RUN

DOM#67A

LOSTON, COLORADO

AD 1999

7:00 PM SATURDAY



Outside Loston, a door opened in midair at the foot of a mountain.

Malachi stepped through, entering from a dark, bleak blackness. He had changed his clothing, dressed in some Eddie Bauer jeans and jacket, Polo shirt, and Timberlands. The better to blend in with the locals.

A moment later, three others came through the door. Malachi watched them come in, surveying his small crew. Usually, when Malachi went on a mission, it was alone. However, this one was important. Crucial, in fact. If they were successful, it would mean the end. He would take no chances.

The three were garbed similarly to Malachi, with sturdy, warm clothing that was voluminous enough to hide an assortment of weaponry.

Todd was his second on this mission. His lean, muscled form stood at ease as he waited for direction. Malachi knew that the apparent relaxation was merely that: apparent. At the slightest hint of danger or necessity, Todd would spring into deadly action. He was a vicious predator, and absolutely faithful to the cause, so was an obvious choice for this important task.

Behind him stood Deirdre. Her dark skin blended with the inky dark on the other side of the door, making her all but invisible until she stepped into Loston. She wore black leather pants and a dark brown leather jacket that made it even harder to see her in the night. It was nearing night in Loston, as well, so stepping through the door made her only marginally easier to see. Todd had argued against her wardrobe choice, telling her that it would make her stand out in a rural farm community.

Deirdre pointed out that Loston was predominantly white. A six foot tall black woman with a dangerous light in her eyes and a distinctly predatorial air would stand out no matter what she dressed in. Malachi had to admit she did look daunting.

Jenna was the last of the group. Like Todd and Malachi, she wore comfortable shoes, jeans, T-shirt, and a loose-fitting jacket that hid a number of machines that would make their quest easier. She was less experienced than the other members of the group, but what she lacked in experience she made up for in zeal. Besides, she was one of the members of the team that had discovered this place, so she deserved to be on the final mission force.

Malachi looked at them one last time. They looked good. They were ready.

He nodded at Todd, who touched a button on what appeared to be his wristwatch. With a low whisper, the doorway to their time shut behind them, sealing up the naked air and leaving them alone in Loston.

"Now," Malachi said, "this is the most important mission we’ve ever been on. We know she’s coming sometime today or tomorrow. I want to find out where she’ll stay, and make sure we’re waiting for her."

"Where do we start?" asked Todd.

"Main Street."

"Anywhere in particular?" asked Jenna. Deirdre just watched, a trained black panther waiting for the kill command.

"Like always. We start at the bars."

The others nodded and Malachi turned to the glow that marked the nearby limits of Loston.

***

The game never changed. Neither did the outcome. Gabe would have felt bad for his friend, but figured that if someone had to lose, it might as well not be him.

He reracked the balls for the third time. Actually, John was playing pool well tonight, much better than he had yesterday after school, thought the coach. The first game had been close. The second game, John got his clock cleaned when Gabe put away five balls in one round. But John came back and won the third round, an unusual occurrence. It probably had something to do with his choice of conversation, which for some indefinable reason was making Gabe very nervous. Every time John mentioned this guy, this stranger, Gabe’s skin started to crawl. He felt like someone was scratching his brain with long fingernails, raking furrows through his mind.

Gabe shook himself mentally, trying to shake loose of the rush of negative feelings this line of conversation was evoking in him. It was no use. The anxious – almost painful – feeling persisted, no matter what he did. Even picturing his daughter’s face – serene, quiet and peaceful as she had been when he buried her – did no good. Usually that remembrance was enough to calm him no matter what. But tonight it did no good. Nor did the fact that he owed John his life. For a moment, the past disappeared and all that was left in the coach was a searing, burning hatred.

"I swear, Gabe," the computer teacher was saying, "I’ve seen this guy –"

"Two other times in the past thirty years and he hasn’t changed, yadda, yadda, yadda. I heard you. It’s your turn to break."

John broke - badly, the ten and the fourteen hung right on the lips of the far corner pockets, but neither fell - and then kept talking.

"The second time I saw him he got blown up, Gabe. Not shot, not hit on the head with a brick, not even get his head cut off. Blown up."

Gabe had hoped that the game would distract John, but his friend was still doggedly pursuing the line of conversation he had begun some forty minutes before. Gabe had tried to turn him away from the topic several times, but to no avail. The coach lined up his next shot, but had trouble focusing on the cue ball. His vision swam before him, momentarily clouding before returning to normal. He realized he was holding so tight to the cue stick that his fingers had gone numb.

He couldn’t imagine why he was so nervous. So uncomfortable and angry.

So afraid.

"So how could I have seen that?" continued John.

"It’s your imagination, bro. Listen, Franny’s coming in tomorrow and I don’t want her thinking you’re a lunatic. Forget about this stuff."

Gabe lined up to put away the fourteen. It was an easy shot, one he should have been able to make blindfolded, shooting with his feet and using a warped stick. He missed, though.

John took the next shot, and Gabe thought perhaps his friend would let it go. He desperately wanted him to. Every time John mentioned this guy, this "Skunk Man" as he called him, Gabe wanted to go a little crazy. That scared him. In spite of his reputation as a loud, murderous coach, Gabe was about as pacifistic as anyone he knew. Sure, he spent some time hunting, but everyone in the town did. Other than that, though, the only time he had ever felt serious anger or rage was the morning Ruth died. And that had dwindled and disappeared when he buried her.

But the feelings that rose with every mention of the Skunk Man were anything but peace-loving. Gabe fought down urges of violence; of strange otherness that tried to persuade him to rip, to tear, to rend.

To kill John.

That was crazy.

Why would I want to kill John? he thought. I owe him everything.

Seven years before, a van had come into Loston. That in itself was almost enough to make front-page news on The Loston Rag, the two page newspaper that served basically as a place for people to sell used hunting gear and fishing tackle, with local interest stories squashed in the spaces between the ads. Anyone coming into the town got a nod of recognition, because visitors were scarce in this mountain village.

The van quickly drew more attention than most passers-by, however. Bearing California plates, it later turned out that the men inside were on the run from the law, trying to make it to a remote enough place that they would not be found. They were also on drugs, it was later discovered, which explained their irrational actions, to some extent, though no one would ever know exactly why they did what they did.

Whatever their reasons, they had come into town, stopped at the grocery store where Gabe had been doing his weekly shopping, and almost casually kidnapped his daughter, Ruth.

He remembered seeing the men walk in, spot her, and pick up the four year old girl from where she was standing in front of the gumball machines. She was trying to turn the dial on one of them, using a quarter Gabe had given her to get one of the large, bouncy balls she liked to play with. Gabe was not married, Ruth being a product of a fling he had had while in college in Denver, and was glad of that fact. Because he knew that if he had been married, his wife would have been telling him not to spoil the little girl.

But he had to spoil her. Ruth was his light, the thing that brought meaning to his life and gave him joy. She was like a flask of living brightness, illuminating all around her with the heady luminescence of pure joy. How could Gabe hope to deny her what she wanted, when she gave so much in return?

Ruth turned the dial and opened the hatch, squealing in delight as the machinery clinked and a ball dropped into her tiny fingers.

That was when one of the men grabbed her. The ball fell from Ruth’s little hand as she was roughly jerked away from her treasure, which bounced slowly away in ever-shrinking arcs. Gabe couldn’t believe what he was seeing for a moment; was rooted to the market floor as firmly as though his shoes had been part of the linoleum. What could possibly be going on? he thought, the complete wrongness of the moment short-circuiting his ability to think coherently.

The three men rushed out of the store, passing Ruth back and forth between them like a screaming football. That was when Gabe finally moved, dropping his armful of groceries and hurrying out after them. They made it to the van, piled in, and screamed out of the market’s small parking lot, fishtailing dangerously over the icy winter street.

Gabe was screaming insanely, but knew he couldn’t help his daughter. They had walked to the market, and he had no way to follow after the van. Still screaming, he ran after them, fruitless though such a pursuit might be. It was his baby, his Ruth, and only death could keep him from following her.

That was when John appeared. He pulled his car up beside the coach, screaming "Get in!" and then hitting the accelerator before Gabe was completely inside the car.

Their pursuit took them high into the mountains. Neither man spoke, single-mindedly following the van through winding, icy roads that quickly became little more than trails. At last, the inevitable occurred: the van hit a patch of ice and rocketed off the road, smashing sideways into a tree. The windows shattered with the impact, and Gabe feared the worst as he and John stopped and ran from the car.

The door to the van opened when they were only a few yards away, and out popped two of the three men that had been in the vehicle. One of them had a gun, which he fired, three sharp reports cleaving the mountain air as cleanly as a razor.

Gabe felt himself lifted off the ground, and knew he had been shot. He also heard a popping noise and knew that one of the rounds had punctured one of John’s tires. He hit the icy ground hard, cold seeping instantly into his bones. He tried to stand, but found that the bullet had taken him in the thigh, breaking his leg and leaving him helpless to do more than watch and fight to keep from passing out.

John dove for cover as the gunfire opened up. He rolled, then came up suddenly in a bright flurry of snow that momentarily blinded the two druggies. Gabe couldn’t even follow the other man’s movements. John was like a man possessed, feinting and dodging with manic speed and precision as the two men – correctly seeing him as the only remaining threat – converged on him.

Gabe knew John only by reputation at the time. So he knew that he was generally regarded as a good guy, and knew that he had been to the Gulf. But that didn’t prepare him for what he saw. John destroyed the two addicts with a skill and artistry that was frightening. He twisted as the one with a gun snapped off a pair of quick shots. One of them grazed his leg, but John didn’t even slow down, gliding past the druggie’s arm and breaking it, then whipping his arm up in the same movement, smashing the guy’s nose through his skull and killing him instantly.

At the same time, John pulled the criminal’s gun out of his now nerveless fingers. Turning fluidly to the other man, who was rushing at him with a snow-frosted tree branch, John calmly put the final bullet in the revolver’s cylinder between the man’s eyes.

Then Gabe saw a burst of movement as the final addict burst out of the van. He jumped out, then fled into the woods. Gabe saw him holding something: Ruth. She was a rag doll, loose as a half-filled sack of autumn leaves.

John turned to look at Gabe. Gabe knew he was bleeding badly; that he might very well be dead within minutes. Still, he didn’t hesitate.

"Save her," he said. Or tried to. All that made it past his lips was a susurrant whisper. John understood what he was saying, though, and dashed off into the trees, crashing through the snow banks and leaving a bloody trail behind him.

Gabe managed to pull off his belt and bind it around his leg in a makeshift tourniquet. Then he passed out, lying in the snow beside two dead men.

When he awoke, it was two days later. He was in a hospital bed. Friends and family were hesitant to speak of what had happened, so only gradually did he manage to wring the details out of them.

John had followed the man holding Ruth to the summit of one of the mountains, finally ending his flight at a sheer drop-off of two thousand feet. The druggie had dropped the girl in the snow a few feet away, trying to lighten his burden to more easily escape from John, who followed him like a coyote on the trail of a sickly gazelle.

It took more work and prying to get out what happened next. But Gabe was as single-minded as John had been, and soon was in possession of the remainder of the facts.

Ruth was dead, her neck apparently snapped when the van hit the tree. John saw this in an instant, and lay her tenderly on her back, her bright eyes no longer alight with the fire of innocent youth, but dim and clouded with death. He crossed her small hands over her breast.

And then he literally took the drug addict apart. The sheriff found his remains at the summit, where every one of his bones had been snapped, rent, or literally twisted off. His jaw was the only thing unbroken, though it was racked open in a never-ending scream of pain.

John then returned to Gabe, holding Ruth’s body in his arms. Neither the van nor the car would ever run again – one bullet had taken out the tire of John’s car, another had sheared through the fuel lines and obliterated the engine block – so John carried both Gabe and Ruth down the mountain. He was met at the bottom by the sheriff and his deputies, who were only barely mobilizing to follow the criminals. After passing Gabe to them and seeing that someone would take care of both him and his daughter’s body, John at last fainted, loss of blood from his leg wound finally claiming his consciousness.

The doctor who informed Gabe of this last bit spoke in a hushed voice that was part regret, part awe. John’s lower leg had been broken by the bullet. Not shattered, but broken badly enough that he should not have been able to walk at all, let alone follow an able-bodied man up a steep mountain face, kill him, and then return down the mountain carrying not one but two other people.

Gabe took all this in quietly. His friends and family were clearly afraid he was going to react with hysterics, screaming at life’s unfairness and shaking his fist at the sky. He did not, however. Ruth was gone, but he would not sully her beautiful memory by becoming hateful. All he felt was a deep, abiding sorrow. And an equally deep, abiding love for this comparative stranger who had risked his all to come to Ruth’s aid.

Ruth was never very far from his thoughts. He cherished her memory, and every time he saw John it was all he could do not to embrace him and thank him for saving his life, and for trying to save his daughter’s. He had known from the time he heard what happened that he would do anything for John. He would risk any loss, and would sacrifice anything and everything at John’s merest request.

And that was why it was so unnerving that as John spoke, Gabe felt nothing but rage. Every clack of the balls on the pool table served only to heighten his anger, and every word John spoke was like a twisting knife, inflicting a psychic pain that Gabe found himself hard-pressed to hide.

The effort of quelling his feelings was making him shaky with tension and adrenaline. Had he not been so focused on controlling himself, Gabe would have wondered if he was going crazy. As it was, though, every tiny shard of energy he had was bent on maintaining control and an appearance of normality.

John seemed oblivious to his friend’s internal struggle, which was good. Gabe didn’t know why John shouldn’t see him struggling, he only knew he shouldn’t.

A thought came to his mind: Keep it secret.

And, on the heels of that, another thought: Keep what secret?

The question was too much for Gabe, and he forced it out of his mind. John took his shot, and for a moment it seemed as if everything would be all right. John put away the fourteen and then the ten, then missed an easy straight shot on the fifteen ball. Gabe dropped the four, then shanked his next, a two-ball combo off the cushion.

John lined up. "I can’t forget about him, Gabe," he whispered.

And with those words, the thundering rage that had hammered behind Gabe’s eyes like a tsunami wave against a dam overpowered him. The anger flowed over his balustrade of mental defenses, blinding him and changing the face of his thoughts wherever it coursed. The wash of vicious spite cleaned his mental slate, stripping away the civilized habits and mores and exposing what lay below it. He felt himself – the person he thought of as himself – sinking away, disappearing as in a fog. Ruth’s face swam momentarily before his eyes, then it too sank into the mist.

And then he was gone. Gabe was gone.

Replaced.

***

John missed the shot, and when he straightened he at last noticed the anguish on Gabe’s face. It disappeared almost instantly, though, replaced by a strange blankness that was even more frightening. It was not the slack-jawed vacuousness of a mental patient. Rather, it was an utterly empty expression that reminded John of some kind of a machine, like a drill press or a heavy water sledge they used in the mines: quiet until it turned on, and then capable of incredible, frightening force.

Gabe spoke, and John recognized his friend’s voice, but at the same time there was something different about it, as though someone had taken Gabe’s timbre and tone and stripped it of all his vocal idiosyncrasies: a synthesized imitation of the real thing.

"Forget it, John," said Gabe. His eyes stared into John’s, boring searing holes into John’s brain. John stared back for a moment, then realized where he’d seen the look in his friend’s eyes before. Gabe didn’t look like a machine...he looked like a killer. It was the look of a sniper. Or one of the black ops assassins. Someone who was preparing to end another’s existence. Someone who had relinquished his hold on humanity, if only for a few seconds.

John dropped his eyes to the pool table, thinking. It seemed to him best to pretend he hadn’t seen the look on Gabe’s face. That frightening look.

He took his shot, his mind moving quickly. Almost in spite of himself, his old training asserted itself and John’s grip on the cue stick subtly changed. He was prepared to swing it like a club, or to use it to block an attack. He looked back at Gabe.

Gabe still looked the same: looked like Gabe, but not.

What’s happening? thought John.

He didn’t say that, though. What he said was, "You’re probably right. It’s my imagination." And he tried to put as much sincerity into those two sentences as he had put into any words he’d ever spoken.

It seemed to work. Gabe’s face relaxed. For a moment his friend looked puzzled, as though stepping into a familiar room whose furniture has all been moved to new positions. Then he grinned, and John’s heart slowed down a beat or two, coming somewhat closer to normal.

Gabe took his shot.

"When you going to see her?"

"Who?"

Gabe looked at him like he had just spoken utter nonsense. John relaxed slightly as he recognized his friend once more. Even so, he did not relinquish his grip on the stick.

"Franny, dim-bulb," said the coach.

"She gets in tomorrow?" John asked. Gabe nodded. "I’ll swing by her place tomorrow night, then. Show her the sights of Loston."

Gabriel laughed, his voice normal, seeming his usual self once again, as though what had just happened were nothing more than a bad dream on John’s part. A waking dream.

"Show her the sights of Loston, huh? That’s the first fifteen minutes of the date," said the coach. "What’ll you do after that?"

Gabe won the game during his next turn, and John left the bar. Gabe wanted to play a few more, but John begged off, saying he wanted to be rested for tomorrow evening. The reality of the situation was, he wanted to get away from his friend who was suddenly acting so strange. He needed to think.

He put his pool cue up in the rack, standing it next to the others, all lined up like steadfast wooden and aluminum soldiers, and stepped into the bar area. He waved goodnight to Casey, who nodded but didn’t stop polishing his bar.

John went to the front door, waving to a few people he knew in the bar, and then opened it to leave.

He almost bumped into the people entering: two men, two women. One man and one woman were laughing, apparently having a good night. The other two - a black woman and a stern older man - didn’t laugh. John had to suppress a shudder as he stepped past them. The older man’s eyes quickly roved up and down, taking in John’s appearance in an instant, before the party moved into the bar. The look unnerved him, and yet he seemed to have seen that look before.

He shrugged internally and stepped out of the bar. When he got in his Pathfinder, he realized what the look had meant.

He was casing me, thought John. He had seen that look, again in special forces training. How to rapidly assess a potential threat, noting bulges in clothing, physical prowess, and a host of other factors that could let a skilled observer know in a matter of seconds what dangers another person represented.

Why would he look like that?

Almost, he went back into the bar. To introduce himself, perhaps, and maybe get a bit of information from the man.

Almost. But instead he put his car into gear, and drove away.