“They might come after us,” Stephens breathed. His bloodshot eyes were nearly black in the gloom. “Can you handle it?”
“We don’t have much choice,” Grimes said.
Stephens nodded. He looked like he wanted to say something else, and, at that moment, despair washed over Grimes, drowned him. What were they doing? What did they hope to accomplish? He thought of Janey and it was like thinking of an old photograph. He had no faith he’d get back to her. He was already dead.
He looked at Stephens and Newby and, oddly, that helped. They weren’t giving up. Stephens wanted to know what happened to his fellow soldiers. Newby just wanted to survive. They had faith they could do this. It radiated from them, like a phosphorescent glow.
When Stephens glanced over the rock and made his move, Newby close behind, Grimes took a deep breath and followed.
They trotted hunched over, soldiers across No Man’s Land. The Entrance Chamber, obscured by shipping containers, drew slowly closer. Grimes thought the distance had been shorter be-fore.
The spotlights clicked on as they reached the halfway point, pinning them like bugs. Disappointment surged through Grimes as he turned, but he felt no surprise. None at all.
The town stood silently beneath the lights, the glare cloaking them in black.
Stephens grunted and an icepick stabbed Grimes’s temple—
(—hide the bolters.)
They jerkily shoved the bolters inside their jumpsuits. Grimes wondered what the point was, and he felt a glowing green hatred for the townspeople.
“Stop where you are,” Dugan called.
“We did, you idiot,” Grimes snapped.
Three men detached and approached with an air of ceremony.
“Trying to leave?” Dugan asked. “That’s not particularly nice.”
“How’d you kill the Deltas?” Stephens asked.
Dugan’s smile widened. “Ah, the resident Alpha speaks. I know Tartan-6 must be particularly brutal for you.”
“How’d you kill the Deltas?” Stephens repeated.
“We freed them, Alpha,” he said. His smile was chilling and Grimes felt a drillbit of fear burrow into him. “They’ve been Saved. You’ll see.”
Dugan stepped aside to reveal the other two men. One was just a townsman, a military rifle bulky and awkward in his unskilled hands.
The other was obviously the Chaplain.
Grimes thought he might’ve once been a handsome elder gentleman, but those days were long gone. He was a scarecrow, his black jumper and Roman collar hanging off him. His hands were gnarled into claws. His head was too large for his body, nearly a rounded triangle. His corkscrewed white hair had fallen out in patches, leaving an uneven mane. His face was a relief-map of wrinkles from which cherry-eyes—identical to Stephens’s—beamed, entirely present and completely insane.
“My fallen flock,” he croaked. His hands clawed the air at his sides. “Do you believe in paying for rewards to come? Do you believe in creating a platform from which Greatness shall arise?”
Grimes’s mouth worked on its own. “Free it.”
The Chaplain suddenly beamed. A gnarled hand gripped Grimes’s arm and Grimes shuddered. His touch was cold, but Grimes felt a vein of unspeakable energy and power beneath, a thrum of heat. “Yes! Yes, that is exactly it!” The Chaplain turned to Dugan. “Its ascension will be complete with these three! They believe! Oh, the wonders It has foretold! We mustn’t wait any longer!”
Grimes allowed the Chaplain to pull him along as the others followed. The bolter banged against his stomach.
They entered town. The only illumination came from the yellow glow of the crater at the other end, reflecting against the dome’s ceiling.
The Chaplain let go of his arm to gesture at the town. “This is our altar and we keep it is as such. This is merely one way we show our faith and love for It Who Carries Us.”
“A nice town with very clean streets,” Grimes muttered and felt sick.
The Chaplain’s horrible eyes blazed. “Yes. We are in Its home, the way the church has always been the supposed home of god. Do you desecrate your lord’s home? Do you, perhaps, shit in the pews and piss in the holy water? No! ”
The Chaplain continued, “It Who Carries Us has touched you three, and that means Its reach is growing from Its prison—It is almost here.”
Grimes’s migraine was intensifying. He felt a sudden vibration beneath his feet and it jarred his brain.
He felt the Chaplain’s eyes on him. “I know,” the Chaplain said. “The pain is very great, but that is only because you haven’t given yourselves fully to Its love.” He looked at the following townspeople. “We all have accepted and we all, as one, no longer feel pain, only joy.
“It Who Carries Us controls this planet’s electro-magnetic field,” the Chaplain went on, his eyes full of the glowing pit. “It is Its way of contacting Its believers. We felt it when the miners broke through to Its level.” He shook his awful head. “The agony. But I heard first. Heard the message beneath the pain. Here—” He tapped the top of his skull. “I heard Its whisper, and I responded. It gifted me for my willingness—” He held up his gnarled hands. “—and I was able to give the others what they wanted: to hear Its message without the pain.”
Grimes looked at Stephens, striding on the Chaplain’s other side. His narrowed bloodshot eyes were impossible to read. Did Stephens, a Psi, hear Its “message”?
Grimes didn’t want to know. If this was hell for him and Newby, what must Stephens be feeling?
“It could contact us, but not free Itself,” the Chaplain went on. “It was too weak. It needed to feed and we knew what had to be done. It needed flesh to gain strength.” He grinned at Grimes. “Sacrifice makes it stronger. Sacrifice leads to freedom.”
Grimes thought of the Deltas and shuddered.
“When it told me it would crash your ship,” the Chaplain said, “bring you to us—the depth of Its thinking! It nears freedom, but It must have the faithful to finish. That was the final stroke.”
The Chaplain trailed off as the group approached the crater. A strong wind came from below. A high-pitched electric distortion drilled into Grimes’s ears, growing with each awkward step across the quaking ground.
“Step forward,” the Chaplain said. Grimes could barely hear him. “Witness the majesty you’re giving yourself to.”
His feet kept moving. Newby followed Grimes, looking like someone beholding his bogeyman. Blood burst from Stephens’s nose.
Grimes looked down as they approached the crumbled edge and picked out details through that blasting yellow light—the rough funnel-like sides of the crater, the constant tumble of dirt. The bottom of the crater was a rough oval opening, ragged like the teeth of a diamond-saw, dropping into the bowels of Tartan-6, where the impossible wind came from.
Bulging from the hole was a writhing, segmented coil of something that pulsed with yellow light. Grimes couldn’t begin to determine its length or size. Its constant writhing—the source of the vibrations—expanded the hole, pushed it slowly out onto the surface. He thought he caught sight of a massive jagged tooth, but it was gone before he could fully see it and he couldn’t shake the sudden disappointment that filled him.
It’s not a god, he thought desperately. It’s not. It’s a species the surveyors missed when they reconned the planet and these lunatics just think it needs sacrifices and worship. It’s not a god.
But he didn’t stop walking, his left foot stepping onto a boulder that rattled like a loose tooth, as if his mind might refuse to believe, but the body was a willing acolyte. He leaned towards the yellow light and a part of him thought, Will I see Its face?
And then a cold burning roar filled his head, a shotgun blast of icicles: Stephens’s voice.
(—OH DEAR JESUS IT’S CALLING ME CALLING ME IN CALLING OH MY GAAAWWWD—)
Grimes jerked like a man startled awake just as the boulder tumbled over. He spun and saw Stephens fall to his knees. Blood flowed fre
ely from his nose, ears, and eyes. His hands moved from his temples to the zipper of his Suit.
The vibration grew in strength, knocking Grimes and Newby down. The wind became a shrieking gale and the yellow light blasted from the bottom. Grimes’s migraine jumped in agony and he felt blood trickle out his nose. The high-pitched distortion filled his world.
Against the pain, Grimes groped for his zipper and saw Newby doing the same.
Another shotgun-blast of cold punched through Grimes’s mind—
(—STOP IT CAN’T STOP IT CAN’T-CAN’T-CAN’T—)
The mental scream cut off. Stephens shrieked silently, blood spraying. He collapsed, his glazed, bleeding eyes goggling at nothing.
Panic galvanized Grimes and he tore his zipper down. He yanked his bolter free and turned towards the townspeople. The Chaplain’s mouth worked, his bloodshot eyes blazing.
Grimes fired as Newby drew his own weapon. A hole, no wider than the bore of a straw, appeared in the Chaplain’s wrinkled neck. A freshet of blood poured through. He dropped face-first into the dust.
Grimes’s migraine was a bludgeon in his head. He focused all his energies on holding the bolter and firing. The closest guard spun like a top, blood squirting from his shoulder.
Newby fired four times, hitting two out of three guards. Grimes struggled to his feet as the remaining six leveled their rifles.
The ground shuddered beneath them, so powerfully it pushed everyone forward. Lightning cracks shot across the ground.
It’s coming out, Grimes thought, and couldn’t shake the undertone of awe within. Another part of him argued, It didn’t need sacrifices, dammit, because it’s not a god.
The distortion rose to a scream, digging into his head.
He stumbled into the crowd, firing at their blank, exultant faces. He caught a woman through her yawning mouth, a man in the temple.
Behind him he heard the faint crack of a rifle and Newby’s distant howl. Grimes turned and saw Newby facedown and still. Grimes fired twice at the killing guard. Both shots took him in the stomach.
He sprinted away, his brain feeling like a tortured plaything. The ground beneath him tilted crazily this way and that, and Grimes had to focus on keeping upright. From both sides came the snap of plastic, the squeal of twisting metal, the musical jangle of breaking glass. The wind shoved from all sides, throwing grit into his eyes. He reached the edge of town and kept going.
A bellow from the crater filled the world, drowning out the destruction of the town. A triumphant shriek followed, made tiny and hollow, “Behold! Behold the GLORY of It Who Carries Us!”
His left foot came down and the ground was now six-inches lower as the earth became a disintegrating trampoline. He fell, the bolter cartwheeling from his hands and plunging into a crack. Pulsing yellow light blasted from behind him, throwing his shadow far out ahead, twisted and strange.
He clawed and kicked and pulled and crawled over sudden rock outcroppings and dizzyingly deep holes. The Entrance Chamber was the mirage in the desert, the light at the end. Just get out, he thought. Get out and hide. He didn’t know if he’d be safe outside the dome, but he clung to the idea like a drowning man to a life preserver.
It Who Carries Us’s bellow cracked the sky and seemed not just an exercise of Its incomprehensible vocal cords, but a command. At the same time, the electronic distortion in his ears changed, shifting from a blanket of torture into something specific and focused.
Grimes slowed, then stopped, even as a good portion of his mind shrieked to keep going.
His body was a willing acolyte.
He turned toward that awful throbbing yellow glow.
In the center of the light was a vast black tower, ridged and writhing and magnificent. In its core, Its Eye, a massive three-pupilled structure, rolled towards him, seeing him.
Grimes’s mind shattered like a piece of thin glass as he heard Its simple, horrible message in the center of his head, reverberating through his nerves:
And the throbbing yellow light consumed him.
The A-shaped rescue-ship tore through the thin cloud cover like the arrival of a pagan god, with a roar of throbbing engines and a scream of directionless wind.
Grimes sat in the outer hatch of the ship and watched it come, his lank white hair whipping around his head, obscuring the scarring around the temples.
It circled the wreckage and then the engine-sounds changed pitch and it began to descend as if lowered by a cable.
Something stirred in the center of his chest, something light and expanding and long-thought dead: anticipation.
“They came,” he muttered. “They finally came.” He felt pain twist in the center of his mind, a bright flare of migraine, and then gone. Grimes shivered.
He’d visited his ship every day for months, waiting. It’d become his ritual and people deferred to it; even Dugan, that simpering little worm. They didn’t understand why, which was fine with him, and they didn’t ask, which was even better. It maintained a distance between him and them.
He’d never bothered to tell them about the beacon. He owed them nothing.
The rescue ship landed with a ground-trembling thud and the engines screamed as they powered down. Immediately, the ship’s side-hatch opened and five Alphas in combat gear—he recognized them by their shoulder insignia—leapt out, rifles raised.
Grimes stood, sliding his hands into his pockets.
The Alpha on-point stopped two yards away, his opaque helmet reflecting sunlight. “Identify yourself,” he yelled over the roar of the engine, his rifle aimed at Grimes’s face
Grimes felt no fear. “UPF Representative Owen Grimes.”
The point Alpha didn’t move or relax. The Alpha closest to the ship pulled a handheld and tapped the screen with a finger. Finally, he looked up and said, “He’s one of ‘em. He’s …” The Alpha trailed off, looked down at his screen, looked back, then studied his hand-held some more. He touch the screen, then touched it again.
Only Grimes noticed.
“Any other survivors?” the Alpha on-point asked.
Grimes shook his head. “They died in the crash.”
The Alphas lowered their weapons. The point man offered his hand. “Glad someone made it, then. Our sincerest apologies for not arriving sooner.”
Grimes pulled his gnarled, throbbing hand from his pocket and gripped the Alpha’s. Staring at his bloodshot, warped reflection in the Alpha’s helmet, he said, “I knew you’d come. I had faith.”
Another twist of pain—agonizing yet oh-so pleasurable—ripped through the center of his head as the Alpha turned to confer with his colleagues. This was a small group, but there’d be more.
My gift to you, he told It.
The Doorway
Man
THE GUN in Jake Reznic’s hand didn’t shake, but his voice did. “T-tell me where h-he is, dammit.”
Lightning cracked the night sky outside, illuminating the interior of the barn like the flash of God’s camera. The rain came in sheets through the massive doors.
The farmer’s piggish eyes were locked on the barrel Jake’s .380; he might not’ve heard Jake at all. His gut swelled, pushing his plain button-down shirt to its limit. Jake could smell him—the sharp tang of sweat and dirt, the ozone stench of fear.
No, that’s me, Jake thought. I’m piss-terrified.
And then the pain came, gnawing through his stomach and chest like hunger pangs. It didn’t blossom and grow—it was just there, like a switch had been flipped. Deep and burning and hungry, gobbling at his nerve-endings. He grimaced and curled his free hand around his stomach.
Muttering suddenly burst into the center of his head; a chorus of voices, chanting but faint, as if heard from a distance. He understood nothing said. He never did, but he suddenly wanted the farmer to come closer, close enough so that Jake could grab him. Draw him in.
Feed the pain.
“I know he’s here,” Jake panted. “So tell me where he is.�
�
The farmer didn’t move.
“Tell me where he fucking IS!” Jake screamed.
“I’m right here, Jake,” the Doorway Man said behind him, and although the storm raged outside the barn and the muttering raged inside Jake’s head, he spoke in a normal but perfectly audible tone of voice. He sounded like he did when Jake first met him at that goddamned party a month ago.
“You don’t belong here,” a man said.
Jake Reznic looked up from his scotch and blinked. The man before him was rail-thin. His clothes were too large and faded, gray and brown, his corduroy sports jacket blending in with his loose T-shirt. His pageboy haircut was lank and dirty, and the bags under his eyes were something you’d have to check at the airport.
Jake glanced around. Everyone else in the spacious penthouse wore suits and dark cocktail dresses, their colors stark against the lush whiteness of the carpet and furniture. To his right, a line of wide windows looked out at the skyscrapers sparkling with minute dots of light.
“It’s funny you say that,” he said, gulping the rest of his scotch. He still wasn’t nearly drunk enough yet.
The man raised his eyebrows. The eyes themselves were glassy. Drugs, Jake thought. “Why’s that?”
Jake opened his mouth and a shadow fell across him.
“Hey!” Mansfield—the bastard—said. “You got to meet the Doorway Man!”
Jake cocked an eyebrow. “What?”
Mansfield stepped between them, looking like he always did—like he’d stepped whole and breathing from a men’s catalogue. The gel in his carefully tousled hair gleamed under the recessed lighting.
A hot, bitter bubble popped in Jake’s stomach. In his head, he heard Mansfield saying, You don’t have a fucking clue, do you, Jakey-boy?
“I was wondering if you’d been invited to this party,” Mansfield said. The man studied his sneakers as a pained grimace crossing his face.
Bones are Made to be Broken Page 9
