Greg Cox - Loose ends

Fortunately, Max wasn't that far gone yet, no matter how out of character he had been acting. "I have a plan," he announced after a moment's thought. Indicating that Michael should follow him, he walked to the far end of the outdoor walkway, then stationed himself in front of the ice machine roughly ten yards away from Morton's door. "This should be far enough," he stated cryptically. "Get ready."For what?" Michael asked, having no idea what Max had in mind. "What's the big plan?"Watch," Max instructed. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, marshalling his preternatural mental energies. Then he opened his eyes and extended his arm, pointing his index finger at the dusty blue hood of Morton's convertible, several yards away.

Abruptly, the Chevy came alive, as though struck by lightning. Its horn honked and its car alarm blared. The windshield wipers whipped back and forth across the curved glass, while the sprinklers squirted cleaning solution over and over. Even the car's engine surged to life, roaring beneath the hood of the Chevy like a prehistoric monster. "Hey, pretty cool, man!" Michael enthused, impressed despite himself. I've got to remember that trick, he thought.

No surprise, the earsplitting automotive commotion drew Joe Morton from his room in a hurry. The door slammed open and he came charging out, a Smith amp; Wesson semi-automatic pistol clutched in his hand. Gulping, Michael wondered if Max had figured on the gun when devising this ingenious plan. Morton ran to his car and hastily shut off the alarm, wipers, sprinklers, etc., all the while looking for the parties responsible for the disturbance. His bloodthirsty eyes fixed on Max and Michael, over by the ice machine, and Michael could practically see him calculating the distance between the Chevy and the two teenagers. "Hey, you kids!" he hollered, sounding perplexed as well as irate. "Did you see anybody messing with my car?"No, sir," Michael shouted back quickly, not trusting Max to respond without giving away his true feelings. Fortunately, he'd had a lot of practice at playing dumb. "We just got here."Morton must have ruled them out as suspects, since, without even thanking Michael for his eyewitness report, he paid no more attention to the pair of disguised teens. "What the hell-?" he muttered irascibly, giving his front tires a savage kick just for the hell of it. He removed his orange cap, revealing a sizable bald spot atop his cranium, and scratched his head in confusion. "I don't get it. How the devil-?"What is it?" a new voice asked nervously from the threshold of Morton's motel room. "What's the matter?"A second individual emerged from #19: a nerdy-looking Asian guy, at least a foot shorter than Morton and a lot less menacing in appearance, wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses and a Bujfy the Vampire Slayer T-shirt. He furtively looked up and down the row of motel rooms, as if fearful of being seen in Morton's company. The new guy had "guilty" written all over his skinny fan-boy face, prompting Michael to wonder again what sort of crooked deal was in the works. A thug, a lieutenant, and a geek, he thought, mentally running down their ever-growing list of suspects. Talk about your strange bedfellows.

Max reacted even more strongly to their first glimpse of the newcomer. "What?" he murmured under his breath, too low for Morton or his roommate to hear. "I know that guy. I've seen him before."Huh? Michael thought. He was positive that the little Asian dude had not been the second man at the Crash-down on the day Liz was shot, so where else could Max know him from? The UFO Museum in Roswell, maybe? That was the only thing Michael could think of right away. "What do you mean, man?" he whispered fervently. "How do you know him?"It took Max a couple seconds to place the guy. "Las Cruces University," he said eventually. Surprise and puzzlement temporarily drove the simmering animosity from his face. "I saw him at the university that one time, when I snuck into the particle physics lab to sabotage that experiment. He was one of the lab technicians performing those tests on Agent Pierces bones!"What?" Michael asked, stunned by this latest revelation. He could hardly forget the incident in question; if not for Max, he recalled pointedly, I'd probably be serving time for Pierce's murder right now. He watched numbly as the alleged science guy frantically convinced Morton to put his handgun away and step back inside the motel room. The painted turquoise door slammed shut, leaving Max and Michael alone outside the motel, with far too many questions to keep them company. "Are you sure?" Michael asked in disbelief. This can't be right. It doesn't make any sense! "Positive," Max insisted. His intense gaze remained fixed on the door to #19. Michael didn't hear a trace of doubt in his voice. "He was there, with Congresswoman Whitaker and the others."That Whitaker had ultimately turned out to be a Skin did not make Michael any happier. Okay, he thought, now I'm really feeling paranoid. It was one thing when he thought Morton was just another lowlife hood, and the shooting in Crashdown nothing more than a routine drug deal gone wrong, but now the surly gunman appeared mixed-up with something far more complicated and unnerving, something that conceivably tied in with the life-or-death dangers and deceptions that had become part of their daily existences, ever since Max first stopped Liz Parker from bleeding to death on the diner floor. What was Joe Morton doing in Roswell that day? he fretted anxiously. And what is he plotting now? "All right, you win," he told Max sourly. "We need to find out more about this guy. A lot more."

Post-traumatic stress disorder," Alex diagnosed. "That's what you're experiencing, Liz. I'm sure of it."And here I thought I was just going crazy, Liz thought ruefully, sitting in a booth next to Maria, across from Alex and Isabel. The oppressive heat had finally driven them indoors, not long after Max's sister had rejoined them on the surface, to the family-style restaurant attached to the Visitors Center. Liz picked unenthusiastically at a cooling plate of cheese-coated nachos while ignoring the milkshake and tamales her friends had treated her to. At the next booth over, a temperamental infant threw a tantrum, banging a metal spoon against the tray of its highchair while shrieking its lungs out simultaneously. Liz flinched involuntarily every time the spoon noisily struck the tray. The baby's high-pitched screams scraped away at her already raw and hypersensitive nerves. "Post-traumatic?" she repeated, not entirely sure what Alex was getting at.

"Exactly," he said with utter confidence. "I should have realized it earlier." He dipped a nacho into a gooey pool of melted cheese. "I wrote a term paper on the subject for psychology last semester, and you're practically a textbook case, Liz. Well, except for the glowing handprint, that is."Hard to overlook that, Liz thought. Even though the luminous sigil was once again concealed beneath her T-shirt, she was half-convinced she could feel the silver handprint shimmering upon her belly. Her skin tingled where the handprint marked her, exactly where Max had healed her two years ago. He'd left an identical brand upon her on that unforgettable occasion, but the splayed silver fingers had eventually faded after a day or two. Why had the handprint returned after all this time? Max had not needed to heal her down in the murky caverns. He hadn't even touched her stomach.

"Explain," Maria prompted Alex. Tiny vials of therapeutic scents were arrayed like toy soldiers next to her plate. Beneath the molded Formica tabletop, she placed a sympathetic hand on Liz's knee. "Isn't post-traumatic whatcha-macallit something Vietnam vets suffer from?"Alex nodded in agreement. "Soldiers, disaster victims, and anyone who goes through some kind of severe trauma and doesn't get the right kind of psychological counseling afterward. Liz's symptoms fit the profile perfectly: flashbacks, nervousness, heightened sensitivity to sudden noises and surprises, inability to concentrate or make decisions." From the look on his face, he must have suddenly realized what a discouraging litany he had just recited, and he hastened to add, "It's nothing personal, Liz. Nothing you need to be ashamed of. It's a perfectly normal psychological response to getting shot."But that was almost two years ago," Maria objected.