Monster (Gone 7)

She stopped in the parking lot of an In-N-Out, panting for breath as she resumed her normal form.

She was shaking. Her whole body, like she had fever chills.

For what felt like an eternity, Dekka sat there on her bike, sat with the engine still throbbing, as she tried to put together the pieces of what she’d just seen.

Living heads. A boy named Lashawn Wilkins from who knew where. A monster named Carl Pullings from El Segundo. A vast underground chamber of horrors with God only knew what other atrocities.

And murder. Hers, of Carl. Hers, of the guards with the blanks. And others.

One thing was clear: Tom Peaks had not waited for his ASO Mother Rock to be recovered before preparing the Ranch and its chambers of horrors. The secret underground at the Ranch must have taken years to build.

In fact, four years, she guessed. DARPA had been preparing since the FAYZ. DARPA hadn’t been waiting around; they’d been conducting ruthless, horrific experiments that testified to great fear, and great ambition.

Peaks was a criminal, a madman. A madman serving a government that had lost all remnants of decency. A government that had simply torn up the Constitution and used fear to justify horrors that belonged in the darkest pages of history.

Dekka knew she needed to get off the grid. She needed to avoid her home, her friends, anything Peaks and company might be able to track easily.

Where should she go?

Where should she point her bike?

But of course deep down Dekka already knew

where. She had made a promise to the man she killed. So, south. South to find Carl’s mother.

What do I tell her? How do I lie to her?

Then she spotted the unusually tall blond boy wearing nothing but a pair of stretched and baggy underwear. He saw her, too, and with a laconic grin stuck out his thumb.

“Who the hell are you?” Dekka demanded.

“I’m the guy who took out that helicopter. And I’d really like to get the hell out of here.”

“The pilot?” Dekka asked.

The white boy shrugged. “Last I saw, she was limping away.”

Dekka closed her eyes in relief. “Look, I’ll take you a few miles, after that you’re on your own.”

“Fair enough,” said Armo.

He swung a long leg over the bike and settled on the seat behind her, more than doubling the passenger weight on the bike. He put his arms around her waist.

“Careful,” Dekka snarled. “I’m not into guys, and I’m not in a great mood for bullshit.”

“Thanks for telling me,” Armo said. “Because sex was totally what I was thinking of right now.”

“You got a name?”

“I go by Armo.”

“Dekka.”

“Where we going, Dekka?”

“Home,” she said.

Dekka turned her bike south, south along the Pacific Coast Highway, which would eventually take her to Carl’s mother in El Segundo.