Vortex (16 page)

She closed her eyes and tried to nod.

“I’ll answer their questions while you’re being treated. Once you’re taken care of, we can pay the hospital with the credit card Martin gave us. Then we’ll just leave. Can you remember all of that? Because they’re going to give you drugs.”

“Yes,” she whispered, eyes still closed. The pain was a giant mouth and it was closing on her... then swallowing her. She felt Gavin’s hand touch the side of her face before she lost consciousness.

Gavin thought fast, trying to anticipate what would happen once the police arrived. They’d have a whole lot of questions, none of which he would be able to answer because he and his wife had just dropped in on the Mahlers to ask some questions for their book. Karen—
No, Susan
, he thought,
don’t forget that, she’s not Karen, she’s Susan!
—had gone to the bathroom. Next thing he knew, there were men with guns in the house telling him to go with them. They’d taken him out the back door to this building behind the house, where he’d found his wife. Then everyone had started shooting everyone else.

But what about Penny?
he thought.
And Pyk?

Gavin turned to Penny, who was silently staring at Pyk. “Penny,” he said. “Those children they fed to him—what did they do with the remains?”

Penny turned to him slowly, blinking as if she’d just awakened. “What? The remains? Oh, they... they took them away and cleaned up.”

Gavin looked down at his feet. A concrete floor—there would be a lot of DNA evidence of those children. Km Services would have a whole bunch of questions to answer by the time the police were done with this place—providing they didn’t already
own
the police. He looked at Penny again.

“The police are coming,” he said. “Do you want to go back to that academy, Penny?”

Her eyes widened slightly and she turned her head back and forth. “No. Please, no.”

He turned to Crystal. “Can you take her? If you can get out of here before the police arrive, you were never here. Understand?”

“Yes,” Crystal said. She went to Penny, put an arm around her shoulder and started to speak, but Penny shrugged her off.

“Wait,” she said, turning back to Pyk. They stared silently for a while.

Gavin started to get nervous. If they didn’t leave before the police arrived, they wouldn’t be leaving.

Pyk moved forward cautiously and lifted his arms. He gave Penny a clumsy hug, held her for a moment, then turned away and headed for the open door wearing only a thin hospital gown.

“Wait,” Penny said. “Its cold out there.” She hurried to the coats hanging by the door and chose a heavy blue parka. She held it up in front of Pyk, then went behind him. Moving uncertainly, he slid his arms into the sleeves. Penny hunkered down in front of him and zipped it up, then buttoned the collar and pulled the hood up over his head. The parka consumed him. Penny put her hands on his shoulders and smiled, then stood and stepped aside.

Pyk went out the door.

“Where’s he going?” Gavin asked.

“He’s going home. The way he came.”

“What way is that?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t want me to know. I think he’s afraid we’ll follow him. He knows he’ll be punished when he goes back, but he doesn’t belong here. He knows that.”

“Okay,” Gavin said. “You two need to get out of here. Now. As fast as you can.”

Crystal turned to him, but he didn’t let her speak.

“No goodbyes,” he said. “As soon as you can, go to our cottage, get all of our stuff and take it to your place. Don’t leave anything behind. And don’t worry about us. As soon as you get out of here, call Martin and update him. Tell him everything you can. We’ll tell him the rest later.”

After Crystal and Penny hurried out, Gavin turned to Gertie.

“Go back inside with your parents, Gertie. When the police ask you questions, just go along with the story we gave earlier. You don’t know us. You’d never seen us before we showed up at your door. Do you understand?”

Gertie nodded. “What’s going to happen?”

“There’s going to be a lot of confusion. Then later, I suspect there will be a lot of covering up. I seriously doubt the people behind this will ever let it make the news. Now go, Gertie. And thank you for your help.”

As Gertie left, Gavin heard Crystal’s car start up and drive out.

He turned to Karen. She was still unconscious. Her skin was the color of flour and she looked 10 years older. He reached down and took her hand in his—it was cold—and stroked it with his thumb.

He was not sure how much time had passed when he heard the first siren.

“I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful,” Gavin said to the police officer in the ER waiting room.

“You have been helpful, Mr. King.” He was in his thirties, balding, and spoke in a quiet monotone.

“What
happened
out there, anyway?”

“To be honest, we have absolutely no idea.”

“What about the Mahlers? Are they all right?”

“They’re very upset, but they’ll be okay. Look, I know you’re worried about your wife. I’m sure we’ll have more questions for you, but for now, I’m going to leave you alone. You’ll be available, won’t you?”

“Sure, sure. I’m just... sorry, but my wife is—”

“I understand. Thank you, Mr. King. We’ll be in touch.” Gavin remained in the molded plastic chair as the police officer left the waiting room, then he got up and returned to Karen’s bed in the back.

She was awake but groggy.

“How’re you holding up?” he said.

One half of her mouth curled. “I’m feeling pretty good right now, tell ya the truth.”

He smiled. “Enjoying the drugs?”

“Enormously.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“Says I’m fine. Clean wound, no problems. Just hurt like a fucker, thassall. He’s gonna give me a prescription for some painkillers and send me home.”

“And from here, we’re going to go straight out of town.”

“What about the police?”

“We don’t exist, remember?”

“But the house—”

“The house was rented in our names. Martin Burgess giveth and Martin Burgess taketh away. By the time they look, there won’t be any way for them to find Susan McGee and Peter King. And we’ll be Karen Moffett and Gavin Keoph again.”

“I need a cigarette,” she said with a sigh.

As Karen stared up at him, her bleary eyes became more focused, even intense.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“Come here,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Just shut up and bend down here.”

With a puzzled frown, Gavin bent toward her. She placed her right hand to the side of his neck, pulled his face to hers and kissed him. It was a long, warm kiss and he was surprised when her tongue slipped between his lips. He put his hand on her arm as the kiss went on... and on.

Finally, her hand slipped off his neck and dropped to the bed. He stood slowly, and when he realized his mouth was hanging open, he closed it. He gulped and said, “What, uh... what was that?”

Her eyes were only slightly open and when she spoke, her speech was a bit slurred. She cocked one brow weakly and said, “That was just... something to think about.”

She closed her eyes and drifted into a drug-heavy sleep.

“
H
ow about that white sea bass?” Burgess said to Karen. “Was I right about that?”

“It’s delicious,” she said.

“I know the chef. JW Foster. He came here recently from the Pyramid Room at the Fairmont in Dallas. Guy’s a genius.”

They sat in the Fairmont Hotel’s Laurel Court restaurant in San Francisco where Burgess had put them up for a couple of nights since they’d left Mt. Shasta. Karen and Gavin had a suite. Separate beds. But only because her shoulder was still very painful and she was high on painkillers most of the time. She decided if that weren’t the case...

They hadn’t discussed it, though.

Karen and Gavin sat across the table from Burgess and Crystal.

“How’s Penny?” Karen asked.

“Exhausted,” Crystal said. “And pretty overwhelmed. This is, like, her first time out on her own. Well, as on her own as she’s ever been. She’s having a hard time adjusting. She wanted to eat in her room and watch TV by herself. She’s probably asleep by now.”

“She’s an amazing girl,” Burgess said.

Gavin asked, “What are you going to do with her?”

“That’s up to Penny,” Burgess said. “But I think she wants to stay with Crystal.”

Crystal shrugged, smiling. “I don’t mind. She’s good company. But it’s up to her. Whatever she wants to do.”

“How are you going to explain her to your friends in Mt. Shasta?” Karen asked.

“I’ve decided to leave Mt. Shasta.”

“I want her to come live with me,” Burgess said. “And Penny’s more than welcome. If she’d like, I’ll work on getting her an identity and we’ll put her in school. At the moment, she doesn’t officially exist. If she’s going to exist, it’ll have to be as someone else. I’m sure the folks at Aquino Academy are looking for her.”

“That’ll be quite an adjustment for her,” Karen said. “From what she’s told me about Aquino,” Burgess said, “it’s an adjustment she’ll enjoy making. I’m amazed by the whole thing. An academy hidden away in the mountains somewhere near a nonexistent military base. Filled with kids who are psychic, telekinetic, pyrokinetic. This is the biggest thing you two have found for me since I first hired you.”

“Bigger than vampires?” Gavin said.

“Bigger than werewolves?” Karen said.

Burgess nodded. “Yes, bigger. Because from what Penny has told me, whoever runs that academy runs... well, just about everything.”

“I notice there’s been no mention of it in the news,” Gavin said.

“I’m not surprised,” Burgess said. “I doubt there will be. I’m wondering if Crystal was right—that the police were covering up for Km Services.”

“What are you going to do with this information?” Karen said. “I mean, the information about Aquino Academy and... well, all of it.”

Burgess smiled. “I’ve already got my network of geeks working on it. They’ve spent most of their lives pursuing information about UFOs, aliens, every kind of paranormal and conspiracy boogieman you can imagine. This has blindsided them. They thought they were aware of all the weird stuff. This completely turned them on their ears. Among them are a couple of very sharp internet journalists. If the media doesn’t pick up on this, they plan to get it out there somehow.” He laughed. “All those kids are on this like a roomful of hungry monkeys on a banana. More wine?”

Burgess lifted the bottle and poured for everyone. He stopped at Karen’s glass.

“You’ve already had one glass and you’re taking Vicodin,” he said. “I’m not so sure you should have any—”

“After all the dangerous crap you’ve put me through, you’re worried about an extra glass of wine with my painkillers?” Karen said. “Shut the hell up and pour, writerboy.”

“I’m trying to make up for all of this,” Burgess said as he poured. “You can stay here as long as you like. Relax, see the city.”

“Hey, I
live
here, remember?” Gavin said. “The only reason I’m staying in the room is that I don’t want anyone at my office to know I’m back in town. They wouldn’t leave me alone. But tonight’s the last night for me. I’ve got to get back to work tomorrow.”

“Well,
you
, Karen, are certainly welcome to stay as long as you like,” Burgess said.

“I just might stay a while. It’s a nice place to recover.” She turned to Gavin. “And maybe we can spend a little time together in your off hours.”

“Sure,” he said. “Did you have anything in mind?”

She shrugged her good shoulder. “It’s something to think about.”

Version History

Version #:
v3.0

Sigil Version Used:
0.7.2

Original format:
ePub

Date created:
November 15, 2014

Last edited:
November 15, 2014

Correction History:

Version History Framework for this book:

v0.0/UC
==> This is a book that that's been scanned, OCR'd and converted into HTML or EPUB. It is completely raw and uncorrected. I do essentially no text editing within the OCR software itself, other than to make sure that every page has captured the appropriate scanning area, and recognized it as the element (text, picture, table, etc.) that it should be.

v1.0
==> All special style and paragraph formatting from the OCR product is removed, except for italics and small-caps (where they are being used materially, and not as first-line-of-a-new-chapter eye-candy). Unstyled, chapter & sub-chapter headings are applied. 40-50 search templates which use Regular Expressions have been applied to correct common transcription errors: faulty character replacement like "die" instead of "the", "comer" instead of "corner", "1" instead of "I"; misplaced punctuation marks; missing quotation marks; rejoining broken lines; breaking run-on dialogue, etc.

v2.0
==> Page-by-page comparison against the original scan/physical book, to format scenebreaks (the blank space between paragraph denoting an in-chapter break), blockquotes, chapter heading, and all other special formatting. This also includes re-breaking some lines (generally from poetry or song lyrics that have been blockquoted in the original book) that were incorrectly joined during the v1 general correction process.

v3.0
==> Spellchecked in Sigil (an epub editor). My basic goal in this version is to catch most non-words, and all indecipherable words (i.e., those that would require the original text in order to properly interpret). Also, I try to add in diacritics whenever appropriate. In other words, I want to get the book in shape so that someone who wants to make full readthrough corrections will be able to do so without access to the original physical book.

v4.0
==> I've done a complete readthrough of the book, and have made any corrections to errors caught in the process. This version level is probably comparable in polish to a physical retail book.