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  Fenneman nodded in agreement. “Hopefully he’ll lead us straight to his cousin and Colin Trench.”

  “Where else would he be going?”

  “Well, I guess we’ll find out,” she said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Closure

  ONCE JB REACHED the mainland, the drive to Greenville Memorial Hospital took him an additional seven hours. Why they had decided to fly Marvin there instead of the hospital in Nags Head was never explained to him, but as far as he was concerned, it didn’t matter. He just hoped the old man would still be alive when he got there.

  It was early morning when he finally arrived and parked his pickup in the lot nearest the hospital entrance. He left Jansky in the truck with the windows down and went directly into the hospital’s main reception and information area. At the desk, he asked for Marvin Keene’s condition and room number. A light-skinned, black woman, looking to be in her forties, was sitting nearby and overheard the conversation. She walked up to JB before the receptionist could look up the information.

  “You must be JB,” the woman said.

  “You must be Rachel,” he replied. “How's he doin'?”

  “He's conscious now… They think he had a stroke, but they're not sure. They're giving him a whole series of tests. They said they’d come out and let me know once they’re finished.”

  “So, he's been here for hours an' they’re still figurin’ out what’s goin’ on with him?”

  Rachel nodded. "He was still in the ER when I got here."

  JB shook his head and replied, "Sorry… I was hopin' it wasn't nothin' real serious."

  She was looking at JB oddly. She said, “So, how is it you know my dad? You don’t seem like someone he would be acquainted with.”

  JB smiled at her and replied, “That’s true enough, but our paths crossed 'cause of a common interest.”

  Rachel frowned. “You mean that alien bullshit?” she said, not bothering to hide the anger in her voice. A moment later, she took a deep breath, and her features softened. “I'm sorry, no offense intended… But you don’t really believe that do you?”

  JB wasn’t eager to debate the issue considering the circumstances, so he dismissed her comment with a smile and said, “I only know your dad was very passionate ‘bout that, an’ I wasn’t gonna argue with him…”

  “I'm sorry. You're right, now is not the time,” Rachel replied apologetically. “I just… I just need to let that go. After mom left him and Jeffrey died, he was never the same. And it got worse over time. He shut himself off from the world and everyone in it." She gave JB an appraising look. "It’s a wonder that he let you into his life.”

  “He was real good to me, Rachel. I owe him.”

  As the two of them sat down in the patient lobby and waited, agents Cole and Fenneman were just pulling up to the hospital grounds.

  “Eleven hours on the road and now we’re waiting on his uncle?” Cole complained. The console in the front of the black sedan had become littered with fast food wrappers and empty Styrofoam cups over the course of their journey.

  “JB did say he wasn’t doing well. At the very least we know where he is and what he’s doing,” Fenneman replied. She wanted to add that being confined for hours in the car with Cole was no picnic either, but she didn’t. Instead, she said, “If he’s going to be here for a while, we should probably find a motel close by and get a couple of rooms. I could use some sleep and a shower.”

  “Fine, I agree. Even if he takes off, we can easily find him again. But, while we're looking into that, I’m going to see what we can find out about this Marvin guy,” Cole said, typing the request into the computer terminal on the dash. “Maybe there’s more here than meets the eye.”

  A half-hour after the two agents had left the hospital, a doctor dressed in blue scrubs found JB and Rachel in the patient lounge. Once he finished introducing himself, he took a chair next to them and deflected their concerned looks by staring down at his clipboard.

  “We're running some more tests right now, but we think we have a diagnosis. Dr. Bradson is on his way. He'll go over everything with you.”

  “Oh, my God!” Rachel exclaimed, “Is it serious?”

  “I'm afraid it is,” said another man as he joined them. He was neatly dressed and wore a white shirt and a blue tie under his white lab coat. “I’m Dr. Bradson, head of Neurology here at the hospital,” he said. His expression was serious, and he spoke with a Southern accent that was nearly as thick as JB’s. He pulled a glossy sheet of paper out from the brown manila envelope he was carrying. “I'm afraid that the scan shows Mr. Keene has a brain tumor… An extremely unusual one."

  "Is it cancer?" Rachel's voice trembled as she asked the question.

  "We don't know yet. We're waiting for the blood work to come back. But I have to tell you that the tumor has distributed its mass into many areas of the brain. Not enough to destroy any cognitive functions… But here,” he explained, pointing at the scan. “The main mass at the top of the left hemisphere has extended these narrow tendrils into various parts of the brain. The seizure was probably caused by this one here. You can see it's enlarged at the tip.”

  JB didn’t exactly know what he was looking at, but one of the many thin fingers that Bradson had singled out had a visibly larger, round node at its end.

  “Unfortunately, there's no way we can remove it with surgery,” Bradson continued. “We can try chemotherapy, but there's no guarantee that will be effective either.”

  The MRI scan reminded JB of what Marvin had told him about being connected to another consciousness. He had never seen an MRI scan before, but it appeared to him as though the mass was a mini-brain that had grown “connections” into other parts of Marvin’s brain. He said, "What happens if you leave him be?"

  Bradson shook his head. “I'm afraid that's not a good option either. If we don’t attempt some type of mitigation, it's likely that the next episode might be more serious. I’m going to consult with some of my colleagues once we complete all the tests. I'll make a recommendation, hopefully by tomorrow morning.”

  “Can we see him?” Rachel asked.

  “Yes, he’s awake and resting comfortably at the moment. They're moving him to up to Oncology." He raised his hand anticipating Rachel's reaction and said, "It's where we place all patients with tumors, benign and cancerous. He'll be in his room in a few more minutes. I’ll have the nurse let you know when you can go in.”

  He pushed the scan photo back into the envelope and reiterated his promise to update them as soon as he could before he turned and walked away. Despite the air-conditioning, Dr. Bradson found that he was sweating profusely. He had grossly understated his patient’s condition to spare the man’s relatives, but what really concerned him was nature of the tumor itself. He was an expert at reading MRIs and determining what types of tissues were involved in tumor growth, but this was the first time that he was utterly baffled. The tissue wasn’t a Fibrosarcoma or Angiosarcoma nor any other type of growth associated with tumors of the brain. Regardless, he had no illusions about the eventual outcome. He could only look forward to the inevitable autopsy.

  “Rachel!” Marvin croaked from his hospital bed as she and JB entered his room.

  “Dad,” she sobbed as she ran over to embrace Marvin where he lay, despite the IV stands and various tubes connected to his arm. “I’m so glad you’re all right!”

  “I know damn well I'm not,” he said with a weak smile. “But it's good to see you. I…”

  “Dad, please," Rachel interjected. The tears were streaming down her cheeks. "You don’t have to say anything. What’s past is past.”

  JB stepped up to the bedside and looked down at Marvin. “Y’all gonna be okay,” he lied. “I got Jansky with me, he’s in the parkin’ lot, watchin’ the truck.” He wasn’t sure what else he could add. He figured the doctor would deliver the bad news soon enough. Medical diagnosis aside, JB was positive that he knew where the tumor had come from, and that knowledge chilled h
im to the bone. Suddenly, he felt that strange sensation again. He recognized it as the same one he had felt when the aliens on Ocracoke had pinged his Sawbonites. He knew he had only seconds to get out of there, or the possible collateral damage could be unthinkable.

  “Marvin… Gotta go… Just got pinged…” He said breathlessly as he ran out of the door. Rachel and Marvin stared after him.

  “What a strange young man,” Rachel said.

  “Darling, you don’t know the half of it,” Marvin said, suddenly serious. "What now?" he muttered under his breath so Rachel couldn't hear.

  JB ran through the ward until he barreled through the nearest emergency exit, sounding an alarm as he pushed past it. He descended the stairs until he reached the ground floor and ran for cover. There was a parking structure a hundred yards away, and he made directly for it, heading for the exterior stairwell. Even though he had no idea of where the attack might come from, it looked like this could be his best option if there was a confrontation. At the very least it was far away from any medical floor. He mounted the stairs and made it to the third level before he felt the strange sensation again. Seconds later, he heard an unfamiliar whistling sound coming from directly overhead and growing louder and louder.

  He couldn't see it, but the object that was hurtling down towards him was entering the atmosphere in a steep descent. Although most of the object had burned away, the remaining portion was only two or three meters in width. Despite its relatively small size, when the mass struck the parking structure, it had enough force to almost entirely obliterate it. The impact hit dead center, and the explosion of shattered concrete and shredded vehicles mushroomed in every direction. JB was still in the stairwell at the side of the structure when it struck, but the force of the impact threw him backward and into a wide arc that ended twenty feet down on the pavement.

  The fiery conflagration of exploding gas tanks, torn sheets of metal and large chunks of rebar-laced broken concrete rained down on where he had landed. JB, stunned and injured, could only watch as the shower of debris fell all around him. While he was in mid-air, his Sawbonites had encased him in the bronze colored metallic sheathing that had saved him time and time again. The smaller shards of rock and flaming metal bounced harmlessly off his armor as plumes of pulverized cement filled the air. Several large pieces of the structure fell close by, narrowly missing him, but creating a pocket shelter that prevented him from being crushed outright.

  While he was lying there waiting for his broken back and the internal injuries suffered in the fall to heal, he felt he was being pinged again. However, this time, the sensation was much weaker than before. The bio-metallic armor that still encased him seemed to diminish the effect, enough so that if he wasn’t lying there quietly, he might not have felt it at all. He thought that was a useful revelation, and hoped his armor had blocked, or least weakened, whatever signal his Sawbonites responded with.

  Several seconds later, after his Sawbonites had finished making him whole, his armor retracted back into the pores of his skin. Slowly, he got to his feet and headed for his truck, parked over at the other end of the lot. He was well on the way back to Ol' Blue before the crowds of people begun cautiously venturing out of the various medical buildings to gawk at the devastation.

  Cole and Fenneman were signing the register at the motel they had decided on when both of their cellphones rang. They answered them nearly simultaneously and listened briefly before they each acknowledged with a terse, one-word confirmation.

  “A bomb, at the hospital?” Fenneman said to Cole as they abruptly raced back to their car.

  “That’s what they said. Jesus! Everywhere that kid goes, shit happens. I told you we should have locked him up!” Cole complained as he started the sedan and tore off in the direction of Greenville Memorial.

  “What the hell was that!” Marvin yelped in surprise at the loud boom that momentarily shook his hospital room.

  “I don’t know!” Rachel said, moving over to the window and pushing the drawn blinds aside. “Oh my God! It’s the parking structure! It’s been destroyed... It's gone!”

  “Christ! They won’t stop at anything to get him!” Marvin said.

  “What?” she said, confused at her father’s reaction.

  “The aliens, they’re after JB,” he replied. “I told you a long time ago, that you were safer when you were far away from me.”

  Rachel shook her head. She was a school teacher with no medical experience, but she knew that brain tumors affected their victims in various ways. She did not doubt that his decades of alien delusions were a direct result of his illness.

  “Sure, dad, sure,” she said gently. Still, she thought it was strange that the destruction of the parking structure happened moments after JB tore out of the room.

  Cole and Fenneman were minutes away when Fenneman’s cell rang again. She answered, and as she listened, her eyes grew wide. “Holy shit!” she exclaimed after she terminated the call. “It wasn’t a bomb.”

  “What?” Cole asked.

  “Can you believe, they think it was either a small meteor or a satellite that fell out of orbit.”

  “Are you shitting me?” Cole said incredulously. “I’ve never heard of that! What are the odds that it would hit a parking structure in the vicinity of our perp?”

  Fenneman didn’t reply. She had no answer, but she was beginning to think there was more to JB than just someone who always managed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  The three off-worlders who had caused the event had stayed hidden but remained close enough to verify the kill. They pinged the Abomination several more times after the impact but received no response back from its medical protocols. They teleported away, satisfied that they had succeeded where others had failed, but disappointed that they had to resort to the Abomination's complete annihilation. With its destruction, the threat to their Har had finally been eliminated. Now, however, they had lost the opportunity to know how the sub-molecular robots had managed to reprogram themselves. But at least the Abomination would never interfere with their plans again.

  Rachel’s phone rang about an hour later. “How is he?” JB asked.

  “He’s okay for the time being… He’s sleeping now,” she said in a near whisper. “But where did you get to?”

  “I had to leave. Tell Marvin I’m sorry and that I’ll try to visit as soon as I think it’s safe to come back.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “It's better if Y’all don' know,” JB said.

  “Dad said that they were after you. Is that really true?” She didn’t have to say who “they” were. In truth, she was surprised at the words coming out of her mouth. She never believed in aliens, but she also didn’t believe in coincidence.

  “Yes, ma’am. Wish it weren’t.”

  “Holy Mother,” her voice was still soft, but there was no mistaking her intensity. “After my brother died, Dad dropped out of my life completely. We, my mom and I, just thought he was crazy. Now, he’s sick and honest to God, and I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  “All y'all need t' believe is that your dad loves you. He was tryin’ to keep y’all safe by keepin’ you away from him. Whether that was right or wrong, don’ make no difference now. He knows he ain't got much time left. Y’all both need to make the most of it.”

  There were several seconds of silence before Rachel replied. When she did, it sounded to JB as if she were choking back tears. “Thanks, JB. God Bless you. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  “I will Rachel. I will,” JB said. He hung up thinking that he felt like crying too. It was a sensation he hadn’t experienced for a very long time.

  “He’s on the move again,” Cole said after he got back into the car. He was referring to the moving dot on the dashboard display of the sedan. “Headed upstate, on the 29. Maybe he’s going to Charlotte.”

  “Well, while you were inside interviewing medical staff, I got a text on my phone,” agent Fenneman a
nnounced. “It’s about Marvin Keene, JB’s supposed 'uncle'. Well, it turns out they’re not related, no big surprise there… But here’s the interesting part. Marvin Keene has several Master's degrees and a couple of Ph.Ds. Aerospace stuff…Astrophysics, Astronomy, Engineering… Seemed he worked for the government until about thirty years ago. But just exactly what he did and where he worked are redacted, according to this."

  "Anything else?" Cole asked.

  "Funny you should ask. It also said some guys from Homeland are on their way down now to interview him.”

  “They won’t get much, I’ll bet,” Cole said. “The charge nurse wasn’t very helpful when I asked about him… you know, it’s all that patient confidentiality shit… But one of the medical assistants was willing to gossip when I flashed him the badge. He told me Marvin’s got an inoperable brain tumor, one of the really bad kinds.”

  “Hmm… So, I can't help but wonder what he and JB were doing together in the first place. I can't imagine a more unlikely pair,” Fenneman said as if she were thinking out loud.

  “Seems like the only things they have in common are an FBI massacre and a meteor strike,” Cole replied sarcastically. “I just hope Tucker leads us to Trench and his cousin sooner rather than later. Otherwise this is going to be a very trying assignment.”

  "True enough," Fenneman replied too softly for the other to hear.

  JB and Jansky were on the highway fifty miles ahead of the agent’s black sedan, on the way back to North Carolina. JB didn’t know exactly why, but he sensed that he should head towards the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Perhaps it was something his Sawbonites had planted in his consciousness, but that didn't matter much to him. He had to start somewhere, and the Black Mountains seemed as good a place as any for him to begin his alien hunt. He only hoped he was pointed in the right direction… He was more than eager for some payback. “We'll see how they like being on the receiving end for a change,” he said out loud. Jansky shot him another doleful look before he stuck his head out the open window and into the wind.