Lost Cargo (14 page)

Good God, that’s me
.

The image showed where he was standing in relation to his surroundings.

Alarmed, he tried to shake the device off his hand again, but it wouldn’t budge. Some kind of alien
GPS
. Was it signaling somebody? Tracking him?

A second symbol of a luminous blue net appeared among scattered boulders on a faraway hill. The three-dimensional net slowly spun in a helix until it came to a stop. He stared at the real hill. Just rocks and trees. If he was tracking something, there was nothing that the symbol could represent.

He grew frantic, tried to wrench the device off his hand, dug his fingernails under the edge, and pulled the metal one more time. To his surprise, the image disappeared. The hook shrank to its former shape and let go of his fingers. He stared suspiciously at the device, wondering if it was going to come to life again, and stuffed it in his pocket.

His phone had one bar. Maybe the call would go through, but when he rang Lexie, he couldn’t get any reception. The Rock Creek Park problem, which he’d forgotten about. He climbed out of the gorge and headed to the nearest rise, where the call connected.

To his horror an idiotically cheerful ringtone floated out of the trees hundreds of feet ahead where the forest rose in another rock-strewn hill. He recognized the hill from the tracker. The device had shown the net symbol there. Somebody was in the woods after all. Shrinking down, he wondered if he’d been spotted.

His call to Lexie went to voicemail.

Seconds later, the ringtone in the woods stopped, an ominous coincidence. It couldn’t be her phone. He still had one bar, called her again, and listened with dread. There it was again. The same faint, cheerful ringtone pealed out from the woods.

He was about to call her name when something moved on the hill, a whisper of a figure stepping out of sight, almost invisible against the trees. The gloomy light must have tricked his eyes. Two trees had grown together and he’d mistaken the one behind for a figure.

Seconds later, a stump on the hill moved. The stump-shape rose up from the ground and changed to a figure with arms. The flesh-eating giant was so far away the folds of her monstrous gray cape resembled the crevices and cracks on the stony hillside.

The phone must have disturbed her. He drew himself into a ball behind the nearest tree trunk and peered around the trunk.

Light rain began to fall in fits. The giant remained motionless, as if she had turned into one of the stones that had been on the hill since the earth’s primordial youth. Then she took three long steps, hopped on a flat boulder, and stared over the woods. Travis couldn’t breathe. Blood rushed in his ears. Maybe she smelled him, his mind screamed, but she didn’t seem to realize he was there.

Time passed. He wanted to vomit.

Lexie
. The sky grew darker. Roiling clouds moved overhead. The giant hopped from the boulder and began to stride into the woods toward the bridge until her shape dwindled and vanished from sight.

When he dared to stand, he was so stiff from hunching down that he could hardly straighten up. He crept over the wooded hills and searched the ground, terrified he would find a shoe, a clump of hair, or worse, but there was no sign that Lexie had ever been there. No blood, no shreds of clothing, no phone.

“That thing took her phone,” he whispered.

Maybe Lexie was all right. Maybe she’d found her brother. Or maybe not. How many days could Burke go without food and water? To his horror, Travis saw more stumps on the surrounding hills. What if one of them had eyes?

The tracker should show the giant as the net symbol. He pulled out the device again, shook it and rapped on the metal, not sure what he’d done before. The tracker melted around his fingers. Seconds later, the diagram sprang to life with lines that resembled trees and a brook. Rock Creek Park again.

Just as before, the image focused on him before it moved to the symbol of the luminous blue net. The net spun in a three-dimensional helix.

Mystified, Travis touched the net.

The diagram disappeared. To his shock he found himself staring at a real scene as if he held a webcam. Sycamores reached to the brooding sky, and beneath their limbs an abandoned road ran under a bridge. He recognized Connecticut Avenue near the National Zoo. The giant roamed the woods beside the bridge and scaled the walls of a towering apartment building, searching darkened windows, balconies, and recesses hidden among the architectural details above the city. Her frightening fingers probed and pried. He guessed what she was doing. Hunting for an inch of window somebody left open because they’d set the radiator too high.

The cape swayed over liver-colored scales that covered her powerful feet like a lizard’s armor. Strong toes on each foot splayed out into fierce horned claws.

The giant snatched a pigeon on a ledge. Then her huge shape moved into the illuminated trees along Connecticut Avenue and leaped to the sidewalk on the bridge.

Streetlights. How long had he been in the woods?

Travis touched the image again, but it disappeared.
Run
. He tried to hurry, his legs wobbling with fear. Made it back to the gorge. Scrambled over the rocks. Fell on his knees. Got up, hitched up his jeans, forged though the creek, crawled up the steep bank, and found himself on the avenue across from the public library. Traffic rumbled by.

A terrible shape moved into the swarm of people coming up from the Metro. And incredibly, a woman who resembled Lexie was near the Metro entrance, too, pushing through the crowd after the giant. Blonde hair against a black jacket. He tried to make out her face, but she vanished down the escalator.

“The gun’s broken,” he shouted.

People stared and kept a wide berth. Traffic surged through the crosswalk. The blocks seemed to lengthen into miles. Maybe Lexie had tried to find her brother and turned back when it grew dark. Was she after the giant for more photos?

Thunder rippled across the sky and an ominous wind chased scraps of litter over the pavement. The rain was going to hit any minute. People were everywhere, milling all over the sidewalk. More cars blocked his way.

Thunder crackled again. The storm broke and gusted in silver sheets across the parking lot. Travis bolted across the pavement and reached the Metro, panting, only to freeze before the newspaper boxes. “Remains of Missing Police Office Found on Newark Street.” The words seemed to slide and slither under the wet glass. “A source close to the investigation said police believe the officer was the victim of an animal attack.”

“An animal attack,” Travis repeated.

Rain beat against his face. A terrifying clap of thunder sounded, followed by a vein of white lightning that plunged down the black sky. Stunned by the story, he pulled himself away and ran down the escalator into evening rush hour.

Commuters packed the stairs and filled the air with the suffocating smell of damp coats. He struggled to the rail, looked out over the cavernous station, and felt his heart fall. No Lexie and no giant. Instead, hundreds of disgruntled office workers lined the platform. A train must have broken down.

Travis pulled out the tracker and hid it in his palm from the crush of commuters, who didn’t give him a second look. He wondered if the tracker’s owner would see his anxious face once he brought the device to life again. Maybe it was an alien webcam. His skin crawled.

The device would show the giant, though. Once again, the hook molded around his fingers. A bright image appeared, flew down Connecticut Avenue, passed the 7-Eleven and the Yenching Palace restaurant, shifted into the Metro, descended the crowded escalator, and rushed up to a symbol of a humanlike figure with a blue sun in the chest.

He recognized himself. The image leaped on the tracks, hurtled at ferocious speed past flashes of light he guessed were Metro stations, and stopped four stations away at Metro Center, where the luminous symbol of the blue net spun in a three dimensional helix on the platform. The giant, waiting for a train, delayed along with thousands of commuters.

How was she getting into the subway? She couldn’t have any money. Was she muscling her way through, or slipping in behind people before the gates snapped shut?

He tried to change the scene, hoping it would show Lexie, but it stayed the same.

“Metro Center then,” he said. “So be it.” He turned off the tracker, inserted his pass, and ran down into the mob. So many people lined the tracks that it seemed impossible he’d get on a train, but when one pulled up, the mob swept him inside and then the doors slammed shut.

Murdered a mugger. Murdered the cop called to the scene and left his destroyed body like discarded garbage on a lawn. She was making huge mistakes, killing people in wealthy neighborhoods. Some of those houses had security cameras. She’d imitated a human being, but her imitation was so grotesque that somebody had to notice. When other people finally caught on to her, there would be an uproar.

He looked at the weary, indifferent people packed around him and knew there would be no uproar. Nobody in the car made eye contact. He rarely paid attention to strangers himself. How could he expect other people to be any different?

White lights whipped past the windows.

“Metro Center,” the intercom announced.

Travis snapped out of his thoughts and found himself studying dirty streaks on the grimy windows as the train glided into the station. The brakes shrieked. Blurred faces flew by and swarmed the doors when the train stopped.

Once he left the car, he blinked in the dim subterranean station with its towering concrete walls. “Damn it, Lexie, be here,” he whispered. “Show me where you are.”

He moved down the platform, caught in a slow-moving herd of overcoats, and almost collided with two lovers wrapped around each other as they passionately kissed goodbye. Best friend. Right now he’d settle for that. He’d settle for anything as long as she was alive and searched the sea of heads again. A million people seemed to be in the station, but there was only one Lexie, and she just wasn’t there.

Swallowing his panic, he stared at the tracks. The platform fell away into a wide chasm of double tracks that snaked to opposite sections of the city. White lights shone through a metal grid down the middle of the shadowy track bed, and beside the lights ran what had to be the electrified third rail, supported by metal coils and covered with a hood.

Maybe Lexie had caught a train out of there. He stared at the opposite platform teeming with people waiting to go back toward Cleveland Park and his stomach lurched. He’d geared himself up for a long hunt, but the tracker had honed in on the giant, who had squeezed herself between exhausted commuters. Muted light from the track bed gleamed over her pale hair and monstrous chin.

She didn’t see him. For several long seconds her face almost resembled an insect as she turned her dull gaze to the platform. Then she shifted her weight and seemed human again. Commanding. Nobody would challenge her for a place on the next train.

She had Lexie’s black canvas bag.

Hot hate washed over him.

The third rail would electrocute him if he went across the track bed after her fat throat. The giant turned again in the glow of the track lights and gripped the bag. Her eyes dimmed, hiding their expression, her fleshy face growing as inscrutable as the dark side of the moon.

“Travis,” a familiar southern voice called. Monroe in jeans and a dark jacket, pushing through the crowd. “Going to AU?”

“No, I’ve got bigger things on my mind right now,” Travis said.

His roommate’s expression changed to amazement. “There’s the woman from your
UFO
photos.”

“She just stole my friend’s bag.”

Monroe gave him an odd look as if he wanted to ask a dozen questions and didn’t have time to get a single one out. “A train’s coming. She’s going to get away.”

Light blazed over the walls as a train rushed along the opposite platform. One step behind Monroe, Travis made it to the top of the escalator and down the other side, where he fought through the crowd. Suddenly Monroe reeled and threw his hands over his eyes. The crowd pushed inside the train and the giant barged in, too, gray cape flowing over her claws. Barging in after her, Travis fought into her car with Monroe behind him.

The doors slammed shut and the train pulled out.

The exhausted commuters around them stared at the floor. Monroe seemed to have shaken off whatever was wrong and Travis didn’t want to call attention to himself, so he rode in silence. The train passed station after station and then rose above ground. Headlights and the glow of streetlights shone through the black trees.

They crossed into Virginia. Rush hour finally wound down. The crowds thinned. The train slowed and rattled over the tracks until the brakes gave one long, murderous wail and they came to a dead stop.

“We will be moving momentarily,” a voice droned over the intercom. “There’s a train ahead of us at this time.”

The giant stared without expression at her reflection in the black window. No neck. A stump of a head on massive shoulders. The car grew hotter. Travis felt more claustrophobic by the minute. Then the train gave a soft electric whine and began to move over the tracks until the tunnel grew lighter and they reached the end of the line.

When the doors opened and the last passengers disembarked, the giant moved down the platform to the opposite side of the tracks where more trains would eventually travel back the way they’d just come, and beyond, to far-flung cities and small towns in Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland. The trains would run for hours. The giant could end up anywhere.

She turned her back to them.

“That woman’s crazy,” Monroe said. “You want to confront her by yourself?”

“Give me your jacket. I’ve got a white shirt and she’ll see me if we go outside.”

Monroe hesitated and slipped off his jacket. “I’m going for the Metro police.”

“I owe you for this,” Travis said, pulling on the jacket.

“Wait a minute.” Monroe felt an inside pocket. “My marriage license.”