Andrea Lepri - The Last Christmas On Earth

"Then you also believe that those two were agents ..." she asked with surprise.

"I see no other explanation, and in any case, I prefer not to think about it. Whoever they were, now they are no longer in a position to harm us," he cut short. "How is it going with your husband?" He then asked in a slightly accommodating tone to change the subject.

"It gets worse every day," she informed him.

"You have to wait a little longer," Adam encouraged, taking her face in his hands in a rare movement of affection. She returned with a tender, fleeting glance and immediately snatched back. "You speak well, but you're not the one who lives in that house. Every day spent there gets heavier and heavier, and the more time passes, the more futile the reason we are doing this seems to me... so much that sometimes I'm afraid I almost forgot about it," she murmured, becoming thoughtful.

"So I am going to remind you what's the reason: what do you think would be our fate if someone discovered who we really are?" Replied the doctor, changing his expression.

"Don't treat me like a fool, do you think I don't know?" Eve replied annoyed.

"Anyway, at this point it is also useless to discuss it, whether you want it or not, we are at the last crossroads ... and in any case, it is not said that all this will really matter."

"What does it mean?"

"I just spoke on the phone with Abel, he told me that scientists are very pessimistic. In this remote village we live like in a cocoon, but nature has begun to rebel against mankind a long time ago.

Every day there is a new catastrophe and it seems that time is running out, and even though we have played our cards well up until now, we have nothing concrete in our hands yet."

"But what will happen to the Earth? And when will this happen?"

"I don't know, Abel couldn't be more precise. There are probably only a few days left, after which there will be no payback or second chances."

"And then, if the situation is so serious, why doesn't Abel make his move?"

"Do you think it's so easy for her?"

"We'll need a lot of luck," Eve said after thinking a lot about his words.

"It's not about hoping for luck, you said it yourself," he said.

"We can start," Helen said when all the agents sat in their seats.

"Why did you rush us back?" Agent Dower asked politely raising his hand like a schoolboy. She decided to skip the preambles and immediately went to the point. "If someone of us still doesn't know, there we have two corpses, we found them this morning aboard a car without a license plate and they had no identity documents. Dr. Stevenson has just finished the autopsy and failed to establish the cause of death, and to make matters worse the bodies were found in the wooded area that we swept several times last night in search of James's son. The Coroner would put his hand on the fire that those two were already there, dead at least from the day before, how is it possible that none of us noticed anything?"

"It's strange," the giant Joe considered with his cavernous voice.

"That's right," Helen agreed.

"Then they may have died elsewhere and been dumped there tonight," said Claretta Jones in a faint voice because of her shyness.

"It's impossible since the car doesn't work," explained the Sheriff.

"And couldn't it have broken down afterward?"

"No, the control unit indicates that the car has stopped approximately when they supposedly have died."

"It's a nice brain teaser..." Claretta commented.

"Exactly ... and this means that we all must work to solve this case as soon as possible, because, in a small village like ours, voices run quickly. I'm sure that a lot of looky-loos will come soon and when this happens we will have to be able to answer their questions."

"So what do we do now?" Asked Agent Benelli.

"It has absolute priority, we must give up everything we are working on at the moment to dedicate ourselves exclusively to this case. We don't know who those two were, but sooner or later someone will surely come alive to look for them."

"How should we proceed?" Dower asked.

"Claretta, you're going to take a nice stroll around, to ask here and there, showing their pictures.

You will start from Spring, then you will pass by the Country Hole and the Boe emporium, then from the gas station, and since you are there you will also go to the pharmacy... maybe someone noticed them and will give us some information. Benelli, you go and take another look at the place of their discovery, I want a nice photo book. Dower, you go to the Motor Vehicle Office with the car's chassis number to see if you can trace the owner, then call the mechanic and ask him if he has figured out what caused its stopping. Coming back from the Motorization, stop everywhere to ask questions. Joe, go to the terminal and look for cases like this, if you find something we could have a trail to follow." Joe nodded silently but deep down he was unhappy, she hadn't let him go for a while because he was old, and being confined within those four walls, he did not like it at all. In addition, Helen had assigned him a computer task and he hated computers because his fingers were so big that he always took at least two keys at a time. He thought, resignedly, he was going to have a nervous breakdown , but he didn't protest because he knew it would be useless.

"Finally you, Cindy, call the phone company and ask if they have the tape with the recording of the anonymous call, because what we have is barely understandable. The call was made by a public telephone, if it is part of the chain of those monitored, we could have something more to work with."

Harry had been working on his model for a while, but James was so upset by his behavior that he couldn't find the right concentration to devote himself to his beloved plants. He looked at the last one he had fixed and judged he had really sucked, so much that for a moment he was tempted to squash them for good, in order to vent his anger. Furthermore, his headache rather than fading, it had intensified and his temples were pounding ruthlessly. Realizing that he was no longer fit to continue, he decided to settle down and then finally bring Harry to buy his new glasses.

He also thought he had been selfish because he should have taken him first. He consulted the clock and thought that if he hurried, they would still be able to get to the store before closing time. He bent over his tools and as he put them back in the wooden box he stared at the circular flowerbed of violets, convinced of being in a dream: the plant Harry caressed an hour before, it was practically resurrected. The slender trunk had regained its vigor and had almost completely straightened, soaring upwards, the ties, that held it to the stick, which he attached as a reinforcement, had loosened, the leaves and petals had spread out again and appeared smooth and shiny, alive. James was wondering how it was possible when he thought he caught a movement in the bush beyond the hedge, something very similar to a fast-moving black shape.

He jumped up scanning the spot where he thought he saw it, but there was anything strange. Immediately after that, he was seized by slight dizziness, because he had risen too quickly and his temples were hammering even harder.

"This whole thing has shaken me too much, I'm becoming paranoid," he said to himself aloud as he bent down again to pick up the toolbox, but again he suddenly felt like he was not alone. He brandished his hoe and walked uncertainly toward the edge of the woods to check the situation, but found that everything was perfectly still. Perhaps too much still, he told himself, it wasn't singing a single bird and not even a poor cicada. But he seemed to perceive, from far away, the dull sound of the Black Hawk that he had just seen circling above the roof of his house. Suddenly, he reminded Harry's terrified face and words, he turned to look at the house and noticed that the front door was open. Caught by a bad feeling he let go the hoe to run and take a look, but before he could move a single muscle, he felt a sting in his neck and his strength abandoning him; a moment later he was lying unconscious on the ground.