The Outlier #4: Zappers Read online

all the time and everywhere. If the ancient gods were to return and breathe in the wireless, they would know all and see all, just as Dillon could, just as the AllDat Corporation did, just as the great nation-state spy-masters did. They were like gods, and so now was the enemy.

  The enemy was here, right here in Hicksville. Dillon knew it for certain now. The enemy would not have led him here for no reason. He wanted to be known. He craved attention, especially Dillon's attention. No one else in the world could have deciphered this code, these signals, this trap.

  “How do we find him?” he wondered aloud, causing the Commander to reply, after a minute in which she waited to see if he answered his own question,

  “Find who, sir?”

  “287 Plainview Road coming up,” she added, repeating the original destination she'd given him.

  “Oh right, thanks,” he said, and opened the window to look out when she stopped the car. There was nothing to see, just some typically over-large suburban houses surrounded by well-kept lawns.

  “Now let's take a look at 29 Larch Street,” he said, and the Commander started up the car again and headed towards Cedar Street, the most direct route to the new destination.

  “There's supposedly a computer company here,” Dillon muttered as they drove up the road. According to his maps, the Monument Technology Corporation was located at the address they just passed, but instead there was just a big white Cape Cod-style house with no sign indicating any sort of business at all. The entire neighborhood was completely residential, including Larch Street, where the house at the address he supplied was yet another tedious residence. The Commander pulled over, stopped the car, and awaited further instruction.

  Dillon was working his tablet furiously. The history of the Monument Technology Corporation was diffuse and confusing. It seemed to exist sporadically, some years filing taxes and other years not. It held several patents, none of which were related to each other, and most of which were not even remotely concerned with the fields of computers or even technology in general. Some were agricultural. Some were multicultural. Some were exceedingly obtuse, inventions which served no logical purpose. There was a formula for turning chicken bones into a feeble commercial paste. There was a recipe for combining unopened cans of tuna fish with standard staples and rusty deck nails to produce a useless semi-metallic substance of no value. There was a patent for the production of comic books with no illustrations. There was a procedure for the application of considerable effort toward no result. None of it made any sense at all.

  The registered owner of the Monument Technology Corporation was listed as a Mister Dennis Hobbs. Dillon found no other record of the existence of this Dennis Hobbs. There were other Dennis Hobbses of course, but he quickly proved to his own satisfaction that none of them were this one. The deed of the house at the corporation's alleged address belonged to a Jimmy Kruzel. Dillon knew that name. Kruzel was the operator of a popular chain of faux riverboat gambling establishments, and Dillon ascertained that Kruzel was at that very moment traveling in the newly thriving markets of Northern Africa, and had been there for the past month. Dillon reviewed some video of Kruzel's activities during that time, most of which involved alchohol and females. He found nothing in Kruzel's records to indicate much of any cerebral capacity, and certainly no signs of any mastermind capability. So who, then, was this Dennis Hobbs person, and what did he want with Dillon Sharif?

  The Commander did not need to be told to wait. She stopped at the house he indicated, parked the car, and prepared herself for another brief rest. Dillon got out of the car, walked up to the front door and knocked. He did not have to wait long. A man answered the door and smiled at Dillon.

  “Can I help you with something?” he asked. Dillon hesitated before replying, and in that moment surreptitiously snapped a photo of the man with the micro-camera he kept embedded in an ear stub. The man was nearly as tall as Dillon, perhaps six foot one, a bit on the heavy side, not in the greatest shape physically. He was very pale, nearly albino-shade, with short straw-colored hair and faint blue eyes. He wore a neatly pressed, white and blue-striped button-down long sleeve shirt, business slacks and loafers, as if 'casual' was a word he preferred to deny. Dillon was certain the man never wore a hat of any kind, but always dressed the same way, indoors or out, summer or winter or anywhere in between.

  “I'm looking for Dennis Hobbs,” he said. “Is that you?”

  “No,” the man said. “I don't know a Dennis Hobbs. Are you sure you're at the right place?”

  “Monument Technology Corporation?” he said. The man's smile widened.

  “It's just a house,” he said.

  “I see,” Dillon nodded. “Well, I'm sorry to bother you then. Thank you.”

  He turned to leave and noticed that the man did not move but kept staring after him as he walked back down the pathway. It was only when he reached the sidewalk, and looked back, that the man closed the door. Dillon paused for a moment and checked to see if the man might now be standing behind one of the windows on either side of the door, but he didn't see anyone. He crossed the street and was just reaching for the door when a a jolt of electricity blasted his whole body and knocked him off his feet. It felt like it hit him everywhere at once and though it lasted for mere milliseconds, the aftershocks kept buzzing through him as he lay flat on his back on the road. The Commander leaped from the driver's seat and was by his side in a flash. She checked his eyes first, then his heart and his breathing, and saw that he seemed to be all right, just momentarily stunned. She lifted his head up to make sure he wasn't bleeding under there. Dillon took a deep breath and started to get up. The Commander assisted him.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked.

  “A little fried,” he muttered, struggling to his feet. He held up his hands and inspected his fingernails. The tell-tale pattern was beginning to appear on them.

  “I was zapped,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” the Commander replied. “Toppled you right over. Never seen that before.”

  “Change of plans,” he said, as she opened the rear door of the limo.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Turn everything off – phones, computers, everything. Leave the car but take the stuff. We're walking. We'll find a cab or whatever, get to the nearest motel, as fast as we can. I've got work to do.”

  “Yes, sir!” the Commander was on it. She might not have looked it – in fact she looked absurdly like the outermost shell of the largest Russian nesting doll ever built – but the Commander was quick as well as strong, and soon they were on their way towards South Broadway, where she had noticed an All Rite All Nite Inn just blocks away.

  “No wi-fi,” Dillon said as they walked. The Commander did not know if he was speaking to her or to himself so she did not reply, but listened closely.

  “This man has access, and some kind of tool, more like a weapon. He's more than one step ahead but I've got to try and stop him.”

  Dillon had already formed a plan of action, and once they were checked into a room, he pulled out his extra-secure backup laptop from one of the carry-on bags. He connected it to the ethernet outlet and logged on to his own AllDat Corporation private virtual network. He felt sure there was no way the enemy could be aware even of the existence of this connection, so he had at least a momentary advantage. He uploaded the photo from his earcam and followed his hunch that the man was an employee of BWC. Scanning for a face match took only a few seconds and there he was. His real name was Mortimer Janssen. Thirty-two years old. Single. Originally from Norway. His current position was Systems Administrator, and Dillon quickly ascertained that Janssen had indeed been secreting data files off the mainframes. No doubt he had securely stored them somewhere else, somewhere it would be difficult for Dillon to locate, but at least he could put an end to future access now, with one click on the keyboard.

  But would that be enough? Dillon was still twitching from the zapping and boiling with a desire for revenge. He could certainly do it. Janssen had
read access to the internet and phone data of millions of people, but Dillon had both read and write access. He could insert data into Janssen's personal profile. He could download all sorts of illicit material into Janssen's work computer. He could revoke the man's driver's license, cancel his passport, place his name and image into every law enforcement agency's most wanted list. He could plant evidence, fabricate charges, put out APB's. He could literally do anything he wanted to this or any other person. Assuming this was the person, of course, that the man he'd met at the door of that house, the man who said he wasn't Dennis Hobbs was actually the man who was doing these things, zapping people at random, redirecting packages, damaging cars and liberating dogs. It had to be him. Dillon was certain of it, but just as he was about to begin that nefarious data entry work, he stopped himself and took a deep breath.

  This is my best chance, he said to himself. He's probably already getting away. Just to be sure, Dillon summoned up the latest surveillance video from the streets surrounding that house. Yes, there he was, Dennis Hobbs or Mortimer Janssen or not, in his silly dress clothes, sneaking out the back door only moments after Dillon had roused himself from the pavement. There was Janssen again, getting into a gasoline-burning compact car,