Out on the horizon she thought she could see the ghost image of the city drift into existence, shimmering grey and green in the sunset. She thought she could see a thin pillar of smoke evaporating from the center of the city, but it was probably just a cloud.
Jean heard herself chuckle. “Off to the merry old Land of Oz…”
• • •
THE RAZOR lay flat on the desktop, perfectly placed in the center so that the blade lay parallel to the front of the bureau. Valco sat staring at the blade, his sleeves rolled up, feeling uncomfortably disappointed that the razor didn’t have the decency to glint menacingly in the dim bedroom light.
This was the coward’s way, Valco admitted, but it was the only option he had left. And perhaps it was the only option he truly deserved. After all the pain he had wrought upon this world, he would be mad to consider he had earned a painless demise, or even a hero’s death. No, he decided. Better to be the one to empty out his veins, so that maybe in this one way, he could bring some balance to his ledger.
A tired, old man stared at Valco from the mirror. Valco recognized the face, but it wasn’t his, it wasn’t even his father’s. It was his grandfather, the way the old man had looked when he was wasting away in the last days of his cancer, reaching to Valco from his deathbed with skeletal hands, lipless mouth agape, whispering words Valco couldn’t hear.
Valco looked down at his forearms. They weren’t the skeletal remains of his grandfather, but the muscles had shriveled and the skin had thinned. He imagined pushing the blade into the blue veins running under his pallid skin, the crimson waterfall that would follow.
It was a pity that there was nothing to drink.
“Dr. Valco?” someone called softly from the door.
Valco ignored his visitor, not even risking a glance over to the entrance. He needed to do this, needed to do it now, before he lost his nerve. He picked up the blade, and floated it over his left forearm.
“Dr. Valco, it’s Franklin.”
Valco pressed the corner of the blade against the soft skin by his wrist and winced at the sting. A small bubble of blood appeared, a raindrop before the flood.
“Harrison? Please.”
Valco pinched his eyes shut and let out a shuddered breath. The razor blade dropped to the floor with a whisper. Climbing out of his chair, Valco wiped away the blood on his wrist with his thumb and sucked it away, hating the salt and iron bite that touched his tongue. He walked over to the door, wrapped his hand around the knob, and leaned his head up against it, the metal cold against his skin. He took one last deep breath before he risked the door open. Murdoch’s sallow visage appeared in the narrow opening, the circles under his eyes deeper than ever.
“What do you want?”
“Can I come in?” the younger doctor asked, taking a half step forward.
“Why should I let you?” Valco asked with little emotion.
“There’s something I need to show you,” Murdoch said, desperation tingeing his voice. Red veins webbed his pink eyes. “Something you need to see.”
“I think I’ve seen enough, Dr. Murdoch.”
Murdoch grabbed the door before Valco could close it. “Trust me, Harrison. You haven’t seen anything.”
• • •
THEY TRAVELED down three winding sets of stairs, the last carved directly into the rock. The door leading into the space was riveted steel. Covered in ice crystals, it was locked with a wheel, a coded keypad, and the most intricate pass code Valco had ever seen; it took Murdoch four full minutes to open. Wisps of vapor curled around Valco’s feet and his skin prickled at the cold. His breath misted in the air, and his teeth began to chatter. He unconsciously wrapped his arms around himself as he followed Murdoch into the darkened area.
“Guess I should have told you to bring your coat?” Murdoch joked with little humor.
Valco grimaced in reply.
They slowly walked into the dimly lit hall, their footsteps echoing with a metallic resonance. Hundreds of freestanding, narrow cement and metal cells filled the catacomb. Frost covered every surface. Small, grilled windows sat three quarters of the way up on every door, though Valco failed to see any evidence of a doorknob on any of them. His skin prickled and his hair stood on end. He could feel hundreds eyes watching him; could hear thousands of fingers scratching at the doors.
“It’s an icebox,” Valco said with a shiver. He wrapped his arms tighter around himself, keeping himself as far from the cells as possible.
“The cold slows them down.”
Valco pursed his brows together. “Them?”
Murdoch nodded to the cells. “The subjects. The Substance makes them more susceptible to temperature. Heat gets them moving; cold makes them stop. We’re not exactly clear why.”
“My God… There are people in here?”
“Were,” Murdoch corrected. “The transformation takes time, but once it’s over, everything they used to be is gone, replaced with something else.”
“How many of them are there?”
“Over two hundred and thirty.”
Valco peered into the grilled window of one of the darkened cells. He could hear something breathing inside, long, rattling, phlegm-ridden breaths. He moved closer, his curiosity quashing his apprehension. The breathing grew faster and more ragged, almost excited, reminding Valco of the gasps elicited during the throes of coitus. Feet dragged across the floor inside and Valco saw something grey shuffle forward in the dim light. The outline of a woman’s face formed, her skin flaking off like old paint on a rotted door, her jaw gnawing at the air. Dry black rivulets covered her face, her eyes were milky white; a puncture wound sat in the center of her forehead, surrounded by the same triangle-and-circle scarring Valco had seen on Gary. Valco pressed his hand against the ice-cold door and stared at the woman with regret.
“This is the indestructible soldier,” Valco sighed, his breath misting the air.
“Near enough… They don’t sleep, they never weaken; anything less than a gunshot to the head or heart leaves them standing… and walking.” Murdoch frowned. “The Project Manager released a few subjects out into the city as… field tests. The results were less than desired. They got hungry.”
Valco broke his gaze away from the woman. “Hungry?”
“They feed on human flesh. We don’t know why.”
“Why are you showing me this?” Valco quietly asked after several minutes of freezing silence.
Murdoch ran a hand through his oily and clumped hair. “Because. Because… Because look at this madness! This isn’t what I wanted. I was just a navy doctor trying to grab a smoke, and they pulled that… thing out of the water. And, then, here we are, making monsters. And… Because… Because, you’re better than this.” Murdoch sighed. “And maybe, just maybe, you and your friends can stop it.”
Chapter 16: The Murder of Jethro Dumont
THE EFFECTS of the Epsilon Mist were beginning to wear off. Jethro could feel his strength returning, crackling like embers in firewood, slowly coming alive. He chanted the Threefold Refuge as he focused the energy and drew it to his center. In some kind of twisted joke, they had dressed him in a green robe with white fur-lined cuffs and a red sash wrapped around his waist in a close approximation of his usual attire. He pulled his arms against his restraints, and felt the leather and metal strain against him; felt his infected veins throb with energy, glowing subtly in the pitch black darkness.
Jethro had initially noticed the infection aboard the Nazi U-boat as they made their way to San Antonio, Chile; a single green vein running along the fresh scar on his right middle finger. At first he thought it was simply a wound from his encounter with the Great Old One Cthulhu, or perhaps a remnant of the Jade Tablet lodged beneath his skin, but then the infection began to spread and soon the cause didn’t seem to matter anymore. The malignancy wormed up his hand slowly before spreading to his arm, neck and chest; and as the infection grew, so did his abilities. With each passing day he grew stronger; could see farthe
r, hear the distant whispers, fly higher—the world became glass, breakable with the slightest touch. And with every day, he inched closer to the death.
Tsarong had known instantly, due to prophecy or simple deduction, but Jethro had kept the truth from Jean for as long as he could. Jethro had no fear of death; it was part of the cycle, part of the samsara, but Jean wouldn’t understand. It was cruel of him, but he didn’t want her to try and save him when he knew there would be no sanctuary. It wasn’t that he had never tried to cure himself, he had—several times—but all his efforts had proven fruitless. He even considered consulting Dr. Valco, but a mixture of pride and an odd sense of shame kept him away. And so, he kept the secret from Jean as the infection continued to spread through his body. Better to enjoy their time together before he moved onto the next life and do all he could with the time he had left to make the world a little safer.
Not for the first time, Jethro reflected back to his first encounter with another such as himself, a man who had donned a mask and a cape to dole out his own special brand of justice. But whereas Jethro had strived for non-violence and compassion, the other man saw crime as a cancer, a blight that needed to be cut away from society by fear, guns, and, most importantly murder. He would lay waste to hundreds without hesitation, cold-blooded murder in the name of justice. He was a madman. Their confrontation had been as much a battle of ideals as it was of strength, ending with a tenuous détente, with both men claiming the moral high ground.
And yet…
Four years ago, Jethro had handed Pelham over to the police so that the mad surgeon could be brought before the law. Four years ago, Jethro had believed he had been victorious, and now, his home was destroyed, his lover lost, and he was left alone at the mercy of his enemy.
He could almost hear the other man whisper in his ear: Where is your moral high ground now?
A blinding trapezoid of light suddenly cut into the room. White spots formed in front of Jethro’s eyes as his vision struggled to resolve, floating like dandelion seeds. Two blurry silhouettes appeared in the doorway holding a third slumped between them.
“Get his muzzle off,” one of the silhouettes instructed. “Quickly. You don’t want this thing biting you.”
There was a short struggle as the two silhouettes removed something from the third’s head before they tossed it into the room and slammed the door shut. Several moments passed in gnawing silence. Jethro’s eyes struggled to adjust back to the darkness, able only to see the formless shadow hunched over the floor. He could hear the slow drip of water trickling to the floor, like blood from an open wound.
The shadow lifted its head and growled. “Tooooooool.”
Jethro leaned against his bindings and peered at the shuffling form on the ground, the distant echo of fear arching up his back.
“Toooolkooooo.”
Jethro firmed his jaw and readied what little energy he had left. “Who’s there?”
The shadow shuffled closer, nails scratching at the concrete, teeth clicking together. “Toolku…”
An ice shard stabbed at Jethro’s heart. Overheard, the soft buzzing of electric bulbs crackled to life. As Jethro’s eyes adjusted once again and the shadow before him turned into curly brown hair, grey skin, milk-white eyes, black blood, and the all-too familiar red triangle within a blood red ring.
“Toolku….” Gary Brown begged, his voice slurred. His body was a map of pain, covered in burns, lacerations, and divots of missing flesh. Several of his fingers were little more than nubs; his bones broken beneath his skin, while gaping holes in his mouth still oozed blood. Ebony tears poured from his ghostly eyes. All that remained untouched was his decade’s old broken nose. “Please… Help…”
“Gary?!” Jethro cried. His muscles weakened and his body inched down the inclined examination table, his leather and metal binding biting at his wrist. Tears began to stream down his cheeks. “Gary! Om! Tare Tuttare Ture Soha… No… Gary, please, no… Please, not you!”
“Toolku…” Gary stumbled forward, reaching a ravaged hand for his former comrade. “Jethro… please…”
“Gary,” Jethro choked, his lower lip trembling. “Gary, Listen to me… Gary. I’m going to get you out of here. Do you understand? I’m going to save you.”
Gary’s milk white eyes widened as he tried to comprehend. “K—Ki—Kill. Me… I don’t want… I don’t want Evangl to see.”
“No matter what happens, Gary, I promise you. I promise you, on my life. I will make you whole again,” Jethro said, meaning every word. “I will get you home to Evangl and Marie. I will get you home.”
“Oh, stop, stop,” Pelham laughed, applauding from the other side of the room, flanked by two armed guards. He was dressed in a pure white lab coat, a column of red buttons running down the left of his partial bib front. He wiped his eyes with the back of his left hand. Jethro hadn’t heard the door open, hadn’t heard their footsteps; they had been watching the entire time. But Jethro kept watching Gary; he couldn’t look away if he tried. “Please stop. This is too much for my weak heart to handle!” Pelham waved the guards over to Gary. “Take him away before it gets messy.”
“Jethro! Jethro!” Gary shouted as the guards dragged him out of the room. Black fluid spilled from his eyes, from his mouth.
“It’s going to be all right, Gary!” Jethro shouted back, his voice breaking into sobs. “I promise! I promise!”
The door cut off Gary’s screams, but did nothing to muffle Jethro’s sobs.
“Reunions are always so touching, aren’t they?” Pelham said with a sentimental sigh.
“What did you do to him?” Jethro shrieked, spit flecking his lips as he struggled against his restraints. “You monster, what did you to him?!”
Pelham gave him a wolfish smile. “Let me show you.” He walked over to the tilted examination table and began to slowly turn Jethro around. “We call it the Substance, a less than impressive name, but a suitable one.”
“You inject it into the victim’s cerebellum, transforming them into something else,” Jethro stated without emotion.
“Someone’s been paying attention!” Pelham said excitedly. “I admit Mr. Brown’s taken a bit longer to turn than the others, perhaps that’s simply the batch—there have been so many of them—or perhaps it’s his pure strength of will. But, I assure you, the transformation will occur soon enough.” He placed his right hand on Jethro’s shoulder in a consolatory gesture before tracing one of Jethro’s green veins with a red finger. “You know… I didn’t tell them. I didn’t tell them about your little problem. Our secret, yes?”
Jethro glanced down at Pelham’s hand and the doctor followed his gaze.
Pelham laughed to himself. “Oh, yes.” He held up his red-gloved right hand and wiggled his fingers like spider’s legs, the crimson leather creaking. “Old habits… Or perhaps it’s nostalgia. Our last time together should hearken back to our first, don’t you think? Do you like your robe? I had it made especially for this occasion. I tried to match it as close as possible to the original, though I fear it’s just a tad too loose in the waist. But for our purposes, it’s close enough. It’s a nice, perfect circle.”
Pelham continued to rotate Jethro around.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I worked for Colonel Starliss’s Medusa Council? It was shortly before you and I first met, a few days, really. I helped them build the E.Y.E. bomb, which you destroyed. So strange, isn’t it? That our paths have been so incontrovertibly linked all these years? Some would call it destiny, others coincidence. I like think it’s luck. Or maybe it’s karma? Isn’t that what you Buddhists believe in?”
A ten-foot tall device came in to view as the table clicked into place a hundred-and-eighty degrees from its starting position. Gears, tubing, and pumps lined the riveted steel, twisting around into the back of the machine, while a long, finger-thick needle surrounded by three sharp pincer-like claws was aimed at the center of Jethro’s forehead.
“Do you like it?” Pelham as
ked excitedly. “It’s very impressive, isn’t it? Only one in the world. Unique, like you and me.” He leaned close to Jethro’s ear and whispered, “Do you want to meet the inventor? Yes, of course you do.” He looked to the machine. “Doctor?”
A stout, hairy man stepped out from behind the machine, his beady eyes sparkling beneath his bushy brow. Jethro recognized him instantly. “Metchnikoff,” he whispered. “Of course, you would be here…”
“Oh, you remember Dr. Metchnikoff?” Pelham said proudly. He clapped Jethro on the shoulder. “Of course, you do, smart little boy that you are.”
Metchnikoff smiled and bowed his head. Like Pelham, he was dressed in a pure white lab coat, but with black buttons on his partial bib front. “It has been too long, Mr. Dumont. Do you like my machine?”
“Still working for fascists, Doctor?” Jethro asked.
Metchnikoff’s smile broadened. “Is that any way to talk about your own government, Mr. Dumont?”
“It’s a trip down memory lane, isn’t it?” Pelham said broadly. “All of us here, together. Too bad it has to be so brief. You see, they wanted to take away our fun and that simply wouldn’t do. We’ve played by their rules for so many years, now’s the time to break them.” He looked to Metchnikoff. “Doctor, if you could be so kind as to put Oh-Bee-Ess Two-Four-One into place?”
“With pleasure, Dr. Pelham,” Metchnikoff said with a nod before turning to the far door.
Jethro noticed Pelham’s eyes roll back briefly in his head.
“Crimson Hand,” Pelham whispered through gritted teeth, his face turning red, bordering on violet.
Metchnikoff stopped short and looked back quizzically at Pelham. “Excuse me?”
Pelham cleared his throat, wiped his crimson glove over his face, and forced a smile. “Nothing, Doctor. Please proceed.”
Metchnikoff gave Pelham a slow, hesitant nod before he walked over to the far door and keyed in a series of numbers on a nearby pad. The door snapped open and two white-coated technicians brought in a cart with three large glass containers of green phosphorescent liquid. At the sight of the liquid, Jethro felt something come alive inside him, something foreign and maleficent. His infected veins began to pulsate and glow from within, while the phosphorescent liquid oscillated inside its glass containers. Metchnikoff and his assistants took a frightened step back while Pelham excitedly arched an eyebrow.
The Green Lama: Crimson Circle Page 28
