"If yer gonna smoke, do it outside the car, willya?"
"What's wrong with me smoking all of a sudden?"
"You ain't heard? Smoking kills you. Gives you cancer."
"That a fact?"
"Yeah, it's a fact."
"No shit?"
"Pick up a magazine, it's all over the headlines."
He flicks the cigarette out of the open car window, the smoke trail lazily following, as if trying desperately to remain in his grasp.
"Can't help it if I'm stuck in the lab all day, now can I?"
"Don't all university-science types already know about this?"
"If I was doing research on the side-effects of smoking, maybe I would've known about it. As you know, I'm doing different research. Stuff that's worse than cancer, I might add."
"I get it, I get it."
"Gentlemen, we are nearing the house."
I park the car on the sidewalk, we can see the house on our right side. Mack and Georgie both lean towards the window in order to get a better look at our target, satisfied with their observations, they turn and look towards me. Mack adjusts his hat and speaks with his game-face on, his squinting eyes and sharp jawline bringing out the scowl on his face.
"What's the plan boss-lady?"
"Me and Georgie go through the front door, I want you going through the back, watch your fire though, we don't know how many there are."
"Got it."
We all exit the black chrysler simultaneously, gathering at the back, I pop the trunk and hand Mack a shotgun and point him in the direction of the back door. Georgie reloads his camera and switches on his electromagnetic field meter whilst I hand him a pistol. I grab another shotgun along with some ammo in my vest. We walk past the white picket fence, down the paved path and knock on the door. A woman, can't be more than 25, opens the door. Mrs. Gallow, average housewife and completely unaware of the danger that she's in. I flash her my badge just long enough for her to see that we're here on business.
"FBI ma'am, we're here investigating some disturbances in this neighbourhood, I wonder if we could come inside?"
It's not an FBI badge but she doesn't notice, nobody does. It's not a question either, thankfully she complies.
"Of course officers! Anything I can do for you personally?" She asks in a surprisingly helpful tone, considering the equipment we're bringing into her house.
"Just wait for my colleague to take his readings. We'll have to ask you a few questions afterwards."
"Certainly!"
Georgie adjusts his bowtie and starts waving his electromagnetic reader over everything he can see. He's getting substantial numbers from the kitchen, bigger towards the hallway that leads to the bedroom. Mack walks in from around a corner.
"What's yer take on the lady?"
"Don't rightly know. Seems green to me."
"That a fact?"
"No, not a fact."
He hums in a thoughtful tone, holding his shotgun closer.
Georgie's hurried footsteps announce his return. Adjusting his glasses, he double checks his findings before looking up at us.
"There's definitely something here."
"Bad as the first time?" Mack asks, eyeing Mrs. Gallow from around the corner.
"Different."
"Different good or different bad?"
Georgie looks Mack straight in the eye, tilting his head up to meet his gaze.
"Different."
Mack holds his shotgun with both hands.
I hold up my hands to silence both of them.
"Mrs. Gallow, have you noticed anything… unusual about this neighbourhood lately?"
She thinks for a second, then as if she was suddenly interrupted, she replies in a voice that's far too calm for being faced with three armed G-men in her kitchen.
"Why no, everything's been perfectly normal 'round here! My son Jack's been taking up football and my husband recently got a job down at the mechanic store. That's just about everything that's happened within the past month for little ol' me." She finishes with a polite laugh and a smile you only see in ads.
We leave the house, Mack and Georgie are tense on both of my sides.
"Gentlemen?"
Mack speaks up first.
"Their backyard hasn't been mowed for about a good few months. Not something a family livin' the American dream would neglect."
Georgie interrupts.
"The son's name isn't Jack. I looked through the bedrooms and the name I found was Michael, not to mention that room hasn't been used for a good few months either. Combine that with the readings I got in there, I'd say we got some pretty bad news on our hands."
"You sure it's them?" I look at him with planning gaze.
"All the signs are there, it has to be."
"Gentlemen, I suggest we lock and load."
We wait at a diner about two blocks away for a few hours before we decide to flick the switch. Mack goes for the ham-sandwich special, Georgie sips on his coffee, going over his findings. I read the paper and munch on a hot-dog.
"Hey Mrs. Nyle, how come you got into the office?" Mack asks me through his teeth. I lower my paper in order to look straight at him.
"I had a reputation for showing, not telling." Mack puzzles over my admittedly cryptic answer.
"You were undercover?" He asks, crossing his arms on the table.
"Something like that." I reply, bringing up my paper again.
Georgie clears his throat and spreads out a few photographs over the cramped diner table.
"So, when I said that this was different, I meant it." His tone sounds foreboding, pointing to a few select pictures. They're snapshots of the house, different rooms. The kid's room looks way too neat to be inhabited, aside from the sheets. The sheets on the bed are crumpled, like they've been mangled and haven't been washed for months. In an otherwise untouched room, it stands out much more than it normally would.
"Has the kid been taken?" Mack talks into his fist supporting his jaw as he scrutinizes the photographs.
"Something's happened to him. He could be taken or be one of the pretenders."
"They're using a kid as one of the pretenders? God help us."
"Like I said, we don't know exactly what's happened. We don't exactly know what's going on with the whole situation, from what we know, these are the two possible options."
Mack keeps staring at the kid's moldy bed.
I interject. "Anything else you noticed?"
Georgie points towards a different photograph. "The bathroom's locked, all of them, in fact. A little strange, seeing as Mrs. Gallow was the only person home, don't you think Mrs. Nyle?"
It's true, she was the only person home.
"You think that Gallow is a pretender?"
"She's either a pretender or hypnotized."
"Let's hope for the latter." I grab my hat and point towards the chrysler.
It's dark when we make our way back to the house. This time, all three of us go through the back. The tall grass swishes as our shins brush past it, I open the door and gesture for Mack to go in first. Inside, the lights are off, every single door has been left wide open and our shoes still seem to make clicking sounds despite the hallways being covered in carpets. Mack gives me a signal that the living room and kitchen are clear. Georgie checks the bedrooms, gesturing for me to come over. The air is full of dust and something smells like like spoiled food. He points at the bed we saw in the photograph, it's been made. Georgie faces me, I can see the worry in his eyes, despite the dark and the reflective surface of his glasses.
"They've never done something like this before." He whispers, he sounds anxious.
"I think they're starting to catch on to us, maybe they saw me taking pictures and fixed everything when we left." He starts speaking faster, unintentionally louder. Mack appears in the doorway and puts a finger to his lips.
"Have we checked the bathrooms?" I whisper to both of them, both shake their heads.
"Then let's go do that."
Mack jiggles the doorknob to the first bathroom, looks at me and shakes his head before kicking the door in. The tiled floor is covered in puddles, the bathtub is half-full and the sink is leaking at a slow pace. Taking a few steps into the room, I can tell by the smell that this place hasn't been aired for a few months, water droplets are already forming in my hair and the creases of my suit are already moist. Strangely enough, the mirror is lying in the center of the room, facing the ceiling, as if it was precious, a thing of importance. It's been forcibly removed from the cabinet. I gesture for Georgie to take some photos before we move on to the second bathroom, which Mack also kicks open. This one hasn't been opened for months either. The bathtub is covered and filled with some brownish, oily substance that has been slashed onto the walls. Mack carefully walks over to the cesspool and nudges the tub with his shotgun.
The liquid moves, as if there was a water snake slithering through the drainage.
Jumping back, Mack points his gun at the tub and waits for something to happen.
Thankfully nothing does. Georgie photographs the oil slashes and the tub, we hastily make our way out before Mack shuts the door, tightly.
The last bathroom isn't locked. We raise our guns and let the door slide open. The smell of spoiled food returns in full force, laced with that same oily scent from the previous room. Mack's shaking hand fumbles with the light switch as fast as he can, flicking it up and down repeatedly before the light blinks on. For a split second, I see Mrs. Gallow standing by the sink, staring into the mirror placed above it before the light goes out and switches itself back on. For the second split second, I see her turning towards us. Her plaid shirt is covered in the goo we found earlier, her face marred with her own handprints, she's barefoot and her head tilts to the side as she recognizes us. I can hear Georgie breathing rapidly, taking sloppy pictures with one hand and shakily grabbing his pistol with the other. Mack sharply inhales and freezes.
Mrs. Gallow closes her eyes but she's still looking at us. She opens her mouth and her voice reverberates off the walls of the tiled room, her voice feeling like a concentrated beam of sound.
"Of course officers! Anything I can do for you personally?"
Georgie lets out a small whimper of confusion. It's the exact same words that she used earlier. Exactly the same, like a recording.
"Mrs. Gallows, put your hands in the air where we can see them!" Mack yells, his gun silently shouting in its own language. Mrs. Gallow sports a look of confusion, then blankness, at least I think so, her eyes are still closed. Her head tilts in the other direction, her eyes closed and her ad-smile plastered all over her face like plastic surgery gone wrong, the smudgy handprints on her face crinkling, making it look like the fingers are slowly curling into her flesh.
For the third split second, she runs at us.
Georgie fires first and misses, the bullet embedding itself into the wall behind her.
Mack fires with a yell that I can't make out, he manages to separate Gallow's hand from her arm, it falls limply onto the floor with a smacking sound. She leaps towards us, the perfect, toothy smile still on her face and her eyes still closed with her head tilted at a queer angle that seems wrong, I miss. She knocks me over and runs out the way we came in, her feet making sickly, unexplainable crunchy noises on the way out, Mack dashes after, his big frame slowing him down, Georgie scrambles after, camera in tow whilst I drag myself up. It's all for naught, her black trail in the tall grass is all we find, a creepy reminder of what we just saw. We stand on the porch, collecting ourselves before radioing back to base.
A few days later, me and Mack are standing outside Georgie's lab. He comes out in his labcoat, holding a clipboard with a grim expression on his face. His neat haircut seems to have been combed more times than necessary, making it look as fallen as his face.
"What do the results say Georgie?" I ask him.
"Well, we've run some tests on the tub of goo that we found, and Mrs. Gallow's hand. The results are… disquieting." Georgie looks up at us with the last word.
"Well, what's the matter?" Mack asks. Georgie straightens himself.
"Mrs. Gallow's hand isn't human. The actual bone seems to be made out of something else and it's been modified somehow, to look human-esque. The flesh is a different story." He pushes his glasses closer to his face.
"I won't bore you with the details so I'll summarize it for you. The skin and muscle are made out of the substance that we found in the tub. It seems that the pretenders are "making" humans from materials that we have never seen before. The goo we found can be manipulated to form different shapes, different molecular patterns, etcetera. Basically modeling clay for the flesh." Georgie waves his hands in a dismissive gesture and looks at us one at a time.
"However, the goo is not enough by itself, it needs the material that it's going to copy to be present within itself. A reference, if you will."
I realize what it is he's actually saying and curse myself.
"So… the previous disappearances, is this where they ended up?" Please don't say yes Georgie. Please.
"Sadly not, Mrs. Nyle."
"Whaddaya mean, "sadly not" Georgie? That means those people could still be alive!" Mack's frustrated words express my thoughts exactly. Georgie's face goes back to the fallen demeanor he was sporting when he first came out.
"The previous disappearances were all men and women in their late twenties to early sixties. We ran more tests on the goo and it wouldn't replicate anything with skin samples from people in the same age range. The goo needs a sample that's still in development and can be easily manipulated."
Mack looks at Georgie with a confused look. Georgie doesn't flinch with his next words, as if possessed.
"A sample significantly younger than Mrs. Gallow."
"A sample that the goo keeps alive to some degree."
The room goes deathly silent. Georgie looks back down at his clipboard as if ashamed. Mack palms his chin in shock. I frankly don't know what to do with myself. Wringing my hands seems so juvenile in retrospect.
"That why it moved?" Mack asks Georgie quietly, facing away.
"The goo doesn't need the whole body. A few… parts are enough." Georgie mumbles.
"Damn kid weren't one of the pretenders or taken." Mack sighs in disbelief.
I stand up from my seat and motion for my colleagues to follow. Georgie drops his clipboard and shrugs out of his labcoat, Mack takes a few seconds before hurrying after us.
"What now boss-lady?" Mack grumbles, looking dead ahead.
"We're going after our pretender, Mack." I coldly answer.
"She'll have left the suburbs, either the center of the city, or the countryside." Georgie suggests whilst reloading his camera. We pile into the black chrysler outside the office. I slam the door shut and fire up the ignition before looking into the back seat and my colleagues. Our eyes all share the same fire, and I know where we're going to look first.
"Gentlemen. I suggest we lock and load."
Mack and Georgie nod eagerly with determined faces.
"And boys?"
"Yes boss-lady?"
"Blow both of her hands off this time."
I see the first smile on their faces in days as we leave the parking lot.