Dark*Matter: Gators Under Gary (Was Exit 23)

[arwink]

Exit 23, Part Fifteen

The snow globe shattered, dissolving in a haze of blue smoke and icy wind. Laying in the snow is a shrunken head, its flesh stretched taught by years of withering. Stubby horns protrude from the scalp, and dark eyes still bulge from the too-small skull.

Nick’s bullets has grazed one cheek, and the puckered skin is already dissolving around the wound. The headless demon body writhes in pain. Then, for the first time since they laid it low, it stops moving.

The dark eyes stare at Nick with hate.

Nick shrugs and winks at it, moments before Ammie's sword plunches through its forehead. The shrunken head melts around her blade, dissolving in a screaming mass of blue mist that is blown away by the wind. Next to the ruins of the car, the body is quickly melting into a cloud of snow and steam.

Calm settles over the rest stop. The absence of the wind is deafening.

Ammie can barely hold herself upright. Between the stress of the last eight hours and the blood loss from the wounds the demon has opened, she's feeling a little light headed. Nick is already kneeling over Zac, checking for vital signs. The ATF agent is barely standing himself, running on pure adrenaline and willpower.

“Is he…” Ammie asks. She can’t bring herself to finnish the question.

“He’ll live,” Nick says. “It isn't pretty, but he’ll live.”

She nodded, sliding the sword back into its sheath. She was dimly aware of Nick pulling a phone from his pocket and hitting a button. A voice on the other end buzzed.

“Wilkins,” Nick said reasonably. “Hi, Nick DeLatre. Good news, harrikens dead, we're still alive. Bad news, when I get my hands on you I'm going to make you wish the demon had gotten you instead.”

***

Police and emergency services swarmed over the rest stop, tending to the wounded. Nick explained things as best he could, glossed over what he couldn’t. The words escaped lunatic were used, and there was a general nodding among the shell-shocked survivors.

A black car pulled up behind the police line. The sharp-dressed woman that emerged talked with the local police for a few seconds, then made a beeline for the ambulance that held Nick, Zac and Ammie.

“Mary Carter, Hoffman Institute,” She said. “You have Riley’s briefcase?”

Nick nodded mutely and pushed it towards her. She flipped it open and examined the contents.

“The orb?” She asks.

“Broke it,” Ammie said. “Needed to kill the demon head inside.”

“Right,” Carter said. “That explains why you’re not dead. Riley’s papers?”

Nick held up one of the folders with one hand. He flicked a lighter and held the flame near the edge.

“I’ll give you one page for every minute I get to spend with Wilkins.”

Carter raises an eyebrow.

“I’m afraid I can’t authorize that,” she says calmly, her eyes never leaving the papers. “And his services are more value than what’s in those papers. Burning them will cost you nothing, Mr. DeLatre, except the opportunity to find some answers for some long-standing questions.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Carter hands them each a card.

“I’ve organized hospital coverage for all of you, and replacement for your cars. This is a thank-you for recovering Riley’s research. If you’re interested in seeing more, we’re always interested in people who have proven they can handle themselves.”

“Yeah,” Ammie says. “Because I want to do this again every week.”

She lays her head against the stretcher, waiting for sleep to take over. She wills herself to tear apart the business card, to forget what’s hapened. If she can just forget and get to the ranch, she can get on with her life.

Instead she runs her fingers over smooth cardboard, feeling the divots of the writing a few times before slipping it into her pocket.

There’s not going to be a recovery from this, not really. Sometimes you have to cling to whatever lifeline you’re offered.

NEXT TIME: Gators Under Gary

 

[arwink]

Gators Under Gary, Part One

Everyone spends a few days in the hospital, slowly recovering from the experience at the rest stop. No one says anything about what happened, and as the physical wounds heal people drift away one by one.

Ammie eventually makes it out to Sid’s ranch. She spends a week riding horses, eating good food and relaxing as best she can. When her boyfriend Dayne suggests she seems a little more…intent…in her even training sessions, something inside her seems to break. She dumps Dayne, borrows Sid’s phone, and puts in the call to Hoffman.

Nick goes back to the ATF, returns to his case files. At the end of the third day he opens the rattiest file in his cabinet, looking at the notes from his second investogation with the force. The clear typed script with the official statement of his apprehension of a drug runner inside a burning building, the hand-written notes about what really happened. It isn’t until a couple of his co-worker start making jokes about “Mouldy” DeLatre loosing it again that he picks up the phone. Twenty-four hours later he’s been removed from the ATF and hired by the Institute as a civilian adviser.

Zac doesn’t even get out of the hospital. He's been badly hurt, so he's still recovering when the others leave. He makes the call only a few hours after they gone, late in the evening, burning with the realization that he’s actually seen a demon and has the chance to see more.

The three of them meet again at orientation, working their way through with a small crowd of potential agents that just don't seem to understand what they're signing up for. The first lecture is like a bad episode of the X-files, with a balding researcher quietly explaining that the Truth is Out there. Most of the new recruits sit in wide-eyed amazement. After the terrors of Exit 23, the fuzzy voodoo dolls and blurred photographs of aliens he’s showing don’t do much to impress Ammie, Nick or Zac. They cluster together, the only people who comprehend the truth in a room full of true believers.

The next day the training starts, a daily routine of hand-to-hand drills, firearm drills, lectures on conspiracies and the supernatural, interview techniques. All the things that could be useful in the field, accompanied by routine exposure to phenomena that hardened the recruits to the new reality they had to acknowledge.

In the middle of their second week of training, Zac disappears. When Ammie asks one of their instructors what happened, he quietly point out that Zac showed promise. He’s now in an advanced program that will develop his potential.

Seven hours later, Ammie and Nick are summoned to the office of Richard Patterson, Chicago Section Chief for the Institute. He waves them into his office, pointing at a pair of soft leather chairs in front of his desk.

“Patterson,” he says gruffly. “Call me sir. Just finished reading your file. Says you took down a Harriken, kept a small crowd of people alive. Not bad, not bad at all. Of course, by all rights, you should be dead.
“Why do people keeep telling us that,” Ammie mutters.
Paterson shrugs.
“Because it’s true. Usually we show up after these things and there’s nothing but a few smears of blood on the wall. Keeping two-dozen people alive is something of a feat. That’s why we’ve fast-tracked you. We’re going to send you out into a small town called Gary, get you to look into rumors of alligators in their sewers.”

 

[Allanon]

Keep it up . I cannot get enough of this Dark*Matter goodness.

 

[arwink]

Gators Under Gary, Part Two

"This has to be a joke," Ammie said. "Some kind of hazing ritual they putt new recruits through."

"Huh?"

Nick is busy scanning his palm pilot, reviwing the notes he made from the file Patterson shoved accross the desk. They notes weren't complte, but the file wasn't allowed out of the room so he'd done his best. Ammie scowls at him, then turns her attention to the group ahead of them in the que. Australians, from the accent, and geeks to boot.

"They're sending us out after aligators in the sewers," She repeats. "They can't be serious."
"Because?" Nick says.
"Because things like that are just urban myths."
"You mean like demons that steal your head and cause snow-storms?" Nick asked. Ammie glanced at him, daring him to even hint at the smirk that was showing in his voice.
"That's different," she said. "Demons are mythical. Real mythical. Old."

"I'm sure that was a great comfort to the people the aligators killed," Nick says. He punched a button on the PDA, showing a list of names and dates. "Four agents dissappeared last time Hoffman investigated this. Another team came back with nothing but bad headaches and a empty air. All the Institute has is six years of newspaper articles and some good hunches."
"Then why send us to find something if they've already looked?"
"Because we're expendible."

Ammie blinked a few times. The Australians finished at the requisitions window, leaving with an armful off briefcases and black packages. Some of them looked deceptively like the carry-case for a sniper rifle.

"Next."

The clerk offered them a wide smile. It didn't suite his rounded features, and looked absurd with the fly-away whisps of hair on his balding pate.

"Hey Q, we're here for stuff," Ammie told him. The clerk grimmaced, his expression leaving no doubt about how often he heard the joke.

"Car keys," Nick said. He handed over a completed requisition form with Patterson's signature. "We're meant to be taking a van out to Gary for a few days, doing some reconnasiance for a documentary about urban myth."

The clerk nodded a few times and pushed some keys into Nick's hand.

"Already taken care of, sir. Fully loaded with AV, laptops with the necessary uplinks and suitable ID. Anything else?"

"Guns," Nick said.

The clerk punched numers into his computer.

"Records show that you've already been issued with the regulation pistols, Sir."

Nick nodded.

"Yep, but we're going hunting for aligators. Or something that looks like a giant alligator. You'll forgive me if I'm not willing to trust my life to a SIG and dumb luck."

The clerk narrows his eyes. Nick smiles a wide smile, full of as much menace as he can manage.

"Very well, sir, what would you like."

"Shotguns," Nick said. "one semi-automatic if you've got them, but pump action if necessary. Give me a sawn-off for tight corners if you've got them, otherwise expect them to come back missing some bits. Two MP5's, with spare clips. And grenades - twelve smoke grenades for starters, plus as many frags as we can leverage."

He turns and looks at Ammie.

"You want anything?"

Ammie and the clerk both blink in unison.

"I thought this was supposed to be a investigative mission," Ammie said. "Not an armed attack.

Nick shrugged.

"If there's something like that Harriken out there, what do you want to be carrying."

Ammie thought about that for a second. Then she thought about her skills on the target range, the dismal line of empty targets that she's barely grazed with her pistol. Then she thinks about the demon gain, and the chilling cold that still seems to creep into her limbs at night.

"Double everything he said," she says. "And give me the biggest #*$&% of a sword you've got."

The clerk nods.

"So, you two are the recruits from the rest stop," he says. "There's rumors about that. I hear the two of you should..."

"Don't say it," Ammie says. "Don't even think it. Just go get us our stuff."
"

 

[Peterson]

"So, you two are the recruits from the rest stop," he says. "There's rumors about that. I hear the two of you should..."

"Don't say it," Ammie says. "Don't even think it. Just go get us our stuff."

LOL.

Another dose of Aussie genius. Thanks guys!

Peterson

 

[arwink]

About seven years ago, Nick was trained in the fine art of staying cool under pressure. He learned to disarm a bomb while hanging upside down from a rapelling cable, just to prove that he could do it. He was in the line of fire dozens of times, and never lost his head. Even when he saw the demon among the flames of the siege gone wrong, he didn't freak out any worse than your average civilian does when they're caught in the middle of a downtown militarized conflict.

This probably explains why he's staying calm right now, quietly ignoring the fact that Ammie has the van roaring along the interstate at a hundred and twenty miles an hour. Even the sound of angry horns and the squeal of tires doesn't get his attention. Ammie keeps her eyes locked on the road, her fists clenched around the steering wheel. She does her best not to think about the small arsenal they loaded into the back of the van, alongside the film equipment.

"So," Nick says. "How do you think the dodgers are doing this year?"
"Don't follow sports," Ammie says. She slams the wheel to the side, squealing around a slow-moving mail van.
"Right," Nick says. "Me either. What about the whole war thing that's going on?"
"Haven't thought about that either," Ammie says.

Nick nods again.

The two hour trip to Gary is filled with half-hearted attempts at awkward silence.

Once they hit Gary, the first thing they do is set about establishing their cover. A phone call to the local council, applying for permission to shoot in public spaces. Lots of cruising aroudn town, getting to know the layout of the place, taking stock footage that can be looped through the miniature editing studio in the back of the van in case they actually need to look professional. Nick is unanimously named the face of the pair, leaving Ammie the camera duties.

It takes the better part of the day, and both of them are bored as hell by the time it's done. When they figure they've been as obvious as possible about what it is that they appear to be doing, the van is parked outside Gary PD and they're on their way inside.

The police station is small, more run down than any Nick can remember seeing. There's a young guy on the front desk, little more than a rookie, who seems surprised to have a film crew on his hands.

"Um, yes? How may I help you?"

Nick gave him his best soothing smile and offered the officer his hand.

"Nick DeLatre, pleased to meet you," he said. "I'm a documentary maker here to get some background on the attacks that have taken place in the sewers."
"What? Listen, sir, I'm not allowed to say anything on current investigations."
"Of course not," Nick says. "Not your place. You're meant to be out there, fighting crime, not running around pandering to the desires of reporters. But I'm not the press son. Documentaries, completely different kettle of fish. How about you call the media liason for your department and let me talk it over with him."

The young officer stammers a few seconds, then reaches for the phone. Ammie raises an eye-brow at Nick, who appears to have taken the basic interview training Hoffman offered them and mutated it into a whole new thing entirely. Especially when he leans over the desk and commanders the phoen while the officer is stammering his way through an explanation. He talks for a few minutes, smiling the entire time, then passes the hand-piece back to the officer on duty.

"Thanks son," he says, still beaming. It lasts only a few more seconds, until he's turned and the young cop can't see him. By then he's scowling.

"Lets go," he mutters. "I'll explain outside."

Ammie waits until they're back in the van before she gives him the raised eyebrow.

"They're giving us the run around," Nick says. "Did it plenty of times in my day. Lots of excuses about long meetings and being busy. Have to nail the bastards down on a time."
"But you got it?" Ammie asks.
"Sure," Nick says. "7 AM tomorrow morning, bright and early. Only time they had avilable, and even then I had to catch him in a double-talk."
"Screw that," Ammie says. "Some of us like sleeping."
"And some of us need a camera crew to maintain out cover," Nick says. "You're coming."

Ammie glares at him.

"I'm hungry," Nick says. "How about we head back to the steakhouse before we find somewhere to crash for the evening?"

 

[Terwox]

Glad to see this SH coming back. Good stuff!