Mind of a Child: Sentient Serpents (OMEGA FORCE and ALPHA UNIT Book 1)

by Dean C. Moore

  He and the rest of the gang pulled into their underground lair a short while later. Formerly an underground bar. Still was at night, not during the middle of the day like right now. But you had to be invited. And the location was pretty hush hush. Anyone traced a copper back to your personal invite, you were dead. Usually the same day.

  The gang was feeling pretty full of themselves as they entered the windowless room lit only by soda machines retrofitted with beer, and other glass-doored refrigerators, many stocking far harder booze. The splashes of light over the pool tables and the spotlit show bikes being tooled on completed the rest of the atmospheric lighting. Panno laughed every time he caught sight of the place. Reminded him of caves in the Amazon basin where the phosphorescent molds lit your way like the sparkling of fool’s gold.

  “You’re always laughing, my friend?” Jasper said, patting Panno on the back as Panno pulled up a seat to enjoy the sex show on the couch across from him. Most of the men and women in the group were animals and made no bones about carrying on with one another in full view of the others. They fornicated about as savagely as they fought. But Panno, used to the painted ladies back home, mostly enjoyed the shows vicariously. Unless Tora was around. She was tattooed from head to toe. And with crazy colors, not the usual drab army green. Just the way he liked his ladies. She reminded him of the Ubuku women.

  She had just walked in the door and he raised his beer to her. She nodded at him and smiled. She would pay her respects to the higher ups in the gang, possibly screw one or two of them to reassure them of their place in the pecking order, before making her way to him.

  Panno shifted his attention to Jasper. “Why do I laugh so much?” He sighed and chuckled. “Before I got to the States, I was my father’s right hand man. Of course, that came with a price. The drugs we Ubuku take keep us in a waking trance. Make us quite powerful. Deadly killers. But also quite serious. I don’t remember laughing a day my entire life. Not till I got out here. I find it the most liberating inner release of all. And the only thing that makes life worth living.” He came out of his reverie, took a swig of his beer, and decompressed with another chuckle that grew in intensity as Jasper shared in it.

  “You’re one crazy, bastard. You definitely kill like nobody else. The look in the eyes. It’s like they lock on you and the rest is a foregone conclusion. You’re not even aiming down the bottom of the barrel.”

  “Nah. I feel it. I feel where the bullet needs to go and then it just goes. Now, quiet, man, you’re interrupting my sex show.”

  Jasper patted him on the shoulder and then disappeared into the throng, evidently intent on befriending as many faces as he could to lock in his initiation, especially since it had been cut short. The ceremony incomplete, it was still anybody’s guess whether he was officially in or out of the gang.

  Tora found her way into Panno’s arms, ahead of schedule. She rubbed up against him like a cat. “You and your poor man’s porn flicks,” she said, eying the couple on the couch and kissing him on the head.

  “Nag, nag, nag. Scew, screw, screw. Damn, woman, you’re a broken record.”

  “Just the way you love me.” They kissed this time, taking turns swallowing one another’s tongues.

  “Why did your father send you out here?”

  He groaned. “I don’t want to talk about my father.”

  “A direct descendent of the East Africans who built pyramids and taught other civilizations how to do it? As they migrated over 60,000 years ago up through Sudan, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, then China, and through North and Meso-America, finally into South America? I sure as hell want to talk about him. Among the Mayans they influenced, we’re talking about cutting the hearts out of living victims. I’ve seen some crazy shit, but what I wouldn’t give to see that.”

  Panno grunted. Got up from his chair. Went over to Jasper. Yanked him onto the pool table. Cut out his heart with his bowie knife and held up the still beating heart to the speechless throng. He rolled his eyes in back of his head, chanted a bunch of Ubuku nonsense he honestly didn’t believe in. Then took a bite out of the still beating heart.

  He looked down at the look of astonishment on Jasper’s face, his brain still not registering that he was dead yet. “I thought we were best buds,” he said, coughing up blood.

  “We will forever be as one,” Panno said. “You’re part of me now. I’ve taken your essence into me. You will be stronger in the afterlife on account of it, able to fight off your greatest enemies just by drawing on my power. And I, here on earth, have protected you from the ugly realization that you can’t ride to save your life.”

  The rest of the gang cracked up, as the light went out in Jasper’s eyes. “That’s some crazy shit right there,” one of the bikers said, returning his attention to the vending machine and to agonizing over which microbrewery beer he was going to choose next.

  Tora was so turned on, she jumped up on Panno, wrapped her legs around his waist, took a bite out of the still beating heart, unzipped both their flies, and grinded away atop Panno’s stiff cock. For his part, he mostly ignored her. Carried on with his pool playing as soon as he’d rolled Jasper’s body out of the way and racked up the balls. With the body sprawled on the ground for everyone to trip over, Jasper spent the rest of the night being kicked by the annoyed drunkards not mindful enough to look down before taking their shot at the pool table.

  Panno’s circuit for the next several games ran from the beer machine to the pool table, trying to shoot billiards and select a microbrewery beer around Tora’s grinding hips and upper torso. She didn’t show any sign of slowing an hour later.

  The alarm in his watch was sounding off and vibrating. He glanced down at it. “It’s time,” was all it said. Jacko was recalling him from his little sabbatical. Panno didn’t want to go. This was the only freedom he’d ever tasted. He knew damn well that within a week of being around the old man he’d be under his spell again. But what choice did he have? Even this far away the old man could reach him. His voodoo was second to none. Maybe upon his return, Panno could stand up to him. He wasn’t a child anymore. He didn’t fear the monsters a child did. His father was no longer all-powerful to him. Just an old man.

  He headed for the door, climbed on his bike. By now he was good and tired of Tora who couldn’t take a hint. He snapped her neck and started the bike in one fluid motion. Rolled her off him and sped off. Destiny called. Not the past, not the future, not even the present. But that strange timeless place his father had a way of initiating him into. The Forever Land.

  ***

  The first thing Panno did upon returning to his tribe was beat his father to within an inch of his life. Close enough that he’d left him for dead. The whole time delivering his sermon on the mount. “All my life I’ve been your hand puppet. No life of my own was I allowed. Now I want you to feel me inside you with the same degree of intimacy. My methods are cruder than yours, but they’ll suffice.”

  Perhaps the man had left this world. Only to return as he alone could. He’d lain where he fell for days. The flies had their way with him. The maggots. Even a crow that had made away with one of his eyes. Maybe if Panno had just thought to finish the job properly, and burnt him alive.

  The father looked like little more than a reanimated corpse when he sat up, and for much of the following weeks. Eventually he would fill the empty eye socket with a carved piece of ironwood painted to resemble the eye he’d lost.

  He was untouchable now. All Panno had done was added to his mystique. The natives were even more in fear of him. And even Panno could no longer get close. It was like an invisible force field separated him and anyone else from the old man who dared to approach him who he did not want to get near. That was madness, of course. But Panno was beyond recognizing by then the influence of his father’s drugs, slipped into his food. He had already fallen under his spell.

  It took all that Leon had put Panno through to wake him from the dead.

  How many times had Panno laughed since returni
ng to the jungle? But not one of those laughs brought with it the sense of freedom he’d tasted once. They were the laughs of a puppet, no more. Jacko mocking his efforts to free himself from his control.

  ***

  PRESENT TIME

  Panno’s heart stopped finally. With its last beat he could taste real freedom. The influence of the old man’s drugs was slipping away. And the man named Leon who’d killed him by turning him into a pin cushion—not unlike a voodoo doll in Leon’s hands—suddenly felt like the only true friend he’d ever had.

  SEVENTY-SIX

  Leon stumbled onto Jacko in an unconventional manner. He had hobbled in the direction of complete quiet. It was an eerie silence, so he’d figured he’d investigate. Unless both sides were taking a break, it was damned hard to find any hush in the chaos of war. That mystery alone bore investigation.

  He arrived, wincing and holding on to his side from the latest voodoo needle stuck into his likeness, to find Jacko in a midsize auditorium. One that might have been used for movies in another lifetime. Before the self-replicating construction bots continued to grow the FORESCO compound until the number of scientists it could hold also demanded a larger theater. The room showed signs of wear and neglect, just like Jacko, as if it had been abandoned.

  The old man was surrounded by his contingent of Umbrage as determined to protect him as ever. They were in a Mexican standoff with the other Umbrage. The good guys were hanging from the ceiling, along the walls, sprawled on all fours over the backs of the seats in the auditorium, ready to spring. Aside from the menacing poses they were striking at one another, all activity had come to a complete halt. “Why does everyone keep calling an intermission in the middle of my war?” Leon balked.

  “Excuse me, Muscles.”

  Leon swiveled to regard the Umbrage speaking to him. “You have rainbow eyes!” he exclaimed.

  “Nothing gets past you, except for me, apparently.”

  “Oh, sorry.” Leon stepped aside. “Wait a second. You speak English?”

  The instant Rainbow Eyes entered the room Leon could feel the electricity in the air. The psychic mindfield that Jacko could not penetrate with his voodoo, because it was already too strong for him—with this many free Umbrage gathered in one place—amplified further at Rainbow Eyes’ presence. Leon wasn’t sure how he knew. He could just feel it. Maybe it was the hairs standing on end along every inch of his body. Maybe it was because the air suddenly felt fresh, as if he were standing by the ocean and not upwind of rivers of blood and guts, as was in fact the case.

  The Umbrage protecting Jacko started to look disoriented, staggering, bumping into one another, and lashing out in confusion and anxiety at members of their own team.

  The old man just smiled. The pupil in his one good eye dilated until the blackness nearly filled his iris, turning it into a black void. A clear sign he was intensifying his magic. Leon shouldn’t be able to observe this much detail from this distance. But Rainbow Eyes was permitting him to see through his psychic lensing.

  Leon was now in the mind of Jacko. Who leaned over what looked like a board game he was obsessed with playing, moving his pieces about. Using the sharpened talons of his fingernails to grip the players. So, those weren’t needles going into his likeness exactly. Jacko’s blinking had stopped. His chanting had intensified.

  But it did him no good.

  It wasn’t long before the last of the unconverted among the Umbrage peeled off their headsets. Leon was expecting a chorus of screams loud enough to deafen him. But there was just more eerie silence. Punctuated by gasps, like deep sea divers popping up for air. The mindfield, amplified by Rainbow Eyes, was nullifying the pain of removing the headgear. The Umbrage that now sported gashes on the side of their heads from the wounds they’d opened up healed in a matter of moments.

  And then they moved as one.

  On Jacko.

  Rainbow Eyes pulled Leon out of Jacko’s mind in the nick of time. He watched from a safer distance as Jacko’s most loyal Umbrage tore him apart like a pack of wolves. While the rest of the Umbrage did nothing. They held their stance. It was as if they figured their brethren deserved their due.

  Was the final act of devouring Jacko paradoxically one of reverence for a worthy adversary, the way some native tribes took a bite out of their most feared and respected enemies? Hoping to absorb some of the warrior’s spirit and strength? Or was it one of defilement? Leon decided he really didn’t care either way, and let the thought go.

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  FIVE YEARS EARLIER

  The three scientists were positioned on the same side of the one-way mirror, which allowed for unobtrusive examination of the college student hooked up to the skull cap in the next room. The skull cap in turn had so many wires and electrodes sticking out of it, attached to machines, it gave the term “mind-fuck” new meaning.

  The senior scientist paced the observation room, arms crossed, face fretting. All the tech gear and monitors crowding the walls and observation window just below the glass just left him fifteen feet or so to walk off his anxiety. His junior techies, graduate students, played with the dials on their console.

  Strange, ghostly apparitions appeared on the oversized monitor, walking about the room the experimental subject was in, and then disappearing. “You’re telling me we’re seeing what he’s seeing?” the senior scientist said.

  “Yeah,” the long-haired apprentice replied.

  “Trust me, we’re more dialed into his brain right now than he is,” the curly haired one interjected, bouncing his knee.

  “So, what the hell are we looking at?”

  Both the techies shrugged. Long Hair kept shaking his head slowly. “Each time we change the brainwaves he can generate, it’s like changing the dial on a radio station. Only…”

  “Only what?” asked the tall man with the even bigger presence in charge.

  “Look for yourself.” Long Hair switched the “channel” on the “radio.”

  A different set of ghostly apparitions appeared. These looked less like button-down types in business suits and more like tribal warriors on a hunt in the jungle. Only, those animals they were hunting didn’t come from Earth. Certainly, not Earth as it existed today.

  Long Hair changed the “channel” again with another turn of his knob. This time the feet walking through the room belonged to giants; it was the only part of them anyone saw stepping through the room.

  “My guess,” Long Hair said, “we’ve found a way to see into other dimensions, parallel universes.”

  “We did target the psychic region of the brain,” Curly Hair said, tapping his pen in a rapid tat-tat-tat against the console, as if he were communicating his distress in Morse Code. “So it’s not totally outside the realm of possibility.”

  “You targeted what you thought might be the psychic region of the brain, because no such thing has actually been clinically verified,” the intimidating man with the bullying voice said, continuing his pacing, his arms even more tightly interlocked than before. He was compromising his own breathing the way he had cinched down on his makeshift straightjacket, as if he were trying to interlock his fingers behind him—just to keep from going crazy. “I tell you what you plugged into, his nightmares, or his memories of old sci-fi horror movies. Whatever it is, trust me, he’s imagining all this.”

  “Yeah, well, tell him that,” Curly Hair said. He had gone from tapping his pen against his desk rapid-fire to repeatedly squeezing the ejector at the top of the ballpoint and bouncing his knee in tandem.

  The student in the recliner more typically found in a dentist’s office, on the other side of the one-way mirror, fighting the restraints the whole time, yelling, “Get me out of this chair!” finally broke down. Any attempts to form articulated speech surrendered. Curly Hair demonstrated as much by turning up the volume on the dial on the monitor so the professor could appreciate the facts for himself. Finally, the student passed out in the chair. Another lab assistant, standing in the same room
as the test subject the whole time, unmoved by his display of emotion, walked up to him and put her fingers on his neck, feeling for a pulse. She looked up at the one-way mirror and shook her head.

  “That’s the fifth one we put in the chair. Not one of them has made it out alive so far,” Curly Hair said.

  The professor, pacing to help himself think and calm himself at the same time, shook off the statement with a gesture. “That’s why we screen for families, friends, anything that could have people inquiring after their disappearance. That’s not the problem. The problem is your college students are too damn suggestible. Bunch of potheads, the whole lot of them. Time we started fishing in deeper waters.”

  Long Hair slipped out a file from under a stack of files. “Maybe it’s time to consider this guy,” he said. He handed the manila folder to the professor.

  The professor opened it and studied the picture of the old man, his pacing unabated. “A shaman?” He chuckled. “You want to put a witch doctor in the chair?”

  “Don’t they like commune with the dead for a living?” Long-Hair said. “Travel into other realms to speak to their spirit ancestors?”

  “A bunch of hooey is what it is. A lot of tribal superstitious nonsense.” The professor curtly handed him back the folder.

  “Yeah, well, at least he’s not going to freak out with anything we show him in the chair. Just a day at the office for that guy.”

  The professor stopped his pacing finally, squeezed the bridge of his nose, and sighed. “Fine. Do it.” He let go of the pressure points and gazed up. “Turns out most of our modern cancer medicines are derived from herbs these shamans have been plucking out of the Amazon rainforest for thousands of years. Who am I to condescend?”

  He stormed out of the room.

  “Did we ever get that guy’s name?” Curly Hair said. “He kind of gives absentee professor new meaning. Except, of course, for when he wants to chew our asses out.”