The Monolith Murders (35 page)

When he returned home, Molly and Who Knows enthusiastically greeted him at the front door with tails wagging. He harshly pushed them aside with his leg.
 

Before he retired for the night, he responded to their irritating whining by scattering their entire month’s supply of dog food on the floor. After today, he decided, I may not even feed the little bastards. Bewildered, both Molly and Who Knows retreated into a corner of the living room, no longer able to recognize their master, wondering who this impostor was who possessed his same unique chemical smell.
 

Chapter 61

Donna drove past Fred’s house. She wasn’t sure how to deal with Fred; she had been able to eliminate Atwell relatively easily, despite all of his special abilities, by employing the element of surprise. She knew that things were different with Fred; he would be on the outlook for her, so surprise would be difficult, perhaps impossible.
 

As she drove by the house she saw one car in the driveway—a red Miata. Fred has to be home, she thought. There was no police car in the vicinity, so she suspected that Maureen was still hiding out at the CIA compound. Donna’s goal had been to get rid of Maureen first; but as long as she stayed protected, that would prove too difficult. She thought that maybe she should just kill Fred, get it over with and forget about Maureen. She needed to get on with her life.
 

She parked her car about two blocks from Fred’s house. She decided to key into his mind; but she recalled the last time she tried, that she had been repelled by disturbing images and unsettling energy flows. She blamed that on a defect in her device. Damn it, she thought, if Anderson wasn’t dead I could have him check it out, now I have no one to go to. Maybe the integration site in my brain still needs to heal more, she rationalized.
 

She started to receive strong mental signals from Fred. Now it was just a matter of executing the process of entry, she thought.

The moment she crossed his mental portals, Fred sensed it as the attempted invasion of an alien link. Now Fred started mentally engaging Donna, almost as a fencing match would have proceeded. Donna jabbed, just subtle enough, she thought, to enter Fred’s brain without his recognition of her presence. Fred parried, blocking and defecting her entry.

Fred entered Donna’s mind; she could not establish any defense for his superior powers. He witnessed through his entrance into her primary visual cortex what she was seeing at this very moment in a muted black and gray display. He viewed a large park; a black and gray sign identified it as dedicated by the town elders for a children’s playground.
 

Shit! He suddenly realized; it’s the park that’s only two blocks from my house. My God, she’s here!
 

Fred flew out of his front door, not taking time to close it. He was running at a full pace toward his Miata parked in the driveway; at the same time he issued a full psychic slashing attack, releasing all the mental energy he could in the direction of Donna.
 

Her reaction was immediate, she was pushed hard into the back of her car seat. Her vision temporarily became a cascading conglomeration of intensely colored dots, both large and small. At the same time a piercing sound of incredible decibels invaded the auditory section of her brain. This time she didn’t black out. She recovered quickly; and with all the energy she could muster, she pushed her accelerator to the floor. Her car snake-tailed back and forth across the narrow neighborhood street.
 

I have to get some distance away from him, she thought, where his power will be weakened. Now she understood why he had been at the CIA headquarters; they must have put a duplicate paranormal device in him. And over her washed the cold realization that whatever he had it was much stronger than hers. For the first time since her escape from prison, she felt pure fear. She knew she no longer held mental superiority over him; now Fred had suddenly become the predator, and she his prey.

The psychic energy he had released caused Fred immediate enervation. He pulled back to give himself time to replenish. As he reached his car, he saw something disturbing; the light flaps which covered his headlights were in a raised position. It meant that he had not turned his lights off since he returned home early yesterday evening. He got in, turned the key and—nothing. The battery was stone dead.
 

He remembered Maureen still had her aging car in the garage. Fred released the emergency brake on his car, pushing it into the middle of the road to allow room for the larger car to exit the driveway. He hated to do that because his beloved car was now vulnerable to being struck from either direction. I have no choice, I have to move quickly, he thought, as he opened the garage door and got into Maureen’s sprawling vintage 1982 Ford Victoria. He backed out of the driveway with his accelerator floored. Then he felt it—a large thud; he had just backed into his Miata!
 

“Damn her, damn her!” he cried out, as he redirected the unwieldy lumbering machine in Donna’s direction.
 

Donna had a head start and was driving a smaller and more nimble car; once she gained control, she negotiated the small city streets with ease. Fred was quickly losing time and distance from her. He hated to use any segment of his psychic powers because they had been so drained; but he desperately needed them to locate her.
 

He placed his revolver on the seat next to him. Ever since he graduated from the academy, he had hated to use his gun to either kill or wound. But now he was thoroughly enjoying the thrill of the chase. He was ready and excited about the approaching seminal moment. He wanted to capture Donna and then he needed to eliminate her; he wanted to do that badly. It was no longer the fact that she was after Maureen, it went well beyond that. He had a hunger for the pursuit and the glory of his eventual kill. There are others out there who need to be killed as well, he thought. My new life will be exciting and adventuresome.
 

Fred’s neighborhood was a virtual forest of live and silver oaks, and it was a daytime playground for squirrels that used the trees as their primary food source. A young squirrel ambled across the street in front of Fred; Fred swerved not to avoid it but to kill it. He missed; “Damn it!” he screamed.

Fred had been conditioned to the maneuverability of his tiny sports car, but now he was driving a vintage automobile limited by its obsolete technology, worn shocks and non-existent springs. As he struck the protruding speed bumps marking the end of his neighborhood, the car oscillated rapidly like a human heart’s final fluttering moments. He was trying unsuccessfully to maneuver five thousand pounds of an unmanageable wallowing machine.
 

Donna was steadily losing him in her more contemporary small car. . She reached the Tamiami Trail, turning a sharp right while skidding across the congested traffic lanes. She was heading at full speed to the next northern town of Bradenton.
 

Fred’s mental facility had experienced a dissipative process when he had directed all of his psychic force at Donna. He was now using residual psychic energy to invade the visual-processing sector of her brain to attempt to determine where she was headed. Through her eyes, he spotted the Sarasota-Bradenton Airport sign. He knew where she was; he was about five minutes behind her.
 

Maureen had been telling Fred to get a tuneup for her car for several months, but Fred kept putting it off. Now he regretted his procrastination. He couldn’t get the old beast beyond sixty, a speed wholly inadequate to overtake Donna.
 

Donna was in a panic mode and no longer possessing clarity of thought. She reached a major intersection in Bradenton and took a sharp left, heading toward the Gulf of Mexico keys.
 

Fred found that he could try to locate Donna by simply linking to her mental signature. He found that effort was much less enervating than using any other segment of her brain.
 

Then Donna made her second major mistake. At the intersection of Bradenton Beach she turned right, onto a road which would ultimately lead to the end of the keys and directly to the entry to the Gulf of Mexico.
 

Fred’s signal was weaker than when he started his pursuit; but it held firm when he passed the intersection where Donna had turned left. Now they were both headed due north but on parallel roads. Fred periodically checked for Donna’s mental signature—the strength of the signal remained at the same level. Fred assumed he was remaining the same distance from her; but he assumed incorrectly that they were both traveling on the same highway.

Donna drove onto the last barrier island at seventy miles an hour, barely missing an elderly downtown shopper who was attempting to cross the narrow street. Within a minute, Donna slammed on her brakes, screeching to a sudden halt in front of a small cement wall. She was now at the end of the island, looking into the tranquil waters of the Gulf of Mexico with no place to go. She considered backtracking and heading back south to the adjoining key, but she knew she would be exposed if Fred spotted her going in the opposite direction.

Then she saw it—a small shack with peeling orange paint situated next to the water, with three small brightly colored outboard motor boats tied to the dock. She ran up to the attendant, “I want to rent a boat right away.”
 

The attendant had a week’s growth of oily brown beard and long stringy hair which looked as if it hadn’t seen a comb for a year. He obviously wasn’t the owner, and he didn’t seem that much interested in renting one of his boss’s boats.
 

“Well, lady, it’s late in the day, and I’d still have to charge you sixty bucks for a half of a day’s rental. Why don’t you come back tomorrow early in the morning, and then you’ll be able to get a full day’s worth of boating? Besides, the weather’s turning foul—too much fog out there to enjoy yourself.”

Donna pulled out three twenties. “Here’s my money!” she screamed. “Now give me a damn boat!”

“Have to see your driver’s license first, lady; those are the rules. I don’t make them, you know.” The man turned his head and indifferently spit out a wad of well-processed chewing tobacco into the vivid turquoise colored water of the gulf.
 

Donna handed him her false driver’s license.

“Okay, lady, I’ll make a copy of this and be right back.” The disheveled man ambled toward his shack to process the transaction.

From the vantage point of the dock Donna surveyed the interior of each of the boats; one had an ignition key in it. She untied the rope tethering the boat to the dock, jumped in and turned the key. The engine roared to life.

At that moment the attendant ran out and yelled, “Hey! You didn’t sign the rental agreement, and I still have your driver’s license. Besides, that boat’s almost out of gas. Come back here!”
 

Donna disappeared into the thick winter fog, not hearing nor caring what he was shouting about behind her.
 

Fred was still heading due north, continuing on highway 41, and Donna’s signal was getting much weaker. He decided to try one more attempt to slip into her visual area and find out where she was. All he could see was fog and water. That makes no sense, he thought, there’s no way any road around here would give me that type of view. Somehow, my powers must have become corrupted.
 

He pulled off the highway into a fast food restaurant’s parking lot. She won this one, he thought, but she won’t win the next time.

Donna was heading northwest, with the boat at full throttle. Because of the heavy fog she had difficulty seeing where she was heading. She crossed under Tampa’s Sunshine Skyway Bridge, where the bay’s waters were connected to a senior winter playground consisting of a swarm of retirement communities nestled next to the warm Gulf waters.
 

A moment later her engine started choking, and she knew she was almost out of fuel. She turned to follow the path of the bridge, trying to stay close to the shore line. Up ahead she saw a secondary road where travelers could leave the main highway, pull their cars into parking areas, and watch the tranquil view of the Tampa Bay waters lapping the shoreline.
 

The engine sputtered to a full stop as she ran aground next to a secondary dirt road. An elderly man and woman had just pulled up to the same area to check out the scenery. Donna noticed their driver’s door was slightly open. She vacated the boat and ran to the car. She pulled the driver’s door all the way open, and was elated when she realized that the keys were in the ignition. She started the engine and was on her way again.
 

Still fearful that Fred was right behind her, she took a long circuitous route east, past Orlando. She kept going east until she intersected the north/south I-95 interstate. On it, she drove due south until she reached east/west interstate 75. From there she traveled across the wild alligator infested Florida Everglades. It wasn’t until late in the night, having crisscrossed the state twice, when she reached the community of Naples, that she finally felt secure that she had lost Fred. I’m no match for him anymore, she thought; I’ve got to get out of the area, maybe out of the country.
 

Chapter 62