GONE MISSING: Chapter 6
(Warning: PG-13 stuff in here. This is a Dark Ride...)
Jo was curled up in the backseat of one of the rental cars. The guys conferred.
"Okay, for just a second, let's assume she's not nuts," Ross started. They stared at him. "For a second."
"You know, when they treated Jo after that psi-ker did that to her in Seattle --" Ross growled. Everyone else winced, remembering what he'd done to the guy. So many little bones in the hands to break ... "They tested her for psi-FX. Maybe it's manifesting now."
Denis shrugged. "Could be. Telepathic backwash. She could be hearing thoughts." He stopped. "Wait, does that mean Sully doesn't want to sleep with me?"
"At the very least it means Sully's prepared to shoot us and bury us in shallow graves," Stephen said.
"Yeah, yeah, but that doesn't mean Sully won't sleep with me --"
"Okay, I have a suggestion." Andy led them back to the cars. "This stuff manifests under stress. So keep her stress levels up. Treat her like she's nuts, and see if the visions come on even stronger."
"You mean, treat her like she's crazy, make her think she's losing her mind, even though we strongly believe she's not?" asked Denis.
"For her own good." Andy thought for a second. "We may want to take the guns away though."
"Good f$%#@&* luck on that" muttered Ross. "She sleeps with them."
"Under her pillow?" Stephen joked.
"No, she wears the holsters." Ross's expression precluded commentary.
Jo glanced up as the guys got into the cars. Denis leaned back over the seat. "Hey, we're going to run Malloy and SUllivan through the Hoffman database, okay?" Jo nodded. Maybe she wasn't going --
In the rearview mirror she saw Andy conspicuously spin his finger in the cuckoo symbol. Her jaw tightened. She took two of the blue pills. They tasted like ... happy. Like puppies and vodka. She settled in for a nap on the drive to the hotel.
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As they ate breakfast in the local diner the next morning, Denis slapped down a piece of paper. "One of the farmers nearby reported seeing three boys on bikes last friday. Who wants that while the rest of us hit the school, talk to the students?"
Stephen took it. "Jo and I. The rest of you, make small talk with the kiddies."
The group split up. Denis, Andy and Ross headed for the school while Stephen and Jo headed out to the farm on an access road. With the spotty cell phone service in the area, Denis just missed the message from the Hoffman Institute regarding those background checks ...
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A sprawling, harvested cornfield led to the edge of heavy Oregon woods. Jo could just barely hear running water in the distance. No other sound intruded. She and Stephen were a quarter mile in, following the dirt path the farmer'd seen three boys bike down. "We're not bloodhounds," said Jo. "How are we supposed to know if they left the path or not? It's been a week."
"We'll look for signs," Stephen said.
Jo snorted. "Like what, a broken branch? A footprint in dusty ground --" she stopped. " -- or that. That'll do."
A forty foot circle of scorched earth sat on the edge of the forest. The discarded cornstalks below were charcoaled to an almost glassine texture. Stephen whistled. "Wish Denis were here. This is more his gig."
Jo walked out to the center of the circle. Something ... stirred. Like an itch, but inside her brain. She didn't even fully comprehend what she was doing. She closed her eyes, let them float back in her skull.
Her eyes snapped open. "GAHH!"
Stephen thought Jo was losing it. She jumped back, her own gaze tracking empty space.
To Jo, three teenagers on bikes appeared spontaneously at the edge of the circle, raced around her and plunged into the woods. She pulled her gun, pointed it in the direction the bikes had gone.
But there were no boys on bikes there. The woods were empty, mocking.
"They were here. Tom Mullins, Darren Vincent, Horatio Martinez. The missing teenagers." Jo, her gun still up, advanced on the woods. "They crossed the circle. Followed something into the woods." Stephen was silent. Jo looked ot him desperately. "You think I'm crazy, don't you? I was wrong about the plane and --"
"Let's go into the woods." Stephen smiled comfortingly. Jo relaxed and let him take the lead.
They weren't more than a hundred yards into the woods when they smelled it. Something ... foul. Sweet and rotted at the same time. Jo brushed against a tree. Something sticky clung to her shirt, then she felt a TINGLE. "What the --"
"You okay?" Stephen stepped over, looked at the stain on her shirt. There was some sort of viscous residue on the trees. He lifted his foot -- it coated the sole of his shoe. "Man, it's like somebody opened up a fire-hose of goo out here. Got to be a hundred gallons of the stuff everywhere."
"And it's an aneasthetic of some sort." Jo pulled her shirt down, baring her shoulder. She wiped the substance away, but her skin still tingled. "Let's go as far as the river, then come back and collect this."
Another dozen yards and the river bank opened up. Stephen jerked his head down. "Look." There were two patches of fresh dirt on the riverbank. He bent down, cracked open his forensics kit. With just a few brushstrokes, the shallow grave was revealed. Jo swore.
Two of the teens, Tom Mullins and Horatio Martinez, were no longer missing.
Jo raised her cell phone to call it in. But Stephen raised a hand. "I want a look before the Feds and locals arrive." Stephen had noticed something. He looked closer ...
Without warning, he stood and threw up into the river. Jo would have done the same, but she was riding a nice psychotropic buzz. She switched the cell over to the ultra-high frequency converting the phone to a radio. "Denis?"
Denis' voice crackled over the radio. "Jo? What's up?" Behind Jo, Stephen just kept on sicking up in the river.
This was so surreal, Jo felt as if she'd floated away from the world, detached just a bit. "You know how when we investigate UFOS, sometimes cattle, well their ... well the anus thing. Missing. Like surgically removed."
"Yeesssss?" crackled the response.
"What does it mean when it happens to people?"
