FIFTEEN
Subject’s body does not produce fatigue poisons,
and processes blood with a far higher efficiency than human
digestion. Virtually all of the metabolic energy in the subject’s
blood meals is available for immediate use, or can be stored
without conversion or loss of energy in the deep capillary beds in
the subject’s chest and abdomen. Subject will only grow “tired”
after several days of consistent effort, and can be rejuvenated
simply by feeding.
—BRIEFING BOOK: CODENAME: NIGHTMARE PET
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
Dylan woke on the hotel bedspread. He’d
heard that you weren’t supposed to remember anything after a
drunken bender. It wasn’t true.
The room spun around him, yes, but he remembered
everything. Stopping at the hotel. Just to rest, he told himself.
He wasn’t going to screw up now. Khaled was checking on him every
few hours.
But he was bored. Nothing on TV interested him. He
went for a walk. Not on the Strip. Too much temptation. He used to
love the five-hour drive to Vegas, arriving at the tables, spending
obscene amounts of cash and then drinking at the clubs.
But across the parking lot from his hotel, he found
a dingy little strip club. He told himself he was just going in for
a pack of cigarettes.
When he saw the naked women onstage, writhing
around, humping the metal pole, he realized how much he’d missed
tits and ass while in Kuwait. Burqas everywhere, covering
everything. He’d almost forgotten what naked chicks looked
like.
He sat down and ordered a beer. The waitress leaned
over, breasts wobbling in his face, and asked if he wanted to open
a tab. Without thinking about it, he handed over the credit card
that Khaled had given him.
He ended up having another beer. Then another. The
girls loved him. They sat on his lap, crowded around him and rubbed
themselves all over him. He signed credit card slips. A lot of
them.
Much later, he staggered back to his hotel, his
shirt pulled out over his stained pants.
His face still hurt from grinning so much.
He found the strength to roll over, and thanked God
that Khaled had not been around to see this. It was the first time
in months Dylan had had any fun at all.
He finally got his feet on the floor and checked
out of the hotel room. He started toward the large asphalt lot in
back of the hotel, where he had parked his truck. It was in the
same direction as the strip club, which made him smile again. His
phone rang. He checked the number. Khaled. Just what he
needed.
He answered, knowing it would only cause trouble if
he didn’t.
Khaled screamed at him in Arabic, then in English.
Dylan had never heard him so angry. Demanding to know why the
credit card they’d secured in a fake name for him was maxed
out.
“I had some expenses,” Dylan replied when Khaled
paused for breath.
“What is ‘Wild J’s Lounge’?” Khaled fired back.
“Did you forget I could see your charges on the Internet?” Before
Dylan could respond, Khaled was questioning his intelligence, his
ancestry, his devotion. . . .
Dylan quit listening. Screw Khaled. Self-righteous
virgin. Let him come out here and do the hard work. So far, Dylan
was the one taking all the risks. Let Khaled put his ass on the
line for a change, and he could—
Dylan stopped in his tracks. The sound of Khaled’s
voice became very distant in his ears.
“I’ll have to call you back,” he said, and snapped
his phone shut.
The truck was gone.
IT TOOK DYLAN an hour of standing at the front
desk, talking to the fat, gum-chewing desk clerk—in slow, loud
sentences—just to figure out what happened.
He cursed his luck again. How was he supposed to
know that the lot where he’d parked was off-limits to trucks? He
had to keep his mouth shut and stifle the urge to scream at every
slack-jawed employee of the hotel. He couldn’t draw any more
attention to himself
It wasn’t easy. The clerk took another forty
minutes to find someone who knew where the truck had been towed.
The city impound lot, halfway across town. A search through the
phone book gave him a number, and a maddening voice-mail menu
finally—after two disconnects—told him what he had to do. Show up,
in person, with proof of ownership of his vehicle, and six hundred
fifty dollars. Cash.
The recorded voice droned on, “Business hours are
Monday through Friday, nine-thirty a.m. to five-thirty p.m. . .
.”
Dylan felt his stomach clench again. He checked the
time on his watch, just to confirm.
It was 5:34 p.m. He was stuck here until morning.
At least.
His phone kept ringing in his pocket. He didn’t
answer.