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Part 4-3: War
I left the station puffy-faced, staggering with over-tight muscles, and without my jeans. Outside, a familiar face waited for me.
“Alena, holy mackerel,” said Fergus, bounding off the hood of his car, adjusting his small glasses. “Let’s get you home, hey?”
“I probably smell,” I said, as he moved in to hug me. It didn’t stop him, and I shivered in his embrace for several long seconds.
“Rough night, I hear,” he said.
“You could say that.”
It was just past noon, and it turned out Deluxe had been processed more than an hour earlier and was already back at the condo, evidently working away at something. Reunited with my phone, I texted Deluxe to let her know I was okay(ish) and inbound.
“She didn’t want to leave you,” said Fergus, as he drove. “But she didn’t know how long they’d take with either of you nor when you’d even wake up.”
“Sure, sure,” I said, unconcerned. I’d rather her be proactive than waiting around for my sorry ass. “She, uh, fill you in?”
“For the most part, oui. I don’t believe any of it, which probably means it’s all true,” he swallowed. “Dack’s in a bad way, huh?”
“And maybe Persi too,” I said. “But as soon as I shower and eat we need to go after them.”
“Persi’s okay! Sorry, shoulda said.”
“What? Where is she?” I said.
“At yours.”
“What happened?”
“She apparently jacked ‘Luxe’s sports car after she was ejected from your ghost fight. Drove it to her garage. Been waiting on your front stoop ever since.”
“Huh,” I said, trying to process it, trying to remember where the Lotus had ended up, if the vines had damaged it. Evidently not enough to make it undriveable. I remembered at least one cop car had been bashed around, and at the same time remembered that those cop cars probably had dash cams. What had they captured? What did the woman in the suit already know? The now familiar, ugly feeling of time slipping away chewed its way back into my brain.
So eager was I to start making sense of what to do, after we’d arrived and parked I literally grabbed Fergus by the wrist and hauled him into the condo building when he wasn’t walking fast enough.
The moment I entered our place, I stood facing Deluxe and three Lobsters: a parakeet hopping around her feet, green iguana on her shoulder and a budgie nesting in her hair.
“Phone,” she said, matter-of-factly.
“Phone,” I said, and gingerly produced my cell.
She plucked it up and attached it to what looked like another phone and started tapping away.
“Persi?” I said.
Deluxe waved toward the kitchen.
“Business as usual,” murmured Fergus, leaning away from the bobbing beak of the parakeet as he undid his shoes.
I raced to the kitchen to find the spritely young lady sitting ramrod straight at our island, half eaten sandwich before her folded hands. She stared at the wifi router. I put a hand on her arm and she twitched, then her mask dissolved into a trembling smile when she saw me.
“I thought it was all done for,” she said, leaning into me as I scooped my arm around her shoulders.
“Almost was,” I admitted. “But I’m stubborn, see?”
She choked a laugh, was quiet for a moment, then said, “I ran. After Eden got the best of me. I couldn’t think of anything else. Maybe a weapon from back where we’d parked. By the time I got to the transports I heard the sirens and thought it best to escape. The tall lady, she took Deluxe’s ignition keys, they were left there.”
“The Lotus is fun to drive, hm?” I said.
“Fun?”
“Joking, it was a joke. It’s okay, I’m just glad you’re okay. I thought Eden had, you know, destroyed you or something.”
“It meant to, I think,” said Persi. She looked over my shoulder as Deluxe and Fergus entered. “But I felt for the bushes and yanked myself away. Learned from last time, when you yanked us both away from the creature.”
The mental image of the crab-monster’s vacuumous doom hole reminded of our missing team member, and what we had to do next.
“Give me ten,” I announced. “Then we’re to hit our favourite office building and find a way to that clock come hell or high water.”
“Take ten, but you and I should assume a low profile,” said Deluxe. She tossed me back my phone. “They let us leave much too easily. Your phone doesn’t appear tampered with but I’d wager there’s a chance of surveillance detail assigned to us.”
“Surveillance?” said Fergus. “The Sheriff’s Department can barely contain a well-planned kegger. They show to like, say, half of the court appointments. Understaffed, underpaid if you listen to the chatter in the right circles, ya know?”
“It’s not your Sheriff’s Department that merits concern,” said Deluxe, folding her arms. “While moving through my decidedly expedited interrogation process, I observed at least two individuals that exhibited blatant out-group behavior. They were not of the Sheriff’s tribe, so to speak.”
Fergus shrugged, “Probably staties.”
“State troopers? Negative,” said Deluxe. “They wore police garb but their insignia were vague. Their demeanor, while subtle, was one of bedrock authority.”
“Curly-head,” I said.
“Curly-who?” asked Fergus.
I told them about the sharp suited lady with the perfect thousand dollar perm.
“Sounds federal, at minimum,” said Deluxe. “Hence, we should not immediately draw attention.”
“I need to clean up and get something in my stomach,” I said, “but there’s no way I’m just going to sit around here and do nothing while Eden has Dack.”
“Agreed,” said Deluxe, a fire in her eyes that I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen before. “We’ll bend all our resources into it, starting now. Go get ready and I’ll prep these two. Any objections?”
“I’ve already booked off, ah, personal time at work,” said Fergus. “Should have been with y’all yesterday. Won’t happen again.”
“I won’t stop until Eden’s stopped,” intoned Persi.
“Rah rah team,” I breathed, both impressed and a little scared of the steely temperature. Even though we’d been fighting this thing pretty much from the moment we met it, I had the distinct feeling that we’d now declared war.
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