Part 4
As soon as they arrived at the cave-in site, Jasper had his handheld scanner out and began tapping on the screen to activate different displays. "This is amazing!" he said, excited. "There are thousands-- hundreds of thousands of them! How could that be?" He adjusted the display again, filtering the content.
Kylie looked over his shoulder. He tapped through the different screens too quickly for her to keep track. She didn't understand the readouts anyway. "Why?"
He started when she spoke, having forgotten her presence. He glanced at her. "W-why what?"
"Why are there so many? Didn't you say they collected all of the first ones? And you only released a few?"
Jasper nodded. "There were only five thousand or so..."
"Five thousand? Isn't that a little more than 'a few'?" she demanded.
"Well, uh, they're..." he held his fingers close together, "...very small."
"Why are there so many now?" Burt demanded, getting the discussion back on track.
Jasper shook his head. "I have no idea. There shouldn't be this many." He looked around for inspiration, but found only Kylie glaring up at him. "Let me... ah... I'll get the other equipment."
They hauled the rest of the equipment out of the truck and started scanning with that. Jasper said little while he quickly assembled the equipment, and other than a few "Hmmmm's" and "Oh's" once the displays came to life, he gave Burt and Kylie few clues to the status of the analysis, or the extent of the nano's spread.
Kylie broke first.
"I say we kill him."
The two were sitting on a rock, watching Jasper scurry back and forth, spouting technobabble periodically, and otherwise ignoring the two victims of his "experiments run amok."
Burt's eyes slid over to her just long enough to ascertain that she wasn't making any threatening moves toward the scientist. She only sat with her chin on her knees, her glittering eyes following his every move. "Are you serious?"
She glanced his way. "No," she replied glumly.
Burt shook his head at her theatrics then focused on Jasper again, his mouth in a thin, flat line. There seemed to be some excitement, he thought, from the man's suddenly changed behavior. He was flitting from box to box, and double-checking their readouts with the custom device he held in his hand.
Before Kylie change her mind and decide to do something drastic, Burt slipped off the rock and walked toward Jasper.
Kylie jumped down to follow close behind him.
"What have you found out?" Burt demanded.
The scientist jumped and spun, surprised at Burt's sudden appearance. His eyes flicked to Kylie, at Burt's shoulder, then back to somewhat safer ground.
"I had no idea how there could be so many!" he told Burt fervently. "I thought there was a glitch in the system or maybe MNI hadn't been as-as-as thorough as they, well, should have been, in cleanup, but no! There really are about two million of them, all through this rubble. It's impossible, I don't see how, and it just can't happen, but there they are!"
Jasper beamed up at Burt as if that explained everything.
"What happened?" Kylie demanded, as Burt opened his mouth.
Jasper started again. "My experimental nano has somehow replicated with MNI's nano that got left behind and they've created a hybrid," he said. His eyes darted from Kylie to Burt and back again. "Didn't I make that clear?"
"No, you didn't," Burt said, his chin thrusting out belligerently.
"But, but, but-- Do you know what this means?" Jasper continued, oblivious to Burt's coming explosion. "They did this all by themselves! I haven't programmed them for anything like this, and I know MNI wouldn't--"
"Those things are destroying my valley!" Burt bellowed.
Jasper's flow of words stopped, mid-sentence, his mouth still open and ready to talk. It suddenly dawned on him that these less enlightened people might not be as keen as he on the obvious scientific breakthrough as this was.
"How do we stop them?" Burt wanted to know.
"Stop them?" Jasper blurted out. "But-- I-- Well... I... Ummmm... The, er, original strain could be deactivated by a specific radio frequency."
"And the new kind?" Kylie demanded.
"I hadn't... um... I hadn't actually got that far..." Jasper admitted.
Kylie and Burt exchanged a look.
"So what did you intend to do with them," Kylie persisted, "just let them run rampant through our valley?"
"Oh no!" Jasper said on a proud grin. "They have a retrieve signal. I can just call them and they return."
"And what about this hybrid?" Burt asked.
"They-they should..." Jasper consulted his handheld device again, clicking on the display with his stylus. "They should, I think, be deactivated with the original ones... If they use the same frequency... I think."
Kylie glanced at Burt again when she heard a strangled sound from him. "And do you know this frequency?" Kylie asked, forcing her voice to calm. She recognized Burt's look and knew she'd never be able to pull him off Jasper if Burt gave in to what he so obviously beginning to want to do.
Jasper nodded, then shook his head. "I do," he finally admitted. "But-- I just-- I don't-- I haven't actually got the equipment, really. Not here. I can't reproduce it and, well, broadcasting, I'd--" He spread his arms wide, indicating the whole valley. "I couldn't broadcast it. I'd--" He shook his head helplessly.
Kylie looked to Burt and watched him squirm his mouth around as he often did when coming up with the solution to an insurmountable problem.
"You can reproduce the signal if you had the equipment?" Burt confirmed, his eyes skeptical.
Jasper nodded fervently.
Burt looked to Kylie, rubbing his chin. "The ABDS might work."
"Yeah!" she said. "We could hook it up to that! It's all over the valley."
Burt shook his head. "The modulator unit's blown."
Kylie's shoulders slumped. "There's got to be a way, Burt."
He stared at her a minute more, as if for inspiration. Then his brow cleared. "I've got an idea," he said.
Kylie beamed, and turned to Jasper. "He's always got a solution," she explained.
"It's in the shed behind Tyler's garage," Burt informed them.
As they neared town, Jasper once again bouncing around in the back of the truck, Burt slowed the power wagon and brought it to a stop. He scowled at the town then turned angry eyes to Kylie.
She was affronted. "It's not my fault your fan club's still here," she said.
Burt shook his head and looked away.
"We could call Larry," Kylie said. "He could get the stuff, maybe."
"No," Burt countered. "It's too big to move. It'll have to be set up in there."
"It's almost dark," Kylie suggested. "Can't we sneak in from behind? They're all over at the water tower. If we come in from around behind Nancy's - go real slow so they don't hear us..."
Burt shrugged. It could work. "We'll never get near it if they see us."
Kylie gave him a sympathetic look and patted his arm. "That bad, huh?"
Burt gave her a look. "You have no idea..."
They parked the truck a dozen yards behind the garage and scurried quietly toward the building, first Kylie, then Jasper, following Burt.
He only paused once to make Kylie stop humming the theme from Mission Impossible.
Kylie, wearing dark red top and blue jeans, was able to hide in the shadows long enough to slip around front and open the door, then let the men in through the bolted door at the side.
Burt hurried over to a tarp-covered mound in the corner without bothering to turn on the light. He whipped the tarp back and uncovered a huge monstrosity of an electrical device.
Even Kylie could tell it had to be decades out of date.
"I'm doomed," Jasper said. He looked plaintively from Burt to Kylie. "I can't work with that. I have no idea how to-- Out there is nanotechnology - you've got-got-got vacuum tubes."
"It will still transmit a frequency," Burt insisted, stooping behind the machine to hook it up and turn it on. "We'll loop it through the ABDS and cover the whole valley." The machine hummed darkly a few minutes, but it finally flickered and switched on, lights and dials coming to life one by one. Burt reached for one of the dials and turned to Jasper. "What's the frequency?"
"I-- Just--" Jasper flipped open his handheld and started tapping away at the screen.
"How's this supposed to work?" Kylie asked, as much for information as to distract him from glowering at Jasper while they waited for him to do what he should have already done on the ride there. Kylie's tactic wasn't lost on Burt. At least she wasn't trying to strangle Jasper anymore. He gave in and turned his attention away from Jasper.
"We have to set up this equipment to communicate with the equipment at the ABDS site. That equipment will receive the signal, broadcast it through the valley and, if this scientist knows what he's talking about," Burt's expression made clear what he thought were the odds on that, "these nano-machines will deactivate."
"All right," Jasper broke in. "I've got it." He showed Burt the screen, and the two fiddled with the dials, getting it set up properly. The old equipment was a little more temperamental than current technology.
Kylie took a quick look out the windows. "Uh-oh," she said.
Burt quirked one eyebrow at her, his mind still more on his task than her.
"They're starting to line up for a tour," Kylie warned. "Makes things a little tricky getting out of here."
Burt shook his head, but turned back to focus his attention on the equipment while Kylie made sure the fan club groups weren't getting any closer to the shed.
"All right, let's go," Burt said when the equipment was set up. They all started for the back door, but Burt hesitated.
"What?" Kylie asked.
"We should secure this," Burt said. "I wouldn't want anyone coming in here and disturbing the equipment. Who knows what the wrong frequency will do to those destructive little machines." Burt had his eye on the women they could just barely see through the two grimy windows on the front of the shed.
"Oh no," Jasper agreed. "If the frequency is off even a-- Well, that--"
Burt and Kylie's heads swiveled to regard him inquiringly.
He looked from one to the other. "It... um... It would be bad."
"We better lock it up." Kylie agreed. She looked around. The front door had a lock, but the back door was just held in place by a bar - no way to secure that from the outside. "You two go out the back and I'll lock up and follow."
It was clear Burt didn't like the plan. "They're sure to see you if you go out the front."
"So? They're not my fan club." She pushed at him and the two men went out the door. Once she bolted it in place she went to the front and peered out. The women were chatting excitedly amongst themselves. They wouldn't even notice her.
She waited a few moments to give Burt and Jasper time to get to the truck, then opened the door a fraction and slipped out as quietly as she could. As she turned the lock then pulled the door closed, the hinges gave a loud, high-pitched squeal. She froze in place, looking to see if the women had noticed. A couple of them turned to look, then went back to their conversation, dismissing her.
She breathed a sigh of relief, latched the door, and started for the truck.
Then she heard, "It's him!"
No need to ask who "him" was. With the rest of the women, Kylie looked up to where she knew Burt had to be.
Sure enough, Burt and Jasper hadn't quite made it to the truck before the women spotted them.
Suddenly, screaming, frenzied women were rushing past her.
Burt's expression was a classic she'd remember for the rest of her life. He clearly wanted to flee, but the man who single-handedly took on graboids, shriekers and assblasters refused to back down from a bunch of paltry women. His frozen posture and alarmed expression reflected his inner turmoil.
Jasper knew no such reluctance. He ran for all he was worth.
Kylie giggled. This was going to be... great. She thought about stepping into the house to get her camera.
The women quickly overtook Burt and surrounded him. He was captured. The ladies all jockeyed for a better position close to Burt and he jostled this way and that, trying to dislodge hands from places they shouldn't have gone. Kylie laughed out loud when one of them got his hat, but he ducked and disappeared, only to reappear a moment later with it back on his head.
Score one for the big guy, she thought. Then she wondered what else the women were grabbing for. From what she could make out of his expression in the fading light, it wasn't something anyone had been grabbing for in a while.
Tyler's tour jeep pulled up and the lights illuminated the scene, allowing Kylie get a good look at Burt's expression.
The grin dropped away from her face. Burt had such a look of fearful agony on his face that Kylie's heart went out to him. She knew he was uncomfortable around people - strangers especially, and the more there were, the worse he got. If the people were women, he could sometimes almost panic. She wasn't entirely certain if he was completely comfortable around her all the time - definitely not when she was teasing him; and he knew by now that teasing was all it was. But these women weren't teasing. They were for real, and this wasn't "almost panic," this was the real thing.
She had to stop it.
She waded into the crowd, pushing and shoving. "Hey, fun's fun, and all," she shouted, "but the party's over!"
They weren't paying the least bit of attention to her. As far as they were concerned, she was just another female fan trying to get a good position next to their idol. And not a very big one at that. Most of these women, she realized, outweighed her by a hundred pounds or more. And they were desperate. She was strong, but in a shoving contest, her lack of mass was against her.
The group shifted and moved away from her as Burt tried to retreat. She got another look at his face, as he spotted her and threw her a pleading look.
This from the man who'd rather die horribly than ask for help...
Her lips thinned resolutely and her hand went to her hip. "Drastic times call for drastic measures," she muttered, as she flipped open the holster and pulled the Kimber. She started toward the crowd as she chambered a around.
BANG - BANG
The crowd parted like the proverbial Red Sea as the women turned to see where the shooting was coming from and instinctively scooted away from it at the same time. The voices and hubbub instantly stilled.
Kylie didn't slow, but she did lower her gun to point at the ground.
"Y'all need to keep your hands off my man!" she shouted in her best Texas accent. While they - and Burt - stood there stunned, she went to Burt and slipped an arm around his waist. "Come on, honey," she said loud enough for the crowd, and tugged at him. They made their escape while the women were still stunned.
Silently, they hurried to the truck. The two shared a carefully neutral glance once they were inside, then Kylie turned to put her .45 back in its holster as Burt turned the ignition and drove.
Kylie knew that glance was about the only thank you she was likely to ever get, and this was not the time to make any of the dozens of pithy comments that were flooding her mind.
Later, she promised herself.
