Deep Silence

by Jonathan Maberry

  As if.

  The crowd watched dumbstruck as video footage from a few minutes ago was played back to show the collapsing dome, the cracking White House walls, and other kinds of structural devastation, but also the wild fighting in the streets. The anchors and reporters were chattering and interrupting each other and throwing around wild theories. Valen stared at the struggling figures and at the bodies lying dead or dying in the street.

  Valen’s cell vibrated in his pocket and he tapped Ari on the arm, showed him the phone, and walked into the empty men’s room to take the call.

  “You promised me this would be, at very least, a six point five,” said Gadyuka without preamble.

  “I assure you, Gadyuka, it—”

  “It’s a seven point eight,” she interrupted, then laughed as sweetly as a songbird. “I am very, very happy with you, lapochka,” she said. “When I see you I’ll show you exactly how happy.”

  A shiver swept through Valen. There was no “love” in their lovemaking. It was all about need and greed and control, and he always lost to her. Every single time. To have sex after this was appalling.

  “Can’t … wait,” he lied.

  She caught it, though, quick as she always was. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Something, I think.”

  He leaned his head against the cool stone wall. “I just wonder if there was another way.…”

  It was out before he could stop the words.

  “Ah, my dear,” said Gadyuka, “we’ve been over this and over this. Stalin did much worse to his own people. Our own people. We are at war, but we are not cutting throats with clumsy bayonets. We have delicate scalpels in our hands. We are the surgeons who are removing the cancers so the world can grow healthy again.”

  “I know the rhetoric,” he said wearily, “but now’s not the time. I’m not like you, Gadyuka. I’m not a monster.”

  She actually laughed at that. “Oh, my dear, you underestimate yourself. In my entire career I have ordered the deaths of not quite two dozen people and personally executed another eleven. I consider myself a monster for doing that. A monster, but a patriotic one. However, you, sweet Valen, have killed a hundred for every one of mine. And soon you will be responsible for killing more people than any one person ever has. More than Stalin or Hitler or the leaders of the Mongol conquests. More than in World War One and Two combined. You are indeed a monster.”

  “Jesus Christ, what are you doing to me?” he begged. “You’re killing me.…”

  Gadyuka laughed again, though not as sweetly. “Shhh, listen. There is nothing wrong, and everything right in being a monster, my sweet. Nations require us to be more than ordinary men. Three thousand years ago they would have called you a demigod, like Prometheus. He was a Titan who stole the heavenly fire for humanity, enabling the progress of civilization. If we read between the lines and strip away the primitive theology, what that means is that a man, a visionary, defied terrible odds to bring truth to the people so that they may have agency over their own lives. Karl Marx was such a man. Lenin was such a man. Stalin, for all his flaws, was such a man. They were all monsters, too, because they spilled rivers of blood. Without their actions, without their willingness to become monsters, America would have swept us out of history after the Second World War. They would have dropped the next atomic bombs on us, and you know I’m telling the truth.”

  “Please,” he begged.

  “Listen to me, Valen. Hear me. You are a brave and glorious monster. A hero. A Titan. And history will remember you as the man who saved the world.”

  “How?” he demanded. “By cracking it open?”

  “Yes,” she said in a voice filled with love. “By exposing the cancer to the scalpel.”

  The first of the aftershocks rumbled beneath his feet. Much smaller than the big strike. He prayed it wouldn’t do more damage, but knew that it would.

  “They’ll never recover from this,” he murmured, forgetting in the moment that he was still on a call.

  “America is hurt, yes,” she said fiercely. “It is shocked, yes. But this is not the blow that will drive it to its knees, and you know it. They can rebuild this. They can rise from this. And we simply cannot allow that.

  “Do you know how to win a knife fight, Valen?” she asked, and now there was a cold pragmatism in her voice that crusted his breaking heart with ice. “You don’t deliver a bad cut and then step back and hope your enemy loses heart and gives up, or limps from the field. No. If you do that you find that they can eat their own pain and they can—what’s the American expression? Man up? If you let them catch their breath and regain their footing, then they are stronger in those broken places. Nietzsche was right about that. No, lapochka, when you have inflicted an injury on your opponent, when his blood is on your knife and you can smell it in the air, then that’s the time to cut again, and cut deeper. Cut all the way to the bone. Cut all the way to the heart.”

  “God…,” he whispered.

  “It’s time to deliver the killing cut, Valen,” said Gadyuka. “It’s time for America as a nation, as a power, as a concept, to end. This is a war. Go be a soldier. Be a hero. Save us all.”

  Valen closed his eyes and felt as if the ground were tilting under him, but in ways that had nothing to do with the earthquake he and Ari had inflicted on this city. He knew what was coming.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  THE CAPITOL BUILDING

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  “Auntie,” I called, “stay awake. Stay with me.”

  Those words are so cliché. You hear them in every movie or TV show where someone is shot or concussed. It sounds like a kind of ego, telling someone to stay awake so they can stay alive. As if any of us have that power.

  Because I was a cop and a soldier and now a special operator, I have first-aid training that’s a few cuts above the ordinary. I can set a bone, stitch a wound, deliver a baby, treat for shock, immobilize a broken neck, can take vitals and give injections. All of which is great if you have even a basic medical kit. Which I did not. I had a dying woman, a dog, and a cell phone. My car was four blocks away and my back was injured. At the very least I had a muscle tear, but it felt worse than that. I didn’t want to kill her by dropping her. Calling 9-1-1 was definitely going to be a waste of time because there was no chance at all they weren’t swamped.

  Instead I called the Hangar. Weak, confused, or inexperienced people will react with shock when you tell them this kind of news. They will waste precious seconds reacting rather than responding. The DMS doesn’t hire those kinds of people. I told Bug what happened and what I needed and he said help was on its way. I believed him.

  I told Doc Holliday about Auntie, and she talked me through the steps that might help until EMTs arrived.

  “Ask her to smile,” ordered Doc. I did. And it stabbed me through the fucking heart. Only part of one half of her face moved. I will never forget the ghastly grimace and the horrified realization in Auntie’s eyes. She knew.

  Then Doc had me ask Auntie to raise both arms. One moved. One twitched.

  “Can she say anything?” asked Doc. “See if you can get her to talk.”

  I asked Auntie to tell me how she was feeling. She made a lot of sounds but none of them were words in any language I could understand. And then one single word came through—broken, half-formed, melting, but coherent.

  “… scared…”

  I swear to God I would rather have taken a bullet than have Aunt Sallie tell me how scared she was.

  “Listen to me, Ledger,” said Doc, speaking slowly and clearly in order to ground me. “She’s had a stroke. She’s aphasic, which means she can’t talk. Keep her awake. That’s crucial, because it sounds like a bad one. You cannot let her go to sleep. Don’t try to give her anything. No food or water or anything. Not even her meds. Nothing. She won’t be able to swallow and would choke. We can’t yet tell if this is a hemorrhagic or ischemic stroke. If it’s ischemic, aspirin could kill her. Th
e reports about D.C. are coming in and it’s bad, Cowboy. It’s really bad. We can’t give you a reliable ETA on when someone’s going to get to you. Maybe there’s not even enough time. I pray so, but … you need to be there for her. Make her as comfortable as you can. Keep talking to her. Reassure her. Lie to her, if you have to. Tell her that help is coming. Tell her everything is going to be fine. Make her believe it.”

  I swallowed something that felt like a rock. “Yes,” I said. “Roger that.”

  “Emergency services are going to be slow arriving, but do not move her. You don’t want to make it worse.”

  I wanted to ask how this could be worse. Just like I wanted to ask how long I could risk staying there. Luckily, Doc Holliday is sharp as a knife.

  “Bug is working on a timetable for soonest possibility of help to your location. The sooner she gets treatment, the better her chances and the less you need to take the risk of moving her. That said, Cowboy, if it looks like we can’t get an ambulance to you, then you may have to get her out yourself. What condition are you in?”

  “Back,” I said. One word, trusting again that she was quick.

  “Pain or serious damage?”

  “Both.”

  “Scale of one to ten, ten being you’re totally unable to try.”

  “Seven.”

  “Shit. Is there anyone around who can help?”

  There were people around me. They weren’t fighting anymore, but they weren’t going to be of much help. Some were kneeling over people more visibly injured, doing what they could to stanch bleeding and provide help. Others wandered in shock, their eyes filled with a more recognizable kind of vacuity than before. Victims whose injuries were inflicted on their psyches. I’ve seen that before, after terrorist bombings or natural disasters. Some were awake and alert but overwhelmed by how many people screamed for help and how few resources they had to work with. Behind me, the main entrance to the Capitol Building was blocked by rubble, so the cops, Secret Service, politicians, and reporters who’d crowded the chamber must either be still inside—alive or dead—or they had exited through another route.

  “No,” I said. “Just me.”

  “Let me talk to Bug,” Doc said. “We’ll figure something out.”

  Then Mr. Church came on the line. He didn’t ask for details, so I assumed he’d been listening. He did not ask to speak to Auntie.

  “I’m talking to you because she’d be embarrassed to speak with me,” Church said, and there was so much awareness and pain in his voice that it hurt me to hear it. “She will see this as some kind of failure on her part to be the same young, strong, effective field operator she pretends to be. I understand that, as much as it hurts to admit it. Do you understand, Captain?”

  “Yes,” I said, and it felt like my throat was filled with glass splinters.

  “Be strong for her and with her,” said Church. “If it is within your power, then keep her here. Keep her with us.”

  “Yes.”

  “Captain … do you have any idea why people began attacking one another? Is this a disease?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It started right before the first tremor and stopped when the ground stopped shaking. Does that make any kind of sense?”

  He didn’t reply to that, but instead said, “Help is coming.”

  I looked around at the ruined city. At slack bodies and blood-streaked faces, at the ruptured streets and broken buildings. At the fires and the smoke that reached like the arms of dying giants to the uncaring gray sky. Then I looked down at Aunt Sallie. There was so little of her left.

  “Help is coming,” I said, repeating Church’s words so Aunt Sallie could hear.

  Her hand, the one that wasn’t already dead, squeezed two of my fingers. Telling me that she believed what I said. Trusting. I wanted to bow my head and weep as first responder sirens filled the air. Too few and too far away. Aunt Sallie smiled up at me with a quarter of a mouth and gave my fingers another squeeze.

  Reassuring me, for fuck’s sake.

  The world was mad and it was broken. This wasn’t a fight and I was the wrong damn man for the job of offering comfort. I held her close and talked to her. Sometimes she talked back. As best she could. We waited.

  As best we could.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  THE HANGAR

  FLOYD BENNETT FIELD

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

  Church looked at Doc Holliday, at Bug, at the staff in the Hangar who were all scrambling to put the right machinery into action. No one in the world was better suited to the job.

  Beside him, Brick Anderson touched Church on the shoulder. “She’ll be okay.”

  They exchanged a look and both nodded at the lie. Accepting it for what it was. Then, without waiting to be told, Brick pulled his own cell phone and began making calls. The first one was to the flight deck to order Church’s chopper, and the second was to the private airfield to tell the pilot to have the Lear smoking when they got there.

  “Doc,” began Church, but the tall, gangly scientist shook her head.

  “We got this. Go.”

  He whirled and ran for the door, with Brick right beside him.

  INTERLUDE NINETEEN

  THE SUICIDE KINGS

  MOTU RAUORO ISLAND,

  SOCIETY ISLANDS FRENCH POLYNESIA

  THREE YEARS AGO

  Valen and Ari sat in the matched leather pilot’s chairs and studied the island. They both held powerful binoculars and had them trained on the camp.

  Ari’s face was swathed in bandages and one eye was swollen shut. He had tissue plugs in his nose and he hovered on the narcotic edge of being awake. Hours had passed since Valen dragged him off the island, and the drugs and booze in the Greek’s system were fading, leaving Ari more or less awake and aware.

  The Suicide Kings bobbed in the swells a hundred yards from the shoreline. The research camp was surrounded by a new fence of sturdy pipes and chain link, and the silver finish glittered in the morning sun. The guard booth was painted a pale green to allow it to fade somewhat into the background. The booth was empty and its glass window was painted a different color. Red, in an artless splash pattern.

  “What the hell happened to us?” mumbled Ari slowly. “I mean, what the actual hell?”

  Valen shook his head, but in truth he thought he knew. Last night, when everyone was killing each other or themselves, when he was beating Ari, something happened. The violence caused his hearing aid to come loose, and suddenly the madness that had overtaken him ended. Just like that. As if a switch had been thrown. The utter silence inside his head was replaced by his own confused and terrified thoughts; but they were his thoughts. He could hear them even if he could hear nothing else, deaf as he was without the aid.

  He’d staggered to his feet and blundered out into the camp. Into carnage and wholesale slaughter. Into rape and sodomy and self-mutilation and suicide. When he reached the lab, it was immediately clear to him that the fool technicians had not only completed assembling the new machine, but they’d turned it on as well. The device squatted like a conjured demon while all around it the air seemed to shimmer and shift as if it was a sheer curtain hanging between this world and some hellish otherwhere.

  Valen saw that the dials on the device were positioned on their lowest settings. Beneath his feet a tremble troubled the ground.

  “No,” he breathed as understanding flooded into him. He shut the machine off, staggered back, fetched Ari, and dragged him to a Zodiac and from there out to the boat. There was no one else left to save.

  “We have to call Gadyuka,” said Ari thickly. His words were softened to a lisp because of his missing front teeth. “We have to tell her what happened.”

  * * *

  Tell her it failed, whispered a voice inside his head. Or maybe it was the fading voice from his breaking heart. It will be so easy. Shoot Ari. He’s a monster anyway. Shoot him and then take the machine far out to sea and throw it overboard. Do the same with the hard drives and t
he research and all of the spare parts and extra crystals. This is the only chance to end it all right here and now. Do it. Do it!

  He closed his eyes as he made the call to Gadyuka. She answered right away.

  “The device works,” he said in a voice he did not even recognize. “It works perfectly.”

  If Ari noticed the tears running down Valen’s cheeks, he did not comment on them.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  THE CAPITOL BUILDING

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Doc Holliday came on the line.

  “Cowboy, listen to me,” she said, “there’s no help coming. Not from the locals and not in time. There are already three hundred dead and five thousand injured, with new reports coming in every second. Emergency response networks are swamped. How close is your car?”

  “Four blocks away,” I said, and heard her hiss like she’d been scalded.

  “I know you’re hurt, but can you carry her?”

  I ground my teeth together. There was no way I was going to be able to pick up a badly injured 220-pound woman and carry her—carefully—all that distance and across those obstacles. No way in hell.

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  “When you get her there,” said Doc, “hook her up to Calpurnia so I can assess remotely. We’ll try to arrange a medevac chopper to meet you once you get out of the city and—”

  Bug suddenly cut in. “Cowboy, listen, I think we can shorten the distance you’ll have to carry her. Betty Boop has autonomous drive. I’ll have Calpurnia bring it as close as possible. We have drone pictures, so we can see you and see the street. There’s a lot of damage and some of it’s going to mean we have to come to you the long way, but I think we can get the car as close as one block. You’re looking straight down East Capitol Street Northeast. It’s totally blocked, and First Street Southeast is not happening. Between street damage and parked vehicles, the closest we can get your car is across the grounds to the Southeast Drive loop closest to the corner of First Street and Independence Avenue.”