Kill Switch Page 12

  Elisa,

  First, I’m still alive, but I no longer have a car or a cellphone. I had another near miss last night. Someone took a shot at me outside a motel. I got away, but they shot an old guy who tried to help me. I had to leave my car behind. I probably shouldn’t say more than that in case someone’s reading this. But so far, I’m still okay.

  Second, what you found is really bizarre. Like you said, too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence. But what the hell could it mean? Like you, it makes me wonder what we saw in that cave.

  It’s funny you mentioned alien ships. And you’re right, it seems laughable, now that I wrote it. Like you, I’ve been fascinated with the stars, but just since I was in graduate school. I wasn’t really into it in high school, or as an undergraduate. I went into biology because it was my favorite science, I never was much good at physics (nor very interested in it, frankly). But ever since I got my master’s degree, I’ve had this thing for space research, and especially, alien life. You know all of those exoplanets that have been recently discovered? Elisa, when I read about that—it’s like, my heart is pounding with excitement. I dream about alien worlds. I remember once thinking—it was after our Field Biology class, but not sure exactly when—that I wished I hadn’t been almost done with a master’s in biology, because if I had it all to do over I would have majored in astronomy, my issues with understanding physics be damned.

  You said this sounded like a post-hypnotic suggestion. I think it’s more insidious than that, you know? Because if you’re right, if that is the link, five of us have died because of it. What it reminds me of is a kill switch. Do you know about those?

  It’s a gene sequence that’s implanted in some genetically modified organisms. It can be for a lot of reasons, but the outcome is the same for all of them. It’s a bit of DNA that is inserted into the host’s DNA, and it sits there, dormant, sometimes for years. Then, when it activates, it causes havoc. The most innocent of them cause the individual to be unable to reproduce. Those have been used in crops when they don’t want people to do seed saving. The seeds form, and look normal, but they’re dead, they don’t sprout, so if you want to replant the same crop next year, you have to buy new seed from the company.

  But some of them are wilder than that, and a little scary. There are DNA sequences that have been inserted into mosquitoes that cause them to aggressively seek out mates, but the mating produces tons of babies who all die when the kill switch activates, before they reach adulthood. I heard about another one that has been used with microbes. When they come into contact with a specific substance, they self-destruct.

  Maybe this sounds fanciful, I dunno. And I don’t think that it’s literally our DNA that is affected. But maybe we had something implanted in us, perhaps at that cave. It activated in all of us, and created our fascination with aliens.

  And now, thirty years later, the bad guys are trying to eliminate everyone who was infected.

  Chris

  He glanced out of the narrow window in the sleeping quarters, looking at the drab, tan Nebraska hills sliding by. By launching that email, had he given some central monitoring device his exact location?

  Didn’t matter. He had to let her know he was all right.

  But the thing about astronomy, that was bizarre. She must be right, though. It had to be the link. And she was surely right that Hargis and Drolezki know about it. If Elisa, working on her own from a laptop in some small town somewhere, could find this out, certainly the FBI could. They had pretended they thought the commonality between the seven was the Field Biology class; but now it was clear that there was a second, and more curious, connection.

  Five minutes later, the Gmail screen auto-refreshed, and there was a new email from ereed@orionsbelt.com.

  Chris,

  A “kill switch.” What a terrifying concept. But I think that feels right, you know? I think we somehow need to find out what was in that cave. It was somewhere near Lake Ingalls, I remember that, but the Cascades are full of trails, so that doesn’t narrow it down much. I think I could probably find the spot if I were there. You know how memory is. You don’t think you remember something, but then when you’re pressed, it turns out that you do.

  I’m really relieved you’re okay, and I hope you’re not endangering yourself by emailing me. Wherever you are, I hope you’re being careful, and that you’ve really gotten away this time, to somewhere they can’t find you.

  I wish I could see you. I know that’s probably impossible, but this would be more bearable if we were together. I can’t imagine how we could arrange to meet, though, since there’s no way either of us can say where we are without the bad guys finding out.

  But I can still wish, right?

  Elisa

  Chris hit Reply.

  I wonder if there’s a way we could give each other information so that only you and I could understand? Like some kind of a code?

  Her response came right away.

  Maybe. Let me think about it. I’m not sure what kind of a code we could use that the bad guys couldn’t crack, but maybe there’s something.

  Then you and I could meet up, hop the next spaceship to Alpha Centauri, and live happily ever after out in the stars, right?

  Chris smiled, and wrote:

  I think I’d like that.

  He turned off the computer and stowed it back in the cabinet. When he returned to the front of the truck’s cab, Champion looked over at him, a wry smile on his face.

  “You wrote to her, didn’t ya?”

  Chris looked out of the window, blushing a little. “Yes.”

  “I knew you would. You had that look on your face when you went back there, and you came out just now looking like a guy who’s got just what he wanted.”

  “I had to let her know I was all right.”

  “I get it. And I hope you keep bein’ all right, you know? You and your lady friend both.”

  Chris didn’t answer for a while. Finally, he said, in a quiet voice, “Me, too.”

  Chapter 11

  They stopped for lunch at a rest area east of Brady, Nebraska. Champion had a well-stocked fridge, with cold cuts, a loaf of bread, half a head of lettuce, and even some mustard and a small jar of mayonnaise. They made themselves sandwiches and left the truck for a picnic bench in the shade of the building that housed the restrooms. Baxter sat next to them, munching contentedly on dog chow they’d picked up at a convenience store in Kearney.

  The weather was sunny and hot, with an incessant wind that dried the slices of bread before they could finish their sandwiches. The terrain was still flat, but the wheat and cornfields had been largely left behind for wide, bleached grasslands given over to herds of cattle. As they drove that morning, the slow, shallow, meandering course of the Platte River could sometimes be glimpsed to the north of the highway, marked by a low line of green showing the only place where lush vegetation had enough water to survive the blazing heat. Elsewhere, the predominant color was brown.

  “Least it’s not humid out here.” Champion took a pull on a bottle of water. “Where I come from, it gets this hot, you’d be wringing wet in five minutes from the humidity.”

  “That’s like upstate New York. It’s not often that hot, but when it is, it’s like a sauna.”

  Champion looked thoughtful. “You think you’ll be able to go back home, at some point?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. He looked out over the level expanse of prairie behind the rest stop building, the wind fluttering hair that was by now in need of a trim. “I don’t know. I honestly hadn’t thought about that. When you feel like you’re in imminent danger of dying in the next five minutes, what might happen five years from now doesn’t seem all that important, you know?”

  “I guess that makes sense.”

  “I don’t even have a house to go back to. They blew up my house, did I tell you about that?”

  Champion’s eyes opened wide. “Seriously? Like, blew it up with dynamite, or something?”

&
nbsp; “Something like that, I suppose. It’s lucky Baxter and I were outside at the time. There were some electrical workers out there, and I thought it was odd, so I called the electric company. A pissed-off-sounding woman told me there wasn’t supposed to be any work done in my neighborhood that day, so I went back outside to ask them what the story was. They were gone, but as soon as I got to the end of the driveway, my house exploded. If we’d been inside, we’d both be dead.”

  “No shit. You got more than your fair share of luck, sounds like.”

  “In one way, I suppose. Lucky, though, would be having none of this happen in the first place.”

  “I guess that’s fair enough.” The truck driver took another drink of water. “But hell, Chris, you can’t keep runnin’ forever, right? And you gotta have people who care about you, family and friends. They got to be frantic by now, with all this shit happenin’, and then you disappearin’ and all. You got any kind of plan, here?”

  “Nothing beyond ‘stay alive’ and ‘keep moving.’ What I’ll do if this all ends, somehow, I don’t know.” He looked down. “And frankly, I don’t see how this can end except with me dead, you know? It’s me and my dog against these guys who can track my movements, rig up explosives and poisons and God knows what else. Who apparently have a network of people all across the country that are part of the conspiracy. How can I hope to hold out more than a few days, really?”

  Champion looked thoughtful. “Well, you got your luck. That’s somethin’.”

  “I guess.”

  “It’s not like everyone is against you, either. I’m not. Most o’ the people you run into aren’t, either, I’d bet. Most of ’em are ordinary Americans doin’ their ordinary American stuff, who know nothin’ about this. But I can see how you could get to thinkin’ that everyone’s part of it. Oh, I get that. It’s like when a dog lives with people that beat it, you know? Poor dog, all it knows is people bein’ mean and cruel, so pretty soon the dog decides that everyone is mean and cruel and’ll bite the hand of the guy who’s tryin’ to rescue it.”

  “Can’t blame the dog. He can’t tell the difference between enemies and friends. Neither can I.”

  “I think you’re sellin’ yourself short, there. You trusted me.”

  “That was luck. I think I’d have jumped in anyone’s car at that moment.”

  “But that’s it. When you rely on your luck, you survive. You gotta trust your instincts. I think you might just get out o’ this alive if you do that.”

  He smiled a little. “Earlier, I was thinking along those lines. I felt like a deer being tracked by a hunter. The deer that survive are the ones whose instincts are the best. They don’t think, they don’t use logic, they act. And some of them survive.” His smile vanished. “Of course, some of them don’t.”

  “C’mon. You got a chance, here. Trust your gut.” Champion looked around him. “And so far, it’s been quiet, right? We haven’t had any trouble today. Maybe we lost ‘em.”

  “Could be.” Chris finished the last bite of his sandwich. He doubted it, though. They weren’t done with him yet. After all of the trouble they’d gone to, there was no way they were going to let him get away easily.

  —

  Chris checked his email after they got back on the road, and found to his delight that he had another email from Elisa.

  Hi Chris,

  I’ve been thinking about what you suggested, to see if there was a way we could communicate so that no one would understand but us. And I think I have something. Maybe it’s silly, but I think it could work, depending on how good your memory is. It has to be something only you and I would know, right? Well, I came up with an idea. And if it works, maybe we can use it.

  Remember when we were studying for all of those quizzes in Field Biology, where we had to learn all the scientific names of the animals we might run across? I know we all hated them. They seemed pointless, memorizing lists of names that we could easily look up if we needed to. But we did it anyway, and we had all these mnemonics for remembering the names. And then, there were all the trips we took, and animals we saw, and stories attached to them. I’m hoping you remember enough of what we did together to make this work.

  Let’s give it a try. If you can figure this one out, maybe that will be a way that we can tell each other where we are, and maybe meet?

  Okay, so here goes.

  We were on an offshore trip, right near the beginning of class, out in Puget Sound. We hadn’t started doing any banding yet, or taken our first trip up into the Cascades. It was kind of an orientation, getting to know some of the species in western Washington. And we kept seeing these little birds, lots of them. None of us had ever heard of them before. And Mary thought they were hilarious. Every time we saw one, she’d laugh, in that stage-laugh way of hers, but finally, we were all pointing them out, because they were funny. If you take the name of the genus of these birds – you may need to look it up, I did – and number the letters, and write out letters 12, 7, 1, 16, 2, 9, and 15, in that order, you’ll get a message.

  I hope this works.

  Elisa

  Brilliant idea; only the seven of them would have any idea how to decode the message, although if they were going to send more serious information, they’d have to be more careful about the clues. How many kinds of “funny little birds” could there be in Puget Sound? But he remembered the trip, and the incident, well. Mary had made a big deal about it, at first commenting that they looked like flying penguins. She really seemed to find them hilarious, however forced her laughter had sounded at first.

  They were called murrelets. He looked up the Wikipedia entry for them, and the first line was, “Murrelets are a group of small marine alcids comprising three genera—Brachyramphus, Synthliboramphus, and Endomychura, living in continental shelf regions in the cooler parts of the Northern Hemisphere.”

  He counted the letters of the three names given. The one Elisa had referenced had at least 16 letters, so it could only be the middle one, Synthliboramphus. He fished around for a bit in Champion’s cabinet, and found a pen and a three-day-old newspaper, and wrote down,

  S1 y2 n3 t4 h5 l6 i7 b8 o9 r10 a11 m12 p13 h14 u15 s16

  He then copied her message, 12, 7, 1, 16, 2, 9, 15, and moments later had written out, MISS YOU.

  Chris burst out laughing, and wrote back:

  Got it, Elisa. And that’s brilliant.

  And I do, too. Just so you know.

  Her response came back quickly.

  You have no idea how much better that makes me feel, that there really is some way for you to know where I am. Maybe we could get together, after all. Like I’ve said, I think I’m safe here, but I do feel very alone. Cast adrift, you know? I’m sure you understand. You don’t even have a house to return to. I have one, but can’t go back.

  I’m not sure which is worse.

  But either way, it’d be easier if we were together.

  I’ll see if I can give some thought to a way to tell you how to find me. The last one didn’t take me long, but that was dumb luck, I think. I don’t know how the professional cryptographers do it.

  Elisa

  Chris read her email twice, and then clicked Reply.

  Elisa,

  Be careful, okay? Only pick things that just the seven of us knew about. The last one—well, someone with a Puget Sound marine bird list could have figured it out pretty quickly, I think. It’s got to be something that only we would know. Now that the others are all gone, there’s no way that the bad guys could get the key to deciphering the code.

  This may be the only advantage we’ve got, at the moment. We don’t want to get careless and blow it.

  Chris

  She responded moments later with:

  You’re exactly right. And no worries. I will be shrewd. I will be sneaky. They will regret ever taking on the likes of us.

  Chris laughed again, and replied:

  We’ll show ’em a thing or two. Take care. I’ll be in touch.

  Chr
is shut the laptop, stowed it back in its spot, and returned to the cab. The scenery hadn’t changed. The expanse of arid grassland seemed never-ending. But he sensed, through a combination of intuition and actual knowledge, that they were approaching the end of the flat midsection of the country. Ahead lay the Rocky Mountains, piled in ever higher peaks, through the states of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming, and further up into Montana and Idaho.

  And after that, more grassland, with the dry fields of eastern Washington and Oregon, and then the volcanic cones, glaciers, and fir forests of the Cascades. Where all of this started. And to where, he thought grimly, he was being drawn, like a moth to a candle.

  —

  It was a little past two in the afternoon, and they were approaching the town of Ogallala. Chris was dozing in the passenger seat, Baxter at his feet dreaming of chasing rabbits, to judge by the twitching of his paws and his occasional low woofs. But Chris roused when Champion moved suddenly, leaning forward and turning up the volume on his CB radio.