Half Blind (The Technicians #13)

Chapter 1- Chemistry

(Last Chapter of Stone Blind )

D arkness descended from the clouds, creating a murkiness to the middle of the day. Heavy winds howled as the forces gathered, galloping down the open highway in brusque gusts, pushing leaves and debris like paper. Brushes with heavy winds pushed against the truck, nearly forcing the vehicle off the road. In the truck's cab, the driver’s hands clutched the steering wheel as anxious eyes searched the roadway for an ingress to rest until the storm passed. Seeing no options for safety, the driver continued along the roadway, careful of his speed.

For a moment, the pack of howling winds abated, allowing the driver to relax. If he could make it to the next town, there was a possibility of a chance. His journey thus far had been long and arduous, and more than anything, he wanted some ground time out of the vehicle. Two weeks. Two weeks he’d been driving, coming up from Guatemala on the Pan American Highway, taking back roads and narrow streets to avoid cameras and detection as he made his way to Elyria, Ohio. The driver needed a new start, a new life, and a new name. The one he currently owned was dirt. Along with the name being dirt, people whom he served beside for years wanted his body buried deep alongside his name.

“I shouldn’t have taken the job,” he said, grasping to the steering wheel for dear life.

A co-worker, if you could call him that, had come down with a hard case of COVID and couldn’t make a high paying black ops assignment in Central America. His first thought was to turn it down. Rarely, if ever, did he do work with a fresh crew that he didn’t know. Not only did he not know them, he’d also never heard of several of the men, but his eyes were on the paycheck. All he needed was one more fat check and he could pay cash for the farm he wanted in Kentucky, get a few horses, and live the tranquil life. In hindsight, the amount he had would have brought down the points and made the mortgage easier, but in his world, no one wanted a paper trail of monthly payments.

“Nothing in this life is easy,” he grumbled as the wind picked up again. This time, the howling turned to growling, and the friendly chase of the wind began an aggressive pursuit of the vehicle. The sound of a freight train on steroids came at him, pushing the truck sideways in the road against the strength of the wind.

“Shit,” he said, looking for a place to pull off, but the rain began to fall in heavy droplets.

The windshield wipers swiped back and forth, trying to keep pace with the aggression of the downpour, but failed miserably in keeping the windscreen clear. At this rate, he’d be lucky to find anywhere on the open road to ride it out. Just as he thought there might be a chance, a howling gust of wind encircled the truck, lifting it from the road, hurling the vehicle into the air across an open field, and dumping the truck on its side. The driver, strapped in and gasping for air, struggled mentally between staying inside the vehicle or taking his chances outside in the elements. Darkness covered the truck, then the driver as he passed out from the impact of the crash.

*****

H E DIDN’T KNOW HOW long he’d been unconscious, but when he came to, his pants were wet, crusted blood was caked on his forehead, and a headache from hell greeted him like an old lover. In the backseat was his overnight bag with the last pair of clean underwear and a one semi-funky pair of jeans. He wore his last pair of socks with a hole in the toe and half the heel was eaten away from the wear inside of his second favorite pair of boots. Struggling, he unfastened the seat belt, pushed open the door of the pickup, and climbed out slowly.

The field where he’d landed, now littered with debris and what looked like the remains of a dead chicken, meant a farm was nearby. He knew there had been no sign of life from the direction he’d driven, and he prayed there were people ahead. Night began falling, and he needed to get a move on if he were to find a place to rest for the evening.

“Damn it,” he said as he tried putting weight on his right leg. Something was hurting, but he didn’t have time to nurse it. It wasn’t broken; therefore, he would not try to fix whatever was happening below his knee. Safety was his priority.

A sign ahead read “Butler County” and he did not know where that was, but the last reading on the GPS told him the end destination was 234 miles away from the current location to Elyria, and he had a busted-up truck, a stack of cash, and an injured leg. He began walking along the side of the road, weary from the two weeks of driving. He was weary from the life he led. He was simply too weary to continue on for much longer. The non-quit commitment in his head wouldn't allow him to stop even though his feet and body craved the rest. Five miles down the road, and a bit over the horizon, he saw lights.

A farm. A small farm with a barn. The barn meant he could rest in tonight, and maybe in the morning seek help from the farmer to get a tow for his truck. Right now, he simply wanted to rest.

He eased his way onto the land, searching for cameras and finding none, and he made his way to the outbuilding. Darkness descended, but he could clearly see half of the roof was no longer there after being pulled off by the same storm which put him on his feet; achy feet that wanted to rest. Inside the barn, an eerie feeling surrounded him and he stopped.

“Something is not right,” he said, looking about for a weapon. He spotted a spade on the wall and grabbed it.

Slowly, he moved forward as the tail of something slithery double-backed and came at him. “Holy shit,” he said as the hood of the snake spread wide.

He tossed his bag at the reptile, catching it off guard and bringing the spade down hard on its head, severing the body from the fangs. Barely having a moment, he turned to spot another venomous snake that had no business being in Ohio, or even in North America for that matter, and he made quick work of ending it as well.

“What in the hell have I walked into?” he asked, holding the spade and walking the space.

Carefully, he moved, checking each of his steps, looking for more, but finding the two vivarium cages. “Good, there were only two of those fuckers.”

On a shelf next to an empty workspace sat a jar of what used to be pickles. At least he hoped it was pickles. Unscrewing the cap, the tart scent of vinegar and pickling spices met his nose. There was an empty glass, and he emptied the pickling water into it. The jar would be the new home for the venomous heads that he scooped up on the spade, dumped in the glass jar, and sealed it tight.

Fatigue came at him in a rush. In the corner, he spotted a cot with a pillow. Gratitude overwhelmed him as he leaned back on the cot, inhaling the soft scent of jasmine. The cot belonged to a weird ass woman who owned a pet cobra and a Gaboon viper.

“I bet in the back somewhere are a bunch of Bunsen burners with skeleton heads,” he said softly before succumbing to the need for sleep.

****

W ILL LIGHTENING, THE local weatherman, was a bald-faced liar. Each time that man put his face in front of Channel 8 WHMT- TV to broadcast the forecast, he got it wrong. Even on the days when it poured down raining cats, dogs, and limp lizards, Will Lightening stood in front of the camera with his oversized glossy white veneers, showcasing the randomly streaked highlights in his over permed hair, shouting to the rafters about the sunshine. Today he lied again.

Myrtle Kainker, PhD, a chemistry professor at Miami University, lay in the empty bathtub, holding onto the sides for dear life as angry winds howled in the late afternoon. It was a tornado. A tornado was bearing down on her, the farm, and everything she owned and that limp biscuit Will Lightening said prepare for sunshine and blue skies.

“As soon as I get on my feet, I'm going to bake that meat-headed meteorologist some brownies laced with laxatives to run the lying shit out of his tiny brain,” she said, slumping into the tub.

Loud winds whipped back and forth; each time the trees she promised to have trimmed next to the farmhouse scraped against the window panes, she swore under her breath. The rickety weathervane she promised to get repaired crashed through the back bedroom, breaking the glass. The barn roof, which desperately needed replacing, was being peeled off the building section by section, and her lab, reinforced in the barn's rear would be protected. A horrific thought went through her mind based on the type of research she was working on with live specimens and made her sit up momentarily in the tub. She’d forgotten to place the cages in the barn's rear within the protected room.

“Oh Lord,” she whispered, praying the specimens didn't get loose. The last thing she needed was for those creatures to mix with any of the local population. If they got free and managed to wreak havoc on the community, she would never forgive herself.

The following morning, clutching the pillow which made sleeping in the bath semi-tolerable and grateful the storm was over, she climbed out of the tub, treading down the stairs to the living room fearful of the amount of damage the farm had sustained. The girls who were her wards would be home soon from Cincinnati. The call had come through fifteen minutes ago. The girls were coming down the main road. Last night she'd been alone, not afraid but simply concerned.

Wearing rubber boots that came to her knees, she exited the front door, mentally prepared to see the damage left by the tornado. Instead, what she found was a strange, racially ambiguous man in her yard standing over the carcasses of her lab specimens. He also held in his hands her pickle jar which normally contained the morning pickled vinegar she enjoyed consuming before a cup of tea. Her eyes were then drawn to the contents of the jar.

“Are those my babies? Did you kill my babies?” she screamed at the man. “Who the hell are you? What are you doing here? And why did you kill my babies?”

The man, solid in form, loaded with muscles, and only wearing the remnants of a tattered wife beater tee, loose fitted jeans, and worn-out boots, frowned at the African American woman. He was surprised she was the owner of the home. After seeing the serpents, he had automatically assumed the property was owned by a man with missing teeth and a rebel flag on the front stoop, wearing a red ball cap. He also expected said owner to possess a mutt with a backwoods name like Butchie Ray. Instead, what he had in front of him was something entirely different. His curiosity was piqued.

Adding a bucket load of fuel to the fired-up situation, a car arrived with two teenage girls. Based on their expressions, there was a relationship between the woman in the boots who kept deadly snakes she called her babies and the teen girls. Jared found no familial resemblance, yet they were protective of the woman. Immediately, they flanked both sides of the snake whisperer. He respected that since he was, in fact, the interloper. He set down the pickle jar with the snake heads. He held up his hands to show he was unarmed and lowered the intonation of his voice.

“The tornado picked up my truck and dumped it with me inside behind the wheel in a field five miles down the road,” he explained. “I'm Jared Bane. I walked as far as I could with my injured leg and found your barn.”

“And you feel that gave you the right to walk into my barn and kill my babies?” Myrtle asked.

“No,” he said, “I walked into the barn and was greeted by the big one, standing upright with the full hood expanded. Then the Gaboon came around the corner at me, so I decapitated them both.”

“You had no right!”

“Right? You want to talk about right? You have two of the deadliest snakes known to man in glass cages in a barn in the middle of Ohio,” he said. “I'm certain no lab knows you have them, and in the middle of a storm, the glass was broken and they were free. What if, instead of me in the barn, one of these young ladies had walked in there? Would they have known what to do against a giant King Cobra? I think not. It could have been you as well.”

“So, I'm supposed to thank you? I think the hell not!” she said, snatching up the pickle jar with the two heads in it.

As she opened her mouth to give him an earful, another vehicle arrived. The crunch of the tires on the gravel was enough to lower the temperature on the conversation. The car came to a stop as a black woman stepped out, observing everything around her. Her eyes went first to the man standing over the dead snake bodies. Next, she took in the woman with the pickle jar with two snake heads from the bodies on the ground. Then she looked at the teen girls. None of the items went together.

Her response was, “Hmph.”

The woman holding the jar gritted her teeth. “On top of everything else, I forgot about you coming today.”

The girls asked, “Who is she? And who is he?”

Helen McDaniel simply smiled and said, “I am The Cranberry. You can call me Helen.”