The Border

by Robert McCammon

  Derryman pointed to an ear. “I can hardly hear a damned thing!” The alarm had ceased, though; its shriek had stopped driving a spike into his brain. There were too many there already. “Give me some time!”

  Dave nodded and moved away. He went carefully across the chunks of rubble and then outside, where the air did not smell of smoke or burned reptilian flesh but instead of bitter ozone. Ethan and Olivia were standing together at the guardrail, watching the distant flashes of blue and red bursts up in the clouds. Hannah and Nikki had both been taken to the infirmary not long ago. Both had been holding themselves together pretty well considering, but it was the huge carcass in the garage and the man’s grisly remains that finally did them in. Nikki had collapsed soon after she’d seen the carnage and might have hurt herself in the fall if Ethan hadn’t caught her, and after realizing what the monster had been Hannah said she thought she needed a little something to steady her nerves. Then the tough old bird sat down on the mountain’s edge and began to sob, and Olivia had gone to find someone to help. As she was being led away, Hannah had given them a crooked smile from the wrinkled, tear-damp face, and said if she could get half a bottle of whiskey she would be as right as rain, which sounded good until you thought about what was in the rain these days.

  “Has Jefferson turned up?” Olivia asked when Dave reached them.

  “I’m sure he will. Bad pennies always do.” Dave watched the flashes of light. In the far distance, pieces of something rippling with blue flame fell into the forest, and almost at once, smoke began to curl up from amid the dead trees. “Are they getting any closer?”

  “Still moving away,” Ethan said. His head pounded, the nerves of this body were still on fire and his hearing impaired, but he was able to ‘hear’ with his mind much more clearly than with his damaged audio receptors. “I believe they’re too occupied with each other to think about me. For the moment,” he added. His voice was muffled, alien even to himself. He thought also he should tell them what else he believed to be true. “They know now that they can’t take me alive. The next time they come, it will be to destroy me.”

  Ethan let that sit for a few seconds and then he turned to face Dave. “That’s why I have to get to this Area 51 as soon as possible.” He’d already explained to both Dave and Olivia that he suspected—but was not sure—there might be something at the S-4 installation he could use. What that might be, he didn’t know, but human weapons would not stop this war. In fact, Ethan doubted that any weapon could stop the war, short of a device that would blow up the world…but then again, it was the line in space that the Cyphers and Gorgons fought over, so even if this planet was blown to pieces the contested border would still remain.

  “I don’t know how you think you can stop this,” Dave said, as astutely as if he’d learned how to read Ethan’s mind. “To do that you’d have to destroy both of them, wouldn’t you? I mean…both their civilizations. Or even their worlds. How are you going to do that? Wouldn’t that be…like…against your purpose or something?”

  “Yes,” the peacekeeper said. “My purpose is not to destroy worlds, but to save them.”

  “So…if you’re looking for an alien weapon…how is that going to help you stop the war?”

  Ethan shook his head. “What I believe…is that I was brought here for a purpose by the greater power. The only further purpose I can see is persuading your President to get me into the S-4 installation.” He was silent for a moment, watching the fires of battle in the sky and calculating that their conflict was moving them further and further away from the White Mansion. “It’s the only thing that makes sense to me,” he said. “Something of value I can use must be there. Only the President can get me in, and as I told you, he’s both mentally impaired and suicidal.”

  “I think it’s hopeless,” Olivia said.

  “Don’t talk like that.” Dave saw how dark her eyes were, how they were sunken in pools of darkness, how her expression was blank with shock and grief and how close she was to falling over the edge of her own cliff. He put his arm around her shoulders, because it occurred to him that one step and she would be gone. “We can’t give up,” he said. “We have to trust Ethan.”

  “Trust Ethan,” she repeated tonelessly. “There must be many millions of Gray Men out there. Around the world,” she said. “China…Russia…South America…everywhere. Maybe a billion or more. Even if Ethan can stop this…what about the Gray Men? And millions more who’ve been driven to madness, or have had to live like animals these last two years. What about them, Dave? How can even Ethan fix that? Things can never go back to what they were, before.” She stared at the guardrail, and Dave imagined she was thinking that crossing it and throwing herself from this height would at least take her away from the misery. “We’ve lost too much,” she said. “Way too much.”

  Dave looked to Ethan for help, but the peacekeeper was silent. It was left up to him to bring Olivia back from the precipice.

  “Yeah, we’ve lost too much,” he said. “Me, my wife, and sons. You, your husband, and the life you knew. Look at me, Olivia. Will you do that?”

  She did, and Dave thought that Olivia’s eyes were nearly dead, her spirit too.

  “We haven’t lost each other,” he said. “We’ve got to hang on. If Ethan believes he needs to get to Area 51, then I believe it too. Olivia, we’ve come too far to let go now.” He nodded toward the flare of energy weapons in the clouds beyond. “They win everything if we let go. Please…stay with me…with us…just a little longer.”

  “Tell me,” she said, still listlessly, “how we would get to that place? The cars here are wrecked. Our bus is…” She hesitated, trying to think how to phrase it. “No longer useable,” she said. “I don’t know the exact distance, but I’d say that Roswell, New Mexico is a long way from here. So how would we get there, Dave? Ethan? Any ideas?”

  “Not just yet. We need to speak to Mr. Derryman.”

  They were interrupted by the presence of Jefferson Jericho, who bashed his shin against a piece of broken stone and let loose a curse as he came through the opening. He was pallid and his eyes looked dazed; he was walking like he’d gotten into the bottle of whiskey Hannah craved. “What is that thing in there?” he asked, and then: “The bus…where’s the bus?”

  “That thing was the bus,” Dave told him as he reached them. “The Gorgons have a weapon that creates life from—”

  “I don’t want to know that,” Jefferson interrupted. “Christ, what a mess!” He focused on Ethan. “Did you kill it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Vope,” Jefferson said to Dave. “What happened to him?”

  “He—it—vanished, or transported away or whatever they do. Where have you been?”

  Jefferson heard distant thunder and was suddenly aware of the battle that raged in the sky many miles away. For a moment his attention was taken by the flashes of light. “I was up on Level Four,” he explained. “President Beale and the First Lady are up there. A couple of Marines played a little rough with me, but they got the order to let me go.” He frowned. “Everybody okay? Hannah and Nikki? Are they all right?”

  “Both in the infirmary, which I think is on this level but back in the mountain somewhere. They’re okay physically, but their nerves are shot.”

  “Yeah, mine too.” Jefferson took a long look at Olivia and saw that she was just hanging on. “How about you?” he asked her.

  “I have been better. Ethan’s been talking about getting to Area 51 to find…I don’t know what…something he might be able to use to stop that.” She motioned toward the flares and flashes in the yellow clouds. “I don’t see how it can be stopped, no matter what he can find.”

  “Area 51,” Jefferson said to Ethan. “Where the flying saucers are.” Three years ago he would’ve given a good belly laugh and maybe a middle finger to the crackpots who talked about government conspiracies and the dissection of bulbous-headed spacemen in underground labs.

  “I want to get into the research facilit
y and see what artifacts are there. Mr. Derryman has told me that the only person who can get me in is your President, but he’s—”

  “Pretty much out of his mind, yeah. I met him once, a long time ago, when he was a law student working for Clinton. We smoked weed at a party in Little Rock. I guess we could’ve blackmailed each other.” Jefferson had actually considered that at one point, but he figured an army of lawyers would grind him to powder and investigations into his own past could derail everything he’d built. So, to hell with the autographed picture. His blurry gaze returned to Dave. “They’ve got a weapon that turned our bus into that thing?”

  “Inanimate objects into living tissue,” Ethan said. “Highly advanced and rapid creation of cells using the object as a framework. In easier terms, a life beam.”

  “Holy shit!” said Jefferson. “And I thought 3D printing was way out there!”

  “The President,” Ethan said, getting them back on track. “You’ve seen him.”

  “I have. He didn’t recognize me, but then again I look one hell of a lot different than I used to. I’m not sure in his present condition Beale would recognize his own mother.”

  “At least you have a connection to him. If we can remind him of that, so much the better.”

  “But you have to get through Derryman first,” Dave said.

  “Yes.” Ethan stood silently for awhile, watching the battle drift further from the White Mansion, which was a good thing. There was a tremendous blue flash in the clouds, blue streaks seeming to shoot in all directions, and far away a huge black shape came slowly spinning down through the clouds and crashed somewhere beyond the mountain peaks. Score one for the Gorgons, he thought, but the Cyphers would have their revenge. That was another reason their war was never-ending; revenge begat revenge, and so it would be into eternity.

  It wasn’t long before one of the soldiers and a Secret Service agent emerged from the White Mansion Mountain and, at the point of automatic rifles, herded the group back inside. Men were in there trying to clean the place up, but it was going to be a Herculean task. What they were going to do about the destroyed entranceway was anyone’s guess. The nearness of the beast’s carcass made Olivia stagger and clutch at Dave for support.

  “Can you get her to the infirmary?” he asked the soldier. “She’s in shock, she needs some medical attention.”

  “Do it,” said the agent, who was one of the jeans-clad, less formal men who’d brought them in from the bus. He understood shock. He’d been assigned to stand watch over the teenaged girl with the eyepatch, and he’d stayed right where he was supposed to be until he heard shooting in the corridor, and then he’d been shocked into immobility for a precious few seconds by the sight of a man-shaped thing with snakelike arms. He’d been one of the men who had gotten on his belly on the concrete and opened fire at the Cypher soldiers. After he’d thrown up blood and his ears and nose had stopped bleeding, he’d gotten some Valium from the infirmary. There had been a run on Valium. He was more in control of himself now, but his hearing was still muffled and there was a pain in his left ear that shot through that side of his face and down into his neck.

  “We need to see Mr. Derryman,” Ethan told him when the soldier had helped Olivia away.

  “My orders are to escort you back to your rooms.”

  “It is urgent,” Ethan said. “The Gorgons and the Cyphers are going to come again. The next time you won’t be able to survive.”

  The agent could not look into Ethan’s silver eyes. He stared at the dead, headless carcass for a long moment. Then he took his comm device from his pocket and keyed in some numbers. “Tempest One One,” he said into it. “Sergeant Akers, is Derryman up there?”

  “Affirm that. He’s getting the boss ready. You okay?”

  “I’m here. Listen…I’m bringing three of the new arrivals up. It’s on my head. The spooky one wants to speak to Derryman.”

  “Ambler’s in bad shape, Johnny. He needs the doc to take a look at him, but he’s wanting to get the speech done.”

  “We’re all in bad shape. The spook says it’s urgent and I believe him. If you’d seen what happened down here you’d believe it too. I’m bringing them up. Out.” He put his communicator away. “Let’s go, but understand this: I am empowered to kill any and all of you if I don’t like a single movement you make.” It sounded like a hollow threat delivered from the agency’s manual, because it was clear the spook had saved the installation from unrecoverable destruction. “Walk ahead of me, single file,” he said.

  THIRTY.

  “THEY’RE ABOUT TO START ROLLING,” SERGEANT AKERS SAID TO the Secret Service agent when they had reached Level Four. “Ambler won’t like the interruption.” He’d seen the alien’s silver eyes and felt a shiver of not fear—he was far beyond fear—but wonder and anticipation. He was about to ask Can’t it wait, but he knew it could not.

  “My responsibility,” Tempest One One said, and he motioned Dave, Ethan and Jefferson on along the corridor. Jefferson couldn’t help but give both the Marine guards a little flippant salute as he passed them.

  The group reached a door marked STUDIO and the agent told Dave to go in. Dave opened the door to a brightly lit room with softly colored green walls, a vanilla-colored sofa, a coffee table, and various overstuffed chairs. Through small speakers in the ceiling played music that Dave equated to a Main Street parade, but Jefferson correctly identified the piece as a John Phillips Souza march, all American with bursting pride and shiny buttons. He had used such music to stir patriotism and open wallets at Fourth of July celebrations in New Eden. Three rooms went off from this central chamber, all with closed doors. The Secret Service agent went to the furthermost door on the left and knocked at it. Almost at once it was opened and there stood a sharp-chinned man in a dark blue suit, white shirt, gray-striped necktie, and an American flag pin on his lapel. Ethan had seen this man on the garage level as he’d been brought in, but had not seen him since.

  “They want to speak to Derryman,” the agent said, moving aside so this new man could see them. “Urgent, they say.”

  The sharp-chinned man gave Ethan a hard, cold stare before he spoke. There were equal measures of repugnance and fear in it. “You know he’s busy. Beale’s just out of makeup, they’re going to be rolling in about three minutes.”

  “Yeah, I know that. Just tell him they’re here. Tell him the alien says the Gorgons and Cyphers are going to attack again.”

  “Hell of a time.”

  “Screw the protocol,” said Tempest One One, reaching a ragged edge. “Everything’s gone out the fucking window. Tell Derryman.”

  The other man withdrew into the room and closed the door without another word.

  “Just wait,” the agent told his charges, as the John Phillips Souza tune marched along with bass drumbeats and cymbals and shiny notes from long-dead trombones.

  Nearly a minute passed. When the door opened again, Vance Derryman’s face was strained with tension and pain that Ethan could feel like a blade drawn along his own spine. Behind the glasses, Derryman’s eyes were red and swollen. He had changed into a black suit because the gray one he’d worn previously had been marred by rock dust.

  “I said I needed time,” he told Dave. His voice was slow and deliberate and a little too loud because his hearing was still impaired.

  “We don’t have that luxury,” Ethan said. “I want to know…how did you get here?” He saw his answer in Derryman’s mind in a matter of seconds. “Where’s the helicopter?”

  Derryman had thought the entire trip through—Air Force One from Washington to Salt Lake City, from the airport by black SUV to the secure hangar and helipad, then the flight here. He knew of course the alien would’ve picked it from his mind as quickly as he saw the mental images. Ethan surely already knew where the VH-71 Kestrel was kept, but Derryman spoke for the benefit of the others. “We have a helipad on the other side of the mountain. It’s camouflaged. The ’copter’s in a hangar there.”

  �
�That can get us to the S-4 area,” Ethan said, a statement of fact.

  “In about three hours. But I told you already…” Derryman paused. His jaw worked. The pain and pressure in his head were still killing him, fouling up his thought processes. “You want to see one reason he can’t leave this place? Come in and follow me.”

  Derryman took Dave, Ethan and Jefferson through another seating area to a door with a red light above it and a sign that read on air, but it was not illuminated. He opened the door and ushered them into a dimly lit space where there were a couple of rows of theater seats. Three men wearing headphones sat at a large mixing console and control panel that sparkled with small green lights. Beyond a large glass window, the President of the United States stood behind a podium that bore the Presidential seal. A bank of spotlights was aimed at him, along with a pair of professional-looking television cameras. The two camera technicians also wore headphones. Up on a ladder, another man was adjusting the spotlight beams. A gray-haired woman wearing jeans and a blue paisley blouse was dabbing powder on Jason Beale’s damp forehead. Behind the President and the podium was a set of library shelves that held not only a few dozen hardcover books but items like a small bust of Abraham Lincoln, a set of praying hands cast in bronze with a Bible leaning against them, framed color photographs of Beale and the First Lady along with their two college-aged children James and Natalie, a world globe, and other items as might be found in the White House. Everything was displayed on shelves high enough so the cameras could catch them.

  “What is this?” Dave asked. “How is—”

  “Sit down,” Derryman said. “He’ll be giving his speech in about a minute.” He pointed at a digital clock counting off the seconds just above the window.

  One of the men at the control console pressed a button. “Kathy, he’s still got some shine on his nose.” He sounded tired and lackluster, as if he’d gone through this a hundred times but it was his job and he was performing it to the best of his ability. The woman nodded and applied the powder brush.