The bus takes a right, and it’s only then I realize the driver isn’t stopping to pick anyone up or let anyone off. There’s even the occasional couple at a bus stop frantically trying to wave the bus down as it drives on.
“We’re here,” Sharon says as Good Old Joe the bus driver finally pulls over, stopping in a taxi rank outside Baconhaus, a fast food joint that is quite possibly a crime against humanity in its own right.
I grab Mark, surprised by how heavy he is. Having had a few minutes to recover from running down the alleyway, my muscles revolt at the thought of carrying him again. I hoist him over my shoulder. Icy cold water runs down my back and trickles down the inside of my leg.
“You take care,” Joe calls out after us.
I step down onto the pavement and, with mock enthusiasm, ask, “Which way to the lab?”
This ought to be good. I doubt she really has a laboratory, and I peer around, looking for someone I can signal for help, but the street is deserted.
Sharon walks down the alleyway next to the Baconhaus.
I see a teenaged boy walk out of a nearby 7-11. He’s looking down at his phone. He glances up at me and stops in his tracks.
I point at Mark draped over my shoulder and mouth the words, “Call the police.” He gets it. I see him instantly dialing a number on his phone. He backs up, returning to the store. He peers out the window at me as he holds the phone to his ear.
“Hey,” Sharon calls out, waving with the gun.
I turn and walk down the alley, knowing the teen just got a good look at the ice packed around Mark’s head. If that doesn’t freak him out, nothing will. I relax my grip on one of Mark’s arms, allowing it to slide to one side and hang loose. I’m sure the boy has seen that. Hopefully he thinks I’m a mob hit man disposing of a body. I can just hear the 911 calclass="underline" “A gangster wearing a tinfoil hat just dragged a dead body into the Baconhaus.” That’s believable. I wonder if he’ll follow up with, “Send Mulder and Scully!”
“In here,” Sharon says, leading me into a storeroom behind the Baconhaus. The smell of fried bacon causes me to salivate, which is all kinds of wrong considering I’m carrying a dead man.
Sharon turns on a dim light and closes the door behind me, flipping a deadbolt lock.
“So this is the lab, huh?” I ask, looking up at the lone incandescent bulb. At a guess, it’s twenty watts, max. I couldn’t read in this light, which makes it a strange choice for a storeroom-cum-laboratory.
“It’s got everything we need,” Sharon assures me. “Lean him against the wall. Get those ice packs off him.”
I try to lower Mark with some dignity, but he falls from my shoulders like a sack of potatoes and sags against the wall beneath a small window.
Sharon hands me a pair of scissors and I cut away the Saran Wrap, puncturing one of the bags by accident. Freezing cold water runs over my hands.
Mark’s face is blue. His skin has shriveled. He looks more like a waxwork zombie than someone who was alive less than half an hour ago.
“Dry him off,” Sharon says, handing me a towel.
I don’t want to touch him. I’ve been carrying him, but this is different. He’s staring at me.
I stand to one side, not wanting his dead eyes to look at me as I pat down his head and shoulders.
Sharon steps to the far side of Mark with a roll of duct tape. She’s holding the tape out in front of her like she’s about to pull the pin on a hand grenade.
“Ready?” she asks.
“You bet!” I reply enthusiastically, with a big stupid grin lighting up my face. I have no idea what she’s about to do. Gagging a dead man with duct tape doesn’t seem entirely necessary.
Sharon moves with surprising speed. She tears a two-foot length of duct tape from the roll and slaps it on Mark’s forehead. Ice? Bananas? Duct tape? I should have stayed in and watched TV.
“Mechanoluminescent,” she says. “We’d get a better result in a vacuum, but this will have to do.”
Each time Sharon rips a length of duct tape from the roll, she does so with a rapid burst of strength. Apart from the very obvious sound of the adhesive tearing from the roll, I notice a slight burst of blue light.
“What was that?” I ask as Sharon slaps another length of duct tape on Mark’s head. She’s slowly covering his entire skull—his brow, his face, his ears, his neck.
“X-rays,” she replies. “We’re exploiting an electron discharge to produce x-ray radiation. It’s just like pulling a wool sweater over your head and getting static discharge, only this will allow us to build a three-dimensional model of Mark’s brain in its current state. I’ll need the computers on Luna One to reconstruct his quantum presence, but we’ll capture it on the tape.”
Luna One? That’s a stupid name. I want to ask her, “Is Luna One the best name you can come up with? You travel dozens of light years to get to Earth, only to suffer from stifled creativity when it comes to naming your super secret alien moon base?” I’m sorely tempted to blurt out, “Is there a Luna Two?” just to be snarky, but Sharon is nothing if not blinded by her optimism.
As appropriate as such sarcasm may be from my perspective, for her it would be mean and cruel. She’s undergoing a mental breakdown over the death of her brother, so I keep my mouth shut. I need to help her get through this, and then turn her over to the cops or the paramedics so she can get professional help.
“We can save him.”
We?
I shake my head.
Sharon is diligent in wrapping Mark’s head in duct tape.
Someone pounds on the door.
“Open up!”
Sharon looks terrified. She finishes the final strip of tape, pressing it firmly in place. Mark’s head is covered in shiny silver duct tape. He looks like a storefront mannequin.
“You’ve got to hold them off,” she says, handing me the gun.
I’m dumbfounded. I stand there holding the gun, pointing it at her simply because that’s the way she handed it to me. Does this woman have any grasp of reality at all? Does she have any idea what she’s doing in any given moment?
Sharon turns back to Mark and presses the tape firmly over his nose, eyes, and mouth as the pounding continues.
“This is the police. Open up!”
I’m still pointing the gun at her as she crouches and starts pulling the duct tape from Mark’s head. Bits of skin come loose, revealing dull red flesh, but there’s no bleeding. Great, I think. Now we’re desecrating a corpse.
I’m stunned on so many levels. I’m trying to figure out just how many laws I’ve broken. Am I an accessory to something? How is a judge going to see this? Juries are supposed to consider what’s reasonable. What is reasonable given I’ve been held at gunpoint? But now I have the gun. How am I going to explain that? She just gave it to me, your honor.
“Please,” Sharon pleads, turning to me as she pulls another strip of duct tape from Mark’s head, trying to keep the strips loosely together in the shape of a mask. “You’ve got to do something.”
And she’s right. I’ve got the gun. I’m in control now. I’ve got to do something, and I will. I’ll let the police in. I walk over to the door and fiddle with the lock, but the pounding has warped the door, causing the lock to jam.
“Open the goddamn door!”
“Hang on,” I yell back. “I’m trying.”
The only way to open the door is to push against the police officer, relieving the pressure on the lock so I can twist the catch. I push my shoulder against the door and flip the bolt back.
A cop comes charging in, knocking me backward on my ass.
“Drop the gun!”
My eyes go as wide as saucers as the realization hits me—I’m the one holding the gun. In his mind, I’m the bad guy. I’ve wanted to get hold of this gun for so long, but now I can’t let go of this chunky hunk of black plastic and hardened metal fast enough. My hands shoot up in the air as the gun bounces off my thigh and onto the concrete floor.