The REM Precept Read online

  THE R.E.M. PRECEPT

  J.M. LANHAM

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Please do not participate or encourage piracy of copyright materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The R.E.M. Precept

  Kindle Edition, September 2019

  Copyright © 2019 by J.M. Lanham. All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 0-9973460-7-8

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9973460-7-7

  Cover design by 2Faced Design

  Keep up with the latest J.M. Lanham news and releases by visiting www.jmlanham.com.

  For Henry.

  Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

  –Philip K. Dick

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: Randall’s Store

  Chapter 1: No Time for Small Talk

  Chapter 2: Coercion

  Chapter 3: The Enemy of My Enemy

  Chapter 4: Interrogations

  Chapter 5: Revival

  Chapter 6: Sitting Ducks

  Chapter 7: The Road to Creekside

  Chapter 8: Daybreak

  Chapter 9: The Detention of Dawa Shakya Graham

  Chapter 10: The Running Man

  Chapter 11: Early Retirement

  Chapter 12: Plausible Deniability

  Chapter 13: The Meeting

  Chapter 14: Wayward Son

  Chapter 15: The Silver Chieftain

  Chapter 16: Road to DC

  Chapter 17: Snake’s Head

  Chapter 18: Set Thine House in Order

  Chapter 19: Plan B

  Chapter 20: Dream a Little Dream

  Chapter 21: Narrow is the Path

  Chapter 22: Best-Laid Plans

  Chapter 23: What Lies Beneath

  Chapter 24: Voices

  Chapter 25: Last Hurrah

  Chapter 26: Shot in the Dark

  Chapter 27: Tower Heist

  Chapter 28: The Server Room

  Chapter 29: What Goes Up

  Chapter 30: The Pinch

  Chapter 31: The Doctor Will See You Now

  Chapter 32: Interviews

  Chapter 33: Sunset

  Resources

  Prologue:

  Randall’s Store

  The last time Randall had had this much blood on his hands was last November, at the peak of Georgia’s deer season. Field dressing a whitetail was hard enough in typical fall weather, but that day had been unseasonably cold, with single-digit temperatures frigid enough to turn a standard organ-removal procedure into a messy ordeal reminiscent of a crude Civil War amputation.

  But, as messy as cleaning that particular deer on that cold November morning got, Randall didn’t mind; he’d had plenty of blood on his hands before. Besides, it wasn’t like he was harvesting a family pet or anything. It wasn’t personal.

  That didn’t mean that he got a kick out of the blood and the guts and the quartering of meat, or had a heartless approach toward hunting—far from it. He’d kneel by every deceased animal and give thanks for the food; thanks for his antique lever-action .30-30; and thanks for his ability to use it to place the perfect shot right behind the front shoulder, hastening the kill as humanely as possible so he could stock his freezer on his own accord without relying on some anonymous farmer a thousand miles away to do the dirty work for him.

  It was never pleasant, Randall had said once, the taking of one life to sustain another. But still, impersonal. It wasn’t like the deer had been coming to his store for the better part of a decade to stock up on cigarettes and energy drinks before hitting the big woods every Saturday morning.

  Not like Alex had.

  Randall couldn’t remember the last time he’d broken the speed limit, but if there ever were a time to haul some serious ass, it was now. High beams mounted to the front of his eighties-model pickup morphed the yellow reflectors splitting the dark stretch of asphalt into a solid and twisting line as the old-timer navigated mountainous curves that were dangerous enough during daylight hours, much less on a moonless night with little to light the highway. But it was late, blood was pooling on the rusty floorboard, and the young hunter who had just been bragging about his recent success in Randall’s store was unconscious, pale, and fading fast.

  “Hang in there, son,” Randall said as he anxiously gripped the wheel. “Just hang in there.” The hunter’s head lay against the window, a blood-soaked mop of hair partially covering his lifeless face. Randall kept one hand on the wheel as he reached over with the other to search Alex’s crimson neck for a pulse.

  He couldn’t find one.

  “You’re not gonna die in this truck, son,” he said, eyes frantically darting between his passenger and the road. “Not tonight.”

  Power poles formed a line of picket fences as Randall sped toward the nearest hospital, which was a good fifteen miles away. He checked the speedometer, the orange needle bouncing somewhere between fifty and seventy-five. If he could keep up the pace, Alex might have a chance. After all, he was no doctor, and perhaps the emergency room could find the pulse Randall had been looking for. So he clung to hope, recited a litany of prayers, and drove like a madman further into an uncertain night.

  By the time Randall wheeled up to the emergency room entrance, the blood on Alex’s face was beginning to dry and crust over. Clotting up, he thought. Maybe the bleeding’s finally stopped. He slammed his truck into park and waved down a paramedic who was walking in.

  “HEY! We’ve got an emergency over here!”

  The medic looked up from his coffee, saw the blood-streaked window on the passenger side of Randall’s truck, and quickly sprang into action. In a flash, two emergency room nurses were helping the medic lift Alex onto a stretcher before rushing him inside. Randall followed close behind, chewing his fingernails while one of the nurses pushing the stretcher turned to ask him a series of questions. He watched her mouth move, but couldn’t hear a thing, the sound of his seventy-two-year-old heart pounding out of his chest drowning out the hectic chatter filling the busy emergency room lobby. If he didn’t get it together, he figured, he might wind up in a hospital bed next to his young friend …

  “Sir?” a nurse asked. “Did you hear me, sir?”

  “Wha—what did you say?”

  “Your relationship to the patient, sir. What’s your relationship to the patient?”

  “Uh, he’s a customer. And a friend. Comes in my store out on highway 20 quite a bit.”

  “Do you know his name, sir?”

  His name? His name ... Why can’t I think of his name?

  “Do you have any contact information for his next of kin?”

  “N-No. Sorry, ma’am.” He hung his head. “I’m not being much help, am I?”

  “You’re fine, sir. You’ve been through a lot this evening.” The nurse turned and called out a series of orders Randall didn’t understand, then said, “Okay, sir. I’m going to have to ask you to wait in the lobby.”

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  The question went unanswered as the team of medical professionals rushed Alex through the double doors leading to the patient rooms. The doors slammed shut behind them as Randall stood in the lobby, stunned and staring blankly into the doors until a triage nurse approached and kindly asked him to take a seat. He looked around and noticed a few concerned stares from a handful of people
in the waiting room. He nodded, then took a seat near a window.

  Outside, it was an exceptionally dark night. The moon and stars were obscured by a thick quilt of overcast clouds as waves of rolling fog softened the glow of streetlamps lighting the parking lot and main entrance to the hospital. Every now and then a car passed in the distance, but for the most part, all was dark and quiet on the outside; a stark contrast from inside the overcrowded emergency room.

  Randall stared out the window and lost himself in the darkness, both outside the ER and inside his mind. I was too late finding him, he thought. If only I’d closed up sooner. The old store owner had a habit of locking up the gas station for the night, getting halfway to his truck, then turning around to check the locks again. Sometimes, he’d do it two or three times. Minutes wasted just checking, checking, and checking again. And now he was beating himself up over it.

  But how could he have known his drive home would be interrupted by finding a longtime customer on the side of the road, battered, unconscious, and bleeding to death? And what had happened to the hunter in the first place?

  Hit and run, Randall had assumed. Drunk driver afraid to call 911. Only explanation. The torn and tattered body certainly fit the description of a young man who had just been clipped by a car traveling at high speeds, but if that were the case, it only led to more questions. What was he doing on the side of the road so late in the evening? If his truck had broken down up the road somewhere, where was it?

  Tightness crept into Randall’s chest as he found himself unable to process it all. The last hour had been a whirlwind, but as much as he wanted to zone out for a while, a foreboding pain was beginning to take hold. He stared out into the darkness, recited one last prayer for his young friend, then turned to call for help from the triage nurse.

  But he couldn’t utter a word—just a pained, guttural moan. He grabbed his chest and keeled over onto the floor. There was a loud thud, and then a group of nearby onlookers swarmed in. The triage nurse broke through the crowd and grabbed the unconscious man’s wrist to check his pulse.

  She never found one.

  Chapter 1:

  No Time for Small Talk

  Over the last decade the Vajrayãna Monastery had received countless requests from a variety of lost and wandering souls seeking Dawa Graham’s spiritual guidance and services. The guru’s reputation in the community prompted at least a dozen calls a week from people looking for a mentor, for meditation … even just a warm place to sleep for the night. But in all the years Dawa had practiced Tibetan Buddhism in the Atlanta area, not once had the monastery received a call from a sentient being back from the dead.

  Until now.

  Paul didn’t know where to start. For the last six months, he had assumed his only brother, Alex Freeman, had been murdered at the hands of Ryan Tanner’s former CIA goons under the direction of the top brass at Asteria Pharmaceuticals. Now he was talking to him on the phone. To say the voice coming from the other end of the line was surreal didn’t fit the bill in the least.

  “Alex?! There’s just no way—”

  “I know, I know. Been a while, ain’t it?”

  His typically slow Southern drawl was faster than usual, but there was no mistaking the accent—it was Alex, all right. The ragtag group of Ocula outliers (the name Tanner had given those identified with a rare genome during clinical trials that had made the nightmarish effects of Asteria’s new wonder drug possible) stood in Dawa Graham’s kitchen, surrounding Paul and listening to his end of the phone call. Claire Connor’s eyes widened while silently mouthing something along the lines of “no fucking way.” The journalist had seen a lot in all her years reporting from crime-ridden cities and foreign warzones, but she’d never seen (or heard from) anyone back from the dead. Donny Ford and Fenton Reed knew what had happened to Alex, but weren’t keen on the details. Puzzled, the middle-aged pitchman and the teenage hacker looked to Claire, both with palms skyward as if to ask what was going on. Claire shook her head and put her hand up, making it clear she’d explain everything later.

  Baffled, Paul said, “I just—I just don’t get it. Tanner said you were killed. And that was six months ago! Where the hell have you been, man?”

  “No time to explain now, brother, ’cause you’ve got to get out of that house. You need to hit the road, like, right now.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “You’re about to have company. Same fellas that paid me a visit here while back.”

  CIA, thought Paul. With Graham in custody he had known it would only be a matter of time before the government spooks made a pit stop by the monastery; he had just hoped it would be much, much later.

  Confused, and a little agitated, Paul ran a hand through his short, brown hair and said, “Alex. I thought you were dead. Then we get this phone call out of the blue. How’d you get this number, anyway? How’d you know we’d be here?”

  “I’m telling you, brother, there is no time.”

  Paul reached for a pen lying on the island—no doubt the one Michelle had used to scribe her heart-wrenching “Dear John” letter long before they had arrived—and jotted down the number on the caller ID. He repeated the ten digits (area code included) aloud as thoughts about why Michelle had fled the monastery with their young son Aaron broke his concentration. Focus, Paul. He shook his head and asked Alex, “This a good number to reach you on?”

  “Yeah. For now, at least. Now get the hell out of there and don’t call me back until you’re in the clear.”

  “All right. I’ll call you back ASAP.” They were both about to hang up when Paul said, “Hey, Alex?” A pause, then, “It’s good to hear your voice, man.”

  “Yeah, you too. Now it’s time for you to make like horseshit and hit the trail.”

  ***

  On the interstate, the outliers easily blended in with any other generic group of carpoolers packed into a four-door sedan driving into Atlanta for work or travel or a baseball game. But while Graham’s inconspicuous ride had gotten them back to Georgia from the Skyline facility without so much as a second look from the various local and state police passing by, it was only a matter of time before the car’s compromised license plate crossed the wrong traffic camera or plate-reader-enabled police interceptor—something Paul was already well aware of.

  “We’re going to have to ditch this ride soon,” he said as he merged into the fast lane.

  “Agreed,” Claire said as she toggled shut the AC vent responsible for getting her chin-length, burgundy-red hair in her eyes. “Problem is my carjacking credentials don’t go beyond checking the visor for keys.”

  Another roadblock, thought Paul. It had been hard enough to shake the feds without worrying about family ties. But learning one Freeman had risen from the grave only to have two more disappear? It was enough to make anyone’s head spin. He glanced in the rearview to see Donny and Fenton sitting in the back seat, craning their heads and scanning the surrounding traffic for tails. So far, so good. No unmarked cars. No tinted windows. And no alarm bells going off. For the time being, it looked like they were in the clear.

  Curiously, Paul looked in the back and asked, “Hey Fenton, you know anything about boosting cars?”

  “Maybe. I do know the Automotive Information Sharing and Analysis hasn’t been able to keep up with ECU cybersecurity in cars—”

  “Jesus,” Donny groaned. “Speak English, would ya?”

  “Basically, most cars today have Wi-Fi. And where there’s WIFI, there’s a way into the car’s computer system. The only problem is, I’ve never tried it.”

  “Wait,” Donny said. “You mean to tell me you can hack into the CIA, but you can’t unlock the door on a soccer mom’s minivan?”

  “I’m sure I could figure it out, numb nuts,” Fenton said. “I’m just not equipped for it.”

  Paul asked, “What would you need?”

  “For starters, a way to access the OBD-II port. It’s the port under the driver’s side dash the auto nuts use to diagnose v
ehicle problems.”

  Paul glanced down to the floorboard and spotted the port. “I’m with ya.”

  “If I could program a scan tool to send information across the car’s network instead of receiving it, then I could, hopefully, find a way to unlock the doors and get it started.”

  “Worth a shot,” Donny piped up. “Let’s see if the kid’s got the chops to put us in a new ride. You know, something classy”—he kneed the back of Claire’s seat—“and with a little more legroom.”

  “Easy back there,” Claire said. She turned to Paul and asked, “You think it’s safe to call Alex back now?”

  “Better sooner than later,” Paul said. “I deleted the caller ID records on Dawa’s phone, then smashed it before we left.”

  “That might have bought us ten minutes, tops,” Fenton said, leaning forward from the back. “This is the CIA we’re talking about. They intercept billions of emails and phone calls every day.”

  “Billions?”

  “Yep, with a capital B. Welcome to the security state, my friend.”

  “So if we’re going to stay in touch with Alex,” Paul said, “then we need to meet up and get off-the-grid, fast.”

  “Exactly.”

  Paul flipped open his phone and thumb-dialed Alex as he drove. A single ring in and he was talking to his brother again; something he never thought he’d do this side of paradise.

  “Thanks for the tip, Alex. Made it out of there without a hitch.”

  “Sure you don’t have a tail?”

  Paul checked his mirrors. “So far, so good. At least, as far as I can tell. But our numbers are going to show up on the CIA’s radar any minute. We’ll need to ditch these phones as soon as this call’s over. Sound like a plan?”

  “Of course.”

  Paul took a deep breath. “So, let’s get to it. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”