everything in the universe is due to electromagnetic interactions. Just some interactions appear to have been animated.
'I don't know, Jim. Let's just hope we can figure out a way to get those things out of her and neutralized.'
As we came to the guard shack of our laboratory parking lot, one of Tabitha's security requirements, we both noticed that there was no guard anywhere to be seen. 'Jim, stop the car!'
'There should be a guard here.' Jim did his best to rubberneck over the windowsill of the two-man shack.
'I don't like this.' I began to feel edgy and thoughts of Johnny Cache flooded my mind. I opened Jim's glove box. 'Jim, the Orbiter didn't just explode due to some accident,' I began as I chambered a round in Jim's Glock. I grabbed his other clip and placed it in my pocket.
For you folks that don't live in the South, I guess I should mention that most everybody has at least one pistol in his or her glove compartment. Those who don't, well they are carrying theirs on them somewhere. That's why our crime rate is so much lower than the big 'no-gun' cities. There, only the criminals are armed. If you recall history, the 'shoot out at the O.K. Corral' was over a no-gun ordinance in the city of Tombstone. In the South we try to keep the playing field as even or better as we can. Therefore, criminals know that if they want to start something in the South that they
'Jim, you're right. The stitches are to fill up the bullet holes left by terrorists. Tabitha is limping on a shot up leg. Johnny Cache shot her. Long story. Do you have any other weapons in the car? I asked.
Jim smiled and popped the trunk. His karate gear and his tournament bag were in there. He rummaged through the gear and dug out two kamas, two escrima sticks, and one set of nunchukas.
'Which do you prefer?' he grinned.
'This will do fine,' I brandished the Glock 19 with the pre-Clinton-Reno era clip. 'Sixteen shots ought to do. Besides, I ain't in any shape to be fighting. I'll have to keep you covered. Sorry.'
The front door to the office had been opened effortlessly. Obviously, the guard's keys came in handy for somebody. We cautiously scoured the entire facility and found no signs of foul play, except that my laptop was missing from the safe, the lab was nearly destroyed, the contents of the offices were strewn about everywhere, and
'They even ripped the whiteboard right out of the damn wall.' Jim exclaimed. We grabbed what equipment we thought would still function and loaded the car.
'I guess they got what they came for,' I told Jim and shrugged my shoulders.
'What do we do now?' he asked.
'Call Tabitha and ask her.'
Jim tried twice and got Tabitha's voicemail message. 'That's odd,' he said.
'Well, let's head back to the hospital and keep trying to reach her on the way.'
The terrorist effort or war effort, whatever it was, had reached into my everyday life more deeply now. While we were away Johnny's people must have ransacked the lab. It would have been a big operation. The safe had to weigh a ton. It must have taken a forklift to move it. And it happened fast. Something else was bugging me on a more subconscious level, but I couldn't wrap my mind around it just yet. Then I thought to look at the alarm system.
'Jim, check the silent alarm,' I pointed to the hidden panel on the wall where the system's keypad was hidden.
Jim slipped back a wall plate and punched in a code on the keypad. The display read today's date about thirty minutes ago.
'We just missed 'em Anson!'
'What?'
'They triggered the alarm just thirty minutes ago!' Jim exclaimed.
Then my subconscious grabbed hold on whatever it was that was bugging me before. 'That means it's still going on! What if they had come in when Sara or Al were here? Crap! They might go to their homes, Jim.'
'We gotta help them, Doc!' Jim looked frantic.
'Jim, get Sara and Al on the phone and tell them to get out of their houses now. They can meet us at a public place or someplace safe.' I told him. I couldn't think of where to send them.
'Tim's place?' Jim asked.
'Perfect.'
Jim got Sara at her apartment. He told her to leave this second. Don't change clothes, don't put on makeup, just go. I hope she listened. We were only five miles from Al's house so we headed that way while Jim called. There was no answer on the phone. I also tried Tabitha at the hospital again, but had no luck reaching her either.
We reached Al's house; there were two vehicles in his driveway that we hadn't seen before. There was a truck and a van. Jim pulled up in the neighbor's driveway and we crawled over the fence into Al's backyard. I barely had the strength to get over the four-foot chain link.
Jim and I hugged the back wall of Al's house and eased around the chimney to the back door. The back door flung wide open and Al came flying out the door headfirst and he skidded across the patio into a large ceramic plant pot. The little apple tree in the pot had one small apple clinging from its droopy limb. The impact of Al's head into the pot shook the apple free and it fell on his back. Al was out cold I was pretty sure.
Behind Al stepped a very large individual. I didn't have time to make out any details of his face before Jim had sunk the blade of a Kama into his throat and ripped out the guy's trachea. I rushed in behind Jim as he flew through the door never missing a beat from the Kama strike. There were Kamas swinging and then escrimas. Two more were dead before the gunfire ever started.
