Free In Dark Corners by Gene O'Neill Page A

over-serious look, absolutely no sense of humor. But I dismissed it all and was about to go home, when I received an anonymous phone call. I think it was actually a psych tech I got friendly with on the ward. He told me this was really a DOD project, and none of the I.S.s in this study were mimics or musicians or mathematicians. They were using controversial experimental methods to develop latent abilities and special programming to trigger these talents. He described some of the fantastic abilities, including Billy-boy's. At first I was dumbfounded. Then I got mad, deciding they had no right to be experimenting on my brother or using him. The next visiting period, I smuggled him out of the hospital in a white tech uniform, despite the surveillance. We've been running for the last seven months. And that's about the story." She shrugged.
    "I see," Rowdy said, scratching his head, deciding to ask the questions, now. "Who are they ?"
    "I'm not sure," she whispered slowly. "Someone from our government." She shook her head, a slightly puzzled look on her face. "The voice on the phone said a DOD experiment." Then she frowned again. "I spotted one of them shortly after Billy-boy and I returned to San Francisco. I didn't go back to the folks' place, but to a friend's. One day on the way home to her apartment, I felt that creepy feeling, you know, like someone watching you. Well, it was one of those guys in a suit following me." She kind of laughed humorlessly. "I dressed Billy-boy in my friend's boyfriend's clothes, and I dressed in her stuff. As it began to get dark, we just walked away…finally ending up in Sparks at another girlfriend's. Then the motel and working at Coney Island. But I saw another suit the other day at lunch…and enter a cowboy riding his white pickup."
    Jesus, it sounded completely paranoid, Rowdy thought. Was she crazy? Then he grinned to himself, because, in some ways, her story reminded him of that King movie of the young girl and her father running from the CIA and George C. Scott. He stared at Ellie a moment, realizing she wasn't reliving a movie or making any of this up. She believed what she said. "Okay," Rowdy finally said, accepting her story at face value. "But why are they interested in Billy-boy. What's his special talent?"
    She thought a while, then kissed him wetly on the mouth, dragging him back down on the bed. "Cowboy, I don't think you really need to know that or what any of the abilities were that they were trying to develop at Sonoma. Not for your own good."
    Then she was busy, and the question quickly slipped to the back of his mind.

    ***

    Rowdy was running the fence line, the red and white steel posts with metal snaps bent to hold three strands of barb wire. It had been a while since the northern-most fences of the Lazy R had been checked and repaired. Posts were down, strands of wire unsnapped and sagging, and occasionally whole sections were gone, torn out. It was slow, tedious work under a late summer sun; the sky an unclouded faded denim, the high desert grazing land a tan monotony broken only by isolated clumps of grayish-green sagebrush.
    So, Rowdy appreciated the company of Billy-boy, even though the young man said nothing. At first he just sat in the pickup, watching. Then, at a section where he needed to replace several steel posts, Rowdy led the boy to the fence line. He put the weighted driver over a post and hammered it down once. Then he put Billy-boy's hands on the handles and he stood behind the boy, guiding the next slams. Bam, bam, bam. The post was driven in far enough. Rowdy let Billy-boy hold the weighted driver, while he strung and snapped in place the three strands of barbed wire. At the next spot he set up another steel post and said, "Okay, hoss, do your stuff."
    At first the boy just stood there, grinning vacantly at Rowdy.
    "Go on, Billy-boy, hammer it," Rowdy pressed encouragingly, finally placing the driver on top of the post he'd pushed into the ground. He