Antler Plan (A Konrad Loki Thriller Book 1)

by Joonas Huhta

  Konrad threw a glance at the crowd, then said to the teenagers. “Let them hold hands if you think it’s appropriate.”

  68

  KONRAD ESCAPED THE chamber through a window. The dark sky flashed and howled with the arrival of police cars. A faint whirr suggested a chopper heading in their direction. Surely a medical helicopter, pretty much the only swift way to bring wounded and sick people to the hospital from all over Lapland.

  His heart crunched at the realization that the shot police officer was going to die. The teens would have to watch it all.

  Unbelievable bravery.

  In the darkness of the woods, a reindeer attempted to acquire something to eat under the frozen ground. Next to it, the whitest of the herd had antlers only on one side. That branching sight reminded him of the painting in his home. The painting Julia held so dear.

  The Antler Plan of Rovaniemi.

  Julia was carrying out something sinister with Rudolph. It was the only explanation for her absence.

  A memory shot through his eyes with husky dogs racing ahead of him, the sled’s runners kicking up snow. The way Julia’s father handled the dogs with confidence was unforgettable. He held Julia tight against his chest, feeling her warmth. But stiffness in her body revealed she didn’t share the moment with him. Her mind was deeply distant with reindeer running toward the twilight far away, wrapping around an idea of fixing the world in a way no one would ever consider trying.

  That was the time when they started to grow apart. It had to be.

  A howl snapped him back.

  A Siberian husky.

  The memory of the sound of a husky choir’s sonorous howling and how it had wakened him on so many mornings filled his heart with decisive energy.

  One unmanned husky sleigh sat available.

  Konrad aroused the dogs’ attention and managed to silence them with the exact gestures of Julia’s father. The dogs were eager to go on a run, their ears turned to the trail leading away from the place of sinister silence under the rising whine of the sirens. This ride was to be the mother of all brochure promises, not just a stroll around a small circle.

  I know where you are going.

  Konrad felt the power of the animals. The power came from the visible concord, months and years of training together as a team. He recapped the mushing sounds and anticipated to make the first kissing sound.

  “Mush! Show me what you you’re made of.”

  “HELP ME,” the policeman begged and gasped.

  The two doctors asked for mercy from Gideon, who refused to look. He loathed himself, the bitter tang in his mouth making him almost throw up. The more he tried to comprehend the situation and the repercussions, and the fact that his family was gone, the more compulsive his urge to flee. His mind didn’t give up imagining and replaying the horrible last breath that would come any second.

  “Back up,” Gideon said to the doctors. He gestured to Ville and Rebecca to be on guard as he crouched next to the policeman, and took his hand into his. The pressure from the dying man’s shake surprised him. He whispered in his ear.

  “I know this is hard to accept. But you must understand that you’re infected. Letting you out would cause worldwide problems. What’s your name?”

  “P-Peter. I-I have to take c-care… my children.”

  “You are. You are everything I wished my father to be.”

  “I don’t want to die.” Peter coughed blood on Gideon’s face.

  An instant tear formed in Gideon’s eyes.

  “It’s all right; you are the hero of this day.”

  “Y-you think so?” Peter calmed down, something escaping him. “Tell my family I love them so much. Tell them I’ll be waiting for them. Promise me.”

  A shudder passed through Gideon’s body as Peter squeezed his hand. “I’ll do everything that your name gets the reputation it deserves.”

  The people lying on the floor held their breaths as Peter’s convulsions came to an end. The sound of his last breath was indescribably sad, yet soothing. A sharp pain stabbed Gideon’s chest. The sadness for Peter and his family was intolerable. He closed his eyelids and whispered, “Thank you, Peter.”

  Eyes turned toward Gideon. By accepting the mantle of guilt, he hoped the message was clear and cold-blooded enough: he would spare no mercy to rescue a valuable life.

  Ville’s and Rebecca’s eyes were shocked in the distorted wrecks of their faces.

  Gideon’s world teetered on the brink of total collapse. He turned to Patrick to launch a spear of sorrow-blinded rage…

  “What in the name of…” Gideon rushed to the base of the stairs and screamed at Ville and Rebecca. “Where is he?”

  The three of them came to witness the overwhelming reality of the situation. As though the earth had swallowed Patrick, only blood pooled on the floor.

  And in that pool sat a gnawed-off thumb with shredded bone and skin.

  69

  ONLY TWO SLEIGH lengths ahead Konrad distinguished reindeer crap. The smell indicated it was fresh. Julia was here just minutes ago. He looked over the frozen river. A black dot was moving toward the city. Illuminated by two gigantic light sources, the Lumberjack’s Candle Bridge dominated the nightscape while lighting up the riverbank as well. There was no way he could reach Julia undetected on the ice and no better way of moving, so he just had to hurry up.

  The dogs’ tongues dangled long as they mustered the strength.

  “Be ready for the final ride.” He commanded them to move. Julia was probably going to drop a present on her hometown, a city that had once wrapped its arms around them, and had been their own frozen cultural hub. Confronting the horror, scarcely imaginable, Konrad took the best out of the huskies.

  Or was she a threat anymore? Until recently, she had always been the complete opposite of violence. How could she bear the burden of killing Iris?

  The antlers had to mean something extraordinary for her. His raw feeling was that they represented a non-ordinary awareness, a crown idea, bringing men and women closer to the sky and thus making them sacred. The symbolic nature of the antlers was the source of inspiration for her to get man’s branching disagreements in check.

  But what happened after the antlers growth had been completed? Didn’t they just fall off?

  Are you planning to do something to yourself?

  70

  GIDEON KNEW THAT Patrick was after Konrad and Julia. If Patrick was infected too, he could start spreading the thing on his own. Was it even reasonable to carry on detaining people inside?

  “Look, uh, you’ve got to stop,” Ville said to a couple drawing closer together.

  “Make them stop,” Gideon demanded.

  “How?”

  “Kick them in the head,” Rebecca said.

  Gideon did a quick analysis. “You’re violating the rules. Move your hands away from each other!”

  “I can’t just kick them,” Ville said. “See. It’s no use to command. Whatever is inside them is taking hold.”

  “I have bad mojo about this,” Rebecca said to Gideon.

  “We’ll tie your wrists together behind your backs if you don’t obey,” Gideon said. He waited for a few seconds before confirming the increasing activity everywhere. “Quickly now, Rebecca, how do we spoil their mood?”

  She did a double take. “If privacy is not a problem I don’t think even bad music would do. Madonna would not get any attention.”

  “Think, think…” Gideon said to himself. “Ville, what the hell are you doing? Are you reading mood spoilers on your phone?”

  “I got an idea how to buy us more time. YouTube…”

  “Slowpoke, Madonna isn’t helping.”

  “Chillax.”

  More than one couples started kissing. Gideon prepared to threaten the people with the bulletproof vest.

  A baby started crying.

  Ville raised the phone over his head victoriously while adding volume. “The medicine for baby fever!”

  The people imm
ediately reacted to the primitive voice, which turned their heads.

  “Wicked!” Rebecca said. “A pacifier for adults’ mouths!”

  The solution lifted a chunk of bricks from Gideon’s back but offered only a temporary relief. The burden of pain was there to stay.

  His heart beat a strange rhythm. Like he was failing to defuse an emotional bomb exploding in his chest and dying all over again.

  Ville’s phone beeped once, and his already pale face turned ghost white.

  Battery.

  71

  THE STRONG HEADWIND attacked Konrad’s eyes with tiny frozen flakes. The sleigh moved on the ice track marked for snowmobiles much faster than Julia. His mind raced at its own pace. What would he say to her? Would she pull a gun and shoot him instantly?

  Konrad looked over his shoulder, blinked the gathering ice out of his eyes. Then he concentrated on getting maximum output from the Huskies with kissing sounds.

  The dogs gained speed, and in the darkness, they ran over a bump that hopped the sleigh airborne. What the hell did she think she got out of her symbolic path? The show was somehow too preposterous, too contrived to be like her. Even with her enthusiasm and devotion with celebrating Christmas something didn’t either add up, or he simply didn’t know her at all. But the ring tightening harder around his finger disallowed him to think they hadn’t looked in the same direction. They had agreed that as long as Konrad’s warnings were on an apocalyptic course, he was just fulfilling the promise of the Scripture. The world was heading headlong to destruction in either case, but crossing that line would be inevitable for better moral flourishing.

  They had an agreement.

  She had blessed his efforts.

  Yet she turned her back on him.

  Gritting his teeth, inside his head, a silent battle cry rang out. If he had crossed some too-holy line and she hadn’t told him, he would not now feel responsible for her actions. The smile of Oona Louhi revisiting in his mind was now a distant ghost of memory that he felt sorry for no more. And that was not like him, either. Almost nothing added up anymore. He would reach her and force her to get to the bottom of it all.

  The hair on the back of his neck sprang up.

  A bestial sound of an engine reached behind him just as he turned around. But the metal beast knocked his feet out from under him and together they broke into the wooden frame of the sleigh and got stuck. In a flash, Konrad saw him again.

  Patrick Praytor.

  Konrad stretched his muscles and spun free from the rubble to the passenger side of the sleigh. Patrick hit the brakes, and the weight of the snowmobile yanked the sleigh to the left with a force that sent the dogs airborne and rolling like a lethal snowball. The animals squeaked in pain, but were chopped short as the sleigh exploded into pieces and the snowmobile overturned and cartwheeled over them. Metal and plastic parts shot in every direction in a cloud of gray smoke and snow.

  Konrad lay pinched with an unconscious husky at his side, its tongue dangling and pierced by the animal’s own teeth. It revived in a blink of an eye, brought its head upon Konrad’s chest.

  The dogs filled the silence with eerily sad crying.

  Footsteps. He moved the dog aside as quickly and gently as possible and stood up from under the rubble. Patrick’s elbow hit his chest, sending him down again. He sprang up with all the strength he could muster and managed to headbutt Patrick’s jaw, the agony numbing them both for a second.

  Both stood, wavering.

  Rage and frustration galvanized Patrick. A dog attempted to lift its head but Patrick flung it down, the handcuffs clanging on his wrist. Konrad threw snow, targeting Patrick’s eyes, but he moved like a steam train. The back of Konrad’s head slammed against the ice with a crack.

  “Now I’ll make sure I hear your last breath.” Patrick’s blood spilled onto Konrad’s face from his injured hand as he exerted remorseless pressure on Konrad’s Adam’s apple. Patrick’s knees in Konrad’s ribcage send a thousand electric spikes to his temple.

  Konrad kicked and swung his arms inefficiently, attempting to dig fingernails into Patrick’s face. But the dogs’ reigns tangled his hands. He felt a hole being ripped in his throat. Time ticked away, his consciousness grew lighter and lighter moving into an eternal sleep. Something moved in the corner of his left eye.

  A husky attacked Patrick without warning. Another. As Patrick cursed, Konrad rolled away on the ice, managing to untangle himself from the reigns. As he stumbled up, he freed another husky. The dog bared its teeth, growled, and attacked Patrick’s thigh. The colossal man tried to hit back at the dogs, but the power behind his blows was weakening. The dogs bit and mutilated his face. A horrible scream rang in the night. Quickly, his vocal cords were chopped short as if under the blade of a guillotine.

  The dogs continued finishing off Patrick while Konrad staggered over and tore the watch off Patrick’s wrist.

  Konrad turned toward the Candle Bridge. Standing on the bridge, Julia had seen everything. She made no move, her hands resting at her sides, looking down at him innocently but as shocked as a schoolgirl.

  Konrad staggered up the river bank and tied the watch to his wrist. The pulse in his wrist raced against the strap as the watch sprang into life.

  Tiny little white dots that Konrad first thought were flakes of snow filled the screen with a spinnable 3D world map.

  It cannot be…

  His world came crashing down.

  72

  “THEY ARE SWEATING,” Ville told Gideon.

  Gideon had noted the growing restlessness. The baby was still crying for some time to come, but not long.

  “Tell us, what’s wrong with us?” a voice asked.

  Gideon hesitated. “We are working that out. Keep your shit together.”

  The three of them gathered for a meeting.

  “Hey,” Ville said to a young girl. “No peeking.”

  Before they managed to hold a conversation, two pairs at opposite side of the rooms rushed to action.

  “They have found something to stuff into their ears!” Rebecca yelled.

  Chaos ensued.

  Men and women rushed against each other and the walls, only searching for release.

  “Stop!” Gideon screamed. “Or I will… I will…”

  Rebecca and Ville both picked up a random couple and dove in to clear their ears. But getting only a few to calm down seemed only to add more speed to the profanity of the scene as clothes started flying all over.

  Gideon touched one man’s shoulder.

  With coruscating light radiating for his fingertips, his mind visited a pregnant silence, a beautiful vision. The man lost consciousness and slumped like an abandoned marionette over the woman under him. The woman’s eyes morseted her amazement at Gideon.

  For a split second everybody stopped before continuing where they left.

  The insight tore a blade through Gideon’s guts. He had seen the potential baby boy of the couple. A morally advanced human being smiling in a wooden cradle. A mind so brilliant that as a grown-up it could revolutionize the moral code of mankind. But an ominous shadow appeared with a black tactical pistol placed on his forehead.

  Gideon’s heart faltered. Rebecca yelled something to him as he touched another couple. The light was like an explosion, repeating everything. As a hawk grabs its prey in its strong talons, his mind caught on another moment where an innocent child was again brutally executed.

  He could stop the future from happening if he stopped everybody. If he wanted. But would the potentially good children ever get a chance to live?

  Among the vicious hormonal attacks, in the middle of the room, a man stood still. His eyes locked with Gideon, jolting him back to the brutal reality.

  An infiltrator.

  Under the man’s opened black jacket was a suicide vest. He took a succession of deep breaths. Then, like it was hate at first sight, he bolted toward Gideon, acting with deliberate indifference to the consequences.

  “EVERYBODY
GET DOWN!” Gideon screamed while instinctively running against the man.

  A flash of unearthly white light.

  Then heat.

  Wooden structures came down from the ceiling onto their heads.

  Smoke and blood and snow filled the hellish stage.

  73

  KONRAD STARED AT Julia from a few meters away. A woman so small, skinny and fragile, playing at the top among such deadly and powerful men, she seemed so…

  Unaffected.

  “Aren’t you going ask me why I did it?” Julia said.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “Wrong.” Julia folded her arms. She flashed her unique flirting smile that Konrad had always fallen for. Immediate twisted urge ignited inside his head. Konrad looked up at two large candles at the top in the pylons, then into the city over her.

  “Antler Plan,” he said. “How did you pull this off? The white dots on the world map… they are all live global covert operations. Aren’t they?”

  Julia acknowledged the plan by raising her chin. “You are so naive, Konrad. Risks are the price of progress. We have overpopulated the world. It would be just a matter of time before nature rebalanced things on its own catastrophic terms. With the new moral instinct, people will reach the right conclusions. It will transform everything. From sexuality to spirituality to moral intelligence. It’s our right to gain power over our fates. Extending and expanding our reach beyond our limitations.”

  Konrad’s couldn’t look at her without twisted sexual urges. He took a step forward, avoided eye contact.

  “Don’t come any closer. Even though I don’t wield a gun to commit suicide, I still have other means.” Julia opened her mouth, and Konrad glimpsed something shaped like a false tooth.

  A cyanide capsule.

  “Is the US government behind this? Or Russians?”