“No problem. Do I strip down here?”
The woman smiled. “I have something neat.” The woman went to the SUV then came back with her hands full. She laid everything down pulled out what looked like a big dark sheet. It had a hole in the middle. She slipped it over Beth’s head so Beth had on a long poncho that reached the ground.
Beth had to laugh as she began to strip off everything, starting by kicking off her shoes. Everything went into a pile on one side. The woman handed her a couple of handy wipes.
“Sorry, out here this is the best I can do.”
Well, Beth thought, in this crazy life, it was called
make do
. She wiped the important parts, then added the wipes to the outside pile. The woman handed her clean clothes, stating with plain white cotton panties and bra, then knee high walking shorts with a loose plaid shirt.
She took off the sheet and was given a pair of sandals. She followed the woman to the SUV to sit on the back seat, feet out, shaking off the dust so she could put the sandals on. They were the type with Velcro straps so she could adjust them to fit.
The woman got into the front seat and leaned over to talk to Beth.
“The bag is yours. Make yourself familiar with your new identity. It will stand up to an IRS Audit. There is a laptop with a lot of old email from friends and work. I hope you have a good memory. I have been assured you do. We have tried to stay close to what you are familiar with in your life. If you have questions, ask away.”
Mr. Average got in the car quickly and pulled out. Beth looked out the back window, over the pile of loose luggage in the back to see the white van still waiting in the parking lot.
Even though Beth hadn’t gotten much sleep lately, she decided to find out who she was. She dumped out the tote on the seat, setting aside the laptop for last. She discovered a worn wallet with a driver’s license including credit cards. She was now Tammy Brown of Toledo, Ohio.
They had been thorough. There was all kinds of junk in her wallet, also in the tote. She finally turned to the laptop. The first thing it asked for was for her to set a password. Well, well, okay, she made it easy,
tb one two three four
. That way anyone looking close over her shoulder should not be too surprised.
Email needed to have a new password so she used the same
tb one two three four
and soon had it opened. She looked at what was there. Her credit cards were paid up to date. Her bank account had a small amount in it. She was confirmed for the study at the Indian Burial Grounds in southern Ohio in a couple of months. There was some junk mail to delete. There were also the old notes from Marly about their trip to Mexico.
The ride was only a couple of hours to the border exit. It was a small one, but with all the extra security for the US in the past few years, it looked modern. There were extra lines and new offices with lots of wire fencing. The lines were slow as the US border guards were taking their job seriously.
They looked at the papers of Mr. and Mrs. Average. They examined Beth’s, then walked around the car with mirrors. Beth pretended to keep busy on her computer, and gave a small smile to the guard who stopped at her window. Mr. Average, as the driver, did the smart thing. He opened all the windows to give access to the guards, so that they could look into the vehicle.
They were one of the earliest vehicles waved through. The road was not too busy as all the traffic was being delayed. They drove at the speed limit, making good time going north. She asked no questions but just sat back catching some light sleep, listening to the quiet talk in the front. It seemed that there was some sort of farm in one of the northern central States. That was where everyone was going to meet.
Well, let’s see, Beth thought. Every Shifter was going to some nice farm in Wyoming or one of the Dakota’s, but not Beth. That was the last place she was going to place her little fanny.
They stopped for gas. Marly and Beth went to the lady’s restroom that smelled of commercial antiseptic that still did not cover the odor of urine. Mr. Average pumped the gas and washed the windshield. It was simple. Marly went in for snacks, and Mr. Average went to pay. She slid into the driver’s seat. The keys were still in the ignition with the dinging sound, which stopped when she put on the seat belt. Away we go, no mess no worry. Beth didn’t even look in the rear view to see if they were waving her down.
She had a full tank of gas. She also had a new SUV that probably had a GPS tracking device. She could take it for a while, but then she had to ditch it.
The roar shook the white van. They pulled over immediately, out of the traffic. The four of them went to the side door of the van, waiting for the Alpha to speak.
“She is running again.”
“Alpha, you are still healing and there is the meeting. You must attend or there will be an outing.”
* * * *
This was the third time she had returned to the clinic. Beth hoped this time the doctors had some answers for her. She had given them an interesting project. After the first trip in, after the first tests had started coming back, with more people getting involved, she was hoping for some help.
She had told them of a trip to Santiago, Mexico, then into the jungle at the Presa Rodrigo Gomez reserve area. She told them a reasonable, made-up story about being part of a research study. She told them that a large cat had attacked and bitten several of the group, including her. She told them that the animal had gotten away, but couldn’t be identified. She claimed she wanted to make sure she had not gotten rabies or some jungle infection that the cat might have in its blood.
The first doctor took a general look at her bite scar as he took blood samples. He asked her to make an appointment to come back in a couple of weeks.
Surprise
! She had received a call two days later, asking her to come to a clinic at a different location. There were several doctors to look at her bite. They also took more blood samples.
Next was a toe to head examination. Some of the exams used a magnification to see if she had any other bites, scratches or puncture areas within her hair, between toes, butt cheeks, behind ears and up the nose. She put up with all of this because she wanted the results of all the tests.
Beth finally decided to take control of things so she drew a stop. She would not submit to any more tests or exams until they told her what they had found so far. She wanted them to answer her questions about it, or if they could, to get rid of it. Could they excise the bite mark?
She came for her next appointment, but when the doctor came in with an assistant to start to take an actual skin sample, she was sitting on the table, still dressed, waiting for them to give her information.
The doctor was startled. “Ms. Perry, is there a problem?”
New identity, new name, she was getting to find it easy to adopt a new persona. Thank goodness she had a great memory.
“Yep. I am a research assistant. I have been in labs in the field. You guys have done a lot to me, yet I haven’t had any information. This is my body. I want some information. Did I get anything? Can it be cured? Do I need to go to CDC or California where they know more?” She waited to see if the threat got her any information.
The doctor hesitated, then mulled over her words as he looked down at the clipboard he was holding.
“Look, let’s step into my office where we will be a little more comfortable. I want to have my partner join us.”
She was shown into a decent size office with the standard wood desk, and lots of leather chairs. The walls were covered with shelves of books instead of diplomas, though there were a bunch of diplomas hanging against each side of the door. That told her they were more interested in what they were doing than what they had done.
After the two doctors sat down with the door closed, one began to speak.
“We want to be honest. Since you have some background, this will be both easier and harder. You don’t have anything in your blood in general, but we find something strange in the serum around the bite area. We don’t know what it is. It seems to be related to feline. We also don’t understand why it does not circulate away from the bite area.”
She thought about this for a while. “Well, what would happen if I excised the area?”
The two doctors looked at each other. “Well, we could do that for you. We would like to have the sample afterwards. This would make a mess out of your breast. It would take a plastic surgeon to rebuild the area to make the breast match the other one. We would do the excision at no cost, but the plastic surgery would be expensive for you.”
“Wow, decisions, decisions. Okay, let me think about all of this. Thanks, I will give you this promise. If I do the excision procedure, I will return here and let you guys have the pleasure.”
She stood up but saw a little bit of panic on the face of one of the doctor’s.
“Look, let me think this over. You have all my information, including my phone so you can contact me. Give me a day or two. At least I can come back and continue the tests.”
This got her out of the clinic. Beth was running from a longer list. She sat in the coffee shop across the street from the clinic to put the doctors off, just in case they had someone looking.
Now, she was running from a Clinic that wanted her flesh, Mr. and Mrs. Average, two guys from some Big Circus, the initial guys from the US Gov, and best of all, the Black Ghost.
She did some planning, as she was traveling on the busy highway in the stolen old car. Stealing an old car was good and bad. There was no GPS for the police to track. The police also didn’t look for junkers on the stolen list, but the downside was that they were older. That meant they were bad on gas plus they broke down without warning.
Well, when she got to Atlanta, she was going to dump this one in an area that would have it either picked clean or taken again within hours. She had on thin leather driving gloves with her hair tucked into a knit cap. Sun glasses finished the disguise, although she had not chosen the items to hide, but to keep her fingerprints along with any DNA off of anything she had to touch in order to move to her new location.
She had thought out lists as she came to her decision. It would be safer to be in the middle of a busy urban area. It was easier to hide from all the alphabet government guys within thousands of faces in plain sight. The Circus guys would be out in the boonies looking under every tent they could find. As for the big cats, well, forests, jungles including the deserts were the place they loved, not the city with vehicles, hard streets and only small parks here and there.
In Atlanta, Beth could lose herself. She would change her identity for a new one. She would find a job in an office with hundreds of other office workers. She could rent a nice room. She could ride the bus to work. She didn’t need a car. She had four thousand dollars in her belt. She had money in the online bank, but she was afraid to touch that. You never know who was watching the Internet.
It took Beth the first week to get a really good identity that would hold up. She used the time to work on rented computers, sleeping in the car that she moved from place to place. She ate junk food. She had become pretty familiar with the different sides of Atlanta, some good some not so good.
The next week, she found a nice room at the end of a bus line on a quiet street at a house that was in a clean neighborhood. She found some decent clothes in a couple of second hand stores, choosing carefully for office work. She had worked up a couple of references, nothing too extreme, but enough that would hold up to a casual examination. Then it was out to beat the street, looking for work with all the others. She had a lot of computer skills.
It took her another two weeks to get the first job. She was underpaid and overworked. There was no pay past forty hours. Of course, there was work beyond those hours. That was, until she cut loose on the computer.
She had another name, another life, and another time looking over her shoulder. In three months, she had been moved up in the department. In six months, she they sent her to the basement. Oh, she loved the basement.
Here were the temperature-controlled stacks beside the boards, the clean rooms with the noises from outside dampened by the floors that were on raised, spring- protected webbing to eliminate the movement from the outside vehicular traffic.
The geeks spoke a different language, when they spoke at all. Most wore ear-pods connected to the latest smart phone, played dark games on their breaks and ate lunch at their computers. At one time or another, most tried a clumsy pick up, but they were easy to put off. Still, she had to smile at the whispers as they tried to encourage each other to some type of contact with her.
Among them were two IT guys that she did smile enough at, so that they let her get close enough to begin to learn the insides of more than just computers. She followed them through the main frames, through the stacks to combine the power and memory. She was learning about op codes, about i-o ports, and some items, she just couldn’t remember the terms, but she did like the systems.
She didn’t let her anxiety dissipate. No matter how much time passed, she constantly watched for tell tale signs for anyone that didn’t fit the pattern of the life she was leading. Beth was looking for any of the people that might be looking for her.
It finally happened
.
She got off the bus that was only two blocks from work on the same side of the street, but she had run out of coffee. At the last minute, she took advantage of the light to hurry across the street to the local shop that had what she thought was the best coffee in Atlanta.
In the reflection of the windows, she saw the black government SUV slam on brakes, then one man jumped out as a couple of horns let out with driver indignity. The SUV turned in the opposite direction. The man hurried, jay walking after her. She went on in to stand in line, then after getting her coffee she turned. She looked directly at the guy. He got real busy looking at the large menu on the wall behind the counter over her head.