by Mike Leon
“Mr. Stedman,” Zap says, his voice the same grim drone as always. “It’s for you.”
“How much did I miss?” Walter says, huffing to catch his breath. Technical Tom, sitting on another lawn chair, wearing his own furry hooded parka, shrugs his shoulders. It seems the two of them have made their own makeshift home-away-from-home back here, entirely out of items purchased on Zap’s company card at the Home Depot. Walter doesn’t know how they stand the cold for so long. This refrigerator truck is freezing.
“Not much,” Zap responds. “We only connected it to a power source. The device began… humming a few minutes ago.”
“Who’s calling?”
“Damien Adams.”
The mention of the name makes Water’s blood pressure jump. Adams was Henry Krupp’s right hand man before they killed him. Adams was the one who gave Novak a call before the general scrambled those gunships to kill him.
“I figured he went down on the Condor.”
“Apparently not.”
Kill Team One, the new Kill Team One, had been shown a photograph of Adams before boarding the Condor. He didn’t identify anyone matching the photo on the plane, but none of them could discern how Adams had escaped either. He had gone up with them, according to Victoria, and the plane never touched down again – not in one piece, at least.
“How does it work?” Walter asks. He hovers over the conch device, sheepishly studying it, as if he could discern in a million years what Tom and Zap have in a few days. The machine is connected to a mess of wires and gator clipped cables. Some of them are run to a car battery on the floor and others to small green circuit boards laid out on the table next to it.
“It’s very simple. Just touch it.”
“Is that safe?”
“We think so.”
Walter slowly stretches his fingers toward the conch. As the tip of his middle finger brushes the shiny surface of the thing, he sees something. He sees Adams sitting alone in a dark room – a bedroom. No. It’s a hotel room; a cheap hotel room. Damien looks directly at him.
“Mr. Stedman?” he says. Walter hears it like he’s there. He IS there. The sleazy motel room is now all around him with its stained carpet and peeling wallpaper.
Walter lurches back in shock. The room goes away. All of it goes away. He’s back in the trailer next to Zap.
“It’s like I’m there,” he says.
“We know,” Zap says. “It’s impressive technology.”
“I don’t like it. I thought cell phones were too intrusive. This thing is crazy.”
Zap nods.
“Are you sure he can’t, like, reach through and grab me?”
“This was planted inside one of their brains, so the possibility of using it that way seems very unlikely.”
Walter understands. He shakes his head before touching the conch again. He’s there again, in the hotel room.
“Mr. Stedman?” Adams calls out. He’s wearing a pair of blue jeans and a white tee shirt – a far cry from the ten thousand dollar suits he wore in every photograph Walter has seen of the man. Adams has shiny black hair that’s thinning on top and a perfectly square goatee formed around his mouth. His skin is pasty white, probably from years on that plane or in Krupp’s castle getting no sun. “Mr. Stedman, my name is Damien Adams. I’m the…”
“I know who you are,” Walter interrupts.
“Good. Please listen to me. I think they followed me here. I… Uh…” Adams croaks out a few more fragments before he breaks down into a gibbering mess.
“They’re dead. They’re… so many dead,” he sobs. “We surrender. No more. Just please don’t kill anymore. There are so few left. At least the children. You can kill me. Just don’t kill the children.”
“What’s a matter, asshole?” Walter chides. “Don’t like the smell of your own brand?”
“We bought them from your kind – all of them sold for gold and guns. They didn’t think anyone would notice. I tried to tell them, Walter. I swear I tried, but it was the only way. Please don’t do this.”
“We dropped a God damn MOAB on your leader, and now we’re coming for the rest of you. I don’t see a reason for a negotiation. You gonna give me one?”
“It’s genocide.”
“It’s war.”
“You’re murdering people.”
“I’m exterminating monsters.”
“You are the monster.”
“This thing works both ways, right? You can see what’s behind me?” Walter says, motioning to the husky cadaver cut open behind him. “That’s a monster. You’re a monster.”
“And the others? The children in their beds? The inner circle?”
“Rothschild and Du Pont are already dead. Didn’t you get the memo?”
“I meant the others.”
The others? What does he mean by that? More Reptoids hidden in the inner circle? It seems impossible. Walter has to know.
“What others?” Walter asks.
“Oh God. You don’t know,” Adams exclaims. His face drains of color. “You have to listen to me, Walter. You’ve made a huge mistake!”
“What others?” Walter barks again, ignoring the last part.
“No. You don’t understand. It’s more complicated than that. It wasn’t just Rothschild and Du Pont. It’s all of them!”
“Bullshit, Adams. I kept them all down there for damn near a week. Novak started to fall apart after two days.”
“Nefs don’t shed if they’re diluted enough.”
“Nefs? Zap, what the fuck is he talking about?”
“I have no idea.”
“Hybrids, Walter! You have to listen to me! It’s more than just what you know. There are millions of people out there that are part Reptoid. Most of them probably don’t even know it!”
“Nah. I think we’d have noticed if that many monsters were running around eating people.”
“No! They don’t have reptilian forms. Most of them don’t. Most of them are just like you or me.”
“You’re one of them!”
“I’m one eighth one of them and my kids are one sixteenth one of them. Roy Novak’s kids were a thirty-second. His wife didn’t even know for God’s sake!”
“Is this bullshit?” Walter asks, turning to his people.
“Heterosis could explain the genetic diversity exemplified thus far,” Tom answers.
“Or this could be another lie like Krupp.”
“That was a mistake. We put you onto Krupp because Sobek thought you would blow up the jet with him and Victoria onboard. The rest of them would have had your head after that.”
“Tell me about the plan. What was Sobek’s endgame?”
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, just stop this killing!”
“I’ll stop when I want to stop.”
“What do you want me to do, Walter? I have to say it? I did it! I called Novak. I told him to attack Graveyard. I’m sorry. Please stop. We’ll do whatever you want!”
“After that. What was he planning? A war? Nuclear winter?”
“What are you talking about?
“You monsters have something lined up. What is it? What were you trying to hide?”
“We were trying to hide ourselves. Van Duyn had proof. He was going to go to you. Sobek thought we would be hunted. The girl saw him. We needed her gone to fix things.”
“To fix what? That’s what I want to know!”
“He was trying to protect us. That was all.”
“Tell me about the ragheads. Are you behind that? Was 9/11 orchestrated by lizards?”
“No! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Blood Drinker. I have pictures of Blood Drinker with the Nazis in the fucking 30’s. You want to tell me what that was?”
“That was eighty years ago! And Blood Drinker! Even the other purebreds thought Blood Drinker was a maniac!”
“Did you back the Nazis or not?”
“Some of us did. Yeah. But not all.”
“So maybe now, some but not all of you are backing the jihad?”
“No.”
“You don’t think it’s awfully convenient at least that there’s a whole religion that makes people stay stupid and subservient?”
“That’s what all religions do, Walter!”
“Here’s what I think. I think you want to turn every man woman and child on this planet into your own brand of livestock, and you’re so Hell bent on it that you’re still lying to me to cover your scheme.”
“No! Please! You have to listen to me!”
“I’m done listening to any of you.”
“Okay. We did it! We started Islam! We planned 9/11! The whole thing was our idea. Please! Just stop the killings! Please stop. Please stop.”
But it’s far too late to stop. A dark shadow passes the window behind Adams. Walter knows what it is, but he gives no hint to the lizard bastard who continues to cry and plead.
Adams screams when the Ghoul smashes the crummy hollow door down from its hinges and steps into the motel room. The monster has to slouch to avoid smacking his head on the doorway.
“No! No! Please Walter! Tell them to stop!”
The Ghoul grasps a machete strapped to his back and draws the blade, displaying it for Adams to see as he encroaches. The little man tries to run, but he has nowhere to go. On trying to pass the Ghoul and make for the door, the behemoth collars him and slams him to the floor.
Walter watches the monster cover Adams’ face with one huge gauntlet and hack at Adams with the machete. The weapon goes up and comes back down, each time with more red blood drooling from it. After four strikes, Adams is still screaming.
Walter thought he would get something good from the sight of the carved corpse. He thought it would bring some satisfaction. He thought there would be closure, but there is none.
Instead he’s left with uncertainty. Adams died running and pleading. Others had died in their sleep, with Kill Team One’s knife in their hearts. There were no more attacks since Blood Drinker and his master were dead. The monsters were not fighting back at all. They were doing a piss poor job of defending themselves at that.
Adams had broken at the end – broken like a man who knows nothing. The way it ended bothers Walter. He has seen men break before and he knows a desperate lie when he sees one. Adams’ confession was a lie. He was telling Walter what he wanted to hear and nothing more. The realization brings with it a disturbing implication.
“Did I hear somebody say murdering innocent people?” Carl Jourgensen says, progressively rotting flesh now dangling from his jawbone, leaking a putrid black slime onto his tattered combat fatigue shirt.
COMPUTER CORE
“How much longer will it be?” Victor says.
“Keep your pants on,” the Philistine answers. “I’m getting there.”
She taps away at an expensive laptop computer that is connected to the wall of flashing lights and control panels in front of them by a series of cables chained together in sequence from modern USB to PS/2 to DIN connector. Victor is surprised by the speed at which she types. He took a brief look at the laptop screen earlier, but didn’t understand any of the jumble of numbers and letters he saw there.
Victor looks out into the corridor behind them. Three more of the Soviet robot sentries sit, still smoking from the catastrophic damage he inflicted upon them with plastic explosives. Those sentries had been the only others they encountered on the way in. Now the Bosnians are sweeping the rest of the facility in case there are more booby traps to be found.
The Dead Hand hub is a strange place. The main corridor is a short tunnel with only a few doors leading to supply rooms and the control room where Victor resides now with the Philistine. One of those doors leads to an adjoining tunnel which goes to the reactor powering the facility. From there, another tunnel leads into a series of silos interconnected by a network of maintenance shafts. Those tunnels are alive with dozens of automatons, robotic arms, cranes and scanners buzzing around on their own, performing the same tasks they have been for thirty years of maintaining the signal rockets.
“If the machine is automated, why is there a control room at all?”
“The system was never wholly intended to be unmanned. Originally, the Russians kept a minimal crew of specially trained agents here to push the button if the time came. The idea was for them to select from the set of pre-planned attack options in the event that the Kremlin was destroyed. The automatic launch triggers were put in place to ensure that the arsenal was still deployed, even if those troopers were somehow prevented from activating the launch.”
“Do the pre-planned attack options match the targets we want to strike?”
“No. That’s why I’m hacking the computer core. Once I’ve over-written the launch platform, we can program the system with any targets we want. To activate the launch sequence, you’ll just push the enter key on this laptop.”
“Good. I like it simple.”
The werewolf enters the control sphere in his human form, something rarely seen anymore. His giant pants have to be held up by suspenders in this form.
“The Bosnians have finished their sweeps,” he says. “I will have them patrol the bunkers now?”
“Yes,” Victor says. “Have them patrol in groups of two. I want two men stationed inside the front door and another at the elevator. Have a firebase here in the main corridor and thirty minute sweeps of the silo tunnels.”
“How long will it be?” the werewolf asks.
The Philistine smiles at them both.
“Excellent,” Victor says. “Prepare the communication equipment.”
RUSSIANS
“What is that?” Nikolai says.
Istvan turns his head from the iPad he’s using to watch Grown Ups 2 on Netflix.
“What is what?” he asks.
“That,” Nikolai says, pointing at the tiny blinking red light on the control panel in front of them. He has been here for six months at the RVSN, and never once has he seen this particular light blink. The control panel stretches out before them like a leviathan of green and yellow and red lights, most off, some on, nearly all of the important ones labeled. This one is not labeled. It is apart from all the rest, and Nikolai has no idea what it does.
“I don’t know,” Istvan says. He shrugs carelessly. The older man has worked this desk for a few years and is more like to recognize this light. “It’s not anything important. It isn’t labeled.”
The idea of nothing important has never seemed right to Nikolai – especially when he has, right in front of him, the controls for enough ICBMs to destroy the first world twenty times over again.
“Maybe we should call Yevgeny,” Nikolai suggests. Yevgeny Tynystanov is the building supervisor. He worked this panel before Nikolai and Istvan and worked it longer than any other man here.
“Don’t bother Yevgeny right now,” Istvan says. “He is an ass after his third cup of coffee.”
What Istvan says is true. The men of building B have it worked down to a science by now. Each morning, Mr. Tynystanov comes in and immediately starts brewing coffee in his office. Woe is the man who disturbs him before the first cup is in his hand. Mr. Tynystanov is nothing short of a verbal abuse monster prepared to curb stomp anyone who comes near him with a string of insults that would put any drill instructor to shame. After his first cup, he is a bearable man, and after the second, he is in his most chipper mood. Most might describe him as even a fun person during those hours of the day. The problem is that Yevgeny begins to crash in the midafternoon, at which point he generally has a third, ineffective cup of coffee. From that point forward, Yevgeny is a tired and grouchy man until the whole cycle begins anew the next morning.
“I am going to call him,” Nikolai says. Something does not sit right with him about the blinking light.
“No don’t,” Istvan exclaims. “It’s nothing. Look. This is the best part. Adam Sandler is about to pee in pool.”
Nikolai pages Yevgeny anyway. It
takes the big boss five minutes to come join them. Istvan is annoyed the whole time because he has to pause the movie and put his iPad away. When Yevgeny arrives, he is not quite into the downslope of his afternoon rage yet. He walks into the room, third coffee in hand, asks them where the problem is and is pointed to the unusual blinking light.
The balding old soldier looks at the light and makes the most curious face Nikolai has ever seen.
“That is the alert for Mertvaya Ruka,” he says.
Nikolai lets slip an involuntary chuckle, which he quickly stifles. He’s obviously being set up for a joke. There is no such thing as Mertvaya Ruka. Yevgeny is making a fool of him. The two junior officers wait quietly for the other proverbial shoe to drop, but it never comes. He never yells at them. There is no punch line. Neither of them ever gathers the nerve to ask if Yevgeny is being serious.
“It blinks when the system is in active mode,” Yevgeny follows. He snickers softly and takes a sip of his coffee. “That light has not blinked in twenty years. I didn’t think it worked anymore.”
“Someone has turned on Mertvaya Ruka?” Istvan asks with quivering uncertainty.
“I do not think so,” Yevgeny replies, waving his hand dismissively. “The system could ever only be activated by encrypted radio transmission directly from the Premier’s office in the Kremlin. There has been no declaration of emergency. This is simply a malfunction.”
“What if someone turned it on manually?” Nikolai asks. He regrets asking before the words make it out of his mouth.
“Manually?”
“Yes. From the system itself.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Get someone from maintenance to come take a look,” Yevgeny says as he turns and walks away. “If they can’t make it stop, just tell them to disconnect it.”
DŌSEIAISHA
