Distortion Offensive by James Axler Read Free Book Online

boots back on. “I think they had a little snack out here, Kane—look.”
    Kane cocked an eyebrow as he picked up andexamined one of the empty shells between thumb and forefinger. “Breakfast?” he suggested.
    â€œMore likely a midnight snack,” Brigid told him, gathering up several shells and peering at them. They were different sizes, and each had been burned so that they were streaked with black, but they appeared to be of the same creature type.
    â€œWhat are they?” Kane asked.
    Brigid peered at them for a long moment, turning them on the palm of her hand, her brow furrowed.
    â€œBaptiste?” Kane urged when she didn’t respond.
    â€œI don’t know,” Brigid admitted, mystified. In another person, this admission may have seemed innocent, but Kane knew that Brigid Baptiste had a phenomenal knowledge base, augmented by a rare natural quirk known as an eidetic memory, which meant she could visually reproduce in her mind’s eye anything that she had ever seen. And as an ex-archivist and natural scholar, Brigid Baptiste had seen quite a lot. In many ways, she seemed more like a walking encyclopedia than a person when challenged to produce theories.
    When Brigid looked up, she saw Kane’s puzzled expression.
    â€œNo ideas?” he asked.
    â€œIt’s from the same genetic strain as mollusks and crustaceans,” Brigid assured him, “but I can’t place the type. Not off the top of my head, anyway.”
    â€œAnd that’s a lot of head,” Kane mumbled.
    As they spoke, Grant returned, accompanied by the church warden and a local medical practitioner called Mallory Price. Price was a tall, gangly woman with a gaunt face and thin blond hair, and she looked very much as if she had just been woken up.
    â€œWhat do we have?” Mallory asked as she approachedthe two teenagers, glancing over at Kane and Brigid. Her voice was husky, as if she had spent a lifetime shouting or smoking. Kane couldn’t tell which.
    â€œI found them in a trancelike state under the pier,” Kane explained as he joined the medical woman. “They just didn’t seem to want to wake up.”
    â€œThe girl said some stuff,” Brigid added as she walked over to join them, her boots back on her feet once more. “Unusual things, not what you’d expect from a teen.”
    Price checked the two teenagers briefly, but other than their general disorientation, she could find nothing ostensibly wrong with them. “They’re both suffering a little bit from exposure,” she told Kane and the others, “but they’re young. They’ll be fine.”
    â€œWhat about their altered state of mind when he found them?” Kane asked.
    The woman shrugged. “Teenagers being teenagers,” she said. “Who knows what they’re getting hooped up on. You probably did the same when you were their age.”
    Overhearing this, Grant laughed. “Oh, you don’t know Kane,” he muttered.
    Kane opened his fist and showed the mollusk shell to Mallory. “Have you seen one of these before, Doc?” he asked, letting her handle the little shell.
    The medical woman turned it over in her hands. “What is that?” she queried. “Some kind of snail?”
    The church warden, an older man called Vernor, with thinning hair that was turning gray at the temples, had made his way over by then, and he sucked at his teeth as he peered at the shell in Mallory’s hands. “Could be a crab, maybe?” he suggested.
    â€œCould be a lot of things, Vern,” Kane agreed.
    The old church warden looked up at Kane with an expression of concern. “Seen a few of these things wash up just lately. You think this has something to do with how these kids are acting, Kane?”
    â€œLet’s get these kids inside and see whether we can make any sense out of all of this,” Kane suggested noncommittally.
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