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Number Five Copyright 2012 by Sa’Quon DeEse Publishing

This is a work of fiction. All Characters and events, even those based on real people and real events are entirely fictional. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coinci-dental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be repro-duced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, record-ing, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the copyright holder, except brief quotations used for review.

Sa’Quon DeEse is a registered trademark of Sa’Quon DeEse Publishing, LLC

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2 Hero Jenkins

Part OneThe best lies have at the least a kernel of truth and even the most unbelievable myths and legends are based in exaggerated facts.

I thought zombies were just myths… until I met one.

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Chapter One

A woman laughed out loud the way the intoxicated did after a night of too much of a good time. A car’s horn blared, brakes squealed, a man shouted.

“Slow down you idiot!” The man screamed at the car that had come within a whisper of running him down.

“Yeah Idiot!” The woman screamed with thick slurred speech. “This is a parking lot, this ain’t NASCAR!”

The car sped away burning rubber as it went and a middle finger was extended out the window.

The woman resumed her high-pitched laughter as she weaved a zigzagged path across the nearly pitch black motel parking lot. She was being propped up by the man, who was as intoxicated as she, if not more so.

The moon had refused to show itself, but the black clouds still lingered, even though they had lost interest in this the armpit part of town. It was a part of town where the smell of urine was ines-capable because it was acceptable to urinate whenever and wher-ever the urge hit you. Garbage went uncollected and spilled out of

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overstuffed cans. Animals who were unlucky at crossing the busy highway lay flattened until they disintegrated from being run over again and again... and again.

He was almost invisible as he crouched in the shadows watch-ing the drunks stagger by. It was cold in that parking lot. He cinched his jacket and tried to think warm thoughts.

Most of the lights in this dirty motel parking lot were either burnt out or broken. Yet the limited lighting was good enough, good enough for him to recognize her car.

With the drunks out of earshot the distant urban noises re-surrounded him as the night re-possessed him. He willed himself to remain motionless, feeling his environment; until he was com-fortable that he was alone.

He approached the car quietly and put his hand on the hood. It was warm; obviously she had only been here for a couple of hours. He returned to his dark place to think.

Kelvin Brandiss looked up out of the darkness at the ugly two story “Cozy Time Motel” building. He was here to find a woman, her real name was Kade Simmons, though she had checked in under an alias, and he had no idea which room she was in. He had tried to get the room number from the night clerk but all he got was attitude from the crotchety old woman hiding behind an inch of bulletproof glass. Obviously the glass made her feel protected from her custom-ers; as a result she felt secure enough to be rude even though she was visibly afraid. But then, what level of service could he realisti-cally expect from an establishment that rented rooms by the hour.

Yeah, it was that kind of motel… what the hell was Kade thinking checking into a place like this?

Kade was not helpless, nor was she a small woman; she was over 5’8” and extremely fit. She was not a shy woman, far from it and she was always armed with a 9mm Glock and a bad attitude. Brandiss couldn’t decide which one was deadliest. She could handle herself he had no doubt…

So why was she on the run, hiding out... why was she here?It had occurred to Brandiss to simply watch her car and wait

Kade out, but she could be holed up in her room for days. He had no intention of dodging drunks in the parking lot for that long. Besides,

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that small still voice was telling him that she was in trouble… he could almost feel it.

He looked at the building again. The lights were off in all, the TV on in some. He noticed that at least three prostitutes were sharing one of the bottom floor rooms. The ones not lucky enough to have a “John” had to wait outside until business was concluded. He had witnessed a “John” leave an hour ago… they were all inside the room now.

Business must be slow.He refocused on Kade. Knowing her, she would have parked

her car on the opposite side of the motel where her room was. That meant that he was in the wrong place.

He worked his way in the shadows to the opposite side of the motel. There were ten rooms facing the parking lot on this side, five on the first floor, five on the second.

Brandiss pulled out his cell phone and called the “Cozy Time Motel” office. The phone was picked up on the third ring. Brandiss asked the cranky female desk clerk to call the room and then he listened for the telephone to ring. He prowled the walkway in front of the rooms, listening… there was no ringing telephone to be over-heard from the walkway, there was no answer. Brandiss moved up to the second floor and repeated the process. This time he thought he heard a faint ringing coming from the last room, next to the stairs. He started moving towards the ringing when it stopped and the robotic voice mail prompt clicked in, he hung up.

Brandiss called for a third time.“If she ain’t in, she ain’t in honey. It don’t matter how many

times I call!” The testy clerk explained as if speaking to a lovesick teenager.

Brandiss choked off a growl instead he cajoled finishing up just short of ‘pretty please’.

”This will be the last time, I promise,” he said.When the ringing started on his cell phone and then seconds

later in room #205, he was sure he was in the right place. He hung up and crept closer and he listened. The television was on in the room and he could hear movement… Obviously she was awake. He backed up to the shadows of the stairway momentarily to think.

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She was not answering the phone, she must be terrified, he thought.

He began to worry that the ringing telephone had made things worse. Brandiss returned to the door and reached for the knob and then thought better of it. Instead he knocked softly on the door and called to her.

“Kade… its Brandiss, I want to talk to you… your father sent me to find you. He wanted to make sure you were OK.”

He saw the light change in that space between the door and the floor, the peephole darkened. Someone, he assumed that it was Kade, was looking out.

“Hey!” A voice boomed from behind him. “Whatcha doin sneakin around out here boy!”

Brandiss initially froze and then he slowly turned to face the voice. It was coming from the drunk Brandiss had spotted earlier. He had apparently come out of the room next door. He was shirtless, wearing only boxers and dirty white socks. His dirty stringy brown hair partially obscured his pockmarked face. He held a can of beer that sloshed over the sides but he didn’t even notice because he was busy using that beer hand to point an accusing finger at Brandiss.

“I’m talkin to you boy, that ain’t your room… you git yer ass away from there or I’m gonna call the cops!”

Brandiss pulled his badge and held it up for the drunk to see. Then he signaled the drunk to be quiet by putting his fingers to his lips… It didn’t work!

“PO-lice,” the drunk screamed. “What the F… Angie! We got the Police out here.”

The other person in the room, the female half of the drunks, whom he had to assume was Angie, slid off the bed and jumped to her feet. She was wearing only a bra and panties and began run-ning around the room frantically. She eventually grabbed a baggie with white powder inside, probably methamphetamine. Next she raced into the bathroom and seconds later he heard the toilet flush.

The creak of the door, Kade’s door, alerted him. He started to turn his head… he didn’t get a chance. Someone, rather something, bolted from the room and bowled into Brandiss, almost knocking him over the balcony rail. The fleeing form disappeared around the

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corner and down the stairs by the time Brandiss regained his balance.Then Brandiss caught a glimpse of what remained in the

motel room and he thought his heart would stop

***

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Chapter Two

Brandiss’ muscular six-foot frame filled the doorway, his eyes rapidly scanned the room… it was a mess.

Clothing was everywhere as if flung about by a tornado. The TV was face down on the floor and shattered. The mirror had been smashed… furniture overturned. There were at least fifty fist-sized holes punched into the walls. Even the normally unmovable paint-ings had been ripped down and hurled across the room.

Only one of the bedside lamps was intact and it had been torn from the wall and was now dangling by its cord just above the night stand. The light was partially covered by a woman’s blouse. It swung back and forth slowly as it lit the room with an eerie soft red glow. Its movement shifting the shadows, giving the illusion of motion where there was none.

At first the light was not enough for Brandiss to make out everything in that tiny motel room. But as his eyes began to adjust, he began to pick out more and more detail and what he saw sick-ened him. There had been a desperate battle here… and the rage that had caused all of this damage had to have been loud… yet no

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one had called the police.Yeah, he thought as despair began to rise in him. It was that

kind of motel… why in the hell would Kade check into a place like this?Then he noticed something else; there was a foul stench in

the air. A faint odor of decay, as if death itself had visited that room and though gone its stench still lingered. That was when he saw it…

There was a body on the bed and it was covered in blood.His heart sank.It was Kade.Brandiss stepped forward… tentatively, just as his hand moved

smoothly for the gun in his holster. His eyes continually swept the room. There was still a danger here. He was not expecting this so he had come alone and though someone had fled, there could be someone else in the room.

God, he hoped so.His hand found the grip of his pistol and he felt his gun come

out of its holster... all things considered, it was a comfortable feeling. He became aware that his back was exposed as long as he stood in that doorway. He stepped into the room and to his right, keeping to the shadows while he listened to the room.

He heard a moan… then he saw the body move… she was still alive.

Kade lay on her side facing him, her eyes were wide with terror. Her feet and hands were bound and her mouth had been gagged. Her face was covered with blood. There were at least two, deep, slashes that ran the length of her left cheek. Her flesh hung down exposing the bone. There were several other less severe cuts visible on her legs and arms.

A strong urge to pursue the bastard who had bolted from the room seized him… he fought back that reflex. Whoever that was he was long gone, besides… Brandiss couldn’t bear to leave Kade alone… not like this.

He took another step, this time forward, away from the wall and into the light. Her eyes focused on his face, they showed rec-ognition and she started to cry. Though the sounds were muffled by the gag in her mouth he could see her entire body as it began convulsing with each sob.

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Brandiss heard a noise like a bang or a bump that could have come from the bathroom. He looked in that direction, the door was closed. Instinctively Brandiss moved across the small motel room, his attention and his gun focused on that bathroom door. It was quiet now perhaps it was only his imagination, but he had to be sure.

He stepped to one side and glanced over at Kade. She was straining against her bindings, desperate to see what was going on behind her. He reached for the knob and slowly twisted it. There was no easy way to do this so he just shoved the door open and brought his weapon up and prepared to shoot.

There was no one in there. The sounds he had heard must have come from the drunks next door.

Brandiss returned to where Kade lay with a small towel from the bathroom. He untied her feet and then her hands. She tried to reach for him but he stopped her.

“Lay still,” he said gently as he carefully folded the hang-ing flesh from her face back into place and pressed the towel to the wound to stop the bleeding.

“Hold this here,” he said.He sat down on the bed. She seemed to relax as he gathered

her up into his arms. She buried her head into his chest and wrapped her free arm around his waist as she held on tight. Brandiss pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911. Then he kissed her on the top of her head as tears were streaming down his cheeks into her beauti-ful black hair.

***

Kade Simmons was involved in something dangerous and she was refusing to let him help. Apparently deciding that what-ever the problem was, she needed to handle it alone. This “problem” was going to get her killed; yet she refused to back off, she refused to be careful.

She had disappeared and had begun using an alias that he wasn’t supposed to know about. But Brandiss had figured it out and now he had tracked her alias to his motel by following a trail of credit card receipts and ATM withdrawals. Although he had uti-

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lized official Task Force resources to find her, what had him lurking about this seedy motel was far from official business. He was still in love with her and he had to be sure that she was safe.

Holding her Brandiss realized that it had been months since he had Kade in his arms. They had met and fallen in love in the hospital where Brandiss was being treated for a work related bro-ken leg and ruptured spleen. Kade was recovering from undisclosed injuries resulting from a case that was still classified, which meant that she was not in a position to talk about either.

That should have been a clue.Brandiss had no doubts that she worked for the government

because only government law enforcement were ever admitted into the wing of the hospital they found themselves in. He suspected that she was a CIA spook or something by the way she carried herself and avoided even the most innocent inquiries as to what she did for Uncle Sam. As it turned out, it didn’t matter what she did. They were just two lonely people and at the time the anonymity was not a stumbling block for the affair.

Suddenly it was over and everything changed. She stopped taking his calls. Refusing to even talk to him, sending her father to deliver the message of dismissal. Brandiss wondered at first why she even bothered but her father quickly answered that question.

“Your ability to hunt people down is legendary in the Law Enforcement community, Officer Brandiss,” her father had said nervously. “She wants your assurances that you will not try to track her down.”

Months had passed, Brandiss kept his word and he had not tried to find her. He assumed that she had moved on even though he had not been able to, Lord knows he had tried.

It surprised him, though it shouldn’t have, that the first con-tact had been made by her father. He needed Brandiss’ help… his daughter had disappeared. When he lost contact with Kade, he had first turned to the police. When they were ineffective, he turned to Brandiss.

Brandiss didn’t trust her father. But then he knew little about him… perhaps that was part of the problem. He was a scientist Brandiss had guessed, involved in some sort of research that nei-

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ther would talk about. But he kept secrets even more so than Kade.His name was Randy or Randall or something like that, which

should have been a clue. Every Randy Brandiss had ever known had been sneaky and a compulsive liar. There was no mother in the pic-ture; at least Kade never spoke of her.

But now, all of a sudden, Randy needed Brandiss’ help… funny how things work out sometimes. He had begged Brandiss to find her but Brandiss was reluctant. Brandiss had loved Kade and the pain of the separation was still there.

At first Brandiss had refused to get involved. However, there was something, perhaps it was the desperation in Randy’s voice that had convinced him to try.

Then there was that other thing, call it instincts if you want. Whatever it was, he knew he had to find her quickly. His instincts were telling him that Kade was in far greater danger than either of them realized.

But now he had found her and for now she was safe. Perhaps now she would let him in, let him help her.

***

“Whoo-ee, looks like some party,” the drunk from next door hooted as he deposited himself in the doorway.

Brandiss glared up at him and if angry looks were lasers, the drunk would have caught fire and exploded. The drunk got the message and disappeared.

The first sign that something was wrong was the pinprick of the needle at the base of his skull. Then his vision started to blur and he felt his grip on reality began slip. The last thing he saw was his darling Kade standing over him holding the syringe and he knew that she had shot him full of tranquilizers or something… but why… it made no sense?

***

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Chapter Three

The police were quick to arrive, next came the para-medics. Brandiss was just regaining consciousness and was still a little groggy so he would be the first to admit that he wasn’t at the top of his game. Nevertheless he told the officers what he hoped was a plausible story as the EMT’s got busy checking his pulse and other vitals. What he didn’t tell them that the love of his life was a crazy CIA spook. They probably wouldn’t believe it so he didn’t tell them that, after he had rescued her, she had stabbed him in the neck with a syringe that had knocked him out. Instead he lied and said he must have blacked out or something.

“Hell,” Brandiss exclaimed, “as far as I know, I could have had a stroke!”

The EMT rolled his eyes at that one.“When I came to, she was gone,” he added.That part, at least, was the truth.Brandiss pointed out that he was the one who had called 911.

Still the assembled officers eyed Brandiss with more than a small amount of suspicion. There was a lot of blood there. The ropes that

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had been used to bind the victim were on the floor at their feet. Standing right in front of them was a disgraced cop telling one of the lamest stories they had ever heard. It didn’t look good. Brandiss knew the cops weren’t buying his story and to be honest, if the roles were reversed he wouldn’t either.

It was not until the drunk from the room next door came over and corroborated Brandiss’ story that the cops crossed him off the suspect list. Still they knew that Brandiss was holding back. They had decided that it was some sort of love triangle gone horri-bly wrong and if Brandiss didn’t care enough to tell them the whole truth that was fine with them. They didn’t even bother to process the crime scene to collect physical evidence.

Brandiss didn’t agree with that decision but he didn’t argue. He knew that his frustration level over what Kade had done was building inside of him and he didn’t trust himself to speak.

Kelvin Brandiss was basically a nice guy, a likable guy and sometimes he was even funny. But he had poor impulse control. His bouts with stupidity would come and go in a flash but it was that time between that got him into trouble.

Most people wrote it off as just a quirk, but it had cost him and his career dearly. In fact, at that moment, he was on suspension pending disciplinary action. There was a board of inquiry looming and he was sure that this time his outburst would cost him his job. The writing was on the wall and even his closest allies had stopped talking to him.

As soon as the police were gone the first thing Brandiss did was to call in a favor from Barbara Connense the team leader of the County Sheriff’s forensics team. He asked her to bring in her team and process the crime scene, unofficially, as a favor to him. When the team arrived he told them what little he knew and left.

When Brandiss stepped out of Kade’s room he spotted the female half of the drunks, Angie, dressed only in the male drunk’s shirt, walking towards the stairwell carrying an ice bucket. The male half was standing in the door of their room. He was shirtless, but at least he had put some pants on. He just stood there and watched Brandiss with a huge disgusting grin plastered on one side of his face.

“Tough break, huh buddy?” The drunk asked rhetorically.

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“Hey… wait a minute,” he said slapping the door jam. “Ain’t you that guy on the Internet? I saw you on YouTube… You’re that cop that screwed up and got himself in trouble ain’t ya?”

Brandiss paused and turned to face the drunk. They stood there eye-to-eye for a couple of heartbeats. Then without warning Brandiss punched the grinning drunk in the face. The drunk stag-gered backwards and fell onto the bed.

He was out cold.“Yeah. Tough break,” Brandiss growled. He actually felt a

little better… not much, but better nonetheless. Until, that is, he realized that he had done it again.

***

Jeff Riles quietly eased open the back door of his apartment building. He hugged the walls as he crept up the back stairs to his third floor apartment. He found the key that he kept hidden inside the fire extinguisher case and let himself in. Once inside he relaxed for the first time in months because it had been months since he had been home. For the life of him he couldn’t remember why.

It had taken him a long time to get home because it had taken him a long time to remember where he lived. Why was he having so much trouble remembering things he should have no trouble remem-bering? Something was happening to him and he needed answers. He would have gotten his answers from that woman if he had not been interrupted by… who the hell was that anyway… a boyfriend?

That woman, whoever she was, had rescued him from the men at that awful place but he didn’t trust her. She had taken him to that motel room, started giving him injections… just like those men had done. She must have been working with them. But he had overpowered her and tied her up. He was going to force her to tell him the truth… but some guy had come looking for the woman and he had almost been caught.

Now that he had made it to his apartment he had no idea what his next move should be. He was having trouble thinking.

He was aware that he was changing into… something else… something non-human! Those men had done something to him.

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Even now he could feel himself slipping away into… what? He had no idea. Somehow he knew that that woman and her wimpy father held the answers but he didn’t know how.

A sound got his attention… unusual noises at the doors and windows… then there was nothing. Either he was loosing his mind, or that medication they had given him was making him paranoid.

He went to the kitchen and poured himself a shot of whiskey. He needed some liquid courage to calm his nerves. He knocked it back and poured himself another.

Suddenly there was an explosion; his door was blown open and then men with guns burst in. They were everywhere. He knew these men; they were the ones from that awful place. They were the ones who had turned him into a monster.

Now came the sharp pains, like he had been stabbed with a hundred knives and then a moment later he felt… nothing.

He was on the floor now, but couldn’t move. He looked up at the men as they hovered around him. He could smell their fear. What was that about? They were the ones with the guns… why were they afraid of him?

***

Brandiss wasn’t sure if Kade would be at this hospital, his rational side told him it was a long shot, but his instincts were relent-less and he decided to trust them and check it out. Kade desperately needed medical treatment and there was a hospital nearby that was known for having one of the best trauma centers in Los Angeles. More importantly they had one of the best plastic surgeons in the area on call. She would be comfortable going to this hospital think-ing that the shot she had given him would keep him unconscious.

He moved tentatively along the hospital corridors, but no one paid him any attention. People at hospitals had enough problems of their own to be bothered with the problems of others he reasoned.

He had no idea where he was going, each hallway he entered looked identical to the one he had just left. He was on autopilot, try-ing to find the emergency room and he wasn’t having much luck. He was being driven to find Kade. He had been dragged back into

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her life and he needed to know why.Brandiss got lucky when he spotted the “Emergency Room”

sign out of the corner of his eye and then minutes later he was hid-ing in the dark inside an emergency room stall. The curtains were drawn and the homeless man, who smelled of alcohol and week old feces, was asleep. He was an older man with foul smelling breath and tobacco stained brown teeth. He had been so obnoxious that no one dared risk waking him up. It would take a lot to get a doctor or nurse into this stall so Brandiss knew he had time.

***

Brandiss flattened himself against the cold tile wall in the back of the stall and peeked into the next stall through the curtain. He saw Kade in bed with a blanket pulled up to her chest and three separate IV’s in her arm. They had already stitched her face and applied a large bandage. There was also a bandage wrapped from the top of he head, down and around her chin that would prevent her from opening her mouth. He imagined that the bandage was to protect the stitches in her cheek.

It struck him how pretty she was. Not model, cover girl high maintenance pretty… but a rugged, kind of functional pretty. Bran-diss had cinnamon shade of brown skin that was not nearly as dark as Kade. Her dark skin had always been blemish free so it required no make-up and even with the scars he doubted that she would start.

Brandiss was debating the wisdom of slipping into her stall and confronting her but before he could decide he saw Mr. Simmons arrive. Mr. Simmons was carrying a duffle bag that he assumed was clothing and other personal items for Kade.

“How is she?” He heard Mr. Simmons ask a nurse.Randy Simmons was a scrawny, wrinkled-up prune of a

man. He wore thick glasses and spoke with a thick East African accent. There was something wrong with his back and at the right angle Brandiss could detect a slight hump. He had a creepy sort of way about him that reminded Brandiss of the mad scientists in the scary movies.

“She’s fine Mr. Simmons,” the nurse replied. “We got lucky,

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there is no damage to the muscles and nerves which are essential for talking and facial animation. You are welcome to see her if you want… she’s been sedated though.”

It was strange how the same urgency that compelled Brandiss to come to her bedside was now driving him to leave. But seeing Mr. Simmons standing vigil there reminded Brandiss of his painful rejection. He felt his temper rising and he knew that it was better for all involved if he left the hospital as soon as possible.

He was prepared leave but before he could the emergency room doctor entered being quietly trailed by two police officers. They were the same ones he had seen at the motel. They must have had the same idea of where to find the other person that had been in that room. The person who had lost so much blood. It had taken them a while… but they had figured it out and now they were here and he was trapped.

***

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Chapter Four

From his vantage point on the eighty-fifth floor, they all looked like germs to him. He had watched some of the deadliest viruses known to man through microscopes He watched them as they did their work… devouring and contaminating all that they came into contact with. That’s how the rest of humanity looked to him from his window high above.

For decades he and people like him, the elite, have separated themselves from the rest of them. Marrying only with a few select families. Breeding only with the richest and most powerful… thus limiting the gene pool to only the pure.

By the time he was born their forefather’s limited knowl-edge of the human genome had already doomed them all to a life apart from the rest of humanity. He couldn’t bring himself to call the results a handicap, but there were consequences to limiting the gene pool to the few thousand families of the elite. The most obvi-ous were the physical abnormalities that were just now starting to show. Most prominent of those were the children that were being born with only four toes.

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Still the biggest abnormality was one that was not obvious. Not obvious to the naked eye at least. It was a weakened immune system that has left them more susceptible to common diseases and infec-tions. Infections that are carried in abundance by the masses below.

He would never admit it, but one of the main reasons that his company even formed its genetic research division was to try to find a way to reintegrate his and the families like his back into the world. But the genes of the masses were like poison, ravenous in their assault on the tissue samples taken from his family. Every attempt had failed; every test subject had died a horrible painful death.

Nathan Sloane was the CEO and the genius behind the rise of Sloane Industries. Yet he was born into a world with almost no ability to fight off the most common virus. A world where a cold could kill and a scratch could cost a limb.

Forty of the eighty-five floors below him are dedicated to providing for him and his family. They lived in a bubble, having contact only with others who were also forced to live in bubbles… less than half a percent of the world’s population. Together they controlled 80% of the world’s wealth, but their world was limited to their towers and what other towers that were within range of the helicopters on their roofs.

Nathan Sloane had never tasted alcohol, he ate meat once in his youth, but his digestive system could not tolerate it. For almost all of his life he has been on the strictest vegan diet. No sugar, no salt, no coffee or soft drinks. His food was grown hydroponically right there in the building. It had to be radiated and washed mul-tiple times before it could reach his table. He survived on a diet of fruit, vegetables, nuts and grains.

His drinking water, even the water for his shower was highly filtered and processed to a perfect PH balance on one of the floors below. The air they breathed was also highly processed with redun-dant filters. The interior climate was maintained at 68 degrees regardless of the weather outside.

Access to the upper floors by the uninvited was strictly forbid-den. A prohibition enforced by a platoon of highly trained security personnel supported by state of the art electronics.

He looked out the window at the masses below knowing that

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he could never walk amongst them. He made decisions daily that would set the course of their lives and none of them even knew he existed. He knew little of how they lived, as a result he had less empa-thy than one would have for ants in an ant farm. He and those like him lived lives separated from the rest, hermetically sealed from any physical contact with the world forever. Which explained why some-one like him could conceive of something like his creature because in his mind, any conceivable repercussions could never affect him.

Nathan Sloane checked his watch. Though the hour was late, it was almost time for the meeting to start. He had called an emer-gency executive board meeting. The jackals, his executive board, were downstairs at this moment going through decontamination procedures. They would hold their meeting with all but one, him, dressed in bulky bio-quarantine suits.

It had been a rough month for his company. The security at one of his facilities had been breached and one of his most promis-ing subjects had been stolen. The first four had been dismal failures, but subject number five had been a triumph of genetic manipulation. He was the pride of the program until someone had just waltzed in and taken Number Five away from him. But tonight things were looking up. His team in Los Angeles had retrieved his monster and Number Five was already on a plane to the East coast.

He had dispatched two of his most trusted operatives to destroy the facility that had built his monster. By destroying the facility and everyone in it, there would be no evidence of his crimes. So he had called this meeting to make sure that he and his board of directors were on the same page, but additionally to make sure that a security breach such as this would never happen again.

***

The police officers and the emergency room doctor hovered just outside of Kade’s stall and talked. Randy Simmons stood by her bed. Brandiss watched him as he pretended to be oblivious to the presence of the men, though it was obvious that he hung on their every word.

“As you can see,” the doctor explained, “she is in no condi-

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tion to make a statement.” The officers peeked in and reluctantly nodded.The doctor and the officers talked for a few minutes and

then the officers left the emergency room vowing to return when she was lucid.

As soon as the doctor and the officers were gone, Brandiss saw Kade’s eyes pop open. She had been awake the whole time.

“I was able to get Jeff out of their facility,” Kade said in a hushed voice. “I tried to reason with him and I know I was close to a breakthrough but for every step forward we took three steps back… he was too far gone in the procedure… he turned on me.”

Kade was talking through clenched teeth. The bandage wrapped around her head was a factor, still she was being careful not to move her mouth too much and risk tearing open her stitches in her cheek. Mr. Simmons glanced around cautiously to confirm that she had not been overheard before he answered. He had a stut-tered clipped way of speaking that Brandiss always found annoying.

“I know… at least, I-I figured as much,” Mr. Simmons said. “If only, if only I had been there…”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference, he was so strong!”“When you missed your check-in, I feared the worst.”“I’m sorry… he would freak out every time I tried to use the

phone. We had to keep moving, we had to stay ahead of the men who were tracking us so we kept changing motels. We had just landed in a new place and I had left him for only a minute to go get us some food. I tried to call you, but there was no answer. I had just made it back to the motel… something had changed; I thought things were going fine. But… in the end he was too far gone… he lost it daddy. He knocked me out and when I woke up he was cut-ting on me… he cut my face.” Her voice started to crack. “I think he was planning to eat me.”

It was quiet in the stall while Kade composed herself. After a few moments Mr. Simmons spoke again.

“I’m sorry about Brandiss,” he said, “but it had been days since I had heard from you. I didn’t know where else to turn.”

“Don’t worry about it dad… you did good, still it was hard seeing him again.”

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“How did you get away from him?”“I always kept a hypo available to use on Jeff but I never got

the chance. I used it on Brandiss when he was distracted. He should be out for hours.”

They continued talking but Brandiss had stopped caring. He didn’t understand what their conversation meant, but he had arrived at an understanding that he had been used again and it broke his heart… again.

I have to get out of here. There was a woman in the stall on the opposite side and

when they wheeled away to x-ray, he saw an opportunity. Brandiss kicked the gurney startling old brown teeth awake. The old man started cursing, then he tried to get out of bed and fell flat on his face. Brandiss slipped into the vacated stall next door. While the doctors were distracted with brown teeth, Brandiss took the oppor-tunity to slip away.

***

24 Hero Jenkins

Chapter Five

Jeff hurt, the pain was indescribable. His conscious moments had become muddled and hazy… punctuated only by pain and agony. How much time had passed? Hours he guessed. The fact that he wasn’t sure concerned him a little, he used to be pretty good at keeping track of time. So much so he rarely wore a watch. But what really had him scared was the fact that he was feeling less and less human with each passing moment. It was as though he was de-evolving. His cognitive functions seemed to be diminishing, while his senses, like his sense of smell and hearing, seemed to be sharpening.

He was starting to recognize some of the sounds and smells... he knew where he was now... he was in New York. The men who had broken into his apartment had taken him from Los Angeles and flown him to New York… but why?

His head was clear for now. There was a small amount of light filtering in. He could tell that he was strapped to a metal chair and that the metal chair was bolted to the floor of a metal cage.

Jeff had been straining against the bindings that held him.

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He had been at it for hours and he was having some success. The bindings were loosening.

Suddenly, he could hear something else. Over all of the other sounds that were attacking his ears, he could now hear something new. Someone was coming. There was the faint sound of footsteps and they were coming closer. Then amazingly he could hear a ter-rified heart beat just on the other side of his cage’s door.

Jeff worked his left hand free. It was just in time too... because whoever his visitor was, they were now fiddling with the lock. Jeff closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. He would wait until his prey got closer and then he would strike.

***

The Gulfstream G650 was parked in the center of a gigantic private hanger. It was large enough for three planes but today there was only the one. A tremendous amount of extra light had been brought in and there wasn’t a shadow large enough to hide a mouse.

But that wasn’t the strange part. The plane was ringed by a six foot wide, four foot deep struc-

ture of some kind. Sawdust and wood fragments littered the floor. When he got closer he saw that the structure consisted of two par-allel walls that had been recently built from plywood with 2X4’s for support. Plastic tarps had been placed in the center of the walls. The tarps were laid end to end, sealed water tight and then the whole thing was filled with water.

It was like a moat around a castle. Herman made eye contact with the guards… they looked

away. They were nervous and they were not even trying to hide it. Herman also noticed that they all had the moat between them and the plane.

A couple of the guards muscled a small poorly built wooden bridge into position so that Herman could get to the other side of the moat. The “bridge”, once he got a closer look at it, was constructed from two wooden step ladders each about six feet tall. Three, six foot long 2x4’s had been nailed between the step ladders to form the bridge over the water, but why was it necessary? It made no sense.

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The moment the bridge was in place, the heavily armed guards to a man raised their weapons and aimed them at the jet’s door.

Herman was getting nervous. Like a condemned man walk-ing the plank of a pirate’s ship, Herman slowly inched his way across the bridge above the “moat”. The guards immediately removed the bridge the moment Herman was on the other side and then they just stood there and watched him approach the plane. Each one of them had a “better you than me” look plastered on his face.

Herman had seen a lot of creepy-questionable things since he came to work for Sloane Industries, but this… a moat around an private jet was just bizarre. And what worried him the most was that no one else assembled in that hangar seemed to think so.

The jet’s door was open so Herman jogged on up the steps and poked his head through the door. The gulfstream had been gutted, it was basically a shell. The cage was in a specially designed cargo area in the rear of the jet.

Herman had to hurry because he had been told that the jet would be there just long enough to be refueled and for the new pilots to arrive. Rumor had it that the cage and its contents were next des-tined for Brazil. But Herman didn’t care his task was a simple one and it wouldn’t take long.

The doctors based here in New York needed a tissue sample and he was low man on the totem pole so he was assigned the task. He had been assured that there was no danger, that the monster was secure. Either they were wrong or they had lied to him, in the end it didn’t really matter which.

Herman opened the door to the large metal cage but he was unprepared for the stench. He froze for just an instant to steady himself and was caught completely by surprise by the swipe of a large hand with razor sharp claws. A monstrous hand that was supposed to be securely strapped down. Herman had absolutely no time to react. He felt the monster’s claw ripping through his flesh, tearing at him as though his heart was literally being ripped right out of his chest.

Herman managed to back away from the cage. He was in shock by the time he turned and stumbled towards the door. As soon as he reached it, his survival instincts kicked in. He had seen first

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hand what his company was willing to do to those careless enough to get contaminated with whatever. He cinched his lab coat closed to conceal the wound. He forced himself to ignore the pain that seemed to be slowly spreading throughout his body.

When he stepped from the plane the guards immediately moved the bridge into place. Herman got lucky, none of the guards would even look at him. They made no effort to stop him, after all they were told only to keep the unauthorized out.

He stumbled from the hangar and considered what he should do next. He couldn’t go back to the office and a hospital would ask too many questions. Soon Herman had a singular focus, he was hurt and he wanted to go home. The last thing he remembered was boarding the subway train.

***

The two men rode in silence down unfamiliar streets. They were on a mission in a van that had been stolen for just the occa-sion. The first thing they noticed as they approached the four-story toy factory was the giant water tower in center of the roof. Beyond the tower, there was nothing else distinctive about the building. The people who lived in this neighborhood walked past it everyday hav-ing no idea what was really going on inside.

The van had been painted to resemble one of the toy factory’s delivery vans. The bored security guards at the front gate simply waved them through after only a cursory glance at their paperwork.

Once past the gate, the men didn’t go to the loading dock, but detoured to the employee underground parking lot. There was only one shift at this facility, the night shift. As a result the lot was nearing capacity.

The men in the van were in luck; they found a parking spot just where they needed to be… near the center of the building. The driver and his passenger climbed out of the van and stretched, it had been a long trip. Then they opened the back of the van and got busy setting everything up.

The two men moved with the ease of skilled operatives who had done this kind of thing before… because they had. They took

28 Hero Jenkins

little notice of the dedicated employees arriving to work at this corporate “black site”. Employees who, like sheep, moved casually towards the elevators... chatting about nothing in particular, carry-ing lunches and backpacks, whatever else they needed to get them through a full shift of work.

They had no idea they were all about to die. They were all going to die because they had committed the

unforgivable sin; they had allowed their security to be breached and the company’s secrets had been exposed. They had now become a liability so the employees and this entire facility needed to be erased. As it turned out, that was the specialty of the two men from the van.

The explosives they were using was an advanced version of “tritonal”, which was a mixture of aluminum powder and TNT. It had the same lethal blast radius (150 yards) of the military’s MOAB (Massive Ordinance Air Blast bomb). The MOAB bomb could dev-astate an entire city block. But where the MOAB weighed nine and a half tons and was the length of a bus, their device fit neatly into the back of their stolen van.

After they armed the bomb, they got to the minimum safe distance before setting it off. The bomb was a specially designed, two stage marvel of destructive power. The first stage of the device would launch a bunker busting projectile up through the floor and would reach as high as the third floor before exploding. The result-ing fire would incenerate everything inside.

Then they would set off the secondary device, the MOAB to collapse what was left of the building.

***

The blast was enormous and within minutes the four story toy factory was reduced to fire and rubble. The blast tore through nearby buildings including the one that was being used as a sur-veillance post by the agency. Only one of the agents, the one lucky enough to be sleeping in the back at the time of the blast survived.

***

29Number Five

Three Days later

30 Hero Jenkins

Chapter Six

It was a beautiful warm summer day that greeted Bran-diss when he stepped out of the Police Administrative Building for the last time. His lawyer, Bryan, all four foot nine of nothing but blood, bone and tenacious lawyer nastiness exited the building and stood beside him.

“I thought there were rules for days as depressing as this,” Brandiss said. “Shouldn’t it be raining or at least overcast or some-thing?”

Bryan chuckled. The press was gone and the world had moved on. Brandiss

stood on the steps and watched the world go by while he decided what he should do next. Getting plastered was the leading option; in fact it was the only option that seemed viable at the moment.

“Well, look on the bright side bro… we kept you out of jail,” Bryan said.

Brandiss laughed.“Yeah and there’s that,” Brandiss said with a chuckle. Brandiss had been divorced a couple of years ago and his ex-

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wife had the house, so at least that had been safe. But he had had to sell his car and condo to settle the civil suit with his “victim”. On the bright side he did have a room at a near-by motel and oh yeah, at least he was not going to jail.

“It’s the times bro,” Bryan said without looking at him. “Every-body and their momma has got a cell phone camera. You have got to be real careful these days.”

Bryan was an ex-cop who himself had been fired years ago for an offence that was far worse. He had taken Brandiss’ case for next to nothing and grown to like Brandiss or at least appreciate why he had done what he did. Brandiss’ temper had gotten the best of him, it happens. But his offence had been caught on tape and after that no one cared.

“Can I give you a lift somewhere?” Bryan asked. “No, but thanks… I think I want to walk a bit,” Brandiss said

and then he shook his lawyers hand walked away.It was still early, way to early for a drink, but Brandiss didn’t

care. His plan was to find a bar and be drunk by mid afternoon. The only thing left to decide was which bar. Brandiss wasn’t an alco-holic, in fact he rarely drank, but when he did, he typically drank too much. The good news was it wouldn’t take long for him to get blissfully falling down drunk, or was that the bad news.

He settled on a dive bar in the worst part of the bad part of town called Mulligan’s. It was a favorite of all the disreputables in the area. Misery loves company and it was the only place that he could think of where people would be more depressed than he was.

The walls inside of Mulligan’s were an interesting combination of sheetrock and exposed wooden studs. The floors were threadbare carpet in most places except where it had been ripped up. Mulligan’s had been going through a renovation of sorts until the owner Vijay’s wife figured out that in America, unlike India, she didn’t have to put up with Vijay’s crap. After one beating too many she got a lawyer and then cleaned him out in the divorce. Vijay now slept on a cot in the storage room. He kept the bar open and made just enough to pay the bills, pay alimony and eat. So whatever renovations he had in mind had been put on hold.

Vijay would open the doors as soon as he awoke each day so

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that he could take in the occasional lost soul who needed a place to sit and sulk. Vijay was behind the bar just staring out the win-dow when Brandiss walked in. He nodded to Brandiss, but that was pretty much the extent of their interaction, he wasn’t much for conversation. He had enough problems of his own to spend his day listening to someone else’s.

Brandiss positioned himself in the corner on a barstool and settled in for a long afternoon of drinking and drowning his sorrows. Unfortunately he hadn’t eaten anything all day and as noted before he was pretty much a lightweight when it came to alcohol. After only three drinks he was so intoxicated that he fell off the barstool.

As he lay on the floor drooling he looked up and saw the last thing he expected or wanted to see. There was Kade standing over him looking down at him with that pitying, condescending look of hers.

Kade picked up his empty glass and made a show of sniffing it.“Cosmopolitan? Really? That’s Carrie Bradshaw’s drink!”“Carrie who? What? W-What are you talking about?”“Carrie Bradshaw, Sarah Jessica Parker’s character on SEX

AND THE CITY… Cosmopolitan’s are her drink.” “W-What… Whatever?” Kade sighed.“Where’s your syringe you psycho,” Brandiss growled.“You’re not good at this getting drunk thing are you?”“I’m drunk... I think I did pretty good!”“You’ve only been here for an hour.”“Whatever,” he said again with a disgusted shake of his head. He thought about sitting up but changed his mind when

the room resumed spinning. He belched and all of that vodka and cranberry juice mixed with stomach acid found its way back to his throat… the pain was excruciating. He felt dizzy, if it hadn’t been for acid reflux he would have passed out by now.

“What are you doing here?” He groaned.“I followed you from the headquarters, I heard you got fired.”“Go away and leave me alone,” he snarled. “Now we both know that you really don’t mean that, espe-

cially since I am here to offer you a job.”

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Brandiss wanted to say something awful but instead he did the next best thing. He rolled over and threw up on her feet.

***

Sandwiched somewhere between the city of Playa Del Rey and Inglewood, in the county of Los Angeles, was the small town of Madrona. The citizens of Madrona, who were mainly upper middle class executives from the near by aerospace industry, had become dissatisfied with the level of service provided by the Los Angeles Police Department. They had the finances and clout to extract themselves from Los Angeles and incorporate their own city. Shortly thereafter, they formed their own police department. Brandiss was a LAPD cop who left the department to become one of Madrona’s finest. He was looking forward to finishing his career quietly in a small department that most people had never heard of and never would.

After 911 the Federal Government was into forming task forces as a outreach to Local and state Law enforcement. As a result they were adamant that every department, large and small, be rep-resented. Before he knew it Brandiss had been assigned to a special Federal Task Force attached to Homeland Security.

In his half conscious state, Brandiss was remembering the night of the “incident” that had cost him his job. He remembered that he was cold and tired and despite the fact that he rarely drank, because his friends all told him that he was a mean drunk, he had decided that he owed it to himself to have a drink. His plan was to stop and pick up a little something and have himself a little drink to warm himself up inside… besides, it would help him sleep.

Looking back, the day hadn’t started out great, but it hadn’t started bad either. It was his first day back after a six-month absence. He had been run over by a drunk driver in the parking lot while he was attempting to run down some guy who was plotting to explode a bomb in a near-by Mall’s food court. Brandiss had spent two months in the hospital, which was where he had met Kade. After he was released from the hospital he had spent four months in rehab. He had stayed in contact with Kade and though he had not spoken

34 Hero Jenkins

with her for a couple of days. They had been playing phone tag, but as far as he knew, the relationship was going well.

Cubicle intrigue and office political drama was present in any and every organization, even law enforcement task forces. Brandiss would be the first to admit that his tolerance for it was way down. His day had taken several annoying turns and he was already in a foul mood by lunchtime. He should have known to get out before something bad happened, but he didn’t.

He didn’t know it until it was too late but he had ignored all of the warning signs and he was well along the path towards per-sonal disaster.

***

35Number Five

Chapter Seven

It was not the first indication that THIS day would not be HIS day, but as warning signs went, it was the most obvious. It came late in the day when he was called down to the lobby for a visitor. He arrived and found Kade’s dad, Randy Simmons stand-ing there with two cups of those blended iced coffee drinks that Brandiss loved.

Well... at least he had brought me some coffee before ripping my heart out.

As it turned out the reason Brandiss had been unable to con-tact Kade over the last couple of days was that Kade did not want to see him again. Adding insult to injury, she had sent her father to break it off. Brandiss had trouble concentrating on work after that and since it was close enough to quitting time he decided to call it a day.

The next warning sign came when he dropped his cell phone

36 Hero Jenkins

in the gas station toilet after he had stopped for gas. The bathroom and toilet was beyond nasty even before his contribution and there was no way he was going to reach his hand in that brownish toilet water and retrieve it. Understandably his mood had gotten worse by the time he made it back to the gas pump and pumped his gas.

Brandiss was distracted and more than a little pissed over losing his phone when he pulled away from the pumps. He decided to stop at the liquor store down the street and pick up something to drink. But given his current state of mind, what he should have done was break all contact with all human beings and gotten him-self inside his house and locked the door behind him.

Though he would never admit it, that business with Kade’s father was what was really bothering him. So it was no surprise that Brandiss was pondering all of this when he walked into the liquor store. He was so deeply in thought that he didn’t even notice the man standing at the counter holding a gun on the clerk.

“Stop right there!” The man with the gun demanded after pointing the weapon at Brandiss. “Take one more step and I will blow your head off!”

Brandiss froze, his hands instinctively went up and he fol-lowed the voice to its source.

“Officer Brandiss is that you?”This is not good, was Brandiss’ first thought. Being recognized by an armed robber while said armed rob-

ber is in the middle of robbing is not good at all. Being identified as a cop by that armed robber who had the drop on you was usu-ally followed by a hail of bullets and a trip to the emergency room or the morgue or both.

Brandiss made eye contact with the robber and knew instantly who it was. That recognition told Brandiss something else and his initial fear had quickly turned to annoyance.

“Reggie? What the... Reggie!” Brandiss barked. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Brandiss knew Reggie from the days he patrolled these streets. Reggie was a crack head and there was no way Reggie would ever have a real gun because he would have pawned it a long time ago to buy crack. Brandiss would bet his life on it and in a moment he would.

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That was when Brandiss noticed that Reggie really had not produced a gun. He had his hand in the pocket of his hoodie and was thrusting it forward to simulate a gun. Brandiss lowered his hands. The clerk didn’t know Reggie, if he did he would have low-ered his hands too. Brandiss was sure Reggie didn’t have a gun and more importantly, Reggie knew that Brandiss knew.

“Don’t move or I will kill both of you,” Reggie said as he took a step back and alternated pointing his ‘weapon’ between Brandiss and the clerk. After a couple of moments of intense staring Bran-diss took a step towards Reggie. Reggie yanked his hands from his pocket and turned to run away.

Brandiss’ linebacker instincts took over; he tackled Reggie before his second step.

To his horror both of Reggie’s legs came off in Brandiss’ arms. It caught Brandiss by surprise and had freaked him out more than he realized. Before Brandiss could process what had just happened Reggie had crawled over to a mop and bucket and after drenching Brandiss with the filthy slimy water from the bucket he took the dirty, slimy mop and began hitting Brandiss in the face with it.

Brandiss dropped the legs and scrambled to his feet. He pounced on the legless Reggie and wrestled the mop away from him. Then Brandiss handcuffed him, got to his feet and tried desperately to catch his breath. He had to use the clerks phone to call for back-up because, oh yeah, his phone was in the grimy gas station toilet.

The danger was over, all that remained was the rage. Bran-diss was having his worst ever bad day. He had been tired and cold when he walked through that door, now add wet and grimy and it was a wonder he didn’t explode.

What Brandiss did next though would go down in law enforcement history. He was so angry that he scooped up Reggie’s tattered old prosthetic legs and slammed them down into a near-by trash barrel. They could been seen, feet and all, protruding from the half empty garbage can as Brandiss turned and walked away. Next Brandiss grabbed a legless, handcuffed, squirming Reggie by his belt and carried him like a suitcase out the front door. Brandiss was so angry that he couldn’t stand to even see Reggie’s face so he placed legless, handcuffed Reggie face down on the sidewalk beneath

38 Hero Jenkins

a bus bench and then sat down while he waited for a marked patrol car to arrive and transport Reggie to jail.

Brandiss couldn’t see Reggie as he lay at his feet beneath that bench. Perhaps if he could he would have softened a little and taken pity on poor Reggie. Reggie was also cold and wet. He began to shiver and then whimper and then he began to cry. He was an awful, pitiful sight lying there handcuffed, legless and helpless on that cold hard ground.

Unbeknownst to Brandiss the liquor store had installed a new digital high definition surveillance system and the owner of the store who thought he would be making Brandiss a hero, decided to post the video of the entire incident on the Internet. Brandiss became an Internet sensation but for all of the wrong reasons.

The press seized on the fact that Reggie was a war veteran and had lost both of his legs to an IED. The public recoiled at the sight of poor legless Reggie wimpering beneath that bus bench. A still capturing Brandiss next to that trash can containing Reggie’s legs made the cover of Time magazine and was iconic for police brutality.

The video went viral and by the time it had reached three million views his termination was all but guaranteed, it was just a matter of process and paperwork.

***

You can have a say in how this story ends and have your input published when this book is released at the end of this year.

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