Book: The First - Part: Two - Chapter: 16 - Installment: i

        The next thought Bev had was the startled sensation that someone was in her home.

        Laying in bed, eyes suddenly wide open, getting her bearings, clawing out of the fog of sleep she recognized the sound of the TV coming from the main room and she relaxed as she recalled her illegal guests.

They were illegal – something she would have to deal with sooner or later.  And with that thought she wasn’t so relaxed again.

        Edmond was sitting up on the couch again.  Slouching, really.  Eyes sunken, lids heavy. Carly sat beside him, watching Scooby-Doo un-mask an apparent ghoul that looked more lively than Edmond.

        “I don’t really know what to say.” Edmond mumbled.

        “Don’t apologize.”

        “I don’t think I was.”

        “I totally forgot about that bottle when I said you could stay here.”

        “Thank you.”

        “That hardly seems appropriate.”

        “For taking care of me last night. Generally and specifically.”

        “Well I’m sorry.”

        “I swear. I’m never going to drink again.” He managed a wry smile.

        “Shhhh!” Carly hushed them. The cartoon was approaching its climax.

        Edmond and Bev shared a smile. They both knew that as much as he had best intentions, his pattern was not promising. He might be capable of quashing the urge for a long time, but the urge always seemed stronger than he was.

        Beverly crossed into the kitchen and dug out the coffee. Scott was going to need it. For his part, he watched the last few minutes of Carly’s TV show and then cleared his throat.

        “Look, we should get out of your way. I’ve been thinking. We’re just going to get you in trouble. There’s no reason that the shit I’ve got myself in should be your problem too. No one even need know we were here.”

        “Yeah, about that...”

“If I can keep moving for another day or so, the idea of quarantining us – Carly in particular – will be ridiculous. I suspect I’ll be looking at a different small room for a little while at the very least.”

        “You can’t go out in your condition. You look like hell. Christ, you’ve got newsprint smeared all over your face.”

        “And I’m betting my face is smeared all over news-print.”

        “That too. But right now you look like the world’s worst hangover. Any authorities see you like this they aren’t going to think you’re healthy. I’m not saying you can stay long, but you owe me an on-the-record discussion, and you need liquids – internally and externally administered – and probably a nap after you’re totally sobered up. You aren’t in any danger of being found here.”

        She made coffee and ran out around the corner to get some bacon and eggs.  The entire time she was structuring questions in her head – the whole gamut; how long were Edmond and Shale partners?; how did he and Carly escape from the hospital, presumably unscathed?; where did they go to escape the authorities, before her?; what, if anything, more did he know about Tanya Meyers?

It wasn’t until she got back to her house that she thought about her necessary return to the hospital – to the story as the world saw it.  Somehow, having one of the key aspects of the event right in her living room made her forget that she was one step ahead of the story on TV and that until she could bring it to light safely, she still had to have the appearance of being wrapped up in the breaking news.

It was the breaking news on her TV as she walked in her door that brought her back to the present.

“Human rights activists are taking up the case of the quarantined staff and patients in the hospital.”

        The report cut directly to a sound bite from a tall albino.  “None of these people have exhibited any symptoms.  The police officer who went on the rampage went mad after hours.  These people’s liberty is being denied due to the paranoia of the scientific establishment.”

        Edmond muttered, “Tanya Meyers took a week from when she last saw her husband.  He took at least that long too.  The scientific establishment has damned good reason to be paranoid, Henry.”

        “Henry Visserman’s always good for a quote.  Even when he isn’t pithy he’s interesting to watch.  He’s so freaky looking.  He is good TV.”

        “I’m betting City Hall wishes you’d use him less.  We sure do in the department.”

        “Captain Anderson isn’t afraid to let us know.  So hey, I’ve got to call the news director and make like everything is normal – so if I can entreat you two to keep it quiet for a few minutes so I can do some effective lying...”

#

        “You can stay as long as you need,” she shouted from her bedroom.  “I’ll be back in about 12 hours or so, things have settled a bit at the hospital and they’ll have the news team into a groove by now.  So unless things get really crazy I’ll be on rotation from here out.”

        Edmond stepped into her door way.  A fleece blanket wrapped around him.

        “Thanks again.”

        “You cold?”

        “I’m fine.  Really.  Except for the... sorry about that.”

        “It was stupid of me.  But that’s one more way here is safe.  You won’t find any more.  I’ve got to go.  Eat whatever you like.  Be prepared when I get back, neither of us is sleeping until we’ve gone at it.”  An awkward pause.  “I swear that wasn’t Freudian.”

        “I understood what you meant.”

Chapter 17

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Catching up in many ways

I WAS SO FAR AHEAD!

So very very far ahead.  But since early spring I have been doing virtually nothing but losing ground.  Sometimes I'd stem the flow a bit, but more often than not since April I've been letting entire weeks go by without adding anything to the buffer of written material I had.  Bah.

I kind of knew that once I got to this date that I would have the opportunity to get back on the horse, so to speak.  Well, here I am.

My film has finished up most of it's intense business - I mentioned in other posts that we had broadcast, DVD and Theatrical deals to do a bunch of work on.  We have agreed to more theatrical dates in October and will be doing the international DVDs soon, but all of that is relatively small-beans and is built upon work done previously.  Meanwhile my daughter has turned one year old and her Mum is finished with maternity leave which leaves me as Mr. Mom three days a week and working at my day job considerably less.

I am hoping that this will allow me to get more done.  Tonight for example, after dinner I figured Jodie would like to take an hour or so to play with December one on one.  That works well for me to take some time here to get some writing done.

I have no buffer left.  I ran out this week.  I had managed in the past few weeks to add a couple of installments which just barely got me to this date... but kind of not - I should have posted one more installment earlier this week in order to keep on schedule.  I actually did have something ready, but I wasn't happy with it.  I figured it was better to take another run at it than post something I wasn't satisfied with.

So, I'm going to go update some internal links and fix up that installment now.  I may even get to posting it tonight.  Failing that it'll probably be a few days.

It'll take a few weeks I expect before I can begin to predict how my new writing schedule will really be.  How often I can post, or if I'll actually make enough headway that I'll get ahead again and be able to post on a pre-determined schedule.  I'll check in with another note once the picture starts to coalesce.

Book: The First - Part: Two - Chapter: 15 - Installment: ii

        Simon cursed his ill-reasoned choice to exercise his independence.  He could have taken one of the Lazarus’ fleet of vehicles when he left for the evening, but instead he had chosen to not be in anyway beholden to the organization’s resources.  He had bussed into the city from the farm.  That had not been a big inconvenience in the light of day, but after midnight he was limited to night busses with considerably reduced schedules and reach.  It had been necessary to transfer twice already and even so, the last bus would still leave him with a significant walk to the farm.

        He didn’t bother wondering how much faster he could have made the trip had been able to use hyper-time.  That had already been dispelled for him in training.

        “Hyper-time will work for sprints, but not any extended distance.  You can’t access it long enough.  You could cover several blocks perhaps,” instructed Sylvette. “I can make it roughly a dozen.  It’s been a long time since I’ve bothered.  Hyper-time is best used for ending things quickly.  If you want to get somewhere fast, use a car and hope the traffic isn’t too bad.”

        The bell to signal for a stop rang.  Someone else had rung it.  Simon snapped out of his deep thought and looked up to see a young woman rising out of her seat, crumpling an empty potato chip bag.  It was his stop too – as close as the bus would get to the farm.  He would have a bit of a walk first.  Perhaps a short enough walk that he could effectively cover it in hyper-time, but he had been strictly counselled to not waste hyper-time on trivia, you never knew when you were going to need it.

        He stepped down off the bus behind the woman.  She had already set off at a determined pace in the same direction he was going.  If his night vision hadn’t been improved by the transformation she would already hardly be visible in the dark.

        The first driveway passed and she walked on ahead of him.  There weren’t many options out here.  She couldn’t be going much further than where he would turn, or she would have got off at a later stop.

        A second driveway disappeared behind them.  The woman glanced over her shoulder at Simon.  She too was aware of their coincidental proximity.  Simon realised that he was effectively following her and slackened his pace.  He didn’t want to seem to be in any way threatening.

        When she turned up the same side road he had to turn up in order to get to the Lazarus’ training complex, his intention to avoid creeping her out fell apart.  As he himself arrived at the foot of the road he stopped and watched as she walked on ahead of him.  As he watched in consternation the woman turned and looked back – probably to see if he was still following her.  She did not get the answer she was looking for.  She turned and kept walking, the up-tick in her pace perceptible to Simon from the distance between them.

        Shit.  Now what?

        His answer turned out to be that he would wait.  His night vision was keener than a normal human, so he waited until she had disappeared into the night by the measure of his ability to see, then he followed after her, content that he could not be perceived to be following her any longer.

        Thirty minutes later he was approaching the disguised entrance to the training complex – an actual equipment barn with a concealed inner door – when from behind a rusty pick-up truck sprung a voice.

        “You don’t look like much of a farmer.”

Simon barked out a startled cry.

        “And I’d say that settles it; you aren’t following me.”

        A thin young woman, stepped out from behind the truck.  It was the woman who had got off the bus.  She stood in the damp grass shivering.  For the first time Simon noticed that she had no shoes.  She stood in her stocking feet.

        “You’re one of them, aren’t you?  I think you call yourselves ‘Lazarus’?”

        Swallowing deeply, Simon couldn’t begin to figure out how to respond.

        “I don’t know who is in charge of hiding your tracks on the internet, but it seems you could use some help.  Perhaps we could make an exchange.  There is a vampire after me.”

Chapter 16