T-Rexes & Tax Law Read online

  T-Rexes & Tax Law

  (sample)

  By Rachel Ford

  Chapter One

  Corporations don’t just disappear. There’s always a paper trail, a digital footprint, a money trail. And if all else fails, there’s the human factor: someone, somewhere, knows something.

  Except where Futureprise Corporation was concerned. Where Futureprise was concerned, it had just up and vanished. Its assets were quietly dissected and dispersed, its web presence scrubbed, its public relations gone dark. Low level Futureprise employees were laid off without warning, and high level relocated. No one knew where, or why.

  At least, that’s what everyone said. But Alfred Favero, senior analyst with the Internal Revenue Services, didn’t buy it. Alfred was a practical man, with a keen sense for numbers and a suspicious bent to his personality. He didn’t believe in mysterious disappearances and inexplicable shutdowns of billion-dollar corporations.

  Now, tax fraud on the other hand? That was something Alfred had seen with his own eyes, far too often.

  Nancy’s voice came over the headset. “How long until we’re there?” Nancy Abbot was the lead Information Technology analyst in Alfred’s division. Or, as he and the other the tax specialists would say, head of the nerd bunker.

  “Another half hour yet.” This was Rick Jenkinson, the pilot of their chopper.

  Nancy sighed, and Alfred said, “You might as well sit back and enjoy the view.”

  She scowled at him but said nothing. Alfred didn’t mind. They had never been on friendly terms – he didn’t really associate with anyone outside of work, but if he had, it wouldn’t have been anyone from the nerd bunker.

  Still, in Ms. Abbot’s case, there was more than his typical indifference at play. She had never quite been able to get over the fact that their first meeting had led to him reporting her to human resources for workplace safety violations. She had plastered her quad in movie posters, and he did the only responsible thing: he turned her into HR for fire code violations.

  And the truth was, he still bore the slightest of grudges that he’d lost that fight. The know-nothings in HR had taken her side, but he still maintained that hanging paper on the walls was a fire code violation – and if it wasn’t, it should be.

  But the final nail in the coffin of their acquaintance had come when Nancy brought in a figurine, some plasma-gun wielding space marine from one of her videogames. Alfred had, naturally, turned her in again, this time for bringing a replica weapon into the building. He could still quote the section and subsection of the guidelines that she’d violated.

  Section 3. Subsection a: replica and non-operational weapons are prohibited under this section.

  Nancy had been incredulous when the complaint was filed. “It’s the size of a toothpick. No one could mistake that for a weapon!” As he’d pointed out at the time, though, there was no tiny-weapon extenuating clause. A violation was a violation.

  Still, HR had taken her side on that one, too. Replicas, they’d said, referred to reproductions of real weapons: a representation of a futuristic weapon didn’t violate any policies.

  And that, finally, had been the last straw for Alfred. He had nothing against Nancy personally, but he couldn’t stand the preferential treatment from human resources. It was blatant – grotesque – favoritism, and he could not but resent her for it.

  So he turned his attention away from Ms. Abbot, and reached back into his box of cookies. Alfred was a man married to his job. The bulk of his passion was saved for ridding the world of tax fraud. But he was a man, too, subject to the primal urges and cravings of his species. Cravings like peanut butter.

  His particular weakness was a good peanut butter cookie – that perfect blend of nutty goodness with the sweet, crispness of a cookie.

  Today was by any reasonable standard a good day for Alfred Favero. He was on the trail of tax cheats, flying to Furtureprise’s research facility, with a box of peanut butter cookies that came as close to perfection as a man could hope to find.

  He wasn’t going to let a disgruntled nerd interfere with his high. So he chomped on his cookies, and watched the Mojave pass them by. It was a beautiful sight, at least from up here. In the air, he didn’t have to worry about what kind of scorpions and spiders and snakes might be hiding down there among the rocks. He could admire it all, the limitless desert and the colorful rock formations, the beating sun and the endless sand, without having to deal with any of it. That really is the best way, he thought.

  And, soon enough, they’d be at the research compound. The facilities were located deep in the Mojave, in a reclaimed bit of desert owned by Futureprise’s CEO and founder, David Garrity. Garrity was one of many members of the corporation’s leadership gone M-I-A.

  As for what kind of research had happened in the facility, Alfred didn’t know. Like with everything else related to the corporation, the files were vague on that score. Phrases like “next century bioengineering” and “technological enterprises of the future” appeared with some regularity. It was the kind of corporate-speak bigwigs loved, because it sounded impressive yet promised nothing.

  Still, he wasn’t worried about the lack of specificity. That’s why he was headed there, after all: to get his answers. He’d finally gotten the okay from HQ to make the trip. He suspected it was mostly just to shut him up. But that didn’t bother him either. He was going to find something to prove that Garrity and Futureprise were the cheats he knew them to be, and make them answer for trying to cheat Uncle Sam.

  And in the meantime, he was going to enjoy his cookies.

  A strange green blur appeared on the horizon. This wasn’t the occasional patch of scrubby growth, but a great, dense spread of foliage. Alfred surveyed it with mounting interest. Futureprise had advertised the site was a bit of wizardry, wrought by the miraculous genius of their engineers.

  But people always said things like that, especially when they had something to sell. He hadn’t expected it to be true.

  “There it is,” the pilot’s voice came over the comm. Nancy glanced up from her phone, and he heard the sudden, sharp intake of her breath.

  “What in the heck?” she said. “How is that even possible?”

  Another time, and Alfred might have heard the question at face value, and responded accordingly. But as full of wonder as his own mind was, he understood that the query was not intended to be answered.

  “Quite the sight, eh?” Rick asked.

  “Unbelievable,” Nancy said. “A little oasis in the middle of the Mojave.”

  “Not that little,” Alfred reminded her. He’d pulled the records, after all. And while Garrity had managed to write-off and loop-hole his way out of paying any property taxes on the facility since he acquired the land, the buildings alone rivaled any half dozen Silicon Valley campuses. The entire expanse went on for miles, with huge parks and preserves and test sites.

  “Back when this place was active,” Rick was continuing, “we used to call it the oasis.”

  “We?”

  “The locals.”

  “Ah.”

  “Strange bit of business, how they shut down. Really hit the towns out here. But back in the day, Futureprise was a hub of activity. People always coming in and out. Made good business for folks like me.”

  “Why did they close?” Nancy asked, her tone guileless, as if she was no more interested than a curious tourist. Alfred rolled his eyes.

  Rick, though, suspected nothing. “Well, miss, that’s the strange part. No one’s quite sure. Mr. Garrity – the boss of the place – up and moved to Europe.”

  Despite himself, Alfred snorted. That was the story, but he didn’t buy it. No one had seen Garrity since. Unless he was living in a safe house somewhere in the Scot
tish highlands where no one would ever go, he wasn’t in Europe.

  The pilot continued unawares. “Next thing we know, the whole place is shut down. No warning, nothing. One day we just see a little armada of choppers overhead, moving in; and then leaving. And that was it. Everyone was gone.”

  “That’s crazy,” Nancy said. “None of the staff ever said anything?”

  “No. There were a few locals who worked in the visitor center. They said the order came through the day the choppers landed. The place was closing up, they were out of jobs. Three weeks before Thanksgiving, no less. Not a way to run a business, if you ask me.”

  “No,” she said. “That’s awful.”

  Alfred rolled his eyes again. He wasn’t sure what his colleague hoped to gain with this undercover routine. None of this was new information.

  “My cousin Carla was one of them,” Rick added in a moment. “She didn’t even get severance pay. Three kids to feed, no job, and no warning; for two and a half years of punching that clock faithfully.” Injury was creeping into his tone. “Just a ‘grab your stuff and get the hell out.’ That’s no way to treat people.”

  Nancy set herself the humiliating task of commiserating with their pilot over the fate of a cousin she didn’t know who lost her job half a dozen years ago, in pursuit of information he didn’t have. Alfred couldn’t listen. There was a reason they didn’t let the nerds out of their bunker. There was a reason they left this sort of thing to the professionals.

  He’d tried to explain that to his boss. “You’re going to need someone who can work with their tech,” Director Caspersen had told him. His protestations that he was more than capable were dismissed out of hand with the reminder, “You got a virus on the breakroom’s smart fridge, Al.” It was a low blow – how was he to know the fridge wasn’t behind the company firewall? – but factual. “I already pulled enough strings to get you the warrant. I’m not risking you destroying Futureprise’s network. Nancy’s going with you, or you’re not going.”

  He sighed at the memory and turned his attention back to the Futureprise complex. He could see shimmering buildings among the greens now. There was a kind of campus ahead, with a square and a park in the center, and buildings all around. But the glint of sunlight on glass and steel was speckled throughout the flora, all over the grounds. The sight made him smile. His answers were there, in those buildings.

  He was temporarily distracted from such happy thoughts, though, as they neared the grounds, and he began to distinguish the manner of growth that had turned this chunk of desert green.

  He was no botanist, so classification was beyond him. But the broad fronds and great, fan-like leaves of the trees put him in no doubt: the place was overgrown in tropical vegetation. That, at least, gave him pause. They were in the middle of the Mojave. How in God’s name could anyone get tropical plants to grow in a desert? Short of those Futureprise engineers actually being wizards, he couldn’t begin to figure out how they’d done it.

  “Alright,” Rick’s voice came over the comm set. “We’re going in. Brace yourselves.”

  Alfred frowned. “For what?”

  “You’ll see,” the pilot said ominously.

  The taxman could only imagine some kind of extreme turbulence or rapid descent awaited them. He seized the edge of his seat and clung to it, ignoring Nancy’s eyeroll.

  There was no jarring entry into Futureprise airspace, though. At first, Alfred didn’t even notice the change. But, all at once, he saw that the windows to the helicopter had gone foggy. For half a minute, he could see nothing beyond a gray film and beads of moisture. “What the-?” he wondered.

  Rick turned back to face him, now, from the cockpit. He was grinning under a set of overlarge sunglasses. “I told you.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s the atmospheric control dome.”

  “Dome?” Alfred was frowning.

  “It’s not a physical dome, Mr. Favero.” He’d turned back to his controls, but Alfred saw him roll his shoulders in a shrug. “I’m no engineer, but the gist of it is, the system generates a self-sustaining bubble of artificial atmosphere.”

  “How?” Nancy wondered.

  “Don’t know. It’s Futureprsise’s tech. I just know that it works. You can tell the instant you step inside or leave. Even if you’re not in a bird. You can feel the dry heat out there.” This was said with a jerk of a thumb back toward the Mojave. “You can feel the humidity in here.”

  “That’s incredible.”

  “Yeah it is. Alright, the helipad is up ahead, behind the visitor center.”

  Alfred, now, felt his anxiety spiking. He didn’t mind flying, particularly, but landing always made him apprehensive. It was liking riding an elevator; you never knew if you were half a minute away from planting your feet on solid ground or plummeting to a fiery death.

  As the helipad came into sight, he gripped the edge of his seat again. Nancy rolled her eyes – for the second time so far this morning. He made a mental note to mention it to his boss and remind the director of the rules surrounding a hostile workplace.

  But these thoughts were abruptly pushed aside as the chopper began its descent. Alfred pressed his eyes closed and waited for it to be over.

  After an eternity, he felt the helicopter meet the landing pad. Only then did he open his eyes and start to breathe again. He hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath.

  “Well, here we are,” Rick told them. “You’re sure you want to do this?”

  “Absolutely,” Alfred said, trying to control the trembling of his voice. He was not entirely recovered from the landing.

  “It’s a strange place,” the pilot cautioned. “I wouldn’t want to be here overnight. Not with the rumors I’ve heard, about the kinds of things that still live here.”

  Alfred fought the urge to laugh. This is real life, he thought dismissively, not some b-rated scary movie. There’d be no monsters lurking among the greenery – not of the supernatural kind, anyway. He wasn’t entirely convinced that there weren’t still a few tax cheats holed up in the facility.

  “Thank you, Rick,” Nancy answered, “but we’ll be fine.”

  “Alright. Well, I’ll see you in forty-eight hours then.”

  Chapter Two

  Once Rick had gone, Alfred paused long enough to reapply his sunscreen. Skin cancer was not as consuming a worry in his mind as tax cheats, but he nonetheless had an abiding fear of the sun’s destructive power. He’d dressed accordingly, with long sleeves and pants and a wide-brimmed hat. Still, he wasn’t going to take chances that an errant ray would get past his defenses.

  “Do you need any?” he asked Nancy. He might not have liked her enough to offer her a cookie, but this was skin cancer they were talking about. “You should probably put it on. The sun is the universe’s most prolific serial killer.”

  She regarded him doubtfully for a moment, then took the bottle. “Thanks.”

  He waited until she’d applied it, alerting her now and again to spots she’d neglected: “Don’t forget your ears,” and, “You missed a spot there, above your eyebrows.”

  When she’d finished, though, he took the bottle back, slipped it in his bag with his cookies, and they set out.

  They followed the road from the helipad toward the main campus. Nature had taken its toll on the infrastructure, splitting the asphalts and obfuscating the signage.

  Still, they had no trouble discerning a route. There were a few smaller roads that led off the main one, but their path continued in a relatively straightforward direction.

  The day was hot, as hot as could be expected in the Mojave, but with the added unpleasantness of tropical humidity. Before they’d covered a hundred yards, Alfred was dripping sweat.

  “This is incredible,” Nancy said after a minute. “I still can’t believe they managed something like this, in the middle of a desert. I mean, look at these plants.”

  She paused to kneel beside a large fern. Alfred paused to catch
his breath. “Look at this thing.” She shook her head. “Unbelievable.”

  “Don’t touch it,” he warned as she reached out a hand. “It may be poisonous.”

  She frowned. “Why would they plant poisonous ferns around the oasis?”

  Her tone and expression – bordering on the incredulous – irked him. “How would I know? Maybe to encourage people to keep their hands to themselves.”

  She didn’t address him again after that until they reached the campus. It was a complex of some half a dozen facilities about a mile past the helipad. Alfred was winded and sweating. She, dressed in a loose, short-sleeved top and shorts, seemed to be handling the day better. A paltry reward to risk skin cancer.

  “Well,” she said, “here we are.”

  The Futureprise logo loomed large on the sprawling central building. He surveyed it for a moment, the intertwining squares looped together like an infinity symbol, with the beginning impossible to distinguish from the end. He frowned. “Let’s go get the bad guys,” he declared, his tone sober to fit the occasion.

  Nancy rolled her eyes.

  That’s number three.

  The visitor center was the largest building in the vicinity, with a central structure reaching quite a few stories, and flanked on either side by two shorter wings. They headed there first. “Might as well start at the beginning.”

  Long, snaking vines traced their way up the shimmering façade, climbing over the entry and up several stories. Threadlike tendrils ran higher still, a kind of presage of what awaited the upper floors.

  “This place has only been abandoned, what – five years?”

  “Six,” Alfred answered.

  Nancy shook her head. “Things must grow fast here.”

  They entered the facility through one of several opened doors. The glass of another had been shattered, and the steel of its frame presided over a pile of broken fragments. Another hung at a precarious angle from rusted hinges.

  Their steps, as they entered, were muted by a soft carpet of moss underfoot.