Resonance, J. B. Everett [the top 100 crime novels of all time txt] 📗

made her jump and nearly bite through it. She turned to glare at Leon who was holding his gun still aimed and practically smoking. But it was Jess who pointed just a few feet to her left where a lynx was teetering on its feet and falling with a soft thud to the forest floor. Becky closed her eyes, wondering whether she should thank Leon or yell at John for this crazy adventure.

 

As casually as if it was a discarded towel on his living room floor, Leon picked up the lynx and slung it over his shoulder. He motioned for Becky to keep trudging forward. Her ankles were sore from three days of this.

 

Her nerves were stretched. And the ground was giving way beneath her feet. But she slid down the small incline, touching her hand to various branches to stay upright, sending small rocks skittering in front of her.

 

Leon and Jesse brought up a tight watch behind her as she picked her way back with very little grace. At least compared to the two men whose big booted feet were no more than cat’s paws in the thick pine wilderness. But she tried to breathe clean air and pretend it was all okay.

 

Becky knew it wouldn’t last long. If she ran, the clean smell would give way to the bloody scene they had twice visited at the riverside. The deer would be only juveniles, and unless she could turn her brain off, she would worry that thought in her head forever. Then there was also the promise of the maniacal gleam that would light John’s eyes when he sent the Peppersmiths off after her to bring her down with their tranq guns.

 

She, too, could come back to camp unconscious and slung across Leon’s wide shoulder, arms hanging limp, flapping with the rhythm of his gait.

 

Her two low ponytails stirred in the wind that reached them as they neared the edge of the clearing. John approached, carelessly picking his way through the brush, branches snapping back behind him. “Oak Ridge is losing people and so is Clinton.”

 

He held up a map in front of her asking what she knew. All Becky could think was that the whole of Anderson County was going under and the two Peppersmiths behind her were getting a serious education in what was happening. She could feel Leon approach even though she couldn’t see or hear him. Her instincts were the best detection for him, probably the only one.

 

John circled the map area, pointing with his pen. “People are going down fast! One hundred since our update this morning.”

 

She watched as the tip of his capped red pen passed right through her parents’ property as he made generous circles around the affected area.

 

She simply nodded, and waited.

 

“I want you on the next plane back down there.” He turned at last to acknowledge Leon.

 

“Can you drive her?”

 

Becky’s mouth almost hung slack. Like a dog with a bone, John’s manners had gotten just as canine. She was turning to apologize for her boss when John spoke again. “I’d like you to fly down there with her. See what you can check out. Catch what you can. I just have to stay here. It’s way too interesting.”

 

He half handed, half shoved a page at Becky. She recognized it as a species list, just as John spoke. “It’s a list of all the species we’re losing.” His eyes were almost bright with anticipation. As though it were just a game, that the paper she held in her hand listed imaginary armies from a too serious game of ‘Risk’, not Bengal Tigers and Canada Moose and Elk and, of course, Georgia Warblers.

 

Jordan took in the scene before him. They had come in on the promised charter. Only this was no Lear jet, it was a wobbly Cessna, that had wound its way down to a field in the open space between Clinton and Oak Ridge. After a touchdown that had felt as though the earth had risen up to them and the plane had stayed stationary, they cranked open the doors and tumbled out.

 

He let Jillian go first, being gentlemanly, and instantly regretted it. She stumbled a little as her feet hit ground. Her soft blue scrubs showing the buckling of her knees, her hands tucking into her stomach as she folded over. He felt the raw stab of fear that knifed him in the gut every time she wavered. Again he came up with an excuse, it was just the plane ride. He was nauseous, too.

 

She didn’t have ‘it’ .

 

With an ungraceful thump, he landed beside her and took her elbow, seeing David come out the other side, compasses already in hand, briefcase and leather bag hanging from his arms. He looked ready to walk into the hotel and spend his workweek. Jordan’s gaze naturally pulled back to Jillian, his hands encircling her upper arms, his eyes finding hers. “Are you all right?”

 

Even as he asked it, he told himself the pain was just because he had already lost everyone. Not because anything was so special about her.

 

She pushed at his chest. “I’m okay. Just need to get my feet under me.” With that, she straightened.

 

Shoved her hair out of her face. The dark strands, for once loose, had bothered her on the whole flight over.

 

Wet and hanging limp when they entered the plane, they had a gentle wave to them now that rubbed beneath his fingers as he let her stand on her own.

 

He felt and heard her take a deep breath, and he grabbed both their bags as had become his custom.

 

David had already planted himself behind the wheel of the midsized, mid-aged gold sedan. Why they didn’t have grey or even a black hearse was beyond him. For the thousandth time Jordan felt like they were walking blind. Only this time they were walking into a serious tragedy.

 

Holding the passenger door for Jillian he waited while she situated herself, most of the green color having faded from her features. Then he let himself into the backseat while David gunned the engine, testing the feel of the car and his own level of testosterone.

 

With the map Anne had provided they wound an uncertain way through the countryside. It looked much like the area outside McCann. The Appalachian Mountains cradled the sides of the small road, only this time they nestled ATV shops, car dealerships, and the occasional small windowless strip joint up along the sides of the two lane highway.

 

The shops gave way to churches, hillsides dotted with houses, and at last a storage unit of long gray buildings fronted by rows of garage doors. The chain link fence was a good fifteen feet high, winding its way around the property and then across the road in front of them. That made Jordan frown.

 

A uniformed security guard stood sentry at the gate that spanned the street, on the outside of the town, and David pulled up even as the guard approached them. But David was already whipping out his compass, and making Jordan wish someone else had driven.

 

The rent-a-cop tipped his hat and spoke to all of them through David’s open window.

 

“Sorry folks. City’s closed.”

 

The City is CLOSED? How does one even close a city? But Jordan could see the answer to his question looming fifteen feet in front of him. The chain link was old and looked unused, but the razor wire gleamed in the afternoon light, obviously a fresh addition to the precautions.

 

David pulled out his temporary badge, flashing it as though he were the president’s guard.

 

“We’re with the CDCP.” He didn’t add that they needed to get inside. Or that they had clearance. He didn’t need to. His confidence, that may have already passed well into arrogance, spoke all that for him.

 

The guard stepped back slowly, nodded again, and spoke into the police style walkie-talkie tacked to his shoulder. His movements all yielded to the slow drawl of the south. And Jordan could see where it was often perceived as laziness, but could also see that it clearly wasn’t. It was bred into these people who hadn’t seen a Minnesota blizzard, or had to do more to keep the cold at bay than turn up the collar on their coats.

 

But they also were possessed of a certainty that speeding up wasn’t critical - a belief that clearly didn’t run in Jillian’s blood, southern cheerleader that she may be. She fidgeted in the seat, squirming this way and that, trying to look calm but not quite pulling it off. Jordan would have bet his life savings her right foot was crossed over the other, keeping to a silent rhythm.

 

The guard sauntered back to them, gave a brief nod and told them it’d be just a minute.

 

It was more like four, Jordan realized as Jillian fidgeted away the time and David sat calmly beside her, pulling instrument after instrument from the briefcase, recalibrating it or something, and then quietly putting it back.

 

Jordan leaned back, trying to stay relaxed. He thought he was achieving it well. He kept the hyperventilation and the terror at bay, tucking his hands behind his head, and leaning back as though he were on the beach and not sitting in the back of a government car about to gain security clearance through the gates of hell.

 

The guard stood stationary at the side of the fence, looking exactly as he had long before they were parked there, engine idling. Jordan wondered what the guard would do to get the gates open, or if he was waiting for a code or such.

 

It turned out the guard would do nothing.

 

A black sedan, filled with men in identical suits and haircuts, pulled up on the inside of the gate, looking like something out of an FBI movie. But then again this was The Town That Built TheBomb, Jordan thought as the four men undid a thick padlock and wheeled the gate back by hand. They threw their weight at the task, creaking it back foot by foot, before waving the car through. David pulled in and kept on driving, but Jordan turned around to see that they men in suits never acknowledged the guard outside and that they secured the gate with the large padlock set with something that looked like a magnetic key. Jordan fought off thoughts of having to climb the gate and throw himself over the razor wire with thousands of citizens when the lock failed.

 

David pushed the small map at Jillian and set her to navigating. She instantaneously spouted off directions.

 

“My god,” Jillian shook her head and she spoke again before Jordan could finish the thought of wondering what pattern her brain had found within two minutes of entering the city. “The streets are alphabetized.” She looked from side to side, and while David seemed to have his eyes on both the road and his compasses, Jordan followed her gaze to see that it certainly appeared that she was right.

 

“Good lord, who are these people?” He heard it from his mouth before he realized he had let it slip. This was Jillian’s South and he didn’t want to offend.

 

But she supplied an answer with a quirk of her mouth. “The government.”

 

“That’s right …” The town had only become public after world war two when the government had opened the city to the families of the scientists who were working on the top-secret Hiroshima project. The place was fuckin’ nuts. As best as he could see the gates encircled the entire city. Whether that was to keep people out or secrets in, he was unsure. The streets were not only alphabetized, they stacked the road signs. So you would turn down a side street that bore four perfectly ambiguous street names.

 

There were a few people on the streets. Of course all the activity was on the outside of the sawhorse barricades. The people who had lived inside the reversal’s radius had already been moved to temporary housing. But the people who were out looked