“Don’t make me laugh. What’s to love? Compared to what’s coming up out of the sea, this country is about as crippled and paralyzed and worthless as … well, as you, old man. Everything will be swept away when the Darkness covers all. But not me. No sir. I ain’t getting swept away. I’m a survivor. You either do or get done to in this life, you know? Victim or victor. And its not like anyone leaves this outfit alive. Everybody’s got to sleep sometime. That’s our motto.”
“Swell. Some motto.”
The other man shrugged. “What the heck. At least it’s easier to say than semper fidelis.”
Peter would never have been able to kill a man in the uniform of his country—until now. The young man’s craven words, whether he knew it or not, had just put the signature on his death warrant.
“Well, you’re most likely right. Gotta go along to get along, I always say, and what’s this damn country ever done for me?” Peter tried to smile. It was certainly the worst acting job he had ever done in his life.
The idiot actually grinned at him. “Yeah, now you’re getting it, old man.”
“Hey, be a pal and adjust this baby-bottle thing over my head here. Just move it closer to my head so I can reach it.”
The young man nodded, slung his rifle, and stepped forward toward the bed. He reached out his hand …
III
Peter flung himself upright, one fist driving into the young man’s groin, the other hand grabbing for the pistol holstered at his belt.
The young soldier staggered back, doubled over, and the hammer of the pistol, as it was coming out of the holster, caught on a belt loop. Because the soldier was bent over, the holster was pushed up at an odd angle. Peter had his hand on the pistol, and he could feel the cross-hatching of the grip slipping through his fingers.
The soldier was staggering backward. Then the pistol was spinning in midair, inches beyond Peter’s out-flung arm.
The soldier’s shoulder knocked the overcoat off the hook as he fell back. At the same moment, he shrugged his slung rifle down into his hand.
The pistol clattered to the floor. Peter was throwing himself out of the bed, also falling, needles ripping painfully out of his arm, numb legs pulling on the bedsheet, EEG machine yanked up off the cart and across the pillows.
The soldier raised his rifle. Peter lay with one shoulder on the floor, the pistol far outside his arm’s reach, legs still on the bed, tangled.
Peter raised his hands as if surrendering. “Don’t shoot!” The soldier sighted down the length of the barrel. Peter could see down the muzzle of the weapon. There was no mistaking the look in the young soldier’s eye. Peter had tricked and humiliated the young man; he would accept no surrender. Peter was about to die.
“Mollner! To my hand!” shouted Peter; and immediately there was a loud explosion from somewhere in the distance behind the soldier, as if a wall had fallen.
The soldier’s finger began to tighten on the trigger.
A mouse jumped out from beneath the bed, scampered up the soldier’s boot.
The soldier shouted in pain; his arm jerked; aim spoiled, the round flew wide.
The noise of the rifle fire in an enclosed space was shockingly loud, despite this, Peter heard the slug fly by his ear, buzzing like a bee, and smack into the wall behind him.
There was a second explosion, as if a second and nearer wall had been smashed by a wrecking ball; then a third, even louder still, as if the source of the terrible explosions were approaching through the building, shattering walls as it came.
The soldier shook his leg; the mouse fell out of his pants leg, teeth bloody; the soldier stepped on the mouse with his boot, crushing it.
At the fourth explosion, the lights went out; the only illumination came from the dusty window.
The soldier raised his rifle again, and the wall behind him exploded.
Concrete blocks erupted into the room in a shower of dust. The soldier turned, eyes wide, just in time to see the bricks painted with the shape of a hideous beast falling on him. The bricks separated as they toppled, making the beast seem to swell in size and disintegrate as it toppled.
From the midst of the shattering, scattering brick, an iron hammer flew. It struck the soldier in the skull, sending brains and blood flying over all parts of the room. Two halves of his helmet rebounded from the ceiling, ringing.
The mouse was twitching feebly amidst the rain of falling dust and pebbles. And, because Peter was staring at the mouse, he hardly noticed the strong jar that shook his arm when the hammer, still smoking from the heat of its flight, and dripping warm blood, came to rest in his hand.
It came to him suddenly, like a memory from a dream, that the mouse who used to eat the cheese in the pantry in the west wing, where Peter used to play as a boy, had somehow (and this part wasn’t quite clear) removed the paralysis from his arms …
Then he remembered the dream, each word.
Peter crawled on his elbows over the rubble to where the tiny brown mouse lay.
It was a small, ordinary-looking little thing, and it had been mauled by the blow from the soldier’s boot. It lay on the floor, limbs still, its little sides heaving with labored breath.
Peter picked it up in his palm. “Don’t worry, pal.” He whispered, “I’ll get you to a—well, to a vet, I guess. I’ll get you to someone …”
But how? Peter heard shouts in the distance, booted feet running, sounding far away, perhaps in a stairwell.
He slipped the mouse into his shirt pocket. Now what?
He looked around, and saw an amazing sight. The wall in front of him had a hole several yards wide blasted through it. The room beyond was a wreckage of broken pipes and wiring, with a hole in the far wall; beyond that, a wrecked room with a hole in its wall, then another toppled wall, and another. All the holes were perfectly concentric, making a corridor of destruction all leading to Peter’s hand.
Peter looked at the small iron hammer in his fist. His hand tingled slightly, as if he had slapped it against a stone, but he had suffered no damage beyond that.
“Just like the damn magicians,” muttered Peter, “you don’t consent, show no fear, they can’t hurt you …”
Experimentally, he flung the hammer at the window. The whole wall exploded outward and chunks of masonry, twisted steel beams, and sheets of insulation were sent spinning out into the air. He was on the fourth floor of a building in some sort of small base or compound. Below, he could see a service yard, and in front of him a low, squat, gray building; a water tower atop that; and beyond, twin rows of barbed wire. Beyond the fence was flat, brown scrub, patches of grass leading into dry, empty lands.
He heard shouts in the distance, the hooting of an alarm.
The hammer came whistling back through space toward him. He held up his hand, face calm and stern. The hammer struck his palm a solid blow and stung like a fastball slapping into a catcher’s mitt.
“Knock the legs off the water tower,” he told the hammer, and flung it.
Like a meteor, the hammer flew. In the distance Peter saw the water tower slowly sway and crumple, and several tons of water pour out and flood the building’s roof. The tower tore off part of the roof as it fell; water poured from upper-story windows.
A whistling shriek announced the approach of the hammer.
At that moment, a young guard came around the corner and through the door. His face was flushed pink, panicky. He raised his rifle, even though Peter, lying on the floor, held up his hands, shouting, “Don’t shoot! I’m unarmed!”
The kid put his rifle to his shoulder. Then his eyes jerked up to look at something behind Peter. Peter heard it from behind him, whistling through the air, singing like a dropping bomb, a sustained note dopplering down the scale.
Peter jerked his hand aside; the hammer missed his hand and flew past, struck the boy in the chest, smashing him against the far wall and breaking all his ribs with a horrifying noise. An astonishing amount of blood spurted from the gaping chest wounds.<
br />
The young man gasped out a girl’s name (surely it was his sweetheart or wife) his hands clutching feebly at his beating heart and pumping lungs, which were exposed to air amidst the sheaths of torn muscle and the splintered wreckage of his ribs. He slid down into a pool of blood and viscera.
The hammer jumped back into Peter’s hand.
“Shit!” said Peter, staring in horrified pleasure at the hammer. He looked at the two dead men, shook his head. He almost felt sorry for them. Almost.
Either one of them could have pegged him, if they had remembered their training. Whatever unit these losers had come from, they must have been the bottom of the barrel, where the rotten apples were.
What about the mouse? Peter scooped the little creature out of his pocket.
The mouse had stopped breathing. Peter didn’t know what to do. Putting down the hammer, he rubbed the mouse’s belly with his finger. “Come on, pal. Don’t give up yet.” The mouse was still warm.
He put it back in his pocket when he heard soldiers in the corridor. He looked for cover. The bottom shelf of the medical cart might hold him, and it had blue plastic drapes that could be drawn. It took only a moment to throw the machine from the cart’s bottom across the room and out through the hole into the air. Then he hid on the lower shelf, pulling his knees in with his hands. He jerked the blue plastic drapes shut.
Men ran into the room. He heard voices.
“You and you, stay in the corridor!” “Jeez, Sarge, what a mess …” “Look at what he did to Kilmer! He’s all over the place!” “Holy Mary Mother of God, what the hell could do a thing like that …” “Sarge—looks like he bashed a hole in the wall and walked out.” “He weren’t paralyzed.” “You three, through the hole with me. Buddy, stay here. Keep contact with Vazquez and Ebersol. Move it, people, move it!”
More footsteps. Men clambering over fallen block and brick.
Peter crossed his middle fingers, whispered, “Morpheus, knock out Vazquez, Ebersol, and Buddy.” Then he inched the sheet up.
To the left, he could see two soldiers in the corridor, sitting down, yawning. To the right, another soldier stood with his back to the room, staring out the gaping hole toward the fallen water tower.
Peter wondered if this were “Buddy.” Maybe a nickname was not enough for spirits to work with to zap someone.
The hammer was lying several feet away, among the scattered brick and splattered blood coating the floor.
Peter stealthily put out his hand, whispering, “Psst! Mollner! Come to Papa!”
IV
Buddy heard a scraping slither. He turned. He saw a muscular, scarred arm reach out from underneath the equipment cart, and the hammer hopped up into the hand.
Peter flung aside the blue sheet as the soldier, too late, raised his rifle. Peter flung the hammer with a backhand horizontal sweep of his arm, shouting, “Only the gun!”
It was like being hit by a truck.
Buddy’s next clear memory was of lying on his back, staring up at the blue sky, and seeing the broken pieces of his rifle, barrel bent, spinning slowly through the air.
It took him a moment to realize that he was draped over the rubble of the hole in the wall, his head hanging in the air, sliding.
A pair of strong hands grabbed him. There was a haze of pain as he was drawn inside.
“My arm’s broke!” he screamed.
“Shut up,” came a calm, hard-edged voice. When the soldier’s vision cleared, he could see the huge-shouldered, scarred man lying next to him, one beefy hand twined around the soldier’s shirtfront. The other hand was up in the air, fingers spread, right up above the young soldier’s face.
Buddy saw the man’s features. There was something in that face, those eyes, that looked just like the boss’ boss, the crazy guy in pimp jewelry who told Went-worth what to do.
“Tell me where they’re keeping Lemuel Waylock. Old man, tall; bald, big white eyebrows.”
“I ain’t telling you shit!”
There was a whistling roar, rushing from high pitch to low, and the iron hammer flew into the room and smacked into Peter’s palm. The hammerhead was still smoking and steaming, and a drop of the gore that coated it fell from the hammerhead and lightly touched the soldier’s cheek.
“Second floor! Room 201! Corner room on the far side!”
“Now tell me how sorry you are for pissing me off.”
“I’m sorry, sir!” the young soldier barked.
“I’ll accept how and when I damn well please. Morpheus! Knock ’im out!”
A blanket of warm numbness stole through the young soldier’s body and closed his eyes. The pain in his broken arm receded, and he fell into a profound, deep sleep.
5
The World of Mists and Shadows
I
Two men stood where the slabs of concrete and macadam were buckled and torn. The roof overhead was a mass of splintered steel girders, swaying remnants of lighting fixtures, torn wires. In the middle of the garage; past where the heavy steel doors that had once covered the truck bay lay, rested a huge, crumpled wreck. Several machine-gun barrels protruded from the mass, twisted at strange angles. One tread of the vehicle was unwound.
“Tell me what I’m looking at, Van Dam.” The first man was dressed in a well-tailored business suit, a yellow slicker over that. On his head he wore a hard hat.
The second man had a thin, gray moustache, and wore a transparent plastic coat over his uniform. “That was our armored personnel carrier. Mr. Wentworth. Three inches of titanium alloy armor. The weapon struck only into the engine block. You can see where the prow is caved in? Those big triangular shards?”
“Yes.”
“See how they are bent backward at the tips? That was caused by the backward passage of the weapon as it ripped itself out of the impact area.”
“And that?” Wentworth pointed upward.
“When the men tried to come out of the vehicle, he knocked over the columns and brought down those chunks of concrete on top of the hatch, trapping them inside. It was pretty clear he was trying not to hurt the men.”
“Fourteen dead? And that’s not trying to hurt them?”
“Mostly from friendly fire. He was pulling his punches,” said Van Dam.
“Hm. Looks like he knew just where to hit the vehicle.”
“It was Gus Waylock, after all.”
Wentworth seemed surprised. “You’ve heard of him?”
“Yes, sir. Captain Peter Augustus Waylock, Twenty-eighth Infantry, Medal of Honor, several Purple Hearts. Very highly decorated. Some places, his name is legend.”
“Well. I wonder if that helped him. Show me the cross corridor.”
“Careful here.”
They walked.
Van Dam said, “This hole here led us astray for a while. We thought he had gone out of the building here, because of this hole. Here’s the stairwell. Look out for that door.”
“I’m okay. I can step over it. What happened here?”
“We think he threw the weapon directly down the stairwell to collapse the stairs. Lost two men here. See where the supports are shorn? The lab boys say they can estimate the kinetic energy of the weapon in motion from that. The weapon strikes with something equivalent to a heavy antitank round.”
“What happened down that way?”
“Sonic boom blew out the windows all along that corridor. The weapon can fly faster than Mach One.”
“But why did you think he was in this corridor at this point? Wasn’t he still traveling in a medical equipment cart by then?”
Van Dan said, “At this point we think he was giving false orders over our radios. He had Kilmer’s walkie-talkie. When we found out, he ordered a radio silence.”
“He ordered?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that’s what caused the thing at the cross corridor?”
“Yes. This way. Look out for that broken glass.”
“I see it. Now, how did he get onto this level if he
didn’t actually come down the stairwell?”
“We found some cable looped around the roof braces. Either he had a confederate on the roof with a winch, or …”
“Or what?”
“We don’t know yet how much control he has over the weapon in flight. He may have tied the cable to the hammer, and ordered it to fly up and through the braces. If so, the hammer has a lifting weight capacity we estimate at nine hundred pounds.”
“Was this while he was carrying his father?”
“We’re not sure. Personally, I think the cable was just another false trail. I think he slid down the garbage chute into the dumpster.”
“Any idea why he destroyed the pay phone on the fourth floor?”
“Something strange there, sir. The coinbox was exploded outward from the inside; there was no entry damage. It may have been the first thing damaged. Here we are. Look here. Uh. This is pretty messy, sir. The medical examiner isn’t quite done yet …”
“I’ve seen worse. Well, Maybe not. Where was he standing?”
“Lying, sir. He was here, where he had carved out a niche in the wall. We think it took three blows of the weapon. You see here where the wall is shorn away? There are three layers of melted rock; the rock momentarily liquefies under the impact.”
“Okay. He was here. There were two squads, one coming down each of these corridors. They can’t see each other. What happened next?”
“Remember, they’re not coordinated because of the radio silence …”
“Even so, how do you explain this?”
“Well, sir, it was also dark. One of the first things he did was knock out the generators and the backup generators. Also, the weapon had already struck among both squads several times.”
“How? Was he throwing it through the wall at them?”
“No, sir, he only did that the one time on the third floor. The men say the weapon was turning the corner each time, changing direction as it flew.”
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