Deep Silence

by Jonathan Maberry

  “We have to consider that possibility,” he conceded. “Just as we have to consider that the Majestic program is not as dead as we thought.”

  “We pretty much drove a stake through its heart.”

  “We’ve been wrong before, Captain.”

  We talked for a few minutes longer, but it was clear to both of us that we didn’t have enough information. For now. He said he was going to make sure all of the right wheels were in motion.

  Before he signed off, he said something off-topic. “I appreciate your going to D.C. to see to Aunt Sallie. She won’t like you for it, but you have my gratitude.”

  “She’s family,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Church, “and it may amuse you to know that she said the same about you.”

  The line went dead as I crossed into the nation’s capital.

  INTERLUDE SEVENTEEN

  MOTU RAUORO ISLAND,

  SOCIETY ISLANDS FRENCH POLYNESIA

  FOUR YEARS AGO

  The lab did not look like a lab. It looked like a hedonistic retreat for people with too much money and too few clothes. That’s how Valen saw it.

  However, there were no greased tourists sprawled on the sugar-white beaches. There were no bikini women or Speedo men romping in the blue-green perfection of the water. Not a single drink with a paper umbrella to be seen.

  Valen stood with Ari, who leaned heavily on a cane, watching as a silent army of men sweated and grunted as they unloaded crate after crate of equipment. Stone-faced and flint-hearted sentries with automatic weapons stood in the shelter of camouflaged tarps. Another group—men and women in white lab coats—milled like ants, going in and out of a row of Quonset huts built beneath half an acre of netting.

  Ari leaned close. “You must be a wizard in the sheets, brother.”

  “What?”

  “This must be costing millions. Tens of millions. You must have screwed Gadyuka’s brains loose to fund all of this. She gave us everything we asked for. The high-tech lab, the security systems. All of it.”

  “Believe me, Ari,” said Valen, “the fact that I’m sleeping with her had nothing to do with this. After she saw the gun and that hand, she couldn’t get her checkbook out fast enough.”

  “And she said ‘They’re back’? But didn’t tell you what she meant by that?”

  “No. She tried to laugh it off, tried to say I misheard her because of my hearing aid.”

  They watched as crate after crate of equipment was carried up the beach.

  “Look, man,” said Ari, “what the hell are we into here?” Since the explosion of the green machine, the Greek was much less bombastic and arrogant. He merely looked scared and uncertain. “We are so far into the dark with this shit even I don’t know what we’re trying to accomplish. Do they want us to figure out who or what left that hand behind? Do they want to use those crystals for something? Or is it the machine? Do they want to blow themselves up? She gives us all this money, hires all these people, spends years sending us around the world to find green stones and ancient books, and I mean, what the actual fuck is the point?”

  “All of it.”

  Valen took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. He was aware of how badly his hands shook these days.

  “Since when do you smoke?” asked Ari.

  “Since when do you wear a religious medal?”

  Ari’s hand reflexively touched the small gold likeness of Saint Nicholas that had the words “Pray For Us” engraved below it.

  “You didn’t answer my question, brother,” he said. “What does Gadyuka want?”

  “She wants what happened at the dig site. She wants us to figure out the science.”

  Ari laughed, then gaped. “Wait, you’re serious? Is she out of her mind? That was a fucking accident. A side effect. I nearly died, for Christ’s sake. Who in the fuck would want that? Why?”

  Valen took a long drag and let the smoke leak out of his nostrils.

  “She wants the earthquakes.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  THE CAPITOL BUILDING

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  There was nowhere to park anywhere near the Capitol Building, even when I flashed my very realistic but totally fake DHS identification. The place was already ass-deep in actual guys from Homeland, as well as every other agency that has badges and buys off-the-rack dark suits. So, I parked about four blocks away and hoofed it, with Ghost trotting dutifully by my side wearing an official-looking vest.

  Once inside, I saw Aunt Sallie and D.J. standing in the back, leaning against the wall, and I immediately understood why D.J. had called me. I did a quick calculation of how long since I’d last seen her. Eight months? Could it really be that long? It jolted me to see how that amount of time had changed her. Aunt Sallie was heavier, with a more pronounced osteoarthritic hump to her back, and skin that hung in loose folds. I always figured her for late sixties, but if I didn’t know her I would have pegged her as mideighties. She looked like a frail old woman. That scared me. I may not like Aunt Sallie, but I admired the living hell out of her. She was one of those legendary agents whose reality exceeded even the wild tales people told.

  D.J. saw me and bent to whisper in her ear. Her head shot up and swiveled toward me, and even though her body was sickly, the eyes she fixed on me glowed with nuclear heat.

  “What in the living hell are you doing here, you jackass?” she growled as I approached. “I’m here trying to keep your sorry white ass out of jail and you come strolling in, bold as brass?”

  “Nice to see you, too, Auntie,” I said, dialing up the wattage on my smile. I shook hands with D.J. but did not want to risk amputation and so did not offer my hand to Aunt Sallie. Ghost wagged his tail at her and her scowl softened by maybe one-millionth of a degree.

  All around us were huge crowds of people who did not seem willing or able to respect the police demands to clear the room. The space around the spot where the Speaker of the House died was clear of rubberneckers, though. Instead, a bunch of forensic technicians were scouring every single inch of each table, chair, and the various items particular to the House of Representatives. I recognized the faces of several congressmen, including senators, clustered together in worried knots. I felt like making a snide comment about how those clusters were composed of members of both parties, but it didn’t seem to be the time for jokes. In the moment, having witnessed a horror that was on a human level, they were just being frightened, confused, sickened people.

  “Why are you here?” she demanded again.

  All the way here I’d been rehearsing how to answer that question. Came up with a few good ones, too, but when I looked in Auntie’s wise, fierce old eyes, I knew that the truth was my only play. Dangerous as that was.

  “I’m here to take you back home,” I said.

  “Why?” She wasn’t going to make it easy for me, and I could see something flicker in her eyes. A kind of fear? The specter of mortality? Sounds dramatic, but it wasn’t—it was merely sad.

  “Because no one who cares about you wants you to die,” I said. “Because as much as I appreciate you coming down here to try and save my neck, it’s not worth you making yourself sick over it. Not on my account.”

  “This ain’t about you, sonny boy,” she snapped. “This is about the DMS not getting pissed on.”

  “Shakes out to the same thing,” I said. “The White House has it in for us, and they came after me to make a point. We’ve got lawyers, Auntie. Good ones. Literally the best that money can buy. Let them rack up billable hours with this. Big Tobacco and Big Pharma aren’t the only ones who can play that game. Let the sharks be sharks and let’s us get the hell out of here. Neither of us needs to get shit on our shoes.”

  D.J. edged a little closer to Aunt Sallie. “Joe has a point, Auntie. You rattled some cages. You made your point. Let’s go home.”

  He and I were both braced for a tirade, maybe for actual physical violence. And, sick as she was, I didn’t like our odds if she made a fi
ght of this.

  But then something happened that truly broke my heart.

  I saw two tears grow into jewels in the corners of her eyes and then fall down her brown cheeks. She slumped against a pillar and I swear to God I could see the fight go out of her. It was like watching a ghost leave a body. It was at that moment that Aunt Sallie realized that she had no fight left in her. That the war had passed her by and she was no longer able to take up her sword and shield. It was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. I wanted to hug her. Not kidding. I wanted to take her in my arms and tell her how much I admired her, how much I …

  Loved her?

  Yeah.

  Fuck. That’s where I was going.

  And thinking that opened up a door of insight inside my head. When I first met her I’d been scouted by Church to be the new top gunslinger for the DMS. I represented the power and potential that used to be hers. And it meant that if I was this year’s model, then she was past her use-by date. Being the one who sends other fighters into battle is mighty damn hard on the soldiers who used to be on the front line. She knew it at that first moment, and she hated me for being what she no longer could be.

  When I held out my hands to her, I could see that Aunt Sallie knew I knew it. That I understood. There was a moment, a flicker of a smile that held no animosity, no resentment. It was a smile shared from one soldier to another. Accepting the reality, acknowledging that the war was bigger than either of us, than all of us, and sometimes we best serve by stepping out of the way so the shooter behind us can take better aim. It also said that we both knew my day would come, as it inevitably does for all warriors. The war was the war, and in the grand scheme of things, we were day players in an endless drama.

  But then Aunt Sallie slapped my hand away, screwed on a familiar scowl, and said, “I can walk on my own two legs, damn it.”

  She marched past me and I stood for a moment, watching her. At that moment I would have walked through fire for her. Maybe that was always true.

  INTERLUDE EIGHTEEN

  MOTU RAUORO ISLAND, SOCIETY ISLANDS

  FRENCH POLYNESIA

  THREE YEARS AGO

  Valen stood in the open doorway to Ari’s cottage. He held a flashlight in one hand and a pistol in the other.

  The room was a wreck. The lamp overturned, bulb smashed; the laptop stomped into useless debris; the bed soaked with blood.

  And the girl.

  “Ari,” breathed Valen, “what have you done?”

  Ari Kostas knelt naked on the floor. His thighs and cock were smeared with blood and his hands were so thoroughly drenched they looked like red gloves. It was clear Ari had been masturbating there, using the girl’s blood as a lubricant.

  “Leave me alone,” snarled the burly Greek. “Get the fuck out. Can’t a man have some privacy?”

  Drool hung from his lower lip and there was a cocaine glaze in his eyes. Empty bottles of wine and vodka were everywhere.

  And the girl.

  The girl.

  The things he had done to her.

  Worse this time than before. Worse than back in college. Worse than the secretary four months ago. At least she had died whole.

  “What have you done?” whispered Valen, stepping inside and closing the door so that no one in the camp could see.

  “Go away, you fucker,” growled Ari. “Go away. I’m not done here.”

  “Not … done…? Ari, what in God’s name are you talking about?”

  “God?” Ari spat on the floor between them. There was red in the spittle. “You don’t believe in God. Not in my God or any god. You fucking Communist atheist prick. You don’t believe in anything.”

  Valen came and crouched down in front of Ari. The man stunk of booze, sex, blood, and piss. Valen took him by the shoulders and shook him. “Ari … Ari … listen to me, you idiot. This girl isn’t some college bimbo to use and throw away. She’s part of our team. People will know she was in here. Are you out of your mind?”

  Ari grinned at him.

  “Of course I’m out of my mind. We all are, Valen. The world is mad.” He began to laugh. A hitch-pitched cackle like a witch from some old production of Macbeth.

  Valen slapped him across the face. Hard. It rocked Ari so violently that the Greek fell onto his side. Valen grabbed him by the hair and jerked him back onto his knees and struck him again. And again.

  And again.

  He could not stop hitting him.

  Valen became suddenly and acutely aware that he could not stop hitting Ari. His hand moved as if it no longer belonged to him. The blows came harder and harder. So hard Valen felt the muscles in his hand bruising and tearing. He felt a bone break in his hand. One of the carpals. The pain was explosive but he could not stop. Ari’s head rocked back and sideways and up and down with the erratic angles of the blows. His nose disintegrated into red pulp, his eyebrows split, his lips tore against his teeth. Two big caps broke from his gums and flew over Valen’s shoulder. Ari vomited and still Valen hit him.

  * * *

  Outside, in the camp, Dr. Marguerite Beaufort stood in her own cabin. The door was locked and her iPad was running through her playlist of Puccini arias. Marguerite took great care in laying out all of her many combs and brushes, making sure they were in a perfectly straight line, like cutlery on a dining table of a great manor house. When she was satisfied, she picked up the large hand mirror, considered her reflection, turning this way and that to study her complexion, the orientation of her freckles, the way in which her blond hair accentuated her cheekbones.

  “Beautiful,” she told the face in the mirror. Then she began humming along to the aria. “Vissi d’arte,” from Tosca. She listened to the words, able to understand the Italian. Floria Tosca sings about how she and her lover were at the mercy of the vile Baron Scarpia. Tosca begs God to tell her why He has abandoned her. Sad as the song was, its beauty always made her smile.

  Marguerite was still smiling and humming when she shattered the mirror against the edge of her bureau, selected the largest piece, and began cutting her wrists.

  * * *

  In the security booth, the senior guard was removing bullets from a magazine and lining them up on the counter. Then he reloaded the magazine and slapped it into place. Then removed and unloaded it again. Over and over again.

  * * *

  In the largest of the Quonset huts used for the team’s work, the machine crouched on its reinforced table. There were six staff members in the hut. A bottle of champagne lay smashed where it had fallen. Each of them had taken a swig to celebrate the completion of the machine. They had followed every instruction to the letter, making sure that all of the settings on the device were at their lowest. No one wanted another earthquake. No one wanted another explosion. The thing was barely even on.

  Two of the lab techs copulated with brutal frenzy on the floor. The woman was on top, and with each buck of the man’s hips she punched him in the chest, or stomach, or face. Which made him thrust harder. Both of them were bleeding. If their eyes saw anything, it was nothing in that room.

  Three other techs were on the floor, crawling toward the wall, which was smeared with blood and bits of scalp. None was able to run headlong into the wall anymore. All they could do now was crawl toward it over and over again. Strike their foreheads. Fall back. Reorient themselves. Repeat.

  The last of the techs stood by the table and stared at the glowing crystal machine, his face bathed in the green light. He did not see the machine at all. Or anything in that room. Instead he saw a vast creature that only vaguely looked like a human. It had arms, legs, and a torso, but all other similarities failed into obscenity. Its head was as bulbous as an octopus’s, and dozens of small tentacles hung like a beard from its gash of a mouth. The thing stood on a mountain slope that ran down to a beach that ran for miles and against which lapped the waters of a nameless ocean. Smaller creatures writhed and squirmed in the froth, and scuttling things ran along the gray sands. The tentacled monster dominated
them all, rising impossibly high, immeasurably vast and powerful. Wings, stunted and leathery and ugly, spread out from its back, but were too small to lift the ponderous bulk. The monster turned toward the tech, as if able to see from its world to this one. It threw back its head and laughed. If laughter it was. The sound was like thunder and instantly all thought, all interior sound in the tech’s head was blasted to utter silence. Not even the whisper of a thought remained; only the awareness of their total absence. The room around him went equally silent. As did the world; and that silence was bottomless.

  The technician screamed—a sound even he could not hear.

  The other five in the room could not hear it either.

  If anyone could, the scream would have sounded unlike any scream but rather a prayer shouted in a language never spoken by a people living on our world. The words were utterly meaningless on this side of the wall separating the machine and the monster.

  “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!” he shrieked.

  And although the technicians in the lab could not hear him with their ears, they nevertheless responded, screaming out in one unified voice.

  “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  THE CAPITOL BUILDING

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Secret Service Agent Marilyn Kang was assigned the task of liaising with the local police who were investigating the death of the Speaker of the House. She was tasked with observing everything, documenting the scene, and taking notes so that the Service could provide their own information to the administration and the senior members of Congress. It was a tedious job, and there were other investigative bodies involved in doing essentially the same thing.

  Kang did not mind the tedium, though. She had been on shore patrol in the navy and had accompanied investigators on dozens of crime scenes. She’d also helped with gathering details following suicides of active military. That experience was what helped her get hired by the Service and be picked for this assignment. She was patient, alert, intuitive, and thorough. Several times she made useful suggestions to the police, which were accepted with varying degrees of good or bad grace.