Kill Switch Read online

  Chris used to be obsessed with the show, especially the episodes about aliens and government conspiracies.

  Now that he was living it, though, it wasn’t nearly so appealing.

  He turned the television off.

  Thinking about his previous life brought his mind back to the fateful field biology class. His life had intersected with six other people—five of whom were now dead. None of them could have predicted such an outcome at the time. The only one who’d had any inkling, apparently, was Gavin. That email to Glen was the only unifying theme, the only thing that gave any hint that there was more going on than a string of accidental deaths.

  Why couldn’t he have given more information?

  But the answer came right away. He’d been afraid his emails were being monitored—which they probably were. But something, anything that gave a clue about what he was up against would be preferable to this blank, terrifying suspicion of everyone and everything unknown.

  Gavin, of course, had always loved mysteries. He’d been a little on the odd side even back then. Fascinated with the fringe areas of knowledge, with topics that most of the rest of them considered nonsense. Chris recalled a conversation they’d had over coffee after class, shortly before their first expedition into the Cascades. Deirdre Ross and Glen Cederstrom had been there.

  —

  “I’m going to have to spend some extra time before the next test in the bone room,” Glen said. “I’m not looking forward to having to learn all of those scientific names.”

  “Pity they didn’t have a Bigfoot skull in the bones collection,” Chris said. “What’s the scientific name of a Bigfoot, anyhow?”

  Gavin leaned forward, his round face flushed with excitement. “Well, organisms aren’t assigned scientific names until they’re catalogued. Bigfoot hasn’t been. But it will probably turn out to be some sort of Australopithicene.”

  Deirdre rolled her eyes. “Really, Gavin?”

  “I was joking,” Chris said.

  “No, but really,” Gavin said, undaunted as always. “How could there be all of those reports, and not one of them is true? Not one single report, not one photograph, not one video recording? All fakes?”

  “Easier to believe that than there being some kind of hairy wild man out there in the mountains,” Deirdre said. “Funny that they’ve never found any bones. Chris hit it exactly. There’s no Bigfoot skull in the bone room. That’s because it doesn’t exist.”

  “I don’t know, Deirdre,” Gavin said. “You’re not a little worried, going up into the Cascades next week? It hasn’t crossed your mind, not once?”

  Deirdre took a sip of her coffee. “Not until now.”

  “What about you, Glen?”

  Glen Cederstrom shrugged and smiled. “I don’t know. There are lots of things that people thought didn’t exist, and now we know they do. How about that fish? You know, the coelacanth. Known only from fossil records until fifty or so years ago, and then someone catches one. It could be that Bigfoot is like that.”

  “But people have seen Bigfoot,” Gavin said.

  “People who have been drinking,” Deirdre said with a curt little laugh.

  “Not all of them,” Gavin persisted.

  “Why do we have to decide?” Glen said. “I’m okay with not knowing. Everything doesn’t have to be settled. The jury can stay out until we have evidence one way or the other.”

  “How can you have evidence against?” Deirdre said. “There’s nothing that would disprove Bigfoot’s existence. That’d mean you’re content to remain in ignorance forever.”

  Glen gave her a slow smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Pretty much.”

  “Well, I’m not,” Gavin said. “At some point, you have to make a decision. I’ve looked at the evidence, and I think if you’re fair, you can’t argue against it. Bigfoot exists.”

  “By the same logic, so do aliens, ghosts, and the Loch Ness Monster,” Deirdre said.

  “Yes,” Gavin said. “They do.”

  “Seriously? You believe all that bullshit?”

  “It stands to reason.”

  “Reason is exactly what it doesn’t stand to.” Deirdre’s voice was sharp with derision. “You can’t just believe something because lots of people say it’s so. Science doesn’t proceed by majority vote.”

  “No, but that’s it,” Gavin said. “The problem is that there are cover-ups. The actual scientists don’t want you to know about what’s really out there. You’ve heard of Roswell, haven’t you?”

  “City in New Mexico,” Deirdre said.

  “Yes! The site of one of the best-documented alien spacecraft crashes. The military covered it up. There’s a film out there that shows a dissection of the body of one of the crew. I watched it. That thing was not human.”

  “But Gavin,” Glen said, “why would scientists want to cover it up? If aliens were real, or any of the other things you claim, don’t you think scientists would be eager to investigate it? Why would there be cover-ups? The results of an autopsy on an extraterrestrial, if that could be proven? It would make a scientist’s career. You think Einstein is famous? He’d be a minor character next to the first scientist who could prove the existence of an alien intelligence.”

  “But that’s exactly it!” Gavin’s voice rose with excitement. “The establishment doesn’t want this to happen! It would overturn our place in the universe. They’re trying to keep us manageable, and that means controlling the flow of information. You think we know even ten percent of what the government does? Why is it so hard for you to believe that some of this stuff might be real, and that there are people, powerful people, who want to keep us in the dark about it?”

  Deirdre laughed. It was not, Chris recalled, a particularly nice laugh. “Oh, c’mon. Glen is right. Humans are lousy at keeping secrets. That’s why conspiracies never last long. Look at Watergate. Those clowns couldn’t even wiretap a hotel room and keep it a secret; how could anyone keep evidence of aliens and Bigfoot and all a secret? Someone would blab.”

  “And then They take care of the informant,” Gavin said darkly.

  “They?” Deirdre said, raising an ironic eyebrow.

  “Yeah,” Gavin said. “Them. You never know who they are. They could be anyone. They could be you or me or Chris or Glen or the lady you bought your coffee from. You’d never know it.”

  Deirdre looked at Gavin for a moment, and then slowly shook her head. “Well, if They made my coffee, They need to learn how to make a decent brew, because this stuff is swill. Or, I dunno. Maybe it’s poisoned, or something. Mind-altering chemicals.”

  “Yes,” Gavin said, not cracking a smile. “Yes, it could be.”

  Deirdre laughed. “You seriously need to stop watching those bad thriller movies.”

  And that had ended the conversation.

  —

  Chris stretched, cupped his hands behind his head. Gavin had given up after that. He knew when he was beaten, perhaps, or simply drifted off onto another weird mental pathway. He always seemed to be into new things. It was yoga for a while, Chris recalled, and then Tarot cards and crystals and herbal supplements and numerology and Native American mysticism. He never stayed with one thing for long, but there was always a stack of books tucked into his backpack that had nothing to do with any of his classes. But Gavin was a genuinely kind individual, and had the earnest enthusiasm of a cocker spaniel. On the whole, though, most of his friends tolerated his flights of fancy. If anything, most people seemed to think the two most judgmental members of his circle of friends, Deirdre Ross and Lewis Corelli, were too harsh on him, and occasionally, simply unkind.

  But Gavin had been right, at least about that. They were real. It remained to be seen if he was right about anything else—Bigfoot and Nessie and aliens and the rest of it. But They were very real. And evil.

  He looked at the beat-up digital clock on the nightstand. 11:04. He stood up and called Baxter, who gave a heavy sigh and jumped down from the bed. Chris peered out into the empty hall.
He went out to let Baxter pee in the grass next to the door, and stood for a moment watching the traffic go past on the highway. Lights glittered in the distance.

  Any of those lights could be Them. Gavin was right. They could be anyone. The girl who checked Chris in to the hotel. Someone in one of the four other cars in the parking lot. Maybe They were catching up with him, and would be pulling up soon, Generic White Men in Dark Suits, and one of them would pull out a gun with a silencer, shoot him in the head, and drive away.

  He gave a little laugh. If They were really here, then they’d had about a hundred opportunities to get him and hadn’t taken them.

  “C’mon, Baxter, let’s go. Shouldn’t tempt fate.”

  The hallway was still empty, and he made it back to his room unobserved. He shut, bolted, and chain-locked the door, got undressed, and climbed into bed. The last thing he thought, before he fell asleep, was what Deirdre had thought, right before she drowned. Whether she recognized she was the victim of her own disbelief, or if she died never knowing she’d been wrong.

  —

  Chris woke up the next morning at a little before seven, ravenously hungry. He yawned and stretched, and felt Baxter’s tail thumping against the mattress.

  “Survived another night, dude. That’s the way to start the day.”

  He didn’t bother checking out. No reason to. He’d paid for his room fair and square and had given a false name and address in any case. All the clerk would tell him was “Thank you,” if that. Just before leaving his room, he checked his cell and deleted another voicemail from Hargis. Then he tossed the room key on the nightstand and headed back to the car. They were on the road by 7:30.

  —

  Highway 20 paralleled the St. Joseph River for a few miles before they veered apart, the road dipping off southward as the river, glittering in the gray morning light, angled sharply toward the lowlands of southern Michigan. The traffic picked up as he got closer to Gary, and for no particular reason other than wanting to stay out of the urban mess that was Chicago and its environs, he took Highway 31 south for an hour, through a flat expanse of corn and wheat fields that seemed to have no boundaries but melded seamlessly from one into another with only the occasional house or silo to break the monotony.

  He was starving by the time he stopped at the Café Tourelle in Peru, Indiana for breakfast. He parked in the shade, let Baxter out, and leashed him to a sapling in a grassy area using a nylon lead he’d picked up earlier at a hardware store. He put the water bowl down near him, filled it with some water, and went into the restaurant, stomach growling.

  The café had computers with free internet access, and Chris sat eating a ham-and-cheese omelet while checking his email. There was another email from [email protected]:

  Mr. Franzia:

  I need you to respond to this email immediately. It is urgent.

  J. Hargis

  “You just won’t take no for an answer, will you?” Chris shook his head and gave a grim chuckle. “Not too bloody likely, my friend.”

  The next one was from Elisa, with a timestamp of the previous day at a little after four in the afternoon. He opened it, feeling his pulse quicken. Every time he saw Elisa’s name, it reassured him that they could win this game.

  We’ve eluded them this far. We can keep eluding them.

  The email read:

  Chris,

  I wanted to send you this so you know I’m still okay. I haven’t seen anything amiss around here, but I’m keeping my eye out. I’m in a place where I’d know if there was anything out of the ordinary, so you shouldn’t worry.

  I hope you’re okay. Just let me know if everything’s all right. I feel like we need to be each other’s lifelines, even if no one else can know what’s going on, we both do. I check my email several times a day. I know you won’t have much opportunity to write, but a quick note when you have the chance would let me know that you’re still okay.

  I was looking at a map of the United States yesterday, and wondering where you were. I know you can’t tell me, but I kept looking at different towns and different states, and imagining that you were out there, on the road, maybe in the South or the Midwest or maybe even back in the Northwest. Not knowing simultaneously makes me feel reassured that you’re safe and makes me feel lonely. I hope you can find a way to get somewhere where you don’t have to run any more.

  I miss you. That may sound strange to say, since we haven’t had any contact for thirty years. Maybe it’s losing all of the others that makes me feel this way. And maybe, somehow, we can meet when this is all over. It sounds like a ridiculous hope, but I’m clinging to it anyhow.

  Elisa

  Chris smiled as he read this. He could hear it, in his mind, in Elisa’s voice. It was a gentle voice, low and sweet. A beautiful voice, he remembered. He hit Reply, and wrote:

  Elisa:

  I got your email, and I’m fine. I’ve had a couple of scary near misses. One in a hotel, where the clerk in the lobby told me that two guys had been asking about me, and one completely inexplicable one at a tollbooth, where the ticket-taker somehow knew what was going on. I don’t want to give you more than that because who knows who else might be reading this, but it shook me up enough that I’m being a lot more careful now.

  But so far, so good. I don’t know where I’m heading, and couldn’t tell you even if I did, but I’m still alive and unharmed and trying to keep one step ahead. I promise I’ll get back in touch as soon as I can.

  Don’t worry about me.

  Chris

  P.S. I miss you, too. A lot.

  He hit Send before he had time to talk himself into deleting the postscript.

  Finished with his breakfast, he paid his bill to a fresh-faced girl who would have been a contender for that year’s Miss Perky Midwesterner contest, and went back outside into the sunshine. An elderly woman with a shopping bag was bent over, petting Baxter.

  She looked up with a smile. “Your dog?”

  “Yes. His name is Baxter.”

  Baxter’s tail was going like mad now.

  “He’s a darling. I simply love dogs. I have two of my own, but I never can pass a sweet doggie like this without saying hi.”

  “Oh, Baxter loves people. He’s about the friendliest guy on earth. He’s been that way since he was a puppy. Not a mean bone in his body.”

  “No, I can see that.” The woman laughed. “I wish I had a doggie biscuit for him, but I don’t.”

  “No problem. He appreciates the petting as much as food, honestly.”

  She looked into Baxter’s brown eyes and scratched him under his chin. “You be a good boy, Baxter. Take care of your daddy.”

  He laughed. “He will.”

  The elderly woman put her hand gently on his shoulder. “God bless both of you. Have a nice day.”

  “You, too.”

  She walked off down the sidewalk, taking little, mincing steps, the shopping bag hanging from her hand.

  Chris unhooked Baxter’s leash from the sapling, and then unsnapped it from his collar, and let him into the car. Baxter jumped into the passenger seat and put his paws on the dashboard, his tail still wagging furiously.

  It was only after he’d started the engine that the thought came to him, seemingly out of nowhere. She was one of Them.

  His rational mind spurred him to laugh out loud. Her? She looked like his grandma. A stiff wind would blow her over.

  Well, the boy in the tollbooth hadn’t look suspicious, either. Not until he’d told Chris to get off the freeway.

  He looked into his rearview mirror. The old lady was still visible, walking away from him, now almost two blocks away.

  No way.

  All she was was an old lady who liked dogs. He couldn’t suspect everyone, could he?

  But the relief was short-lived. That was the old way of thinking and had nearly gotten him killed. He had to suspect everyone, even if they looked harmless.

  Maybe especially if they looked harmless.

  He r
eached over and ran his hands over his dog’s fur. Nothing amiss, so far as he could tell. Baxter, pleased with the attention, gave him a wet kiss on the cheek.

  Chris unsnapped Baxter’s collar, and held it up.

  It was five minutes before he saw it. He’d been about to give up and put the collar back on, and write his feelings off to paranoia. It was a tiny, rectangular black metal chip, wedged into the blue nylon fabric of Baxter’s collar. At first, it looked to him like a fleck of dirt or rock, but he used his fingernail and thumbnail to lever it out, and then it sat in his palm. A little dark, flat object, obviously manmade, with a minuscule hook on the back.

  He stared at it in silence, his heart thrumming in his chest. He considered dropping it onto the pavement, but after a moment, he tossed it into the open window of a battered pickup truck parked nearby. The truck had Indiana plates and a bumper sticker that said, This Truck is Protected By Smith & Wesson. After a moment’s thought, he tossed Baxter’s collar in, too.

  At least the owner of the truck looked likely to be able to take care of himself should the Men in Black show up.

  Then Chris was out onto the road, driving down the highway, looking in his rearview mirror every thirty seconds for signs of pursuit, the wind of his speed drying the sweat standing out on his skin.

  It wasn’t until he hit Logansport, an hour later, that his heart rate returned to normal.

  Chapter 9

  As Chris crossed into Illinois at a little before eleven in the morning, he began to wonder how exactly he was being tracked.

  In the hotel two nights ago, he’d been careless, signing in under his actual name, and using his bank card to get cash the next morning. It was no mystery how the two nameless men in generic suits had located him. In fact, it was lucky they hadn’t gotten there sooner, found what room he was in, and killed him as he slept. After that, he’d been on the Turnpike the whole way across Ohio. If the kid in the tollbooth had been right, they would have known the instant he crossed the state line, and knowing the speed of traffic, and that he hadn’t exited, it wouldn’t have been difficult to keep track of where he was the entire way across the state.