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  Quack followed him down the stairs. “Excellent.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  As soon as she got home from work Friday morning, Stacia knew she had to go find Marvin. She felt badly that she hadn’t done it Thursday afternoon the way she’d planned, but she’d been exhausted, and Marvin was an adult. She’d needed to do chores around the apartment to keep Aunt Darla from doing them, and she was only one person with so much energy.

  Stacia also suspected trying to talk Marvin out of the program would be useless. That was her gut instinct’s ruling. She’d wanted to put off the disappointment and emotions that would trigger.

  She was far more cynical about the world now than she had been a few days ago, and she’d pretty much been a realist before she’d met the Drunk Monkeys.

  But she didn’t hold on to any hopes of talking Marvin out of the program. Not after her discussions with the men and what she’d learned about what they thought might be going on there. They’d pretty much confirmed her worst fears.

  The odds of Marvin staying healthy, much less surviving whatever crazy-assed plan the church had for him, were too poor for her liking, but she didn’t think she’d be able to change the outcome short of the men abducting Marvin from the program.

  That would be her next step. She’d try the easy approach one more time, just in case.

  Part of her tenaciously refused to give up on her brother.

  Yet, a dark, quiet part of her brain had already started ticking through the list of ways Marvin’s permanent departure would make things easier on her, and on her aunt.

  She hated herself for the thoughts, but dammit, Aunt Darla had spent her life sacrificing for them through excruciating pain. And if what Marvin had couldn’t be cured…

  Maybe things happened for a reason.

  Her aunt had already left for work. Stacia grabbed a quick shower and a protein bar and headed out for the church. That’s when doubts assailed her again.

  Maybe I should wait and get Quack and Lima to help, no matter what I told them.

  Then again, despite the soft, dark voice in her mind, Marvin was her brother. This was her responsibility. If he wouldn’t listen to her, he likely wouldn’t listen to her men.

  The day felt oppressively hot, very little wind, and the sky an ugly brownish orangey color that meant an inversion layer was keeping smog and smoke from the riot fires and brush fires trapped near the surface.

  She adjusted her face mask as she walked. It made the day feel even hotter, the way her breath was trapped under the mask by the fabric.

  Still wasn’t enough to make her pull it down and off her face.

  When she reached the church, she stared at the front of it, where they’d already replaced the plywood covering the front glass windows with stained glass panels containing large gold crosses.

  Oh, puh-leeze.

  It figured they’d pick something as gaudy as that to replace them.

  Trudging across the parking lot to the front door, she almost expected to find it locked. But it opened when she pushed, surprising her so much that she nearly tripped her way through the entrance.

  There were three women in the office, but none of them looked up when she walked in, so she didn’t announce herself. She wanted to go find Marvin herself and talk to him.

  She still peeked inside the sanctuary as she walked past that door and then stopped, backing up to look again.

  A lone figure sat in a chair at the front.

  A lone figure with a Marvin-like shape.

  Hoping against hope, she hurried in, up to the front row of chairs, and breathed a sigh of relief to find, yes, it was Marvin.

  He looked up at her as she stood over him. On his face he wore a beatific smile the likes of which she’d never seen before.

  “Marvin?” she whispered, horror coiling in her stomach for a reason she couldn’t explain.

  His smile widened. “Hello, sis.”

  She sat next to him. “Please, come home with me. Aunt Darla misses you. You don’t have to do this. We’ll get you out of the contract.”

  He took her hand in his and held it. There was something different about him.

  Disturbingly different.

  She couldn’t put her finger on it, either. He sounded content, at peace. Placid.

  Focused. “This will be okay,” he said. I’ll be home in a few weeks, when my assignment is finished. I feel better than I ever have in my entire life, and I’m going to be spreading the Word of God to people in desperate need.”

  “But you have a family in desperate need.”

  “I wish you could feel what I feel right now, sis. It’s…amazing. Like everything is clear for the first time in my life.”

  She knew from his tone there would be no arguing with him.

  Didn’t mean she wouldn’t try. “What if you don’t come back, Marvin? What are we supposed to do without you?”

  “You’ll be okay. It’s God’s will.”

  She’d try logic. It was a long shot, but maybe it would work. “I know what’s wrong with you, Marvin. I found out why the military discharged you. You have a genetic condition that’s like a type of autistic dyslexia, a sensory processing disorder. It means you don’t see the world the way the rest of us do. That’s why you always had problems following through with stuff, because it just doesn’t stick in your brain. It’s a specific genetic abnormality tied in with something Dad was exposed to while he was in the military. It’s all related to your condition, everything. It’s why you always had problems in school. We might be able to find a way for you to learn to work around it.”

  “I’ll come back,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken. He looked up as a soft tone sounded three times. “I have to go. Time for my next treatment.” He stood. “It’ll be okay, sis. You’ll see. Love you.”

  She stared up at him, at the eyes the same shade of brown as hers, at his brown hair, a little on the shaggy side because he hadn’t been around lately for her to give him a haircut. “Love you, too, bro.”

  She watched him walk out of the sanctuary, helpless to do anything but let him go.

  * * * *

  Lima and Quack sat in the truck across the street from the church and watched the front entrance, time nervously ticking past for them as they waited for Stacia to emerge.

  “Well?” Quack asked. “Do we go in? I don’t like her being in there.”

  “If we go in guns blazing, we’re liable to get the wrong kind of response,” Lima said. “We don’t know what’s going on or if they’ve improved security since I was last inside.”

  “That’s why I’m worried,” Quack said. “We don’t know what’s going on.” Bubba was still trying to decode the secret project’s timeline. They suspected things were growing tight time-wise, but Papa wouldn’t give the okay to blow the place until he heard back from Bubba about it.

  “We sit and wait,” Lima said. “Just keep your eyes open.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Stacia struggled not to burst into frustrated tears as she left the church and began the walk back to their apartment building.

  I cannot farking believe he’s going through with it.

  Based on what she now knew about the world, she was convinced her brother, and the other volunteers, were being sent on suicide missions. Why else pay them exorbitant amounts of money?

  Why would it be worth the church paying them that much to go out and spread the “word of God”?

  More like hush money being paid to desperate families who wouldn’t want to raise too much of a stink later about the source of their sudden financial windfalls.

  From what the men had told her about the real reason her brother had been discharged from the military, looking back, a lot of things made sense.

  What if they’d been from a rich family? Would a doctor have diagnosed him when he was a kid so he could have gotten the appropriate therapy to help him make something of his life?

  Now he was little more than a lab rat for a wh
ack-job religious nut.

  Her last shreds of hope lay in the men and the possibility that they might be able to rescue Marvin for her.

  When the tiny, dark voice in her mind tried to convince her to just let him go for her aunt’s sake, she viciously silenced it.

  Stacia stopped at the small park next door to their apartment building. Playground equipment, picnic tables, a small jogging path, there was a little duck pond in the center and a few sections where shade trees provided welcomed oases from the summer sun. It wasn’t the most beautiful park, or the fanciest, but it had been there for years, one constant in their lives.

  They’d spent countless hours there as kids, the two of them on weekends or after school while their mom and aunt were still at work.

  She walked over to one of the larger oak trees which stood there, tall and round. Looking back, she could see how much it had grown over the years, as had she, but only upon reflection was that growth truly visible.

  Resting her head against its rough bark, she closed her eyes and thought about her brother.

  Dammit, I wish I had him here with me.

  They’d spent hours under this tree playing together.

  It had been their favorite tree as kids. Back then, she’d never allowed herself to dwell upon there ever possibly being a day she and her brother wouldn’t be together. They’d lost their father when she was three, and they had moved in with Aunt Darla just weeks after.

  Then they’d lost their mom, too.

  That she’d likely never see Marvin again still hadn’t quite sunken in yet. Hadn’t penetrated the old brainpan.

  Didn’t feel real.

  Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’ll be back.

  “Stace!”

  She froze, listening. It had almost sounded like—

  “Stace!”

  Her eyes popped open and she turned toward the voice.

  There was Marvin, running toward her.

  Of course, he wasn’t wearing a mask.

  She let out a happy sob and was already reaching out to embrace him when he ran up to her.

  He scooped her up in a huge hug and spun her around, the kind of hug he’d given her when they were kids and she was depressed or upset or worried. The kind of hug designed to make all the bad things go away and make her smile again.

  A big-brother hug.

  “Oh, thank god,” she whispered, desperately clutching him to her.

  “I’m still going,” he said, his words almost running together. If he’d been placid before, he was like a whirlwind of energy now. “I just got my treatment and I feel a lot better. I always feel better right after my treatments. I feel bad that you’re upset. I forgot to tell you I called Aunt Darla last night. I just snuck out after my treatment. I was hoping I could catch up with you. I’m supposed to be resting right now. I just found out they’re flying us out tonight.”

  Her happy feelings shattered. “Please, please don’t go. Stay. Quit. Tell them you changed your mind and don’t want the money.”

  “Stace, it’s okay. I have to do this. I want to do this. And when I get back—”

  “But you won’t come back, don’t you understand that?” she screamed against his shoulder. “I don’t know what the hell they’re doing, but they don’t plan for any of you to come back!”

  He cupped her face in his hands and smiled down at her. It was a peaceful smile, a loving smile. A calm stillness settled over him, counteracting whatever tsunami of energy had infested his body.

  “I know what I have to do,” he said. “This is God’s will for me. And I’m okay with that because I know that, no matter what happens from this day forward, you and Aunt Darla will be okay. I can take care of myself. I always had you or Mom or Aunt Darla making sure of it before, but you’re right. It’s time for me to step up and do what I need to do for my family for a change.”

  “But not like this, please! We don’t need the money. We need you. You’re my brother, and I love you.”

  His smile widened. “I love you, too, little sis.” His gaze left hers, suddenly focusing on a point behind her. Then the serenity fell from his expression like snow sliding off a roof, horror replacing it. “No!”

  Marvin grabbed her in a bear hug, spinning them both around as a loud crack shattered the afternoon.

  It felt like someone had whacked Marvin across the back with a baseball bat, the impact rocketing through her, too. And then he was sliding, his grip on her loosening, his knees and legs folding, collapsing as she struggled to keep him upright.

  “Marvin!” She followed him to the ground, landing on her knees in the grass next to him.

  Behind where he’d stood, about thirty yards away, she saw Marco stalking toward them. In his right hand, he held a gun pointed at them.

  “Fucking cunt! You goddamned got me fired! Little bitch!” He aimed at her again as she screamed, but then a second crack, this one from behind her, split the air.

  Marco’s forward momentum stopped. Before he fell backward, she realized a hole had appeared in the middle of his forehead and the back of his skull disintegrated and sprayed chunks of red, grey, and white across the scraggly grass behind him.

  She turned to see Lima and Quack sprinting toward her, both of them with guns drawn.

  She looked down. Marvin stared up at her, a silly little smile on his face despite the blood pouring from the wound in his chest. It was all over him, and her, too, from where she’d been trying to support him. It coated her hands as she tried to apply pressure to the wound.

  “No, no nonono no nonononono! Marvin, hold on, we’ll get you to a hospital! You just fucking hold on, you hear me?”

  Quack fell to his knees next to her as Lima continued on to check on Marco.

  “Stacia, are you okay?” Quack asked her as he holstered his gun.

  “My brother, please, we have to get him to the—”

  He grabbed her by her the arm. “Were you shot?” he yelled.

  “No! But we have to get Marvin to a hospital right now.”

  Marvin let out a little cough, red bubbles forming and bursting on his lips before he took one last breath and went still.

  “No!” She leaned forward as she yanked her mask down, intent on doing mouth-to-mouth on him, but Quack grabbed her with both arms and bodily dragged her across the grass away from her brother’s side.

  “Let me go!” she screamed, struggling against him. “We have to—”

  Quack shook her. “Stop! Listen to me, right now. Just stop. It got his spine. It took out his lungs.” He looked over at the fallen man, and then at his own hands and arms, which were now also coated with blood.

  Lima ran up to them and skidded to a halt about fifteen feet away. “Oh, no. Dammit, Cody! Fuck!” He holstered his gun and turned away from them before turning back, stomping his foot. “Fuck, man! Fuck! Fucking hell! No!”

  In the distance, she saw people had turned their way.

  “Give me the sticks, Devin,” Quack said, keeping his left hand painfully clamped around her upper right arm so she couldn’t move from his side, while reaching out his right toward Lima.

  “Fuck!”

  “Devin! Give me the goddamned motherfucking sticks!”

  Lima pulled a small plastic case out of his pocket and tossed it from where he stood so that it landed in Quack’s outstretched palm. Lima ran his hands through his short hair as he dropped into a squat, watching them.

  Only then did the significance of what just happened between her two men penetrate through her roiling fog of shock and grief to hit her in the brain and jolt it back into gear. “What—”

  “Shh, baby,” Quack calmly whispered as he worked to open the case one-handed, his tone now completely changed. He bore a totally different demeanor from just seconds earlier. Calm.

  Eerily calm.

  “It’s okay,” he insisted. “Everything’s gonna be okay. I’m not leaving your side.” He looked at Lima. “Devin, go get the truck and drive it over here.”

  Li
ma leapt from the ground and sprinted to do it.

  Quack shook a clear test strip from the case with his right hand and reached out, dipping the sharps end that usually poked a person to draw the sample into a smear of Marvin’s blood that she’d transferred onto his own left arm from their struggle.

  She stared at Quack, watching his face. He closed his eyes, his lips moving without any sound coming out.

  She realized he was silently chanting.

  Not blue. Please, not blue.

  Over and over again.

  “Quack—”

  “Shh, baby,” he said without opening his eyes. “It’s going to be okay. Everything’s gonna be all right. I’ve got you, you’re safe. We are going to be okay.”

  Her gaze dropped to the test strip pinched between his right thumb and index finger.

  It had already started turning blue.

  “Motherfucker,” he whispered.

  He dropped it and shook out another. Leaning, he stretched to reach her brother’s body, this time dipping the test strip into blood directly from Marvin’s chest wound.

  Her brother’s eyes remained half-open and staring sightlessly up at the sky. The same brown eyes she had. Her mother always told them they had their father’s eyes, what a comfort it was to look into their faces and see their father mirrored there.

  The strip started turning blue immediately.

  Quack stood, pulling her with him. She wanted to stay but he started dragging her toward the street and away from Marvin’s body.

  “Quack—”

  “We have to get out of here. Now,” he said without stopping. “The police show up, they’ll quarantine us and we’re done.”

  “But what about his bod—”

  He stopped, grabbed her by both arms, and shook her again, gently. “He’s gone, baby. I’m sorry, but we’re still alive. They’ll burn his body anyway. He’s infected with Kite. Eaten up with it for the strips to turn that blue that fast. We have to get out of here right now.”

  They heard the sound of a gunning engine. Lima bounced the truck over the curb and onto the grass, racing toward them, the windows up. He slid to a stop next to them, and Quack didn’t give her time to react. He scooped her up and dumped her into the bed before jumping in with her.