"Brandon was anything but focused. He was always asking questions. Never took anything at face value. This job always confused him. Is that it? Is that the difference?
And Gant realized, too, that he was confused himself. Confused about his marriage. Confused about his job. Confused about every mission they undertook, especially this one.
The entity had suggested that he—Gant—had a self-righteousness about his duty.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
So many years of following orders and killing on command. Where had it gotten him? Deeper and deeper into the gray area between right and wrong.
He worked for men who made nightmares—men like General Borman, like The Tall Company. The feeling had been growing inside of Thom for several years—years in which he had watched his wife go from afraid to stoic about his job. He had watched her become yet another victim of his work.
There was no righteousness here—only orders. Orders Major Thom Gant followed because he had been trained to do so—trained as well as any attack dog.
Once, long ago, he had obeyed those orders because he wanted to. Now he obeyed because he knew nothing else; you might as well ask him to stop breathing. Yet even while he obeyed he wondered what had become of him, his life, and the lives of those around him.
Confusion. Doubt. Fear. Like Twiste, Gant allowed his emotions and confusion to blind his usually ordered and controlled mind, despite what the outside world saw. And like Twiste, "God" was held at bay. His own weakness had become his only defense.
"That’s it, isn’t it?" Gant spoke out loud again, as if everyone listening had been following his train of thought. "You can get into an ordered, disciplined mind. A mind that does not question what it sees. People like the guards upstairs. People like Haas. People like—"
Gant stopped. His mouth worked for a moment before it formed his next thought.
"People like General Borman."
He pivoted on his leg a little too fast and a sharp pain shimmied up his body.
When it dulled to a throb, he shook his head and asked, "Who else can’t you control? Who else is so blinded by emotion and confusion that you cannot get into their head?"
—
Sgt. "Biggy" Franco leaned easily into the corner. He was in the "old" vestibule area—the one that seemed a carbon copy of the area the Archangel team had assembled in—how long ago?—a day? Twelve hours?
Time seemed irrelevant in that dungeon, and particularly so to Franco. Time did not matter. The blood that poured from this body did not matter. The dizzy spells that came and went, they did not matter either.
What did matter? Oh, now that was the rub. What did matter to Sgt. Franco was that there was only one way into the quarantine zone on sublevel five. And only one way out.
Biggy Franco waited in a perfect position to watch that exit. Indeed, he propped himself behind an overturned desk in clear view of that door.
You missed another tackle, Biggy! You let that nigger run you right over! He went right by you! One fucking tackle and we would've won the game. You lost it for us, Biggy. You are a goddamn loser.
"I'm sorry, Dad. He was too fast. Too slippery. But I'll get the next one. He won't get by me again. Not after what they did to me. Not after they left me to be … to be dinner. They're gonna pay the piper, Dad. I'll get 'em good."
Franco had an assault rifle with an infrared scope, a clear shot at the only exit in the whole godforsaken place, and as long as he did not bleed to death, he had the patience to wait.
Don't miss another one, you worthless fuck.
"I won't, Dad. Not this time."
30
Wells was the last of the three to fall to the floor from the drop ceiling. The sound of his boots hitting echoed down the dark hall. The three soldiers held still—nary a breath—waiting to see if that sound would be greeted by attack.
Nothing came from the pitch black ahead, and therefore Campion concluded that they were safe.
"Where are we?" Galati asked in a huff.
They had taken so many turns, crawled through so many air vents, walked through so many halls that seemed familiar that it felt as if they were in a holding pattern; as if Campion’s sixth sense for finding paths through the complex had purposely delayed their progress.
All the time, at every turn, they heard the distant shuffle of the denizens of that big hole in the ground—sometimes a growl or snarl, too. But each time Campion found an escape route before the creatures—Germans, spiders, clowns, or whatever—came into view or pounced.
"This is nucking futz," Wells played on words.
"Relax, soldier," the captain replied.
"I’m just saying," Wells grunted, but he left it at that.
Campion surveyed their surroundings. Just as he had expected, a maintenance shaft had led them to a ventilation duct that had provided them a safe, sheltered route from one end of sublevel 8 to the other.
Now they assembled in a secondary passage lined with storage facilities, sealed biohazard bins, and the access room for a long-dormant industrial incinerator that had once been used to dispose of toxic materials.
How Campion knew all this, how he even knew the maintenance shaft would lead to the ventilation duct and in turn to this secondary corridor, was as much a mystery to him as to the others. None of these shortcuts appeared on his computer map. Yet like a cool pool player who makes a lucky shot, Campion acted in complete control; the best leaders inspired confidence.
Nonetheless, a nagging feeling that he was wasting time troubled the captain. Part of him kept suggesting that the main Red Lab sat around the next corner, while another part—a stronger part—suggested it would be better to take their time, to wait to complete the mission.
Wait for what?
Captain Campion relaxed his grip on his submachine gun. The area appeared safe.
A great place for a rest.
"Let’s take a rest. We’re almost to the home stretch and I want everyone sharp for this last bit because it could get hairy."
Galati and Wells shared a glance. They had stopped for a number of breaks and rests.
Campion led them into a pitch-black storage room. He pulled a glow stick from his utility belt, cracked it, then shook the chemical mixture. In a few short seconds a bright green glow illuminated a circle of the dark room.
Dusty shelves, old boxes. Nothing of interest; nothing younger than very old.
Wells gently closed the door behind them and the three sat together.
Campion removed the V.A.A.D. from the duffel bag with both hands, then rested it in front of him as if it were a sculpture worthy of admiration.
The others eyed him suspiciously. Galati and Wells knew that Campion had neither an instruction booklet nor the training to make it do what it was supposed to do.
"What are those holes there, on that thing?" Galati pointed to small circles on the sides.
"Those are the plugs for the batteries. Dr. Twiste has the batteries."
"Some assembly required, huh?" Wells said in a flippant tone.
Campion took one solitary finger and slid it lovingly along the side of the device. It ran over the battery plugs then pushed against a small compartment. That compartment swung open on a swivel, revealing a row of small buttons and a dormant light.
"Power grid activation," Campion said, but there were no words to read.
He paused, tilted his head in a manner similar to a dog tilting its head in reaction to a high-pitched noise. Then he ran his finger over the inside of the compartment.
"The batteries plug in here … then they’re activated one at a time by these switches. The device charges … when it’s at full charge the light glows green."
Galati and Wells shared yet another look.
"You’ve … seen this thing, before? Cap?" Galati wondered.
"No … no …" Campion mumbled to them but then spoke out loud to himself while running both his hands over and along the device, opening more compartments to
access more buttons, dials, gauges, and switches. "Of course, it’s simple. I set the radius of effect using the two dials; set the duration of effect with this timer … here. Then it’s just a matter of finding the correct particle balance."
Galati shrugged and sarcastically said, "Yeah, um, Cap, sounds simple to me."
"Sure," Wells chimed in. "Just find the correct particle balance. Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?"
Campion fell out of his trance, looked at the two soldiers, and said to them, "I don't know. It's like I've had the instructions for this thing in my head all the time. I just had to, well, remember."
—
The tender sound of Beethoven’s Symphony Number Nine rolled across the small living room like the current of a gentle stream. The sounds fell upon a vacant sofa and matching coffee table, where an ancient copy of Popular Mechanics rested. Alongside the couch sat a small stereo, from which the classical music played.
Then came another sound, just below the music—never overpowering it.
A sniffle. A sob. A grunt. A pencil scribbling.
Dr. Vincent Vsalov sat at a round table in his guest quarters, writing. He wrote on a solitary sheet of paper with a number 2 pencil. The remains of a half-dozen number 2 pencils—snapped or worn to nothing—lay at his feet, across the table, and otherwise discarded in haphazard fashion.
More writing paper—blank—waited in a neat pile to his left; waited to go under his pencil, to receive line after line of harsh, sloppy scribbles to then be thrown to his right to join a growing messy mass of papers already covered in line after line of jagged script.
Vsalov gripped the pencil in a red fist so hard his fingers cramped. The letters came out mutated and mangled. But the ideas behinds those words were clear. Each broken word a clear thought in his mind before it made it to the paper; the paper then filled and discarded.
Vsalov wanted to cry out, but mental gridlock froze out any impulse other than the impulse to spill his thoughts onto the paper. He was in pain; horrible pain as something strip-mined his brain, forcing the ideas, concepts, and designs it wanted into his arm and smashing them onto the paper.
He worked with the fury of a desperate addict, and the impulse to tell became a psychological bullet, pulling out the desired knowledge but turning his mind into something as mutated and mangled as the wretched marks on the paper.
A tear splashed onto the paper as he filled the last bit of white space on a page. That sheet, the words, and the tear were thrown aside—they were no longer needed. The written words were irrelevant.
It was the thought that counted.
31
Major Gant took the last bite of an energy bar pulled from his survival kit. He washed it down with a mouthful of water that was warm and tasted metallic. Not exactly his first choice of last meals, but no one appeared willing to share the culinary bounty of Twinkies, candy bars, and MREs taken from his team's gear, so it would have to do.
The creature wearing Dr. Briggs’s flesh emerged from its room at the end of the lab, but what came out from behind the heavy metal door was greatly changed from what had gone in.
This version of Briggs seemed re-energized, as evidenced by the surprising bounce in his step. Furthermore, the scientist-turned-vessel had dressed in the charcoal gray sport jacket, slacks, and matching tie that had somehow made its way into one of Gant’s soldiers’ backpacks.
What hair was left on Briggs’s balding scalp was groomed to the point of being slick, and while it appeared the entity had made no attempt to cure its host’s hair loss, it did apparently feel that eyesight was important: Briggs’s glasses were gone.
In all, he appeared one part funeral director and one part Mafioso, although a smattering of nerdiness remained.
The self-described superior being emerged and looked about the lab until its human eyes fell upon Ruthie, who reacted to some manner of communication by setting aside her pistol and approaching her master. Jolly did the same, although the former soldier kept his gun—once Gant's HK MP5—pointed at the prisoner.
Briggs, however, gave all his attention to Ruthie, no doubt one of his prized playthings, as evidenced by the obscene "children" infesting the lower levels.
"You have been so very good to me, my dear. I have enjoyed our experiences together," he said to the skeletal woman and ran his hand lovingly across her cheek. "I have made you beautiful, have I not? You were never beautiful before—but I gave you this gift."
Gant found it hard to believe that anyone could consider the frail, broken woman "beautiful." Perhaps once, sure. But what stood there in that lab was only an echo of what had once been a woman. She—like Jolly—was less than alive, but not mercifully dead.
"Oh yes, my love," she said as she closed her eyes and rested her hand upon his.
Gant realized that this was the first time he had seen Briggs—the entity—talk to or treat any of his followers as anything other than servants or tools.
Briggs’s left hand found the back of her wiry hair, and while he moved in what appeared to be a compassionate fashion, Major Gant felt an uneasiness in the room, like watching a barometer fall as an omen of foul weather.
"So many … things …" the entity told her, "we shared so much."
It sounded to Gant as if Ruthie moaned or purred, but it came across as forced, a lie to stroke his ego.
"I know I hurt you from time to time," Briggs said with little concern in his tone.
"All wonderful," she responded.
"Do you remember back in the beginning?"
Briggs's voice remained soothing but Gant felt his muscles tense as he clearly sensed a storm about to break.
"Do you remember what you said to me, that first time?"
Gant was conscious of movement from behind, from the double doors of the lab.
Ruthie did not answer. She held her head tilted up with her eyes closed, still clasping his right hand as it stroked her cheek.
"You said 'never.' Do you remember?"
The master’s tone lost any semblance of soothing and took on a sharp, nasty edge. The creature’s hand tighten on her hair and yanked her head back. For a moment Gant feared Briggs planned to bite into her throat like a vampire.
Ruthie's hands floundered at her sides. She tried to smile, but a grimace of pain kept overtaking that smile.
"You said, 'NEVER.'"
The doors to the lab opened. First one, then two, then three of the horrible children came in, their teeth chattering, their posture bent over so that their long fingernails nearly dragged on the floor.
Briggs’s voice became angered—not louder, but stronger and cruel.
"You said, ‘never,’ you stuck-up bitch."
Ruthie squirmed. When she spoke her words sounded nearly human, a voice buried under two decades of submission, brutality, and terror.
"No … I did everything. I did everything you asked."
"Yes, you did," Briggs clenched his teeth and glared at her. "Open your eyes and look at me."
Ruthie complied.
Gant stepped forward. Jolly matched his step and raised the gun, and while he warned the major off, the way his teeth bared through his open gums made it seem like the monster welcomed confrontation.
"You did everything. You did everything, every way. You were mine, whenever and however I wanted. And you loved it too, didn’t you?"
"No—please don’t …"
"Begging again, Ruthie?" Briggs snarled. "I thought you said never. I thought I wasn’t good enough for you."
"I’ll do anything," she said, forcing herself to caress his hand again.
"Everything you like … all those things …"
"Why would I want that now?" the thing in Briggs's body asked. "Soon I’ll take any woman on the planet. I'll call them and they will come running to me. What would I want with you? I’m throwing you away, Ruthie. I’m throwing YOU away."
Briggs jammed his lips onto hers in kiss that shared more in common with a bite. Then as he pulled aw
ay he ripped her shirt, exposing sagging, worn breasts on an emaciated body.
"Children, kiss your mother goodnight."
And the mob took her. Claws, ragged teeth, dug into the woman who had given them birth. Her upper body disappeared into the center of the trio. Gant saw only her legs, kicking and slapping the ground with little strength. Blood splashed out from the slaughter and streamed across the concrete.
Jolly just stood there, and while Gant figured the creature probably did not even realize what had happened, his exhales sounded like a soft, insane chuckle as one demon enjoyed the sport of others.
"You told me, ‘never,’" Briggs said again.
The creatures dragged her away. Her legs still kicked, a little, and Gant saw her fingers clench and unclench, but whatever life remained in the research assistant named Ruthie was quickly draining away.
Briggs watched Ruthie’s body disappear out through the double doors with his eyes bulging and a thin smirk on his face making an expression Gant translated as some kind of perverse satisfaction; a petty child settling a score.
Then the entity that inhabited what had once been a leading human scientist turned and locked eyes with the soldier. Calmly, casually, the thing told Thom: "Time to go."
"Well, then, I suppose this is the end of the road for me."
He did not want to die, particularly not at the hands—claws—of the children. But he could not defend himself. Hell, he could barely stand on his bad knee, and his left arm would be useless in a fight.
However, the entity said, "Not quite, Major. You’re coming too. We have to make way for your friend, Captain Campion. He’ll be here any minute and we don’t want to disturb his work."
Jolly kept an eye on Major Gant but also found and pushed the bag holding the V.A.A.D. batteries to the center of the room, just in front of the cloth covering the ancient radio.
If there is actually still a radio under there, Gant thought.
Once the big guy had taken care of that particular task, he motioned the barrel of the MP5 at Gant and then toward the exit. The major understood perfectly, and although a bolt of pain shot up his leg, he walked in that direction, careful not to slip over the trails of blood leading out the door. He could not discern which of the trails belonged to Twiste's body; all the blood had sort of merged together into one wide track.
Opposing Force: Book 01 - The God Particle Page 27
