Janet Evanovich - Plum Spooky

Munch, the En glish-speaking uniform, and three other uniforms with guns drawn led me to the kitchen. A uniform pulled a wooden kitchen chair to the middle of the room, sat me down, and secured my hands behind the chair back with cuffs. He cuffed my right ankle to a chair leg, my left ankle to another chair leg, and he took a step back and set the key on the kitchen counter.

“Is that okay?” he said to Munch.

“Yeah,” Munch said. “That’s great, except she’s got all her clothes on.”

The uniform opened a couple kitchen drawers, found a pair of scissors, and handed them to Munch.

“Have fun,” the uniform said.

The four henchmen left, locking the front door on their way out. There was the sound of two vehicles moving on the gravel surface, and then it was quiet. Just Munch and me left in the cement-block house.

“So,” I said to Munch, “see any good Star Trek reruns lately?”

“Yeah. All the time. I have the whole collection. All the seasons. And all the movies.”

“Wow, that’s amazing. Do you want to watch some?”

“Maybe later. I only have an hour to have fun with you.”

“What does fun involve?”

“You know… fun.”

“It looks like you work here. That’s a serious-looking computer.”

“It’s okay. Mostly, I work at the main facility.”

“Where is that located? Is it far away?”

“It’s through the woods. Everything is through the woods here.”

“Wulf said you were sending a rocket up to night. That’s pretty exciting. I wish I could see it.”

“It’s not that exciting. It’s just a small X-12 King. When we get the barium, we’ll fly the big bird, the BlueBec. It holds twenty-three hundred pounds of propellant, and it’s got a full payload. It’ll be the first real test. If it works, we’ll go global.”

“Global? What does that mean?”

“It means we’ll be able to control weather. Well, not entirely. I can’t do everything with the waves. At least, not yet.”

“What can you do?”

“I can make lightning. Not just a single strike, either. I can create the most terrifying storm you’ve ever imagined. And I can make it rain. Not a sustained rain, but a deluge. I can make the kind of rain that can do damage. Rain the earth can’t absorb fast enough.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“I don’t know. Why do people want to paint pictures? Why do people want to design skyscrapers? It’s just what you do. It’s what’s in your head. I tried to get Brytlin to fund my research, but they thought I was a nut. All they wanted was a better magnetometer.”

“What about Eugene Scanlon?”

“Eugene was okay. He saw what I was doing with the new antennae grid design and the miniaturization. He’s the one who started all this in the Barrens. He had some land here, and since the Barrens are filled with nutcases, he figured we wouldn’t be bothered by anyone. The problem was, we didn’t have any money. All I could do was computer-generated stuff. We did a couple tests with the little rockets, but then we were broke.”

“That’s where Wulf comes in, right?”

“Yeah. He’s got money coming out of his ears. I don’t know where he gets it. It’s like he makes it in the basement or something.”

“Why did he kill Eugene Scanlon?”

“Eugene wanted Wulf’s money, but he didn’t want Wulf involved. Eugene wanted to be the boss. And then Eugene got all in a snit and said he wanted Wulf to buy him out. Eugene wanted fifty million dollars or he was going public with my research. So Wulf killed him. Wulf doesn’t mess around. He’s got four BlueBecs on pads for me. You know what they cost? About two million apiece. Not that it’s a big loss. He’ll get all that money back and more. Once I’m up to speed, I’ll be able to destroy every power grid in the country. They’ll pay us what ever we want.”

“You’d blackmail cities?”

“Yeah. How awesome is that?”

“If Wulf has so much money, why did you steal the transmitter?”

“It was going to take too long to order one. We have a generator that we’re using now, but it doesn’t give enough power. The radio station had a monster.”

“Where’s Gail Scanlon?”

“She’s at the main facility. She’s part of a side experiment I started. Turns out the human brain operates on low frequencies of electromagnetic energy. When you’re in active thought, it’s maybe at like fourteen cycles per second. When you’re sleeping, it’s more like four cycles. I can alter that with my machine. Only problem is, I needed to put the helmet on my test subjects so their brain waves would match the resonant frequencies I chose to generate. I can’t really control thoughts yet, but I can make monkeys fall asleep or get depressed or enraged. Human trials are my next phase.”

Seemed to me that monkeys spent a lot of time sleeping anyway. And as for depressed and enraged, I’d feel that way, too, if I was forced to wear a helmet while Munch conducted experiments on me.

MUNCH PICKED THE scissors up from the table. “I should start working on your clothes before my time is up.”

“These are the only clothes I have with me,” I said. “If you cut them up, I won’t have anything.”

“Yeah, but you won’t need anything. I figure you’ll just go naked all the time.”

“That feels sort of icky.”

“You’ll get used to it. You’ll be like my sex slave. Besides, once I perfect my mind-control device, I’ll be able to control your mood, if you know what I mean.”

“Wouldn’t you rather have a girlfriend?”

“Are you kidding?” Munch said, looking for a place to start with the scissors. “What man wouldn’t rather have a sex slave?”

“Lots of men.”

“They’re lying. Sex slave is the way to go. You could do anything you want to a sex slave.”

I was wearing jeans and Diesel’s sweatshirt. The sweatshirt was thick and didn’t have a front zipper. Munch started cutting at the bottom of the sweatshirt.

“Ow!” I said.

“What?”

“You stuck me.”

“I did not. Stop squirming.”

“What do you mean, you can do anything you want to a sex slave? You aren’t weird, are you?”

“I don’t know. I want to try stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

I really didn’t want to hear any of this, but he only had twenty minutes left. If I kept him talking, I could considerably delay the whole naked thing.

“Everything.”

“I don’t do everything,” I said.

“A sex slave does everything.”

“Not this one.”

“Jeez,” Munch said. “Give me a break. I went to a lot of trouble to get you here. The least you could do is cooperate.”

“I could cooperate better if you uncuffed me.”

“I don’t trust you. Last time, you kicked me in the nuts.”

“I wouldn’t do that this time.”

“Wulf would be mad at me. He told me not to do that.”

“How are you going to do everything if I’m attached to this chair? A lot of my best parts are inaccessible.”

“Wulf already thought of that. He said I should have fun with you like this, and then when I want to do something different, like some of the everything stuff, I should get the two men outside to help me.”

I felt all the blood drain from my head, and I broke out in a cold sweat.

“That would be rape,” I said.

“You could think of it like it’s a science experiment,” Munch said. “And like those two guys are lab techs.”

“If you unlocked the restraints around my ankles, you could pull my pants off,” I said to him. “It would be okay because my hands would still be cuffed behind my back on this chair.”