Deciding there was nothing left worth eating inside Luis, the beetle scurried off the dead man’s stomach and into the forest grass with surprising mobility and speed.
Before a single word could be spoken, Jak had responded to the grotesque insect’s movement by selecting and throwing one of his lethal leaf-bladed knives. The albino was a lightning-fast blur of motion as he aimed and hurled the knife downward, effectively sending the blade home into the beetle’s glistening black shell and through the insect’s softer underside.
Red blood spurted out as if from an overripe piece of fruit, and the insect’s twin mandibles clawed at the ah- like miniature ebony hands, reaching up and wiggling for the sky before becoming as still as the lifeless body of its victim.
“Hate bugs,” Jak said flatly as he stepped forward to retrieve the knife. He raised and lowered a boot heel and twisted his foot to crush the remains of the insect into the grassy soil of the forest floor. “Hate ’em.”
Maryland, Virginia, December 28, 2000
Doc TANNER DIDN’T BOTHER to look up when the smooth metal alloy and Plexiglas door of his one- room holding facility slid sideways into the far wall. His attentions were on the thick hardcover book he was holding, one of more than two dozen family biographies he’d read recently about the famed Kennedy dynasty.
A tragic fall of three, beginning with the president and ruler of Camelot, the one-and-only lusty Jack; then his second-in-command with his own eyes on the prize, the compassionate Bobby; and finally ending with the lesser of the trinity, poor, sad Teddy, who’d fallen prey to circumstance and timing and seen the dynasty crumble to dust on the cold banks of the Chappaquiddick.
The floor of the small quarters was covered with stacks of books and magazines. Overhead a color television set was on, but Doc had the sound turned down, finding himself quickly bored with the images. A fantastic invention, he had to admit, but as for the choice and quality of what was being broadcast, a lot was left to be desired.
Aware of another’s presence in the crowded room, and also aware that whoever it was didn’t intend on leaving, Doc decided to speak.
“More questions?” he barked, still not gracing his visitor with a glance. “Perhaps I shall be allowed to clamber half naked upon your wondrous treadmill and run myself ragged for the amusement of your note-taking associates. Better still, perhaps we shall test my psychic abilities. Tell me, what do you see in your mind? A circle? A square? A picture of a cross? Your own rancid smiling face?”
“No, none of that.”
Doc lifted a bony arm. “Or do you require yet another pint or three of my bodily fluids?”
“Why take a pint when we have drained the entire store?” Welles replied silkily.
The tone of Welles’s voice sliced through Doc’s concentration and he looked up from his volume on the trio of Kennedy brothers. The fat man’s three chins were jiggling as Welles struggled to contain his laughter.
“What, pray tell, does that mean?”
“Tanner, you are, without a doubt, the biggest, most puckered asshole I’ve ever had the fortune to encounter. Stubborn, arrogant, prideful, and for all the wrong reasons. You get on my nerves like no one else, not even my first wife nor my sainted mother, damn her immortal soul may she rot in peace.”
“Am I to take comfort in your compliments?” Doc retorted.
“I had the option of having you terminated, you know. A simple order. My decision. No one cares, really, about you anymore. You are no longer special. And while I know it makes me sound like the villain in a third-rate television melodrama, I have the extreme honor of telling you your usefulness to Operation Chronos and the Totality Concept has ceased.”
Doc drew himself up on the bed and set his jaw firmly. “So. The day has come. I have never feared death.”
“So you say. So you’ve said. Got some video interviews with you saying just that very phrase, same ramrod posture, same twitch in your jaw. I spent a sleepless night debating my next move, imagining the joy I’d take from watching your death throes- from a purely scientific view, of course. Then, I decided death was too good for you, Tanner. Much… too… good.”