April 18
10:23 p.m. EST
Albright would die if he didn’t run. That’s what the doctor said, at least.
He panted in the dark, wishing he’d been exercising as much as his physician recommended. It would be easier then, wouldn’t it?
Only circling three blocks.
Halfway around, he knew he’d do the same as always: stop running and start walking!
His lungs were filled with smoking acid, as was his heart. He could smell the burning. He lifted his fists higher, hoping it would relieve some of the stress on his body. He didn’t know anything about proper running form.
Just to the next stop sign, he told himself, then walk.
He’d heard on television that whether one ran or walked, one would burn the same amount of calories. He supposed it would be the same with his cardiovascular system; he’d burn the energy, sweat a couple liters, and keep his pulse rate high. He couldn’t say his heart wasn’t going!
It was under thirty degrees, but warm for an Ohio night in April. Thunderheads hid in the dark overhead, but the pavement his feet beat upon looked dry as concrete in a desert under the yellow street lamps. All the snow had disappeared, but there would probably be more by midnight tomorrow.
So why was he sweating?
Didn’t exercise but once in a week.
He could see the stop sign…relief!
Wiping away the sticky moisture on his face with his gray sleeve, Albright slowed to a gentle stride. His arms fell to his sides. His lungs sagged, waiting for his heart to rest.
He had a good excuse for not running. He’d been out of the country. The doctor couldn’t expect Albright to run in the mountains of Guatemala!
But why tell his physician he ran every night? For more Fenfluramine and Phentermine! They were supposed to lower his appetite. It wasn’t easy shaking thirty years of carefully acquired excess weight! Besides, he wasn’t supposed to get more than two weeks of the prescription at one time (which he did take regularly, and couldn’t do without), and Albright was going into his second month.
Nice doctor. He got his check.
Running fingers through his wet hair, he held his breath as a blue Chevy passed, vomiting invisible smog.
He’d left the Kalpa site in a hurry to get back to the states. It was very peculiar, he thought, passing the stop sign. Peterson had taken off the day before him, and Albright had no idea what had happened to Ulman…though he had suspicions.
A colorless Ford Taurus with bright lights rounded the corner.
With a snarl, Albright lifted a hand to protect his eyes.
He dropped it and listened to the car pull to the curb and die some twenty feet behind him.
So why had the University requisitioned KM-1, Dr. Albright’s codex?
Made him too famous, he figured.
That was fine. His first article was published, and a more thorough paper would be finished tomorrow morning.
It wasn’t illegal, his possession of KM-1. Not mostly.
He’d passed through channels…bribed, his way, that is. Wasn’t too hard to obtain the necessary paperwork. Easier to purchase than he’d thought it would be!
But the University had frowned on his measures and said they would keep it, “For legal purposes.”
Right.
Okay. Albright had plenty of notes and a complete set of photographed facsimiles of the manuscript and a great deal of the ancient library where KM-1 had been found. He’d already made plans for the publication of a set of volumes tentatively entitled The Hidden Library of Ancient Kalpa. But Dr. Peterson argued that they could not yet conclude that modern day Kalpa had any relation to the lost city, so the title would have to be amended after they’d learned more.
Peterson had decided to focus on the site itself, which to Albright’s knowledge still didn’t have an accurate mnemonic distinction. But Albright suspected that Dr. Peterson had smuggled a manuscript of his own into North America. His colleague was not beyond such actions, when necessary. Not that all professors of Archaeology and Ancient History would do such things, but…no one had found something so feasibly controversial as they had.
Or Ulman, rather.
Whatever. It didn’t really matter anymore.
Albright suspected Ulman had never left Guatemala.
There were reasons.
Was Dr. Ulman’s body rotting under a bush crawling with Mesoamerican spiders? Most likely. Unless the larger animals had gotten him.
Albright shook his head. He shouldn’t think about it.
Death.
He’d read in the Tribune that a Stratford University professor of History had been murdered. Why would anyone want to kill old Dr. Wilkinson? No taste for his archaic clothes? The paper said it may have been done by a convicted felon named Raymond Polaski, presently sought by the authorities. Red hair, short beard, blue eyes, Caucasian, medium weight, withered left hand, 35–40 years of age. Why did Albright remember the description so well?
Albright gazed behind him.
A shadow leaned against the stop sign he’d passed seconds before. A yellow light behind the figure solidified his silhouette. The phantom looked at Albright, but didn’t move. Albright thought he saw breath release like cigarette smoke into the cold air.
The professor turned away.
Now growing paranoid, Albright thought. Need a good ten hour nap!
Why would someone kill the professor? Angry student? It wasn’t unheard of.
Ulman was dead.
Wilkinson executed.
Where was Peterson?
Okay, Albright admitted to himself. KM-1 and the site might be worth murder…to some people.
Albright’s heart pounded. But for all the wrong reasons.
How would he get the manuscript back from the University? He thought of three ways to steal it. None of them would work. He wouldn’t make it as a criminal. There had to be a bureaucratic way.
He looked back.
Death moved in perfect stride with Albright’s feet.
It’s nothing.
A withered hand? Of course not. But the shadow’s flanges rested within coat pockets. There were no eyes either.
Albright kept walking, his feet involuntarily doing double-time as the ghost followed.
Sweat trickled into his right eye and stung as if two parts alcohol.
Albright wiped it away and thought about Peterson. Where was he anyway?!
Buried?
No. On sabbatical…of course, hidden from the world, trapped in his big house shrouded by empty night. Dr. Alexander Peterson, proudly writing his great archaeology text, no doubt centering on the newest and most outstanding of all Central American finds!
Still could be dead.
Albright glanced back.
The guy was closer.
Well what-d’-ya-know! Second wind!
Albright started jogging again, pounding the asphalt with cheap tennis shoes as he crossed to the end of the last block.
Down to the next stop sign, then left. Almost home.
He turned back.
The shadow jogged with him. Same pace? Just a little closer.
Albright made for the end of the block at top speed. It had been years since last his legs felt the strain of sprinting. They’d forgotten the correct coordination.
Throwing himself forward, feeling the killer puffing with poison white breath on the back of his ears, Albright let his mouth hang loose.
Had to get home!
He didn’t care if anyone saw him flying like an out-of-shape fool.
He hoped someone did!
He heard the feet slapping the ground behind him.
He felt the shadow overpower his mental energy; a ring wraith from Tolkien’s world, commanding his feet to stop.
Albright refused to listen.
Running mad. He pumped his fists from his hips to his cheeks.
The weight of his body bounced.
But I’m not that fat!
Toes pointed. Heels kicked against the thorns behind him.
The power of the sprinting shadow reached at him with giant hands.
The air chilled.
The hands grabbed Albright’s left forearm.
Albright screamed, but kept running.
The black beast, the murderer, the dark assassin had him, but didn’t.
His head swam with a white mist.
Albright didn’t stop screaming.
He turned the corner, ignoring the claws, the knives, stabbing his arm.
The shadow commanded the ground.
The curb lowered beneath Albright’s feet, then rose abruptly.
Concrete hooked Albright’s right toe.
The dark sky disappeared. white lightning flashed inside his eyes.
Albright rolled on his back, dropping into the gutter. His head roared with pain as if run over by a truck. He felt cold wetness in his hair.
The shadow stooped over him, breathless.
The streetlight behind the being created a halo of fire around the black hole in man shape. An alien. A spirit. An executioner. Death himself!
Talons tore at Albright’s left arm.
Albright grabbed his chest with his right hand, opened his mouth more widely than his watering eyes…and never closed it again.
April 18
8:33 p.m. PST
“Thanks for coming, Porter,” said Kinnard, looking out of his drapeless window into solid blackness. “I’ve gotta meeting I’m already late for, but I had to talk to you before you went home today.”
“If I had a phone in my office, you’d be to that meeting right now,” Porter said, casually taking a seat. The white walls of Kinnard’s room and the soft color of the bookshelves contrasted the window and the cherry wood desk. “I think you need an interior designer.”
“To make my office looked as stripped as your own?” Kinnard said, forcing a small smile. He moved to his chair, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. “You won’t need a phone, Porter.”
“Well, I figure-”
“You won’t be in the office long enough.”
Porter’s playful grin froze. His eyes went dead.
Kinnard looked at him for a moment with sobriety in his telepathic words. But, of course, Porter couldn’t understand. “I suggest you simplify your dissertation. Cut all the corners you can.”
“I thought I was already doing that. I only have a month left,” said Porter, sensing an unrevealed weight in the room.
Kinnard felt a immense surge of emotion. He could see Porter’s predicament better than anyone else. Including Porter. He knew how much this doctoral candidate needed him. But what could Kinnard do? He didn’t have the strength to say what needed to be said, and he didn’t have the power to alter the situation.
Porter let his eyes drop as he waited. He scanned the scattered papers and books on Kinnard’s desk, as Kinnard shot him short glances. A bent copy of American Archaeology with a female figurine on the cover, rested on top of a number of other magazines. Stacks of unread research papers choked one corner of the table, threatening to topple and roll off. A copy of Newsweek, hidden just under Truman H. Campbell’s, The Atlantis Bridge: The Egyptian/ Mayan Family.
Porter picked up the book. “Not your regular reading,” he said to the professor of Near Eastern Studies.
“How is it going with Ms. Alred?” said Kinnard, straightening his briefcase in preparation to leave. In reality, he was just hiding the nervousness in his hands.
“You actually taking this seriously, Dr. Kinnard?” Porter said, lifting The Atlantis Bridge and flashing the glossed cover at his supervising professor.
“I don’t know what to take seriously anymore.”
With a shrug, Porter said, “As well as you probably would have guessed. I know it wasn’t your idea to put me with a partner. No one’s ever liked working with me!”
“That’s how it is?” Kinnard said.
Porter, who had pushed his way to a grin, let it slip away. He nodded.
“I’ve enjoyed working with you.” Kinnard pulled a stubborn file from his leather bag, tearing the card and warping the pages in the process.
“You know, you’ll subconsciously give those papers a lower grade because they’re hashed?” Porter said, eyeing the manila folder.
“Alred’s a great lady. Top of her class. Excellent woman,” said Kinnard, letting the folder hit the floor to his right. “You should marry her; tell her your middle name.”
“Always looking out for me,” Porter said.
Kinnard looked at him with sober eyes. His eyebrows high, his eyelids drawn together, he bit the inside of his bottom lip and said, “I don’t like this.”
“Still fighting with your wife.”
Kinnard sat and leaned back in his chair.
Porter lifted himself to the desk. “I’m kidding with you. Who wouldn’t feel the tension in this room?! It’s like cigar smoke from six card players trapped in an office the size of mine without a vent.”
Kinnard nodded and gazed at the edge of his desk.
“Don’t worry,” Porter said through the silence as heavy as iron. “I’ll get my dissertation done.”
“I’ve already left a message on Alred’s answering machine,” Kinnard said.
“I’ve heard of those contraptions! Setting up a date for me?” Porter said, sitting back again. The chair groaned beneath his weight. He put his hands behind his head and tried to close his eyes, which were laced with red streaks in a shattered glass pattern. “I’m really not interested in Erma Alred. I just wished she’d like me a little. The D in my name is starting to mean Discord, I think.”
“I’ve told her everything, so she won’t yell at you when you spill the news.”
“Good!” Porter said. “Whatever it is, I don’t think I can stand looking into her cold green eyes again. Albeit, they are kinda nice-”
“They’ve changed the date for dissertations. All papers are due on the fifth of May,” said Kinnard.
“I was baptized on that day,” Porter said.
“You and Alred will also argue your material on the fifth.”
The air chilled.
“But…you said…I have till…the twenty-first,” said Porter.
“They’ve moved it up,” Kinnard said without looking up.
“It says so in the schedule,” Porter continued, “I read it! I have five weeks!”
“I’m sorry, Porter.” Kinnard put his dark-rimmed glassed back on.
“That’s an implied contract! They can’t change it!”
Kinnard stood, the light gleaming off the top of his head. He kept his face hard. There was nothing he could do. There was no point in wasting breath and any more emotion over it.
Porter got to his feet, realizing he was wailing at the wrong person.
Kinnard walked him to the door. “You have a little more than two weeks. Don’t waste your time making formal complaints. They’ll only add to your ruin.”