Tuesday, October 2nd,
1996, 08:23am
“If you want to shoot
him, go ahead, but realize that you’ll be calling down the local cops on us.
Even though we will probably get away by shooting a way out of here, there’s no
way we’ll be able to finish this Op and put an end to what’s going on here…”
Jason looked at
Jasper, who held a raised gun at Jude and seemed less than a second away from
shooting the Agent. His knuckles turned white on the grip. Something in Jason’s
voice must have reached Jasper, because he blinked a few times and slowly moved
the finger away from the trigger, but kept it aimed at Jude’s head.
Monday October 1st, 1996
Jason finished his cigarette while looking out of the window
of the motel room. He saw Knight walk back and a bit further away Jude was
blowing the horn repeatedly. After a few moments Jasper walked out of the
reception area and got in the car. They drove off, heading to the agreed meeting
place out of town.
Jason took his time, driving to the diner with Knight,
picking up some coffees and taking the time for a quick chat with the waitress
they met yesterday. Then they headed west as well.
They found the others shortly after and told them to drive on
and take the first road or driveway on the left. Once they were out of sight of
the main road, they pulled over. It didn’t take long to get to the point.
Jasper and Jude realized that their time in town was running out. Jason had
given them a page out of his notepad with things he wanted them to do. They
agreed to call in every 2 hours and keep each other up to date if new
developments would arise.
Knight and Jason drove back into town, straight to the
Sheriff’s office. They were told Sheriff Oakley was looking for them and were
led into his office. He started straight away about the two DEA agents, and
came across defensive, to the point of aggressive. Jason had expected this and
played to it, apologizing for the behavior of the two, telling the sheriff he
knew all two well how they could behave, that he and Knight had been on the receiving
end of it themselves. This seemed to work, as Oakley relaxed a bit and told
them that he only wanted for his town to be left in peace.
He then proceeded on telling them he had been contacted by
Mrs Allen, and that she had informed him about what had happened at her house.
Jason felt Oakley was about to get all uppity again and blocked it off by
explaining that the woman had no idea where her daughter was, this only a week
or so after the boyfriend had disappeared. The Sheriff seemed a bit more understanding
but asked them to tread lightly.
Oakley told them that Deputy Glenn Patterson would show them
the way to the Spivey’s, making it clear that they would be observed in how
they acted. At the home of Billy Ray things seemed normal. The mother, Angel Spivey, was grieving, as was to be expected, and was comforted by her sister
Amy and brother in law, Joe Crista. No new information was gained and nothing
in Billy Ray’s bedroom seemed to be out of the ordinary.
They said their goodbyes and drove over to the house of
Doctor Simms. Again, very little could be discovered. The only additional
information that was able to give to them, was that there were more people who had
lost memory of a period of time. He reluctantly gave the names and addresses of Bud Aldrich
and Louisa May.
From there, they decided it was time to tackle Alderman
Allen. They made their way to the town hall, and decided to split up, in case
whomever spoke to the alderman would somehow be “affected” like Mrs Allen was. Knight
had a close look at the car of alderman Steve Allen and noticed it clearly had
been parked there for quite a while. Jason spoke to one of the employees behind
the counter but was told there was no way to see the Alderman until 10am the
next day. He tried to push a bit, making clear this was an FBI case and that it
couldn’t wait, but that didn’t help. He tried to ring the office of the
Alderman twice, but both times the phone rang out. Discussing the matter with
Knight, they decided to see the Sheriff, and see if he could make an earlier
appointment.
After a short while the Sheriff contacted them again, full
of himself and let them know he had been able to secure a meeting for them, for
the next day at 10am...
He drove over to the diner with Knight to get a quick lunch
and made his way to the bathroom, as his partner was chatting to the waitress.
After checking if the cubicles were empty, he called Jasper. Filling the other
part of J-cell in didn’t take long. Jasper had some new info to share.
According to the guy at the St Claire petrol station, there had been some kind
of UFO nutter in to talk to him. Jasper and Jude had been able to get a business card and were heading out to search his home. On the card, however,
the guy had written “Room 9, Merle’s Shut-Eye Motel”. With a bit of luck, he
was still there…
He returned to his table and quietly discussed this with
Knight. They finished their food and got back in the car. First port of call
this afternoon was Bud Aldrich. They could have saved themselves the trouble. As soon as they broached the
subject of him blacking out and missing a period of time, the old man’s jaw clenched,
and no information was to be gained from him. They left before he got too
agitated and made their way to Louisa May. They could have saved themselves the trouble, as the result was identical. It
felt to Jason that the woman was embarrassed and would not open up to
outsiders.
They returned to the Shut-Eye Motel. Knight said he had some
skill in opening locks, so Jason had a quick think about a way to distract the
woman behind the reception desk. He went inside, blocking as good as possible
her view on the door of room 9, while Knight went to work. He told the woman he
needed to receive a fax and needed a large envelope. While she went inside the
office to find one, He took his DG mobile and keyed in the number to Agent Jagger.
Cutting the Englishman straight off from asking any
questions, he told him what he wanted and that he needed it immediately, then
hung up. He sent the receptionist back, this time for a small box. By the time
she returned, the fax machine started to vomit out the first sheets of paper.
Jason looked back and saw Knight walking to their room, shaking his head. He
made his way behind the counter, cutting off the receptionist’s objections with
a sharp “Sorry ma’am, government paperwork, can only be handled by Federal
agents,” and took the stack of papers Jagger had faxed.
An hour later they tried swapping roles, but it was clear
the woman was not going to be distracted as easily. They gave up and went back
to their room, waiting for a call from the others.
It didn’t take long for Jasper to ring them. They were unsure
what to do, as they were dug in on the hillside and were sure they’d lose
reception when they hiked up higher. The day seemed to have yielded little
information. Jason conferred with Knight
for a moment, they were going to have another go at the lock of room 9. Knight
put the idea forward to have Jude and Jasper go in and interrogate Bud Aldrich;
see if a tougher approach would result in answers.
Jason thought about this for a second. He didn’t like it, as
there was the risk that the old man would go and talk to someone, perhaps even
the sheriff, about some guys roughing him up asking the same questions those
Feds had asked only hours earlier. He made a decision and told Jude the
address, that the man has lost time and that they needed any info out of him
that he could be hiding. To finish off, he told Jude to take care of things and
make sure it looked like an accident. He looked over at Knight, gauging his
reaction to the last instruction. The agent didn’t object, but something in his
eye made clear cold-blooded murder wasn’t something he fully agreed with. Good.
At least one person on this team wasn’t a full-blown psycho…
After midnight, they changed into their dark clothes and snuck
out. Knight, using Jason’s lock picks, opened the lock in record time. Jason
slipped in, gun drawn and lit his flashlight. The smell of a dead body was
unmistakable. Quickly scanning the room, he only noticed clothes, some stacked tidily,
others chucked all over the floor, or stacked against the window or door, as if
to block something from entering. It looked like the warmest clothing had been
discarded, whereas the thinner items were still folded. Jason decided to leave
the bathroom, where the smell came from, for what it was for the moment and
searched the rest of the motel room with Knight. From behind the door they
could hear a steadily dripping sound. The only item that was of interest was
the laptop that was plugged into the wall. They disconnected it and set it
aside. That’s when they heard a much louder sound from the bathroom, as if
something had fallen into the water. It was time to check the bathroom. 
Jason opened the door and shone the flashlight in. The body
of Scott Adams was visible, in the bathtub, a pool of blood on the floor
underneath his limp arm, bled out from where he slit his wrists. No movement,
no sound, apart from the dripping of the tap. Knight pointed out a pale lump on the
man’s forehead. Jason aimed the flashlight at it, it looked like he had bumped
his head. As they were about to return to the room, Jason made one last sweep.
The bump was gone. There was a sound of something rippling through the water.
He told Knight to leave and closed the door behind him.
He called Jude to check in on them. They had been unable to
get more information out of Bud and the issue had been handled. They organised
to meet up and made their way back to the motel. Jasper handed over a disk with
an audio file. They hadn’t found much more than that at Adams’ apartment in
Knoxville, which made sense, as he had his laptop with him in the motel. Jasper and Jason began to try to get past the
password while the others got some sleep.
After a while they finally were able to get into the files.
They found a few documents relating to events in Groversville and were able to
play the audio file. It sounded garbled, but after a bit of tinkering with it,
they were able to increase the speed of the file and heard a voice saying “...dealing with. Has been a long time and
we have many things to do and you are not sure what you are doing. Stop now.
Stop now.”
The other document seemed to be a list of strange events in the area and a couple of paragraphs that didn’t make sense. As it was very different
in style to the other documents, it looked like there could be some coded
message in it.
Tuesday, October 2nd, 1996
Jason put it aside as his phone rang. Alphonse. The Old Man
told Jason that he should expect a parcel in the next few hours. Once it had arrived,
he had to call Alphonse back. Jasper and Jason caught a few hours of sleep, cut
short by a knock on the door. A man, clearly a federal agent, handed Jason a
box and left.
They opened it, finding six spray bottles in the box
together with a note. After reading the note, Jason called Alphonse back. They
quickly discussed the contents and Alphonse made it clear that it would reveal
the presence of the proto-tissue. It wouldn’t harm anyone infected though, so
it wasn’t a weapon. How to proceed was left vague, Alphonse parting words being
“You know what to do, Jason”.
He thought for a second. The only venue left to investigate
was town hall. The document mentioned what they already suspected: the aldermen
never left. The last thing he wanted was to go in, guns blazing, only to come
out and get into a firefight with the Sheriff and Deputy. If there was any
information to be found there, they had to be able to act upon it. A shoot-out
would not help with that. He was about to tell the others to get a few hours
more sleep, when a thought struck him.
“Let’s get this out of
the road. Everyone strip and get sprayed, so we at least can confirm we’re all
ok.”
Knight compelled first, under scrutiny of the others, who
observed with drawn weapons. As Jason sprayed a fine mist of the liquid a couple of tiny motes in the air became visible, revealed as a blueish purple colour. But the spray didn’t reveal anything on Knight's skin and he quickly
showered to get the chemicals off. Then Jasper. Same story. Jason
undressed and was given the treatment, revealing the massive scars on his back
and leg, burns and severe cuts, where someone of something had hacked at him, the
reminders of a different story. He showered and dressed, picking up his gun and
turning to Jude.
08:12am
“Let’s get it over with, Jude”
As the spray hit Jude,
nothing showed. At first. The moment he turned around, an area around the
kidneys lit up blueish purple. The weapons all raised immediately, ready to be
fired. This was not what Jason had expected. He sprayed the area again. Minute scars
crisscrossed Jude’s lower abddomen. He slowly backed away.
“Don’t move!” Jasper
called. Jason looked over and saw the look in Jasper’s eyes. The guy was close
to the edge, seconds away from blowing his teammate away.
“If you want to shoot
him, go ahead, but realize that you’ll be calling down the local cops on us.
Even though we will probably get away by shooting a way out of here, there’s no
way we’ll be able to finish this Op and put an end to what’s going on here…”
Jason looked at
Jasper, who held a raised gun at Jude and seemed less than a second away from
shooting the Agent. His knuckles turned white on the grip. Something in Jason’s
voice must have reached Jasper, because he blinked a few times and slowly moved
the finger away from the trigger, but kept it aimed at Jude’s head.
“It’s starting to burn,
guys…”
Jason nodded, the gun
trained on Jude’s torso.
“Slowly move to the
shower. Keep your hands where I can see them”
They all moved into
the bathroom which was too small for this kind of scene. Jason’s mind was
racing. When had this happened? What had happened? Did he get in contact with
something up in the hills?
Jude turned the water
on, and as it hit the chemicals that covered his body, the water turned purple. All
of it. Jason raised the spray bottle and squirted it at the stream of clear
water that came from the shower head. Purple.
“It’s in the water…”
Jasper almost lost it.
“I TOLD YOU! I FUCKING
TOLD YOU BACK IN MEADOWBROOK!!! IT’S IN THE WATER!!!!”
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