36 Righteous Men
Page 22
Suddenly: the central shaft opens—a vaulted atrium where the three equipment tunnels come together.
Instancer stands at the nexus.
Manning stops at the incline entry. I stagger up beside him, dragging Rachel.
MANNING
Stay back!
He catches me and presses me into the wall. He’s smart; he has grabbed flame boots and gloves.
MANNING
Cover your face!
Manning makes me take his gloves and boots.
As I’m struggling to don them . . .
The first tunnel-buster fires.
There’s a split-second delay. Then the second and third go off.
The shock wave hits like a building collapsing. My feet bowl from under me, even in the lee of the access tunnel. I go deaf and blind. Superheated dust fills my mouth and nostrils. Overhead panels crash. Alarms blare. The central shaft collapses in sections on all three sides.
I’m clinging to one of Manning’s fire boots. He has gone down too. I’ve forgotten Rachel completely. My only thought is, as during the warrant service, Hang on to that shotgun!
The corrugated floor writhes beneath me. It’s the back-suck from the initial concussion. I’m being swept. The air that has been pushed in by the tunnel weapons’ triple blast now roars back in the opposite direction—out.
MANNING
Dewey! Can you hear me?
Manning pulls me by the collar back into the incline tunnel.
By increments, the central shaft clears.
Instancer stands there.
Soot-black from sole to crown.
But unfazed.
Grinning.
LEVEL EIGHT
A steel stairwell descends from the blasted atrium. Ben-David has plunged down. Instancer follows.
GEOTHERMAL AREA
NO ENTRY
Alarms blare. Emergency sprinklers gush from overhead. Foam fire retardant blasts from wide-mouth nozzles along the walls.
Manning grabs me.
MANNING
The Zombie Killer!
I press it into his hands.
LEVEL NINE
Manning vanishes down the stairwell.
Am I a coward? Every cell is screaming, Run! Climb! Get outta here!
I can feel the earth’s core beneath me. It rumbles like a nuclear reactor. The soles of my feet, despite the flame boots, burn as if I’m standing on a hot iron.
What is that sound?
Magma?
The geothermal core?
I descend the stairwell. Its bottom is a sheltered cell.
My heart fails me.
I can’t take another step.
I peer, shielding my eyes with the oversized, Mylar-faced flame gloves.
Level Nine is a domed arena, the size of a wrestling ring. Its floor is sizzling corrugated tin. You can see the magma glow beneath it.
Ben-David crouches in a defensive stance on the far side. An alcove no bigger than a coffin protects him. He wears a flame suit with boots and gloves. He’s holding a helmet up to protect his face.
Instancer stands in the center of the ring, facing Manning, who has stepped from the stairwell. A space of ten feet separates them.
I hear a sound from above.
Rachel.
She half tumbles down the ladder well. In flame boots but with no suit, no gloves, no helmet. I realize I’d lost track of her. I curse my heedlessness. I lunge at her.
She wrestles against me.
RACHEL
Where’s the gun?
We both turn toward Manning.
He clutches the Zombie Killer.
Instancer faces him. Smoke rises from his shirt and trousers.
Manning steps forward. His clothes are smoldering too.
MANNING
You can fall.
INSTANCER
What?
MANNING
Motherfucker, you can fall.
Manning pumps three shells, not at Instancer but at the floor he stands on. The surface shreds, opening like a trapdoor.
Instancer plunges into the void.
A fury primeval roars upward from the center of the Earth. Manning’s shirt and trousers erupt into flame. He had started toward Ben-David, to drag him clear, but the blast bowls him backward. Then he sees:
Instancer.
One hand clutches the twisted corrugation that Manning’s shotgun had torn apart.
A second hand reaches up.
Instancer’s head and shoulders appear.
Ben-David squirts from his shelter, dashes along the wall to Rachel and me in the stairwell.
BEN-DAVID
Go! Go!
He grabs us both and pushes us toward the rungs leading up.
Rachel resists.
I do too.
Instancer hauls himself up out of the chasm. He’s half clear when Manning bull-rushes at him.
Manning flings himself full-speed, full-weight upon Instancer.
Heat is rising from the void in scarlet waves. Manning clutches Instancer from behind and above. It’s some kind of wrestler’s hold.
Manning hauls Instancer’s left hand off its grip. He pries with all his strength and leverage to free the right.
Instancer jack-knifes himself with impossible power. Both hands recover their grip. He rises, with Manning clinging to his back.
Something pushes me aside.
For a second I think it’s Ben-David.
Then I see Rachel, bending to retrieve the Zombie Killer.
She steps from our sheltered cove into the central arena.
She fires as she advances.
One shot.
Two.
Three.
Each successive impact blows Instancer rearward. But his grip on the rim never slackens.
Manning, hanging on to Instancer from behind, struggles to pry Instancer’s hands from their hold.
With a cry, Rachel flings the shotgun aside. She lowers her shoulders and charges with all her strength into Instancer.
Instancer’s grip fails.
The three, fused in fire, plunge as one into the inferno.
BEN-DAVID
Climb, Dewey! Get out of here!
When I reach the surface, every follicle of hair on my body, including those on my arms and legs, has been seared to the skin. My phone in my pocket has melted. It’s not till I recover my laptop from Ben-David’s truck that I can enter their cloud codes and retrieve my comrades’ status lines:
END RACHEL TRANSMISSION
END MANNING TRANSMISSION
BOOK EIGHT
CYPRUS
32
EARTH’S LAST CHANCE
OUR PARTY, absent Manning and Rachel (and Dana and her soldiers, who have remained in Israel), has crossed to Cyprus by sea from Haifa. Representatives of a hundred and seventy-four nations, including forty-seven heads of state, attend this climate conference billed without overstatement as “Earth’s Last Chance.”
The harbor at Nicosia has been converted into an exhibition space for two dozen tidal, sea current, and saltwater energy projects, including Ben-David’s SROG, Seawater Re-Oxygenation and Generation technology. Crowds in the thousands swarm the site in a celebratory mood. The emotion of the climate conference is one of long-awaited, overdue breakthrough.
Around the globe, atmospheric anomalies have stabilized. Rain is falling in parts of Africa, Australia, and Central Asia where drought conditions had prevailed for decades. Two Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes have been downgraded to tropical storms, and even these seem to be abating further.
Is this the hour of salvation at last?
Ben-David has, moments before, delivered his keynote address to the representatives and heads of state of the assembled nations. I’m descending the steps to Amity Square. The hall behind me echoes with the ovation for Ben-David’s speech.
What had seemed unachievable until this instant has at once become not just practicable but inevitable. The species can grasp its own des
tiny. Humankind’s expedient and self-destroying impulses will not win out yet again.
What about Manning? I set his loss alongside the salvation of the planet. It’s crazy, I know. But in my mind the two stand equal. What keeps me (so far) from feeling devastated is the thought that Manning in some way wanted his fiery end. He felt in that moment, I’m certain, that his life meant something. As for Rachel, all my feelings of protectiveness have come flooding back. She was a vessel broken in a hundred places, who put herself back together for the one moment that meant everything.
I have a message from Dana in Israel, sent forty-eight hours ago. Earthmoving equipment and demolition engineers have arrived at the site of the Gehenna dig. Dana is there. She is witnessing the transformation firsthand. With the blessing of global leaders, the “portal to hell” will be sealed permanently beneath thousands of tons of basalt and sand.
I hear a scream behind me.
For a moment I think, Ah, a cry of joy.
Then conference-goers in panic begin streaming past me down the convention hall steps. I turn and look back. Hundreds are fleeing the hall.
“Ben-David!” someone cries. “Ben-David has been murdered!”
My blood goes to ice.
My hands and wrists are still wrapped from burns. My eyebrows, singed to the skin line, are just starting to grow back. My bare skull, salved in oil and antiseptic, is sheathed in a scarf.
I have no weapon.
I swim back up the steps, into the stampede.
“Who?” I’m shouting to anyone who might answer. “Who killed him?”
No one knows.
I find a policeman. The killer got away, he says. “He escaped into the crowd.”
I clutch the officer’s arm.
ME
How was Ben-David killed? With a gun?
POLICE OFFICER
Strangled. By hand. Choked to death.
I plunge back down the steps amid the throng. I don’t know where I’m going. I have no idea what I hope to do.
Am I running?
From what?
To where?
I try to summon Manning. What would he do?
As I’m thinking this, I spot Dana.
What the fuck?
She’s below me, on the steps, climbing toward me, toward the hall.
ME
Dana!
(rushing down to her)
What are you doing here? I thought you were in Israel.
I stare at Dana. She’s dressed in civilian garb—a skirt and a low-cut summer blouse. She’s wearing eyeliner and mascara, with her hair free and flowing. She looks feminine and sensual.
When she sees me, her expression turns stricken, even shamefaced.
Then I realize she is here with a lover.
The man is standing next to her, holding her hand. I haven’t noticed him, being too startled and surprised by seeing Dana.
INSTANCER
Hello, Dewey.
I can’t breathe. The earth seems to collapse beneath my feet. I stare. It’s him. Untouched, unscathed, unaltered.
INSTANCER
Have you had time to bring your notes up to date? Collated? Uploaded to the cloud?
He knows I have.
I know what’s coming.
INSTANCER
You’re my chronicler, Dewey. Thank you. What we have accomplished shall endure forever.
His right arm shoots toward my throat, swift as a striking snake.
I feel my voice box being crushed.
The organ-failure alarm chirps on my indicator. My last thought is to picture my status line as it updates in the cloud.
END DEWEY TRANSMISSION
And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually . . . And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
GENESIS 6:5–7
SPECIAL THANKS
TO COLONEL ROBERT GOUGH and to Bill Bagshaw, whose encouragement kept me going when I was inches away from pulling the plug. To Shawn Coyne, who “put the Story Grid on” the narrative when it crashed in midstream and provided the direction to put it back together. To Kate Snow for contributions above and beyond the call of duty. To Officers Gina and Freddie Pineda of the NYPD for their counsel on police procedure; to Amanda Tunnell for matters of tech and media; to Rabbi Mordecai Finley for his wisdom on all things Judaic. To Star Lawrence for his belief in this material and his rigor in pushing it to its most highly realized level. And to Sterling Lord, who put everything together and made this whole damn thing happen.
ALSO BY STEVEN PRESSFIELD
FICTION
The Legend of Bagger Vance
Gates of Fire
Tides of War
Last of the Amazons
The Virtues of War
The Afghan Campaign
Killing Rommel
The Profession
The Knowledge
NONFICTION
The War of Art
Do the Work
The Warrior Ethos
Turning Pro
The Authentic Swing
The Lion’s Gate
An American Jew
Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t
The Artist’s Journey
36 Righteous Men is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Steven Pressfield
All rights reserved
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Pressfield, Steven, author.
Title: 36 righteous men : a novel / Steven Pressfield.
Description: First edition. | New York : W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019014779 | ISBN 9781324002895 (hardcover)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Mystery fiction. | Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3566.R3944 A614 2019 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019014779
ISBN 9781324002901 (Ebook)
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