Lost Cargo Page 5

  “I’m near the Cleveland Park Metro, so I can meet you here. I have to go with you because you won’t be able to find it… because it’s camouflaged… because sometimes you can see it and sometimes you can’t... no, I’m not saying it’s invisible, if you would just listen… that’s right, camouflaged.” Her voice rose. “No, this is not a Halloween joke.” Silence again. “I’m here with my friend. We both went in it. He’s right here. He’ll tell you.”

  She turned to Travis. “They want to talk to you.”

  He stared at her and hung up the phone.

  “What did you do that for?” she said in outrage.

  “Why didn’t you just come out and say it’s a UFO?”

  “Because they would think I’m crazy! You hung up on them! My brother is injured and trapped down there and you hung up on them! What’s with you?”

  “What’s with you? They thought it was a prank. You were just supposed to say he fell in the rocks!”

  “They weren’t going to send anybody right now. I had to tell them.”

  “Well, I have a news flash for you. Nobody is going to believe there’s a guy stuck in Rock Creek Park in an aircraft that you can’t see. Nobody.”

  “I said it was camouflaged!”

  Travis looked around the pub, trying to think fast to keep everything from falling apart. “Let’s sit down and have coffee and we’ll figure out what to do.”

  “No, thanks. I’m not going to sit around some stupid bar all night. I’m going home for a flashlight and some rope, and I’m going back there now.”

  “We should wait for daylight.”

  She wouldn’t look at him. “I’ll go back by myself then. I’m not a coward.”

  “Whoa, I never said I wouldn’t go back with you. We’ll take flashlights. We’ll go back right now. Hey, I’m on your side, all the way.” He put a hand on her shoulder.

  She nodded, still refusing to meet his eyes.

  “You have a mark on your throat,” he said. “Those things must have caused it.”

  “It hurts. I don’t care.”

  “Sure you’re okay?”

  “It’s nothing compared to my brother.”

  “Look, I’ve got to call my sister and get out of dinner.”

  “Thanks, Travis.” She finally looked at him. “Thanks for coming with me.”

  Tech 29 clung with his footpads above the engine room door in case the intruders came back. Their shrill voices still rang in his ears.

  His exhausted, worried face gazed back at him from the reflection wall. Bruises blackened three of his six eyes, ran in splotches across the intricate folds of his pale blue skin, and covered his left shoulder where the crash had hurled him across the ship. The medical scan he’d taken earlier said he had a concussion and was dehydrated, which explained his terrible headache.

  Strange croaks and shrieks came out of the woods. The Elemental must have found a place to hide by now. If it reached the sprawling city he’d careened over before the crash, it could be anywhere among thousands of buildings and alleys.

  The night wore on. A cold wind blew through the ruptured hull.

  He waited until it felt safe to come out of the engine room, crawled down the wall, and picked up the luminous manual that he’d dropped on the floor.

  Radiation Control Systems (4-5), Anti-Gravity Breaking System (5-8).

  Not there. He kept going.

  When Your Ship Is Towed By Tractor Beam (8-1), Hatch: Lockout, Jams, Damage: Meteoroids, Solar Wind, Space Trash (12-5), Encounters with Space Pirates and Intergalactic Gangs (13-3).

  Not there, either.

  In the Event of a Crash (14-5).

  Here it was, the section he’d been reading when the manual fell out of his fingers. He’d studied the ominous paragraphs when he went through training, but that was ages ago. Beyond ages. The dry language on the page seemed out of touch with his frightening situation.

  Escape from an Exploding Ship.

  No need to read about that.

  Notify Galactic Animal Control (GAC).

  He’d tried that. The message wouldn’t go through. The crash had damaged the communication system.

  Set Controls to Regeneration.

  He’d just finished this step when the locals broke into the ship. The black walls and floor thrummed under his feet. The ship’s living skin would reform the hull, the doors, the lights, and most of the damaged equipment, but he knew the process would move at its own pace over days, maybe weeks. The ship could be as finicky as one of the creatures he hauled for a living.

  Camouflage: Travel at all times with camouflage. If you crash on assignment, deactivate the camouflage so the locals can find you. If you crash on an unfamiliar planet going to or coming from an assignment, activate your camouflage. Assume the locals are hostile until you know otherwise.

  The force field was at sixty percent and shutting off at unpredictable times, which had allowed the intruders and a group of curious brown animals with hooves and antlers to approach the ship.

  Inspection: Activate camouflage and inspect the ship for damage.

  The ship was a mess. A boulder had pierced the hull, destroyed the main cage, and wrecked the food supply doors.

  Lost Cargo: In the event the cargo escapes, make every effort to capture it alive. If the crash damages the cage, put the cargo in suspended animation (see sub-section 14-6b) until regeneration repairs the cage. If the cargo reaches a populated area, determine if it is a threat to the locals. The technician has the authority to destroy the cargo if capture is impossible.

  The techs called the Lost Cargo paragraph the Stew Clause. If the techs had to do away with the cargo, they would usually store it and turn it into stew, as long as it wasn’t poison or covered in horn or especially nasty. Stewed cargo was a welcome change from the usual tasteless nutrition wafers.

  Right now Tech 29 felt he would give anything for a tasteless wafer. With the ship’s food supply doors jammed, he had no food at all, and that wasn’t in the manual. He would be in desperate shape if the first intruder hadn’t dropped the bottled drink.

  He stared at his bruised reflection and wished he had a hot cup of gribble. Tonight’s unwelcome guests weren’t coming back right away. The woods were too dark. They would wait until daylight, if they came back at all.

  Time to find out if they’d wrecked the ship.

  Tech 29 opened the door and almost stumbled over a large local trapped in the floor. Blue light shone across the local’s horrified face as he pulled his jacket together in a hopeless attempt to hide himself.

  “What the hell are you?” the local shouted.

  Chapter 5

  Footsteps in the Fog

  Lisa Mitchell put the phone down and walked past the baby grand piano and crystal lamps to the couch, where she sat beside her husband Ian. Her mother was going to love this one.

  “That was Travis,” she said, smoothed out her black cashmere sweater dress, and crossed her legs. “He took a girl to the emergency room.”

  Her mother hooted. “Oh, really? Which hospital?”

  “He didn’t say. The girl had an asthma attack.”

  “When does he expect to be here?” Ian asked. He looked like a thoughtful sheep in jeans and tweed. With his curly gray hair and placid expression, all he needed was some grass to chew.

  “He doesn’t know,” Lisa said. “As soon as he can. We’ll see him this week anyway. I told him about the condo.”

  “Unbelievable.” Her mother shook her blonde head and fixed a smile on her face. “So the condo’s on Connecticut Avenue. That’s a great location.”

  Ian nodded. “On the top floor, facing Rock Creek Park.”

  “Which is nice,” Lisa said. “Really nice. We’ll have the woods.”

  “That’s a plus,” her mother said.

  Ian reached for the Brie and crackers on the glass coffee table. “Buchanan House was a prestigious apartment building for over a hundred years until it went condo in the 1980s. The Wyatt Corp
oration owns most of the units on our floor, and they’re relocating to Virginia, so they’re upgrading everything before they sell.”

  Lisa emptied her wine glass. “So we get a beautiful new kitchen.”

  “Terrific cheese,” Ian said. “This is what God would have if he wanted a snack.”

  The logs in the fireplace snapped as the flames leaped up.

  Lisa’s grandmother finished her cheese and crackers and brushed the crumbs off her enormous bosom. “The paper said an animal attacked a jogger in Rock Creek Park.”

  “What are you talking about, Gram?” Lisa said. “Where did that come from?”

  “The animal attack,” her grandmother repeated. “It was in the Post. Your mother and I were just talking about it. They found the body near the library.”

  Lisa’s mother waved her hand. “And that was probably a one-time thing. I’m sure they’re on top of it. More drinks, anybody? Lisa?”

  “Not me,” Lisa said. “My diabetes.”

  “Oh, of course,” her mother said. “When do you start at the magazine?”

  “In a month. Gives me time to breathe,” Lisa said. “You want to come with me to look at towels tomorrow? The bathrooms have these canary yellow tiles with a thin black border. Retro. We don’t have anything that matches.”

  From the corner of her eye she saw her grandmother frown and settle back in her chair.

  Travis stood around in Burke’s huge kitchen, waiting for Lexie while she changed clothes and found flashlights. The kitchen had endless black granite. Whatever Burke was doing on Capitol Hill, he was making money at it, more than he ever made as a measly photographer mucking around for the Associated Press. Travis stared at the moon’s cratered face outside the window and his thoughts about Burke trailed off as hollow chatter. The consultant might never see his house again.

  “No, we’re going to get him out of there,” he said aloud. Famished, he raided the refrigerator and wolfed down a beef sandwich and a chocolate pudding, eating as fast as he could so Lexie wouldn’t see him mowing through their food.

  No coffee, the one thing he wanted.

  Wiping his mouth, he went into the hall, listened for any signs of her emerging with the flashlights, and caught himself in the mirror. He ran his hand along his jaw. He looked like a Neanderthal and could use a shave.

  Her footsteps moved across the upstairs floor and stopped.

  In the quiet he took out the mysterious silver device he’d stolen from the black triangle. The night already seemed like a half dream, but here was this strange thing, bringing it all back. The heaviness suggested something was inside it, but there were no openings. And why did it have a hook? Was the hook supposed to attach to something?

  Lexie’s footsteps crossed the upstairs hall again. He slipped the alien device in his pocket just as she hurried downstairs with her blonde hair falling over the collar of her black coat. She’d slung a black canvas bag over one shoulder and carried a large Canon around her neck.

  He straightened the strap on her shoulder. “What’s with the camera?”

  She gave him a disarming smile. “To take pictures of the black triangle. We have to take pictures of it. I’ll leave the camera in the woods so the ship won’t damage it.”

  “Good idea. I didn’t think about that.”

  She opened the canvas bag. “And I have flashlights and a knife and some rope. Maybe we can pull him out.”

  “I’ll carry that for you.”

  “Oh, I don’t need any help.”

  “Come on.” He grinned and took the bag. “You’re going to be hauling that camera around all night. Do you have another cell phone?”

  “No, we’ll just have to go without one.”

  “I have one at my house,” he said.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Porter Street. Half an hour.”

  “Cell phones don’t work in the woods,” she said.

  “Sometimes they do. Depends on the carrier and where you are.”

  “I don’t know what to do. I just want to go now.”

  “Then let’s go.” He put his hand on her back, followed her down the hall, and looked with dismay through the narrow panes beside the front door. The carriage light on the lawn shone into heavy fog. It had been raining all week and the fog had come back with a vengeance.

  “Great, look at this stuff,” she said and stepped outside.

  The trees beyond the lawn vanished in the cloudbank that had settled over Macomb Street. He knew parked cars lined the road, but he couldn’t see more than twenty feet in front of his face. As soon as they took a few steps past the grass to the sidewalk, wide wisps of fog rolled back to reveal the cars by the curb.

  They left the house behind and headed downhill in the muffled quiet. Luminous streetlights lit up phantom shrubbery and trees.

  “Burke must be exhausted,” she said.

  “Why was he going to the Adirondacks?”

  “A spa, I think, then to Montreal to buy antiques. I don’t know where exactly.”

  “We’ll get him back tonight,” he told her, thinking they would be lucky to even find Spa-Boy in the dark woods. “So he was going to a spa.”

  “He does that. You know, massage, manicure, a businessman thing. When we find the wreck, I want to try to short-circuit the floor. It has to be some kind of security system.”

  “There’s the library. I didn’t even recognize it.” He pointed to the darkened windows of the Cleveland Park branch library at the bottom of the hill where Macomb Street ran into Connecticut Avenue. Fog drifted in ragged streamers across the deserted intersection. They headed across the well-lit avenue, relieved to be on one sure path in the murky landscape. Stores and restaurants loomed up, first the rain-drenched flag and green awnings of the Irish pub, followed by a deli that disappeared as more stores appeared out of the mist.

  A realistic mannequin in a store window made them jump. As they moved past the theater with its dark marquee and empty ticket booth, the fog rolled away under the glow of red taillights. A city patrol car was idling outside the 7-Eleven on the corner.

  “Cops.” Travis touched her shoulder. The fog was so thick he couldn’t tell if the cops were inside the store or still in the car. The 7-Eleven was the only place open on the street. Hazy yellow light from the windows stretched across the sidewalk.

  Lexie wiped her damp hair from her face. “Maybe they’ll help us.”

  “They might figure out you called them before.”

  The door of the 7-Eleven opened and a cop stepped outside with a cup of coffee in his hands. He took a few steps and then with perfect cop instinct stared right at them.

  “I’m going to ask them anyway,” she said.

  Travis fell in with her, almost feeling like her boyfriend. The cop got behind the wheel and said something to a second cop in the passenger seat. When the traffic signal changed, they pulled away from the curb and disappeared in the fog up Porter Street.

  Lexie threw up her hands. “I can’t believe it. Look at that.”

  “You know we’re never going to find Burke in this fog,” he told her.

  “I guess we should wait for it to burn off.”

  “Let’s get my cell phone,” he said. “We can make coffee and wait a couple of hours and look for him when we can see. Come on.”

  “Okay, you’re right,” she sighed.

  They left Connecticut Avenue and went up Porter. The fog grew thicker, drifted over the black road, and parted in streamers to reveal the inky windows of darkened houses. Gloomy lawns appeared and disappeared, bordered by trees that vanished behind them.

  “Do you hear something?” he asked.

  She froze. “Where?”

  “Behind us. Listen!”

  Footfalls came through the fog up Porter Street. The slow footfalls made a sound like claws on the sidewalk, faint at first and then distinct, until the walker paused as if to listen.

  “The cops?” Lexie whispered.

  Travis peered into the fog
, but couldn’t see anything. The footfalls started again. “It sounds like claws, some kind of an animal.”

  “Maybe it’s a dog,” she said.

  He took her arm. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  They hurried along until they came to a brick retaining wall with ivy trailing over the top, and beyond it reached a familiar landmark. The 34th Street signal glowed through the haze across the silent intersection, quite a change from daytime when the crossroads streamed with traffic.

  He stared back down the hill. Maybe they could shake whatever was following them if they got off Porter. He took her hand and headed up 34th Street. The fog grew thicker. Macomb Street was somewhere nearby. They could forget the cell phone and go back to her house. It was closer than his place.

  The sound of claws came after them. His heart was racing a hundred miles an hour. When he looked over his shoulder, he still couldn’t see anything. They stepped up their pace. Darkened condominiums gave way to homes surrounded by towering magnolias and the deep shadows of walled gardens. Hiding places, but he wasn’t stopping. If a dog was after them, it would be able to smell them out.

  The hill sharply rose. Then 34th Street forked, and he realized they were on the wrong side of the road.

  To reach Burke and Lexie’s house, they would have to take the right fork and dash across the pavement, where the streetlights would expose them in the middle of the road. They continued up the left fork, heading in the opposite direction from the way he wanted to go.

  “What are we doing?” she whispered.

  “Listen,” he said. The footfalls came to a halt and started again. He turned, trying to locate the sound.

  “Do you hear anything?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure,” he lied, but when he saw her face he knew she could hear it, too. They began to run uphill, hand in hand, past brick walkways and arched doorways and shuttered windows, racing over the grass to muffle the sound of their shoes, covering several blocks in silent panic until they doubled over, gasping for breath.

  Lexie clutched the camera. “Where are we? How did we get lost in our own neighborhood?”

  “I hear something,” he said, his skin prickling. “It’s coming after us.”