Taken

PART TEN. Taken

Chapter One

“Hi, thanks for having me on your show, Mr. Jeffreys.”

The voice sounded familiar, and Charlie leaned forward and dialed up the volume on the Durango ’s radio, then glared at John, who sat silently on the passenger side. “What are you looking at?” he snapped.

John’s eyes shot away from him and held to the road.

“My name is Dale, and I’m from Seattle, Washington,” the caller said.

“Dale,” Lisa said. She glanced at Charlie unbelievingly. “It’s Dale. From Harriet’s group.”

Charlie nodded, then glanced into the backseat where Allie lay sleeping in Lisa’s arms.

“I’m calling about this little girl,” Dale said. “The one the Army is looking for in South Dakota. This little girl, she needs help. She and her parents are out there, all alone against the people that are trying to bring her in.”

“Isn’t this related to that toxic spill?” Jeffreys asked.

“There was no toxic spill,” Dale answered sharply.

“They want to bring this little girl in because she’s what these fifty years of all this, of people being taken, has been all about,” Dale insisted. “They want to talk to her because she is part alien.”

“I guess he thinks he’s helping,” Lisa said.

Allie moaned softly and Lisa looked at her worriedly.

“She’ll be all right,” John assured her. “She’s just done too much.”

“Can you help her?” Lisa asked him.

John said nothing.

“You want to help her, don’t you?” Lisa asked. She glanced at Charlie, who seemed to be seething, enraged that he had one of “them” in the front seat of the car.

Dale continued, his voice nearly drowned out by a sudden flurry of static. “I’m not the only one who saw what she could do. There were nine of us. We all saw it. We all saw the things she did.”

John continued to stare straight ahead.

Charlie glared at him angrily, whipped to a fury now by his silence. He felt a wave of rage wash over him, jerked the wheel to the right and brought the car to a skidding halt beside the deserted road. “Get out!” he snapped.

Allie suddenly awakened. “Charlie?” she asked softly.

“Get out!” Charlie shouted. He leaped from the car, walked to the passenger side and yanked open the door. “Get out,” he repeated furiously.

John nodded, then stepped slowly from the car.

“You’re going to talk,” Charlie said. He grabbed John and slammed him against the car. “Now! Right now! You’re going to tell me what the hell this is all about.”

“Charlie,” Allie pleaded. “Stop it.”

Charlie continued to glare into John’s face. “Why are you here? Why have you been doing this? What the hell do you want?”

John peered at Charlie softly. “We’re just trying to understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Everything,” John answered. He slumped down and collapsed at Charlie’s feet. “Everything about you.”

Allie rushed from the car and took John in her arms. “Stop hurting him,” she cried. “Stop it, please!”

John’s eyes drifted up toward Charlie. “We came here to learn about your world,” he said. “We came here to learn.”

Lisa came around the other side of the car, and knelt beside John, drawing Charlie down with her, so that they formed a half circle around him.

“We’re not different from you,” John went on. “But there are things in you that we no longer recognize in ourselves.” He looked at Lisa and smiled softly. “Right from wrong. That was foreign to us. That what we were doing to you was… cruel.” His eyes drifted over to Allie. “We lost… compassion,” he said. “It is a dormant trait in you.” He touched her face. “We wanted to awaken it… to feel it again… like you do. To combine our mind with your… heart.” His gaze seemed to take all of them in suddenly, as if in a circle of light. “And so, our greatest experiment began.” A single finger moved down Allie’s face. “It was an unqualified success.”

General Beers drew Mary and Wakeman over to the side, away from the men he’d just finished interrogating. The abandoned gas station stood a few feet away, and for a moment they all watched it through the hazy smoke that still rose from the blasted truck.

“They were with somebody,” the general said.

“‘What do you mean, with somebody?’” Mary asked.

“Another man,” the general said. “The other men, the ones who shot him. They say he was in his thirties… and that his eyes turned black.”

Wakeman nodded. “They were waiting,” he said thoughtfully. “They were waiting for her to demonstrate. They see she’s got the power, bam. They’re here.”

Beers glanced first toward Mary, then back to Wakeman. “You’re saying this other guy is an… alien?” he asked.

Wakeman smiled. “You’re paying attention.”

The general stiffened. “You’re both in this thing with me,” he said hotly. “And right now, I have to go back to Washington and explain what happened out here.” He glared at Mary and Wakeman in turn. “Find that girl!” he ordered. “Her and whoever she’s with.”

“And when we do?” Mary asked.

“Then you’ll find me and I’ll take it from there,” Beers answered. He whirled around and strode away.

Mary walked to her car and got in behind the wheel, then waited until Wakeman joined her.

“Where to?” she asked.

“They’re about ten hours ahead of us,” he answered. He opened his laptop and Mary hit the ignition. “The big board has been shut down. I didn’t want the general to find them. But all of that information is in here now.”

“You know where she is?” Mary asked urgently.

Wakeman’s eyes filled with a curious vulnerability. “Mary… you’ve been through a lot. First your father, then everything that Allie put you through. I just want you to know I’m here for you.”

“I know that,” Mary said. She smiled. “You said before that you thought they’d been waiting for her to demonstrate.”

“Yeah.”

“So what happens now that she has?”

“Pie,” Wakeman said.

“What?”

“My rule on any car trip. Pie every day. Let’s find a place to get some and I’ll tell you my theory of everything.”

They headed down the road and found a small coffee shop. Mary brought the car to a halt, and they went inside.

“Okay, tell me,” Mary said impatiently.

“What do we know?” Wakeman asked. “They are this whole, this energy. I believe that this energy can manifest in different ways. As the beings we’ve seen. As their crafts… as our thoughts. There’s no right or wrong about it.”

“No right or wrong?” Mary asked thoughtfully.

“I think they had no concept of cruelty or kindness… no way of seeing beyond the oneness of all that energy. It’s like the little animal brain we have in all of us. It can be awakened by some… experience.”

“Experience?”

“Something could have touched one of them,” Wakeman went on. “Something small and simple… and it awakened this sense of what was missing… something gone and half-remembered.”

Wakeman looked at her for a moment, as if trying to find the right words. “I think they want something. Maybe they had it and lost it. Or maybe they never had it, but think they can get it somehow… from us.” He searched for some glimmer that she understood him. “And whatever it is they want, it’s extremely important to them, something they can’t do without, and so they’re willing to risk everything in order to get it.” He looked at her pointedly. “Think of us, Mary. Think of mankind. The species. Not what you want for yourself. But what you would want for the species.”

She looked at him pointedly. “To take the next step.”

Wakeman smiled. “I love you, Mary.”

“I love you, too.”

Wakeman’s eyes glimmered softly. “We’ve taken it all the way together, haven’t we?”