Thomas Cook - Taken

“And when we do?” Mary asked.

“Then you’ll find me and I’ll take it from there,” Beers answered. He whirled around and strode away.

Mary walked to her car and got in behind the wheel, then waited until Wakeman joined her.

“Where to?” she asked.

“They’re about ten hours ahead of us,” he answered. He opened his laptop and Mary hit the ignition. “The big board has been shut down. I didn’t want the general to find them. But all of that information is in here now.”

“You know where she is?” Mary asked urgently.

Wakeman’s eyes filled with a curious vulnerability. “Mary… you’ve been through a lot. First your father, then everything that Allie put you through. I just want you to know I’m here for you.”

“I know that,” Mary said. She smiled. “You said before that you thought they’d been waiting for her to demonstrate.”

“Yeah.”

“So what happens now that she has?”

“Pie,” Wakeman said.

“What?”

“My rule on any car trip. Pie every day. Let’s find a place to get some and I’ll tell you my theory of everything.”

They headed down the road and found a small coffee shop. Mary brought the car to a halt, and they went inside.

“Okay, tell me,” Mary said impatiently.

“What do we know?” Wakeman asked. “They are this whole, this energy. I believe that this energy can manifest in different ways. As the beings we’ve seen. As their crafts… as our thoughts. There’s no right or wrong about it.”

“No right or wrong?” Mary asked thoughtfully.

“I think they had no concept of cruelty or kindness… no way of seeing beyond the oneness of all that energy. It’s like the little animal brain we have in all of us. It can be awakened by some… experience.”

“Experience?”

“Something could have touched one of them,” Wakeman went on. “Something small and simple… and it awakened this sense of what was missing… something gone and half-remembered.”

Wakeman looked at her for a moment, as if trying to find the right words. “I think they want something. Maybe they had it and lost it. Or maybe they never had it, but think they can get it somehow… from us.” He searched for some glimmer that she understood him. “And whatever it is they want, it’s extremely important to them, something they can’t do without, and so they’re willing to risk everything in order to get it.” He looked at her pointedly. “Think of us, Mary. Think of mankind. The species. Not what you want for yourself. But what you would want for the species.”

She looked at him pointedly. “To take the next step.”

Wakeman smiled. “I love you, Mary.”

“I love you, too.”

Wakeman’s eyes glimmered softly. “We’ve taken it all the way together, haven’t we?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“We’re going to be there when it all comes together when it finally all comes together. And we’ll know we did our part.”

“Our part?”

Wakeman took her hand in his. “They’re in the endgame,” he said, his tone now filled with a strange finality. “They have to be. By going it on our own… by keeping this all from the general, we’re helping to keep Allie safe until they can finish their work.”

“You’re fine with that, aren’t you?” Mary asked. “Them ‘finishing their work’?”

Wakeman nodded. “I can’t wait.”

Mary drew her hand from Wakeman’s grasp. “So what do you want? Just a front-row seat at the show?”

“They’re more highly evolved than we are, Mary,” Wakeman said. “And Allie’s more highly evolved than they are. It’s the way of the Dao. Nature takes its course.”

“What if it’s our nature to fight back?” Mary asked sharply.

Wakeman looked at her as if she were a small child in need of elementary instruction. “Then we lose. Evolution one oh one.”

From a short distance, Charlie and Lisa peered back at the Durango where John sat in the backseat, Allie beside him, nestled in his arm.

“He wants her to go with him,” Lisa said. “He came to take her.”

“We’re not going to let that happen,” Charlie said, his voice oddly broken for a moment, before he steeled himself again.

Lisa turned her gaze to Charlie. “There’s something more,” she said. “A feeling I’m getting.” She seemed reluctant to tell him.

“What?” he asked.

“He cares about her, Charlie. He wants to help.”

Charlie turned and headed for the Durango. “You ride up front with me,” he told John sharply, then noted the odd look he exchanged with Allie, as if to assure her that it was all right.

John did as he was told, Lisa in the backseat with Allie, John on the passenger side up front.

Charlie hit the ignition, and the radio came on, the William Jeffreys show once again blaring out of the speakers.

“Larry King wants to know why our government would cut a deal with a bunch of aliens. Technology, Larry. We need their technology. More of the things they’ve already given us. Like Velcro.”

Charlie’s eyes shot over to John. “Is that true?” he asked. “What this guy’s saying about Velcro?” His eyes narrowed. “Or were you too busy destroying lives to notice?”

Allie leaned forward. “Don’t talk to him like that,” she pleaded. “He’s hurt. He can’t stay human much longer.”

“He’s not human!” Charlie said desperately, his rage suddenly boiling over.

He pressed down on the accelerator and they drove on for a time in silence, Charlie staring up the deserted road while the William Jeffreys show droned on. Cynthia, another from Penzler’s group, called, backing up what Dale had said, and Charlie knew that she was like so many others, another person who seemed to know-or at least sense-that the kooks and crazies, the people who heard voices, saw visions, moved through space and time-had in fact touched, or been touched by, a vague and impossible truth. He knew that some of them were insane, drowning in black pools of madness. But the ones who weren’t, the ones who’d actually seen, he knew they had felt an anguish and loneliness that went down to the deep, deep bone. He could feel it in his own bones each time he glanced into the rearview mirror and saw the little girl he had come to love, human and not human at the same time, and yet, beyond all question, his living daughter, the one thing in life he would not let them take.

He looked at Lisa. “Your uncle should have seen the ad we put in the paper by now,” he said. “He should call the William Jeffreys talk show tonight.”

They drove on in silence for a time, all of them listening as Cynthia continued.

“I saw this same little girl heal a man who’d been shot,” Cynthia said. “And Dale, his son was killed in the Gulf War, and Allie…”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Jeffreys said. “But we’ve got Tom Clarke, the noted UFOlogist checking in.”

Charlie and Lisa exchanged excited glances.

“What do you have to tell us, Tom?” Jeffreys asked.

“I’m afraid I’ve got nothing for you but a false alarm,” Tom said. “I’m calling from the Grayback Dam in Idaho.”

“Grayback Dam,” Charlie repeated thoughtfully. He looked at Lisa. “I guess we’re going to Idaho.”

They reached Mount Grayback the next morning. Tom was waiting for them in the wide asphalt lot of the Grayback Dam, where they’d arranged to meet. Allie leaped out of the car almost before it halted and rushed into his arms.

He was in his sixties now, the long years of his struggle weighing down upon him.

“So this is Charlie,” Tom said as he brought Allie back down to the ground.

“He’s my dad,” she said brightly.

Tom smiled. “I know, honey,” he said quietly. He offered his hand. “Thanks for taking such good care of the family.”