I knew there were two more enemies behind the car where I couldn’t see them, and I wasn’t about to stick my head up to see. I looked at the car that had crashed into the stolen one, but the front window was spider-webbed, the cracked glass obscuring the identity of the driver. I thought I heard the sound of fighting from the other side of the car, where Scott and Kat were laying, but I couldn’t be sure through the ringing in my ears. I edged toward the hood, away from the crashed rear, and raised myself up, gun pointed. My eyes widened at what I saw and I hesitated.
“You’re just like me; you know how to get yourself in trouble,” came the soft voice of the woman standing in front of me, holding the bodies of the two remaining assailants by the back of their collars. Both appeared to be unconscious. She was wearing a red tank top, cut off jeans again, and flip-flops. Her dark hair was hanging around her face and she dropped the bodies to the ground. “What would you have done if I wasn’t here to save you?”
“Charlie?” I stared at her in near disbelief. I heard a grunt from the first guy I had shot, laying about a foot to my right, lanced out a foot and kicked him in the head, causing him to go limp. “What are you doing here?”
She shrugged. “I was bored in Minneapolis, so I came looking for you.”
I stood slowly, looking around the street, which was quiet save for the ticking sound from the engine of the car that had crashed. “And you decided to go looking on a random street in Eau Claire, Wisconsin?”
She laughed. “No, I absorbed the mind and soul of a tech geek a few years ago. I tracked your cell phone’s GPS.”
I looked down reflexively at my pocket. “Really?”
“It’s not as hard as you’d hope it would be.” She shrugged. “Looks like my timing was good. What’d you do to provoke an Omega sweep team?”
“Omega?” I felt a thrill as I made my way around the car to check on Kat and Scott. “These guys are from Omega?”
“Uh huh.” She leaned down and grabbed one of them by the chest, ripping open his collar to reveal a small tattoo of the Greek letter Omega. “See?”
“Curiouser and curiouser.” I bent over Kat, trying her pulse (not an easy task with leather gloves on). She stirred at my touch, causing me to sigh in relief. I reached out and shook Scott, causing him to groan, his eyes fluttering. “Omega must be tracking our robber, too.”
There was a sound from behind me of metal stressing and squealing and I was back to my feet, gun drawn again. The door of the car that had crashed was opening. “I thought you drove that?” I asked over my shoulder to Charlie.
“Nuh-uh,” she said without concern. “I parked down the street and hustled up when I saw these guys ambush you. I thought it was one of your guys driving.”
“Whoever’s in the vehicle, hands up and come out slow,” I said. “No sudden moves.”
“Uggghhh.” The moan was not subtle, and was followed by the sound of a body hitting pavement. I saw the head and shoulders of a man, his long, dark hair tangled around his face. “I save your life and this is the gratitude I get?”
“Reed?” I stared at him before holstering my gun and running to his side. I rolled him over once I reached him; his nose was bloody and he had the start of a bruise forming under his right eye. “What are you doing here?”
He coughed, then grimaced. “There’s an Omega safehouse just down the street. I was surveilling it; figured it might be a nice, boring place to keep an eye on while I waited for word on another robbery. Then you and your pals go and get bushwhacked by an Omega sweep team, and suddenly my life gets really interesting.”
“Can you walk?” After I said it, I heard Charlie approach behind me, her flip-flops smacking against the pavement. The ringing in my ears had begun to subside.
“I think so.” He took my hand and I pulled him to his feet. “We need to get out of here before the law arrives. Doubtful they’re gonna ignore a scuffle this big.”
“I need to get a look at this Omega safehouse,” I said. “Preferably before the cops get here.”
Reed waved his hand in the direction that his car had come from. “Down the street. 8453 is the house number.” He clutched at his side and his face was a mask of discomfort.
I looked at him, then Charlie in turn. “Can you get Kat and Scott into my car and meet me in front of the safehouse?”
She got a lazy grin on her face. “You just need all kinds of help today.”
“Can you do it or not?”
She shrugged. “Sure. Keys?”
“Kat had them last,” I said, already turning to run down the street. “Check her pockets – and, Charlie…” She turned and I shook my head at her attire. “Remember to touch them only on the clothing.”
“No problem with the blond girl,” she called back. “But the boy…I might touch him some other places.”
I ignored her and ran down the street at full clip. I saw faces staring out of the windows of houses, saw curtains rustle in others as I passed. I watched the house numbers decrease until I reached 8453, a nondescript single story white house. I decided to avoid the front door and instead jumped over the wooden gate to the backyard. I listened over the slight ringing that persisted in my ears as I came around the corner and saw the back door kicked in.
I drew my gun, changed to a fresh magazine and stepped inside. The door led into a small hallway. I could see a kitchen to my left, along with a body and a lot of blood. Straight ahead was a family room, and off to the right was a hallway leading to several bedrooms. I went into the kitchen first, which had a nasty green tile backsplash over orange countertops and beige linoleum floors. Those were distracting, but the body in the middle of the kitchen was more bizarre than the horrific 70s color scheme.
First of all, it was obviously dead. There was enough blood on the floor to fill three bodies, and his face was frozen in anguish. He was elevated slightly off the floor by something on his back.
Worse than him were the remains of two enormous snakes lying on the kitchen floor. I shuddered. I do not care for snakes. I kicked at one of them to make sure it was dead. It didn’t move, but that didn’t make me feel much better. While I knew logically that they weren’t slimy, I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I touched it, it’d be slick and disgusting. I leaned in to look at the dead man, adjusting the body to see what was causing his corpse to incline.
When I lifted him, I almost retched. I saw what was holding him up, and it looked as though the snakes had been growing out of his shoulder blades. I dropped him and stood, stifling an urge to vomit. I kept my gun in hand and stepped over him, coming around the corner of the kitchen into the dining room to find another man on the couch, this one much younger, and with no obvious signs of snakes growing out of him.
He was also quite alive, though he was limp, arm hanging off the edge of the sofa. His chest moved up and down, eyes closed. I heard the faint sound of sirens outside and walked over to him, shaking him with one hand while keeping the pistol pointed at him with the other. He didn’t stir, and after two more attempts I left him and took a quick look around the rest of the house. Two bedrooms were pretty simple and a cursory look under the beds and in the closets didn’t reveal anything. The third bedroom seemed to be set up as an office, and I grabbed the laptop computer for later analysis by someone who’d know what to do with it.