Bad Jack ((Ascension: Book 1))

BAD JACK

(Ascension: Book 1)

ADAM MOON

C
opyright © 2013 Adam Moon

All Rights Reserved

To my wife for helping me get rid of the bodies

and keeping her trap shut about it.

I’ll kill you if you talk.

Love and kisses,

Your watchful husband.

Chapter 1: Job Offer

Jack
Mayberry folded up the printed email and stuffed it in his back pocket when he saw the stranger waiting for him at the booth. It was his favorite restaurant, just a few blocks from his apartment so it was an easy call when he was asked to come up with a meeting place. The email hinted at a job offer; that was all Jack needed to get off his tired ass and give up a couple hours of his Sunday afternoon. He already had a job at Millworld supervising a bunch of illegal immigrants that fixed filthy used pallets, but fuck that place. He’d take a pay cut to get out.

As
he approached, the man quickly turned in his seat, his expression paranoid. Jack smiled at him but the smile wasn’t returned. For a second he wasn’t sure this was the right guy. The man stood up from the booth and forced an uncomfortable smile that looked more like a pissed off scowl. He introduced himself as Mr. Humboldt, no first name was offered. He looked like a short Colonel Sanders, with grey hair instead of white. Unlike Colonel Sanders, he wasn’t cheerful; he seemed frazzled. Mr. Humboldt beckoned for him to take a seat and they both sat down.

Jack started by digging out the email and flattening it on the table. “From the email here it looks like you might have a jo
b offer, is that right?”

“The job’
s already yours if you want it,” said Mr. Humboldt getting straight to the point. His eyes darted about as he dabbed at his temple with a napkin. “Before we begin I have a couple precursory questions for you that may seem a bit strange.”

Jack nodded, expecting the usual bullshit interview questions like ‘where do you see yourself in five years
?’, or ‘what would you do if…?’ He wasn’t expecting the stranger to ask him if he’d been followed to the restaurant.

He
shook his head. It hadn’t even crossed his mind to check and see if he’d been followed. Why would it?

“Are you sure about that?”

Jack nodded but the question put him on edge.

“Do you currently have a girlfriend or
a boyfriend?”

He must have already known Jack wasn’t married.
But how did he know this? What else did he know? He let the suspicions slide away. He needed a new job in the worst way.

“
Nope, no girlfriend.”

The man waited silently
, deliberately, until he added, “Or a boyfriend.”

“This job
may require you to be away from home for long periods of time. Will that be a problem for you?”

“No, I don’t have friends
these days and my family all passed away a long time ago.”

“Good, good
,” said the man, oblivious. “This job is of a secretive nature. Can you be trusted to keep certain aspects of your employment confidential?”

“Of course
.” He didn’t exactly know if that was a lie or not but apparently it was the right answer. This job interview had quickly devolved into something out of the norm.

“Did you bring the two forms of ID?”

Jack nodded. He fished his driver’s license and Social Security card from his wallet.

Humboldt
looked them over, seemed satisfied enough, and then picked a stack of papers off of the bench beside him. It was about three inches thick. Jack cringed when he discovered he was supposed to read through it all and sign, date, and initial each section. The man pushed the stack across the table just as the waitress arrived. They both ordered coffee. Humboldt asked for a cinnamon stick for his so Jack felt obligated to do the same. He hated cinnamon but he’d tough through it if it earned him brownie points with his new employer. Just then he realized he knew nothing about the job. He wasn’t about to go through all this paperwork if the pay was lousy or the job was crap.

“What’s the pay like?”

He flipped to section four at Humboldt’s bidding. He was momentarily stunned. He looked from the figure on the sheet to the man across from him. “This can’t be right. I have a psychology degree but I’ve never actually used it. Even if I was working in the field I’d never make close to this much money. You must have the wrong guy.”

“I can
’t tell you any more than what’s printed in that stack of forms. But I can tell you that you’re exactly the man we’re looking for. Now come on, let’s get you started so you can get to work.”

“And what’
s the work I’ll be doing?”

“I’
m not at liberty to discuss that.”

This threw
him for a loop. How could anyone take a job without at least having a vague idea of what the job would entail? He could only guess that his knowledge of psychology would be put to use and that, perhaps, there would be a patient or two
,
but that didn’t make much sense either. Just about every psychology major in the world had a leg up on him since he’d never actually gone into the profession. He didn’t raise these new doubts with Mr. Humboldt. He really did need a new job and he decided he really did deserve such a huge paycheck.

He filled in the normal crap:
his full name, social security number, date of birth. Then he flipped through page after page, signing and dating as he went. Even half-assing it was laborious. Most of it was non-disclosure stuff laced with threats of litigation and legalese that he didn’t care to decipher. His coffee was cold by the time he was done. He pushed the stack back across to Humboldt and was a little taken aback when the man snapped a picture of him.

By way of explanation he said, “It’s for your new employee ID.”
With that, Humboldt stood up. “I’ll be right back.”

Jack watched him walk from the diner and get into an SUV sitting outside
the restaurant. He could have sworn he caught a glimpse of a uniformed figure sitting in the passenger seat of the SUV just before Humboldt closed the door. Was it a cop or personal security? Had he just imagined it? Humboldt returned within a couple of minutes, handing him a new, still warm badge with his picture on it. The photo was crystal clear. His black hair even had glints of light reflecting off of it. It was obvious that the picture-taking had startled him; his green eyes were too wide and he wasn’t smiling. His title was “research” and it read “access limited”. His date of birth was printed clearly as March seventh, 1981. It gave his height as six foot and his weight as one hundred and sixty pounds. The info must have come from his driver’s license because it was wrong. He’d gained about ten pounds since the last time he had to renew it. He put the ID in his wallet along with the drivers’ license and social security card that Humboldt slid back across the table to him.

“So w
hen do I get started?”

Humboldt
was ready with another card; this one looked like a business card. It had an address printed across the front. “Do not lose that card or the ID badge. Don’t let anyone else see them until you arrive tomorrow at 0700 hours. If you need to tell your boss that you quit, now’s the time. Don’t tell him anything about our meeting.  Don’t mention it over the phone or down at the bar. We will know if you talk. I doubt I’ll see you again so I wish you the best. Good luck.” The man shook his hand and walked out, leaving Jack alone with all of his doubts and questions. But then he remembered the money and his enthusiasm blossomed.

It turned out h
e didn’t need to call his boss because, as usual at any time of the day or night, his boss called him to tell him about some stupid thing or other. This time it was about an OSHA related matter. He asked Jack to come in early to get the place put straight before OSHA got there. This wouldn’t mean he’d get to go home early either, it just meant the boss was using him as free labor because he was a salary guy and he couldn’t get overtime or even straight pay for additional hours worked. He also told Jack that they might have to work this Saturday and then chastised him for not meeting quota this past week. Jack smiled the entire time and almost laughed out loud when he finally told him to get fucked.

According to the address on the car
d he’d have to leave a little after four in the morning to get there by seven. From the directions he got off of the internet, he knew it was somewhere outside of Green Bay. He didn’t expect to get much sleep tonight; he was too excited for that.

There were guards on the high walls. This surprised the shit out of Jack
. He’d expected to see a research facility of some kind. Maybe it was top secret government research. He’d spent the whole night tossing and turning, trying to solve the riddle of what his job was going to be. He knew his imagination had run wild when he’d started thinking about aliens and spies.

For a pretty good portion of the night
he had regrets about taking on the job and quitting his old one. Things generally didn’t go favorably for him, even when he kept his head down and his nose clean, so he was really asking for a kick in the butt by taking this risk.

By the time he’d finally fallen asleep he’d made his mind up. It was
the mystery of it that piqued his interest. So here he was, his heart palpitating, finger tips tingling as he showed his newly minted badge to the girl in the security pill-box. She scrutinized it closely, made a phone call, and then hit a button that opened the gates and lowered the tire spikes. She smiled sweetly at him as she handed back the ID. “Welcome aboard Mr. Mayberry.”

He
tried to smile back but the fear and anticipation were making him numb. He imagined the smile he finally mustered had some kind of demented quality to it.

He slid his
rusted Ford Focus up to the front of the building. It was immense. It was wide enough and nondescript enough to be a warehouse. It looked to be around five stories high. He parked in an open spot. There were only a few windows on the ground level clustered around what he assumed to be the front entrance
.

H
e got out of the car on road-weary legs and approached the front door. For some reason he turned around and looked up. What he saw almost made him shit his pants; a guard on the perimeter wall was pointing a rifle right at him. He scurried inside before the guard could get off a shot. He’d never been in such fear for his life. He was shivering and it wasn’t because of the frigid Wisconsin weather.

The inside
of the building was no safer. There was a security desk with three armed men sitting behind it. As he entered he spotted in his peripheral two men, one on either side of the doorway he’d just walked through. For a split second he imagined that he’d been tricked into coming here; these men were going to kill him.

“ID
,” said a gruff voice to his right. Jack fumbled through his wallet and gave it over with palsied hands. The guard stared at it for a second, ran a scanner across it, and handed it back. The scanner must check for forgeries or something; maybe there was a microchip inside because no bar-code was visible.

The guard on the other side
chimed in, “I need to search you.” It wasn’t a suggestion. He told him to empty his pockets. Jack took out his cell phone and wallet, and the guy patted him down roughly, balls and butt crack and all. He hoped to God there wouldn’t be a cavity search. The guard flipped through the wallet, removing everything except his new ID, and handed the now empty billfold back. He didn’t give back the cell phone.

A
security guard behind the desk placed the receiver of his telephone back in its cradle and said, “A liaison officer will escort you shortly Mr. Mayberry.”

Jack nodded quickly and looked around for a waiting area but there were no chairs or benches
. He put his back to the wall and leaned against it giving his weakened knees a respite. Being in a room with five armed men was unnerving to say the least. He had to fear-piss like crazy.

The
re was a lone elevator at the other end of the lobby. It opened with a ping, and a blonde man in his early twenties emerged. He was about Jack’s height and build, but just a half decade younger. He was a good looking guy and his appearance alone suggested that he was good natured too. He walked up, took Jack’s sweaty hand in his and shook it briskly.

“Name
’s William McNamara but you can call me Billy. I’ll escort you from here Mr. Mayberry.” Billy was armed as well, leaving Jack feeling like the kid who forgot to bring his favorite toy to show and tell; he suddenly wanted a gun too.

He
followed the blonde man into the elevator. He inserted a key into a steel panel and punched three times onto a key-pad. The doors closed and they descended. Jack’s knees gave out a little; he’d expected that they’d go up. They went down a couple of floors and the doors pinged open. Another uniformed guard was there, pointing a rifle into the elevator. He dropped it when Billy strode forward.

“This is Jack Mayberry. He goes where I go.” The rifle dude nodded as though he w
as committing it to memory, but still insisted on checking Jack’s ID. Billy looked over his shoulder when Jack got the all clear and said, “Come on Jack, if I’m right about this, I’m about to blow your fuckin’ mind.”