Reverse Metamorphosis book one of the Irrevocable Change trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page A

limit and went straight to his house. Clay
called it a night too, and went home. The following Sunday morning
O’Neil left the house an hour before noon, and drove to another
house in Des Plains. Sunday dinner with the family he guessed.
    The following week mimicked the previous
routine and Clay ended up at the biker roadhouse again on Saturday
night. The only major change had been when O’Neil went to the bar
after work on Friday night and stayed until eleven. Then he picked
up a hooker on the street and disappeared into a cheap motel for
half an hour. Apparently there were no steady girl friends in his
life and he was paying for sex. He felt he knew O’Neil’s routine
enough to put a loose plan together.
    Sunday morning Clay again drove the route
from the roadhouse. He had noticed an interesting spot at night and
planned to check it out in daylight. A highway overpass had been
built several years earlier over a two lane highway at a spot about
ten miles from O’Neil’s house. When the state built the overpass
the engineers had allowed for future growth by building an
additional outside lane on each side of the highway. The paving on
the additional lanes looked to be about a thousand feet long on
each side of the overpass, and blended back into the single lane at
each end. An inside shoulder lane ran the entire length of the
outside lanes and the overpass supports extended about four feet
into the shoulder lane. Although he didn’t have any experience in
this kind of thing to rely on he thought the plan he was developing
would work.
    The next stop took him almost nine miles from
the overpass, to an abandoned quarry site where he and Jimmy had
spent many days from the time they were sixteen and old enough to
drive. They had ridden their dirt bikes around the site and later
shot target practice and caught fish down in the bottom of the open
pit quarry. After parking on the shoulder of the highway, he
climbed over the double swing gate. It was made of two inch
diameter steel pipe and secured with a heavy chain and padlock. The
road from the gate was about fifty to sixty feet from the wall of
the pit, behind a rusty chain link fence that ran around the edge
of the deep open pit mine. The gravel road was unused and rutted
from the run off of many years of rain and snow melts. About a
quarter of a mile from the highway the gravel road ran twelve feet
higher than the edge of the pit. The ground sloped gently through
small saplings and brush to the protective chain link fence. This
location was above the solid rock portion at the bottom of the pit.
The road wound gently though trees and brush for half a mile, back
to the main mechanical equipment area where the abandoned crushers,
sorters, conveyers and such were located. The road then continued
another quarter mile to an opposite entrance on a parallel
highway.
    He had seen enough, and decided to put his
plan into action the following Saturday night.
    Monday through Friday he reviewed the plan
again and again. He drew detailed sketches of the locations and
identified pertinent features he would use. While in his junior and
senior years of high school he had worked part time at a plant
nursery to pay for a car, car expenses and spending money. The
nursery had a big duel wheel flat bed truck that would be perfect.
The business closed at five on Saturday as did most of the other
commercial businesses across from it. He knew the layout, knew how
to operate all the equipment and knew where the keys were left in
the office. He regretted needing to involve the nursery owners;
they were an honest, hard working family who had treated him
right.
    Jimmy had a 250 cc. Kawasaki dirt bike in the
garage he had bought as a wrecked basket case. They had rebuilt the
engine completely. It was bought without papers and could not be
licensed for the highway. Jimmy hadn’t gotten around to repainting
the bike so it was very inconspicuous. A black helmet with small
silver striping was hanging on