Leviathan lowered its head and growled, fifty yards away. The Dragon twisted its demon head, as if laughing, and Connor saw with a shock it would have to walk directly between the severed sections of the Norwegian power line to reach them. Jordan saw the beast and screamed, and Connor realized with horror what he had to do.
“Jordan!’’ he screamed, pointing frantically at the phosphorous grenade. “Listen to me son! Listen to me! Get that grenade for Daddy! Please! Get it for Daddy!”
“No! No!” Jordan screamed.
Jaws gaping, Leviathan approached the severed sections of the Norwegian power line.
Stunned by fear and hope, Connor grasped his son by the shoulders, pointing frantically. “Jordan!” he screamed. “Please, son! Get that for Daddy! Please! Get it for me! For me!”
But Jordan only leaped and crawled farther into his arms and Connor groaned in utter pain as he pushed him back, knowing that everything, everything had come down to this single moment in time.
“Jordan!” he cried, eye to eye and heart to heart. “Do you remember how I promised you I’d kill the Dragon for you? Do you remember?’‘
Jordan shook his head. “No! No!”
“Yes!” Connor shouted, bringing their heads together as he had to bring their hearts together in order to survive. “Get that for me Jordan and I promise you 1’11 kill it! I promise! I promise!”
Leviathan opened its jaws, drawing breath.
Took another step.
“God help us!” Connor cried, throwing his face to the ceiling before looking down again. “Jordan!” He shouted. “Get that grenade for me now, son! Get it for me! For me! And I promise you I’ll kill it!”
Shocked and crying, Jordan stared into Connor’s eyes. And, as if he’d been touched by a force even more powerful than his terror, he suddenly turned, gazing in utter fear at the beast. And then with a child’s purest love and trust and essence, the boy tore away from Connor and leaped onto the walkway, running helplessly and screaming toward the Dragon.
And the grenade.
Leviathan’s dark eyes blazed with inhabited hate as the child approached and then Jordan bent to snatch up the grenade. And for a stunning, frozen moment the child stared up, up into the face of the Dragon. And the Dragon glared down, fangs gaping, hating and threatening.
Connor gasped, shocked at the moment of unearthly stillness. But Jordan somehow held his place as the Dragon hovered before him, colossal and satanic and monstrous but somehow ... afraid...
Jordan stood, motionless.
Then Leviathan shrieked, staggering forward.
Instantly screaming in horror Jordan turned and leaped into Connor’s arms with Leviathan following in his steps and Connor roared with love as he caught his son from the air, turning him away. Then in the next blinding split-second he caught the grenade from the boy’s hand to slam it into the M-79, snapping the weapon shut and raising it simultaneously.
The Dragon roared, bending over them.
It stood solidly between the severed sections of the power line.
Connor desperately pulled his son’s face close into his chest, aiming the grenade launcher dead-center between Leviathan’s demonic green eyes.
They glared face to face.
Leviathan snarled, jaws twisting.
Connor frowned.
“You’re extinct,” he rasped.
And pulled the trigger.
The grenade struck Leviathan’s hell-born face to mushroom instantly over the severed sections of the supercharged power line, and as the chemical cloud hit the copper coils a blue-white bolt of lightning leaped instantly across, hurled over their heads like the Wrath of God to strike the Dragon hard in the chest and blast a hole through its monstrous form as the air coruscated white with the firestorm that continued, continued through galactic reptilian pain that raged across the cavern, raging until it was itself overcome by the white fire that surged over them in a God-roar that finally tore the Dragon’s shriek to shreds in an amazing, blazing blast of unearthly power and justice and wrath.
Chapter 41
Holding Jordan in his arm, Connor stood over the Dragon.
It was finished. All that remained of Leviathan’s gigantic, reptilian form was a charred mass of blackened bone and flesh. The serpentine neck and forelegs, once hard with muscle and tendons, were withered ash. Even the proud armor that had defied the might of an army was finally defeated, overcome by a force far more powerful.
Staring down, Connor saw that almost nothing remained of the Dragon’s gigantic aspect. Leviathan was twisted and contorted with a charred hole blasted clean through the center of its massive body. There was simply nothing there—no heart, no blood, no life. The Dragon was an empty husk. And the glowing green eyes were burned black – empty and dead.
Connor said nothing, hugging Jordan close beneath the emergency lighting. And then Beth was beside them, wrapping her arms around them both. Her forehead was bruised but the blood was already stanched by Frank’s bandage. Gazing down, Connor kissed her softly and held her.
It was a moment of silence but of a rumbling silence like the silence cloaking a low, lightning-torn sky. And then Frank was also beside them, staring down coldly. His face was empty, his pose solemn.
Connor turned to him. “Is it dead, Frank?”
“It’s dead,” the scientist said somberly. “Forever.”
Raising his face, Connor gazed across the cavern toward Barley. “Is Barley going to make it?”
“Yeah,” the scientist nodded, looking at where they had laid Barley on a stretcher after Frank had helped free Connor from the girder. “He’s a strong guy. He’ll make it. But he’s going to be laid up for a long time. He’s got a lot of broken bones.” Frank stared tiredly. “Not that he cares.”
An interrupting voice came over the surface link radio and Frank instantly picked it up. With the calm thoroughness of an emergency room surgeon, he gave terse instructions for necessary medical assistance, along with their location in the cavern.
“It’s the Sea Patrol,” he said, turning to them. “They’ve arrived with a representative of Stygian Enterprises. They said that they can get to us in about an hour. And they’re going to bring a couple of stretchers.”
“Good enough,” Connor said before he sensed Jordan staring up at him, quiet and still. With a gentle smile Connor gazed down. “You’re a good boy,” he whispered. “You’re a real good boy.”
Jordan smiled, wrapping his arms around Connor’s neck.
“Are we going home now?” he asked. “Like you promised?”
Connor nodded, closing his eyes.
“Yeah, boy. We’re going home. Like I promised.”
It took EMTs two hours to haul Barley through the cavern and then they were finally on the way to the surface. But Connor had been given an injection of morphine for his badly bruised leg and other wounds and he insisted on walking the full distance, making a slight detour when they passed the Matrix to retrieve something he could not leave behind.
Then they reached the elevator and began to rise to the surface. But halfway up the ascent Connor curtly ordered the lift stopped. Then he opened a trapdoor and crawled beneath the cage, working quietly for a few minutes in the shaft.
When he crawled once more through the trapdoor he was bathed in sweat, and fresh blood gleamed through the bandages over his wounds. Beneath Beth’s concerned gaze Connor rolled, exhausted, to a wall.
“Did you do it, Connor?” she whispered.
Connor nodded wordlessly and motioned for the confused rescue personnel to proceed with the lift.
And the elevator began to rise.
Toward the sun.
***
Connor gently placed a hand on Barley’s shoulder.
“You’re not going to die on me are you, Barley?”
Barley grunted, almo
st pale from blood loss, “No, Connor, I think I’ll stick around for a while. Might even take a vacation.” He lowered his voice. “Did you do it?”
“Yeah,” Connor nodded. “A few more seconds.”
“Good. Then it’s almost over.”
Eyes narrowing, Connor turned to stare at the cavern shaft. The blackness of the abyss was completely isolated, the elevator itself anchored solidly on the surface. He knew that no rescue personnel had descended into the cavern since they had reached the surface. The United States government had ordered the facility secured.
No one else was going in.
Frank walked up.
“Beth and Jordan are in stable condition. They’ve been airlifted out on the Sea Stallion,” he said. “It’s a fast-flight helicopter, so they should be at a hospital inside an hour. Jordan is dehydrated and suffering a low grade infection, but he’ll be okay.”
With a nod Connor focused on the scientist’s youthful face. “I appreciate you taking care of them for me, Frank. I had some things I had to do.”
“I know. But you need to get to a hospital, too, Connor. Those cuts on your chest are infected. And you’ve got a bad bone-bruise in your leg. You’re not going to be standing when that morphine wears off.”
Connor nodded. “You know what I’ve done, Frank?”
“I know.”
Connor felt a sadness. “I’m sorry, Frank. I know that ... the computer was more than just a machine to you.”
“GEO was never a living thing, Connor.” Frank’s face brightened, stronger. “It was only a machine.”
“But it was part of Rachel.”
“Remembered love is enough, Connor. It has to be.”
They nodded together.
As the Sea Patrol lifted Barley’s gurney, the C-4 that Connor had strapped to the limestone walls of the elevator shaft detonated like a volcano. And, awakened from his morphine stupor, Barley shouted at the thunderous blast and lifted a hard fist in the air. His bellow of victory carried across the compound.
Connor laughed, knowing that the C-4 had completely closed the shaft by sending over a million tons of granite and stone and dirt thunderously to the bottom where it buried the vault in a mountain of stone. In moments the cavern was completely sealed from the world — the computer, the dead, the Dragon and the heroes that had defied it.
Startled by the explosion, a representative of Stygian Enterprises, someone Connor didn’t know but recognized by his air of authority, ran up. The little man staggered to a halt beside Connor, staring in horror at the sulfuric dust roiling from the exit of the shaft. He glanced to the side and seemed to catch something in Connor’s haggard, angry face.
“What happened?” the man whispered.
“I blew it,” Connor said. “I buried it.”
Pandemonium roars echoed from deep inside the cavern, and the thunder continued a long time until silence finally overcame all there was — a sea of silence that left the shaft as dead and buried as Hell itself.
“Mr. Connor!” the man shouted. “I represent Stygian Enterprises – the company which owns that facility! I want to know immediately who gave you the authority to destroy the elevator shaft!”
Connor stared. “Nobody.”
The company man staggered.
“So …” He gasped, “So how could you destroy it? It’s going to take years! It’s going to take a fortune to dig it out!” He stepped back, pointing a finger. “You’re in big trouble, Connor! Big trouble! That was a billion-dollar facility!”
Connor laughed as he turned away.
“Send me a bill,” he said.
Epilogue
In ice-light, the tower stood. Connor stared at the fortress that forever conquered and commanded the wind and sleet and snow. But he had finally come to understand, and with a strange contentment, that it had never truly been the man who inhabited the tower. It had been the tower that inhabited the man.
Connor moved slowly through the frost-framed doorway, glancing sadly at Tanngrisner’s empty stable, for the proud stallion had been set free to roam the dark night vales of the island now that his beloved master had passed. Connor had personally seen to that.
Carrying the large, heavy object in his hand, Connor slowly ascended the steps toward the large, upper chamber where the white stone portal stood open as it had always stood open, shrouded in light.
But across the circular stone room the deep fire hearth was filled only with gray ash and cold blackened iron, a reminder of death. Connor paused, staring as his hand tightened painfully on what he held. Then he limped slowly across the chamber, finally halting before the hearth where his gaze locked on the thick iron hooks, deep in stone.
Empty. Waiting.
It was an unknown and uncrowned king, Old Guardian of the People, who stood here last, reaching up with his strong right arm to call down the strength to slay the Dragon. And yet now, Connor knew, Thor’s great strength was gone, and gone forever. Just as he knew that one day, in some way, the Dragon would return.
As it always returned.
With a grimace Connor raised the battle-ax, laying it to rest. Then he stepped back and stared a moment at the weapon, gazing at the image of cosmic battle etched upon the steel—the angelic warrior battling the Dragon, driving the beast down from the stars. And Connor once more saw Thor, wounded and dying and hurling the battle-ax through flame, fighting forever, defying the Beast to the last.
Connor stared, remembering, and remembering more. Then he reached up to gently touch the battle-ax again, searching for the faith and love and strength and life to defy the Dragon.
Connor searched a long time, and then he smiled.
Yeah, he thought, understanding ... at last.
It was worth dying for.
The End
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Read A Sample Next
ONE
Sitting upon a bough, the raven watched.
In the dying of the light the little boy swung slowly from the tree, his body broken, a noose around his neck. And at the edge of the forest a car burned and the raven watched as flame rose from the heat like hate rising from the heart of the sun.
The raven and the boy were together as the fire burned and burned and began to fade in the last of the day but still the raven did not move. It stayed upon the bough and did not leave the boy alone until the sun had descended and was gone.
The raven watched as the boy was claimed by the darknes
s of the night. It watched as the fire smoldered and the smoke vanished in the evening gray that overcame the day. It watched and it watched and it watched and it watched until something else had begun to burn in the dying of the light …
Fire rose in the raven’s eyes.
* * *
Joe Mac felt the gray November cold more completely than he’d ever felt it before because he could no longer see the leaves fade from rust to gold or gaze upon the skeletal silhouettes of trees etched against the gray November sky.
Now he lived in the world of the blind, so feeling the cold was all that remained. The rest was darkness and he would inhabit this darkness until the day he died and they buried him in the dirt and this darkness.
The raven came as it always came; it descended with the sound of enormous wings to land with a thunderclap on the home Joe Mac had built for it.
Three years ago they met as Joe Mac was first learning to live in the world of the blind. The raven had come to him every day as he sat alone in the back of the barn, and Joe Mac named him “Poe” after the old poem. And every evening they would sit together in the back of the barn in Joe Mac’s eternal night.
Poe did not rise or even seem to notice the familiar Mrs. Clemens as she approached, but then Poe rarely flew away when someone came close. Rather, he seemed to know the exact distance for danger and ignored anything else.
Mrs. Clemens brought Joe Mac his supper – an act Joe Mac reckoned to her uncommon human kindness – and spent a moment to inquire about his health. But Joe Mac sensed something different in Mrs. Clemens tonight. Her steps were halting and seemed to wander before she laid a hand on his shoulder.
Thrilled to Death Page 139
