Jacob turned away, now watching Carol and Lisa as they strolled along a line of crumbling fence. “I can’t do that.”
“But, Jacob,” Tom argued, “this is something the world has a right to know. You are the proof that it really happened.”
“What do you want me to do, go on TV and bend spoons? It would be a freak show.”
“But after that, people would know.”
“What would they know?” Jacob asked. “Not why they came. Not what they want,” He shrugged. “Besides, I’m not the only one.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t really,” Jacob admitted. “It’s just a feeling I get sometimes. That there’s… someone else.”
“Like you?”
Jacob peered out over the barren land. “They’re playing catch-up. The government. They’re trying to figure out the same things.” He looked at Tom darkly. “Owen Crawford knew about me,” he said. “Maybe he knew about whoever else there is.”
“Jesse Keys,” Wakeman said excitedly, like a prospector who’d just stumbled onto a vein of gold.
Eric stared without enthusiasm at the black and white photograph of a teenaged boy Wakeman displayed on his computer monitor. “One of my father’s many failures,” he said dully.
“Failure?”
“I’d call it that,” Eric said harshly.
“Your father couldn’t have known what would happen when they took out Russell Keys’ implant,” Wakeman noted. “After all he…”
“I don’t want to talk about my father,” Eric interrupted sharply “Tell me about this one. This Jesse Keys.”
“One thing’s for sure about him.”
“Which is?”
“That he mattered to them,” Wakeman answered authoritatively.
“How do you know that?”
“Because they pulled him right through the wall of a bomb shelter in order to take him. They wouldn’t have done that if they hadn’t considered him vital.”
“What do you think it all means?” Eric asked.
“Maybe nothing,” Wakeman admitted. “But it’s clear that some they chew on repeatedly, and some they spit out after one bite. They came for Jesse Keys and they took him. Now that we’re looking more at the genetics, perhaps we’ll figure out what he had that they wouldn’t let us keep.”
“Genetics,” Eric mused. “What have you learned about those brothers in Alaska?”
“My guess is that they were failed attempts at crossbreeding,” Wakeman said. “Like that kid your old man tried to bring back from Texas.” His eyes sparkled suddenly. “You see what they’re doing, don’t you?”
Eric felt a jolt of energy. “What?”
“Everything they can,” Wakeman said, and began typing rapidly, like a man seized by a vision. “This is an FBI ‘aging’ program,” he explained. “Some fugitive has been underground for ten years and they want to make sure they’ll know him if they see him.” He punched the Enter key and waited as the pixels slowly revealed a computer- aged version of Jesse Keys. “I’ll lay you diamonds to doughnuts this Jesse Keys is still alive. If you want to know what’s so important about him, maybe we should ask the man himself.”
The distress call cut in, and Jesse Keys yanked the microphone to his mouth. “Yes?”
“Chief, we got a pileup on Old Cayton Road,” the dispatcher said. “Car full of college kids. Paramedics on the scene.”
“I’m on my way.”
When Jesse reached the site of the collision, the destruction amazed him.
The car had all but disintegrated around the telephone pole. A few other vehicles were strewn about, some involved in the accident, others belonging to motorists who’d stopped at the scene, backing up traffic in both directions.
“What have we got, Bobby?” Jesse asked the first EMS tech he saw.
“Kids coming back from Milton,” Bobby answered breathlessly. “Two boys in the back pretty banged up. Already on their way to County. Girl’s still in the passenger seat. Looks like a spinal. We’re getting her out now.”
Jesse raced to the car and looked in. The girl was pinned into the passenger seat, a neck collar already securing her neck. He adjusted the collar slightly.
“My friends?” the girl asked.
“On the way to the hospital,” Jesse answered.
“Kevin?”
Jesse shook his head.
The young woman’s eyes went blank and began to roll upward.
She was rapidly losing consciousness.
Desperate to keep her from going under, Jesse quickly snapped a pen from his pocket. “Listen, can you do something for me?”
The girl blinked rapidly. “What?”
“Can you keep your head straight and follow my pen with your eyes?”
He moved the pen slowly right to left, watching as the young woman’s eyes labored to follow it.
“Good,” he said, pocketing the pen. “We’ll have you out of here in no time.” He smiled. “You just keep looking at where my pen was, and keep your head straight.”
He rose and moved through the wreckage, the usual scenes playing out before him, crumpled metal, gawking motorists, a landscape of flashing lights. Nothing drew his attention until he noticed Bobby standing off in a field, his shoulders hunched, head down.
“Jesus, I’m sorry, Chief,” Bobby explained when Jesse got to him. “I just…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jesse told him. “My first accident, I puked all over my chief’s shoes.” He patted Bobby’s shoulder. “And remember this, when you come upon a bad thing like this, everything you do makes it better.” He pulled out his pen and nodded toward the young woman in the car. “Keep her staring at this pen. Don’t let her look at that hole in the windshield.”
Bobby nodded softly and took the pen. “Thanks, Chief.”
Jesse rushed away, still moving quickly among the wreckage, looking for anything that might have escaped the notice of the other police and EMS workers who’d gathered at the scene.
Within minutes, the chaos of the initial response had resolved itself in an orderly arrangement of activity.
Jesse stood within the flow of cars, watching as they whizzed past, getting glimpses of the far side of the road as he paced about, cars blocking his view as they passed, then revealing it again, a cop giving directions, an EMS worker standing by an ambulance, and finally a tall, slender man, hawk-faced and leaden-eyed, smoking a cigarette beside a large truck, its sides hand-painted, TRAVELING ATTRACTIONS.
Jesse froze.
It was him. He knew it instantly. It was the same man who’d chased him down the alley when he was kid.
The carny touched his baseball cap and nodded like someone greeting an old familiar friend.
But he was not a friend, Jesse knew, not a friend at all, and so he strode toward him determinedly, cars screeching their brakes as he stepped into the traffic, moving forward in a trance until something flashed and he awakened to find himself standing in the middle of a deserted road, nothing left of the accident save the occasional small bits of broken glass, the shadows deepening all around him as night fell.
The hours of missing time were still playing darkly in Jesse’s mind the next day as he went through the routine
