The Two Lost Mountains - Jack West Jr Series 06 (2020)

by Reilly, Matthew

  As he ran, he heard Rastor’s cackling laugh and at first he thought he was imagining it, until he realised that he’d put the general’s radio in his pocket earlier and the laugh was coming from it, live and in real-time.

  At length, Jack came to the Jaffa Gate, a high medieval battlement situated at the western end of the Old City, embedded in its monumental outer walls.

  The famed Walls of Jerusalem stretched away from the gate to the south for hundreds of metres, fading off into the gloomy night air. Built over two thousand years ago and augmented in the Crusades, they were high, solid and formidable.

  Jack didn’t care.

  Everything had gone to Hell.

  Rastor had performed the Fall before Jack had got here and was no doubt on his way to the Supreme Labyrinth.

  Jack had not performed a Fall at all and until he did, the Supreme Labyrinth would be closed to him. Christ, he didn’t even know where the Labyrinth was.

  Things had been tough for him before, but they had never been this bad.

  His daughter was adrift in a deadly slumber.

  Stretch and Aloysius Knight, too.

  He’d lost Hades at Mont Saint-Michel.

  And now his mother.

  As Jack saw Pooh Bear and Easton pull up in a van outside the Walls of Jerusalem, he wondered how this could possibly get any worse.

  And then it got worse.

  Jack saw it rising above the darkened tree-covered hills to the south, above modern Jerusalem’s dimly lit suburban streets, and his mouth fell open in dismay.

  A lone helicopter—a Chinook—its twin rotors thumping, its floodlights panning the area.

  It rose straight up.

  Up and up and up.

  Jack froze in horror as he saw the object hanging from the underbelly of the Chinook.

  A giant metal sphere.

  A Siren bell.

  He hadn’t seen one since Moscow. He’d forgotten how big they were.

  ‘Oh, no. No, no, no . . .’

  He waved frantically to Pooh Bear and Easton and, oddly, in that instant, he noticed that Easton had Roxy with him.

  Jesus Christ, Jack thought. Amid all this craziness, my dog is here. He blinked away the thought.

  ‘Guys! Put on your headphones! Sphinx still has people here!’

  He clutched for his own headphones, dangling around his neck.

  But before he could get them on his head, the helicopter rocked and the great bell swung . . .

  . . . and rang . . .

  . . . and to his absolute horror, Jack heard it, heard the singular sound of its ring, and in that terrifying instant he knew that he was going to fall asleep.

  Because he’d been wearing protective headphones in Moscow when the bell had gone off there, Jack hadn’t actually heard the song of a Siren bell before.

  It was oddly beautiful, eerily beautiful even, like a gong being struck, only lighter, sweeter.

  His brain ate up the noise the bell made, the pleasure centres inside it going wild.

  Jack saw Pooh Bear fall out of the van he had arrived in; saw Easton slump in his seat.

  And then the sweet, sweet sound of the bell overwhelmed Jack himself and as his strength waned and darkness closed around him, he was able to mumble one final word.

  ‘No . . .’

  Then his world went black.

  The Siren sleep.

  It was a very strange kind of sleep, Jack discovered. More like a twilight state than deep slumber.

  It was like being asleep but also partially awake. His eyes were closed and to any outside observer, he would have appeared asleep, lost in the coma of the bell.

  Yet while his eyes might have been closed, Jack could hear the world outside him, albeit distantly, dimly, in a muffled kind of way, as if he were underwater.

  But he could not move.

  No matter how hard he willed his muscles to act, he couldn’t get them to obey.

  He was paralysed. Paralysed and blind, yet sentenced to hear, from an eerie distance, the goings-on around him.

  For instance, he heard the Chinook helicopter sweep by overhead, its normally deafening rotor-noise a faraway thumping.

  He actually felt it land on the broad boulevard outside the Jaffa Gate, a boulevard that by day was packed with tourist buses.

  Then he heard and felt the footfalls.

  Many footfalls, heavy footfalls, all of them stepping in perfect unison.

  The sound of bronzemen . . .

  Getting louder.

  Getting closer.

  Coming toward him.

  And it was then, right then, again very distantly, that he heard, of all things, a dog barking.

  Jack couldn’t see it himself, but if he could have, he would have seen himself lying flat on his back, out cold, on the wide boulevard outside the Jaffa Gate, beneath the high Walls of Jerusalem.

  Near him was the parked van, with the slumped figures of Pooh Bear and Easton, also out cold.

  The Chinook helicopter had landed about two hundred metres from him. Its floodlights—blinding white—were pointed directly at Jack.

  Out of its rear ramp marched about twenty bronzemen.

  They marched in rows, in unison, toward the sleeping figure of Jack West Jr.

  At their rear, sauntering along with easy confidence, was Jaeger Zwei, the Knight of the Golden Eight who had failed to kill Jack in Moscow.

  Wearing military-grade headphones, Zwei grinned nastily.

  He couldn’t believe his luck.

  He’d got a second chance to kill Jack West Jr.

  After ringing his Siren bell over Jerusalem and putting all its citizens to sleep, Jaeger Zwei had been about to leave the city when Rastor had shown up with his awesome force.

  Zwei and his chopper had lain low and observed Rastor blowing apart the Temple Mount and performing the Fall in the light of the powerful green moonbeam. Using the bell on Rastor wasn’t an option, as he and his people were all wearing protective headphones. And losing his bell to Rastor—who had a far more powerful plane than Zwei did—was to be avoided at all costs.

  Then Rastor had left and West had appeared and Zwei had seen his opportunity for revenge.

  And now he had Jack, paralysed and defenceless, completely at his mercy.

  It was then that something truly odd happened.

  A small black poodle sprang from the van near West and raced to his side.

  Jaeger Zwei frowned.

  In the glare of the helicopter’s floodlights, the little black dog stood over West’s body protectively, forepaws spread wide, growling at Zwei and his advancing company of bronzemen.

  And then the dog did what dogs do.

  It started barking at them.

  Zwei drew his gun. He’d shoot the fucking dog, too.

  It was quite possibly the sweetest sight in the world.

  The tiny Roxy barking fiercely at the approaching ranks of impassive bronzemen.

  The bronzemen did not stop.

  Roxy kept barking.

  Seeing that this strategy wasn’t working, she reached down and, with her teeth, snagged hold of Jack’s collar and started trying to drag him back toward the van.

  Now it was the most extraordinary sight in the world.

  The little black poodle, barely knee-high, all fifteen kilograms of her, with one crooked hind leg, trying desperately to pull her full-sized human master out of harm’s way.

  But Jack was just too big, too heavy.

  Whimpering with the effort, Roxy lost her grip on his collar a few times and Jack’s limp body slumped to the ground.

  But every time he fell, Roxy just bit into his collar again and started dragging him again, in a determined but futile effort to get him to safety.

  In the hazy world of Jack’s
mind, this was all happening far, far away.

  He heard the barks and the footfalls and the chopper’s rotor blades. He even felt the jolting movement of being dragged, but it was an alien sensation that in his current state, his mind couldn’t interpret.

  And then he heard something his mind could understand: a voice, also remote and distant.

  A woman’s voice.

  One that he knew.

  A young woman’s voice.

  But as he recognised it, he knew for certain that he was dreaming because it was impossible that she could be here.

  For it was Lily’s voice.

  She was saying, ‘It’s okay, Roxy. Good girl. Good girl. We got him now. We got him. Zoe?’

  ‘Okay, Tracy, do it,’ Zoe’s voice said.

  In his current state, imprisoned in his own body, Jack didn’t know what to think.

  Obviously, Lily wasn’t here. She was asleep herself.

  And Zoe couldn’t be here either. She had gone somewhere else, on some other mission, somewhere Jack couldn’t quite remember now.

  Maybe this was what happened at the end, at your death. As death overtook you, you heard the voices of the people you loved the most, which for him was Lily and Zoe.

  And then he felt sharp pricks behind each of his ears and—

  —Jack West Jr sprang up into a sitting position on the roadway outside the Jaffa Gate, awake and fully fucking alive!

  The glare of the helicopter’s floodlights blinded him and he held up his forearm to shield his eyes.

  Suddenly several things happened at once:

  Something small, black and furry leapt onto his lap.

  Roxy.

  She licked his face furiously, slobbering all over him with unbridled adoration.

  Then human arms wrapped Jack in the tightest of embraces and Lily’s voice called.

  ‘Dad!’

  As his eyes adjusted to the glare, he saw that it was indeed Lily—his Lily, awake and alive—wrapping him in her arms.

  Then gunfire rang out, loud and close, as beside Lily, Jack saw three figures standing over him, all of them firing at the advancing ranks of bronzemen.

  Zoe.

  And Stretch.

  And Aloysius Knight.

  But how could that be? The last time Jack had seen Stretch and Aloysius, they’d been asleep . . .

  It didn’t matter to Jack now.

  They must have been using the team’s specially tipped bullets because the bronzemen were falling and Jaeger Zwei was racing for cover.

  Jack still wasn’t sure this wasn’t all some acid-trip dream caused by the bell.

  And then, covered by the still-firing Stretch and Aloysius, he was lifted by Lily and Zoe—accompanied by a brown-haired woman he’d never met—back to the van, where he saw Sister Lynda at the wheel.

  ‘Fucking hurry up!’ the old nun shouted over the gunfire.

  Might still be a whacked-out dream, Jack thought.

  In seconds he was inside the van alongside the still-comatose bodies of Pooh Bear and Easton, fleeing from the Old City of Jerusalem, looking back out through the rear window to see Jaeger Zwei furiously watching him get away.

  As the van zoomed through the deserted streets of modern Jerusalem, Jack’s mind strained to return to normal.

  Sister Lynda drove like a demon, taking turns at high speed through a residential neighbourhood packed with apartment complexes.

  ‘Lynda!’ Zoe yelled. ‘We can’t outrun that chopper once it’s airborne! We need to hide! Get us underground now!’

  In response, Sister Lynda yanked the steering wheel hard over and they went bouncing down a ramp into an underground parking garage beneath an apartment building.

  They descended for three levels until Lynda hit the brakes and the van squealed to a halt.

  Jack was still lying on his side, taking in this sudden unexpected rescue.

  Stretch and Aloysius scanned the garage outside, guns up.

  Zoe and Lily knelt above Jack.

  They both smiled broadly.

  ‘Hey, you,’ Zoe said. ‘Wakey, wakey.’

  ‘Hi, Dad,’ Lily said. ‘I’m back.’

  Aleppo, Syria

  4 hours earlier

  While Jack had been dashing to Jerusalem, Zoe and Sister Lynda had been racing in their little ICON A-10 plane—with the sleeping figures of Lily, Stretch and Aloysius lying against each other in the back—to Syria, to the town of Aleppo.

  It took some doing, but there, amid the bombed-out ruins of the once-magnificent Roman city—its citizens living under constant bombardment by the brutal Syrian regime—they found a small mobile hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders.

  They’d found this field hospital by asking the local women if they knew of a female doctor who specialised in hearing and breathing difficulties. It turned out, many did. They spoke of the brilliant lady ear doctor who had saved the hearing of many of their children after bombs had landed close to them.

  A brilliant lady ear doctor.

  That sounded like Dr Tracy Smith.

  Which was how, on Christmas Day, among the dusty ruins of Aleppo, Zoe and Sister Lynda had found a striking woman with her sleeves rolled up and her brown hair pulled back in a careless ponytail peering intently into a small child’s ear with an otoscope.

  ‘Tracy!’ Lynda called.

  The doctor turned. She was in her mid-forties, sharp-eyed and attractive.

  She nodded in acknowledgement.

  ‘Why, hi, Lynda. With all these Siren bells going off around the world, I was wondering if someone might come looking for me.’

  Brief introductions were made and Zoe quickly saw just how disillusioned Tracy Smith had become with the secret royal world.

  Tracy said, ‘There’s an old African proverb: When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. I got tired of all the palace intrigue with the nuns and the Church and the royal households. I figured I’d never have a voice in the throne rooms of the world and get to sway the elephants, so I decided—fuck it—I’d just go help the grass: the poor, the dispossessed, the ones who lose their homes while the lords of everything squabble.’

  ‘You’re more important than you know,’ Zoe said with genuine sympathy. ‘The Catholic Church wants you dead. They ordered a hit on you. I’m guessing this is because of your work on the Siren bells.’

  Tracy Smith gave a single short nod. ‘I imagine so.’

  ‘Do you know how to undo the Siren sleep?’ Zoe asked.

  Another single nod. ‘The Siren sleep isn’t magic or some kind of religious hocus-pocus. It’s just science. The bells affect the inner ear, specifically the semicircular canals within the inner ear. It’s kind of like a supercharged version of Ménière’s disease.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The bells disrupt the delivery of a special kind of fluid in those canals known as endolymph fluid. The bells don’t affect animals because their semicircular canals are larger than ours. My theory is that you undo the sleep by injecting a synthetic endolymph serum into the semicircular canal in each ear.’

  Zoe’s eyes widened with hope.

  ‘Dr Smith. I work with Jack West Jr and we need your help. If you come with me and test out your theory on a very important young woman named Lily, you’ll not only be deeply hurting the throne rooms of the world, you might just help save the whole world from enslavement.’

  Tracy Smith looked up at that.

  Zoe began to speak, but the doctor held up her hand.

  ‘It’s okay, Miss Kissane,’ she said. ‘You had me at “deeply hurting the throne rooms of the world”. Let’s go and fuck them up.’

  Thirty minutes later, on a bombed-out runway in Syria, in the back of Zoe’s plane, Dr Tracy Smith inserted a long-tipped needle into the soft
tissue behind Lily’s right ear and injected some serum into it.

  Then she did the left ear.

  Everyone waited, watching Lily intently.

  Nothing happened.

  Lynda looked at Tracy. ‘How long will it—’

  ‘Wait!’ Zoe exclaimed. Her eyes had never left Lily’s.

  Lily’s eyelids fluttered.

  Then, very slowly, they opened—blinking quickly, regaining focus—and Lily sat up and looked at the cluster of women gathered around her.

  ‘I . . . I . . . Thank you,’ she said.

  Zoe dived forward and hugged her adopted daughter tightly, tears flowing down her cheeks.

  Lily hugged her back. ‘You won’t believe how hungry I am. Do you have any food and water?’

  ‘We sure do,’ Zoe said, reaching for a canteen and some energy bars in her pack.

  As she handed Lily the water, Lily froze, suddenly remembering the moment she had succumbed to the sleep.

  ‘Where’s Dad? I tried to warn him . . . in Moscow . . . with a note.’

  ‘He got your note, Lily, and it saved him from the bells,’ Zoe said. ‘And because of that note, we’re still in the game. But the game has got kinda crazy and we’re a long way behind the bad guys. As usual, Jack’s in the middle of it all and we need to go help him in Jerusalem right now.’

  With those words, they’d got moving, heading directly for Jerusalem, with a new member added to their ragtag team, Dr Tracy Smith.

  On the way to Jerusalem, Tracy had used her serum to awaken Stretch and Aloysius.

  Stretch groaned. ‘What happened? Is everybody okay?’

  Aloysius Knight rubbed the back of his head. ‘I have got the worst headache. Feels like the hangover from Hell.’

  He spun to face Zoe. His first question wasn’t about Jack or the sleep or the end of the world.

  ‘Where’s Rufus?’

  ‘He’s okay,’ Zoe said kindly. ‘He’s on a mission with Alby Calvin. They’re going to a remote location to try and tap into a lunar rover on the surface of the moon.’

  Aloysius stared at her blankly. ‘The surface of the moon? Just how long have I been out?’