The Fifth Descent of Lexi Montaigne

by R. S. Darling

  “Twenty-two miles,” Lexi murmured, glancing at the dancing needle of the compass. She was off course; ragged Dakota had veered east.

  Teeth chattered and the top exploded off of the water bottle from the jarring escapade. Lexi wailed as the burning in her arms increased to hellfire torture and the migraine manifested new degrees of agony. “Come on!” she shrieked. “God, help me.”

  The burnt out end of the scorching October day fizzled into ash as the Dakota struck a protruding rock and the clang of her rim against stone brought her to a heaving restive. By the time she stopped, the truck faced south and was belching smoke that climbed into the night sky in ghostly plumes.

  Before Lexi shut her off, the rock music ended, replaced by the heart stopping tone of the Emergency Broadcast System. A message in a Stephen Hawking-type voice: “This is not a test. The Nevada State Military warns all civilians to stay indoors. Particles from Wormwood, some as large as golf balls, have fallen in Oklahoma and Colorado, with some meteorites reported as being as large as a dog—”

  She shuttered and glanced up. Against the black backdrop of a fresh night sky and the ticking of cooling metal, Lexi exited the cab for the final time and walked around to the bed. Despite the absence of the sun, vaporous heat clung to the air. She grabbed the case Westin had tossed in the bed during their helter-skelter flight from his shop.

  The molded digits on its plastic hide read SG 550. Lexi set it down on the sand and lifted the metal snaps, opening the case. The rifle was black with a side-folding skeletonized buttstock. She hoisted it up, grunted against the heft and opened the hinged stock, locking it in place by accident. She set the stock against the sand and withdrew a fully loaded and translucent twenty-round magazine from the case. A quick glance at the receiver housing and hand guards showed her that to load she would need to release the bolt catch lever. She did so and slammed the magazine into place.

  Another look into the case unveiled further secrets: the bayonet slid on with the connector over the flash suppressor. She clicked the safety off and positioned the mode selector to “1” for single fire. She aimed and eased back just enough on the trigger to know that it would be ready. With that Lexi clicked the safety back on and closed her eyes. Gramps had trained her in the use of firearms all throughout her youth, but she hadn’t touched a gun in ten years.

  It was like riding a bike.

  She wrapped the rifle strap around her neck and shoulder, lifting her long strangled hair and clasping it quick with a few colored bands. With limbs still shaking and heart still racing, Lexi Montaigne turned away from her tombstone truck and headed north. She permitted herself one final glance at the Dakota that had driven her through two-thousand miles of mounting madness.

  Leaving it behind felt wrong. The Dakota was the last sign of civilization, the yellow badge of sanity that shackled her to her fellow humans. Where she headed now was into the unknown, a place that held an inscrutable man and an equally enigmatic Device.

  She strode forward in silence.

  The collection of stars that usually decorated the night sky was all blotted out, overpowered by the brilliance of Wormwood and its corona. Lexi wished for the civilized lines of power poles rising high and crooked, but there was only endless desert. The compass needle pointed north to Arfion.

  “Two and a half more miles.”

  The quiet was intense. Nothing like Batavia, with its abbreviated dead air in between dog barks and sirens and the screaming matches of the neighbors. This was absolute silence; the pure essence that exists only in the absence of life. There was no wind and no trees for wind to rustle through. No food so no birds and the nearest train too far for its blaring horns to be heard.

  In a word, it was exquisite. Lexi whispered this word. There was nothing to swallow the sound so it hung there in the air before her, blatant and accusing.

  An hour later the silence broke with the report of a detonation. An explosion somewhere in the sands threw Lexi to the ground in fright. A column of flames lit the desert a mile south of her location, the liquid orange glow dying as quickly as it had been born. As she rose on unsteady legs another explosion rent the night. More flaming jetsam crashed, close enough this time for her to feel the seared air of its passage. Lexi tugged the rifle strap snug and ran with eyes glued to the compass needle. Abbreviated screams escaped in bursts as more explosions of sand and fire littered the landscape. The desert was an unholy Salvador Dali painting. She tore her eyes from the compass to glance up; a long mercury-studded train cleaved the night sky, the whiteness vivid and the crests of orange like an ocean of flowing fire.

  Her legs were rubber, painted in sweat.

  How had she come to be here? How she, a quiet thirty-something working on a manuscript? She was as alone as anyone can ever be, civilization having come down to a rifle in the soft bloody hands of a psychologist.

  As the sky rained down all around in columns of Sodom and Gomorrah, an amethyst beam of light, pure and thick as a Redwood, shot up from the desert floor a half mile to the north. Lexi stopped for a moment to recalibrate her thoughts. “The facility!” In strides she covered the distance between the falling sky and the rising tides of Mr. Dorl.

  The roar of the beams drowned the sound of the meteoroids, the hum of electricity stealing the sounds of the world until it was all there was, until sound itself seemed swallowed by Dorl’s mysterious Device.

  Lexi hesitated for a moment before stepping forward, towards the Device.

  Chapter 38

  Cotes drove the black Caddy past Nellis Air Force Base, following the 215 at a steady 70 mph. Glasses black as the Nevada night concealed the hard “look” other agents feared.

  “Agent Cotes?” the dark-skinned agent in the passenger seat said. “Aren’t we going to stop at the AFB? I thought we were going to use soldiers for the back up.” He turned his head back to the windshield and waited, wiping glistening sweat despite the blast of AC.

  “Two SWAT units will arrive by carrier at the Base at oh-nine-hundred,” Cotes said in a monotone. “They will take two hummers and shadow us, one unit moving to the facility as vanguard, followed by us with the other unit acting as back up.” Cotes turned to stare at the other agent, holding his eyes while keeping the Caddy straight with miraculous dexterity.

  “And drop the Agent crap,” he added. “It’s just Cotes.”

  Silence resumed as they held each other in a gaze-of-war, the car remaining straight on the line. “And I’m just Jeffries,” he responded, his voice shaky, uncertain as all voices are when traveling the fine line of duty and servitude. He eyed Cotes’ Styrofoam cup and smirked. “What kind of tea you drinking, Cotes?”

  Cotes glanced over at him, gave a bored stare before turning his head back to the road, each movement fluid and calculated.

  The headlights bathed the road in a yellow glow, twin suns flying across the desert path to a place called Arfion. Jeffries put a finger to his earplug and turned his head to the side. Eyes widened and neck muscles stiffened. A few moments passed. He turned to Cotes. “Sir, the SWAT units are two miles back.”

  “Is that what made you nervous, Jeffries?” Cotes’ lips moved but face, arms and hands remained motionless. “Your pulse increased by ten beats per and your flesh cooled a few degrees under the strain of information.” Despite the mocking tone the corners of his mouth did not even flicker.

  “No,” Jeffries retorted. “SWAT spoke with General Early at Nellis. He informed them that at twelve-hundred hours this afternoon a Corporal Brinks brought in a female straggler.”

  Cotes turned his head slowly. It stopped halfway between the road and Jeffries, his posture still flawless. “Do they still have her?”

  “Negative Sir,” Jeffries braved. Cotes inhaled audibly for the first time this mission. Encouraged, Jeffries continued, “It seems Brinks assisted in the escape of Miss Montaigne. By the time they discovered the breach, she was gone and so was her truck. There’s more, if you want to hear it.”

 
Cotes removed the sunglasses and glowered at Jeffries, his head now turned enough so that Jeffries could spot the scar on his left side pulling the corner of his eye back.

  “Of course you do,” Jeffries cleared his throat. “They placed Corporal Brinks under Base arrest. Found a flash drive on him.”

  Cotes raised his fist as though to slam the wheel, but then eased it back in place. “I take it that since Brinks let her go, he viewed its contents. We will have to pay him a visit after Arfion. Did he inform the General or anyone else as to the contents of the drive?”

  “No sir,” Jeffries said. “The drive is currently in the General’s locker. Brinks claimed it held classified documents and they would all be arrested if they viewed it. Smart kid.”

  Cotes’ right hand flew across the interior, landing with a hallow thud against Jeffries’ throat. Jeffries’s hand clutched at his windpipe as he gasped.

  “Inhale slow and deep,” Cotes instructed. “I want you to listen carefully. Miss Montaigne may not be an agent, but she sure fooled your dumb-ass.” The corners of his mouth flared up like a Jack Nicholson Shining moment. He bored his eyes into the suffering agent while maintaining impeccable control of the car. “The number of people on the planet who know more than she does about the Tower can be counted on a single hand. But, she is walking under an ash cloud of misinformation. If she reaches the Tower before us, she could ruin everything.”

  Jeffries managed to get his breathing under control again. As he held his throat he showed his teeth. “What haven’t you told me about this mission?”

  “Everything you don’t need to know,” Cotes said pleasantly. “Just do as I say and you will live through this.” The car crossed the black, busted tail end of the Nevada night at 90 mph.

  The first meteor exploded a half mile to their right, showering the car with sand. After the second one destroyed the road behind the SWAT hummers, Cotes increased his speed to 100. Fireballs of otherworldly luminescence lit up the desert and tore great white holes through the helpless sky. “Another two miles,” Cotes said with only a hint of altered pitch.

  Through the mirrors they watched a cannon-sized meteorite plunge through the second hummer, spewing men and body parts and metal fragments across the cooling desert floor. “Damn,” Cotes said and added a second damn after swerving to avoid a fragment destroying the road before him. The car bounced as it veered away from the crater onto the dusty desert plain. It hopped up violently as Cotes directed it back onto the road. The remaining hummer mirrored his caddy and was soon tailing it—also at 100.

  The engine whined and the speed sagged as the caddy climbed a crest in the road. Over the peak the world lit up with artificial lights and the pavement came to an abrupt end. The agents bounced around like pin-balls, striking their heads against the roof as the jostling vehicle rummaged across the dense turf. The Caddy skittered before rolling to a stop a half mile later.

  Cotes and Agent Jeffries got out.

  At the trunk, while locking and loading, Cotes stared out as if waiting for something.

  “What are you looking at?” Jeffries asked. He flinched and jerked back as an amethyst beam shot up from the facilities’ roof and stretched to the heavens. There was an ear-shattering report as the beam of unnatural light struck a falling meteorite. Marble-sized fireballs popcorned down around them and out into the desert. Another beam lit the world, met its match in the sky; all the while the deafening roar of electricity built and dispersed.

  “What was that?” Jeffries screamed over the din, crouching down.

  “That,” Cotes pointed at the amethyst light scorching the black sheet of night, “is why we are here. That is the Device we are here to repossess.” He waved as SWAT approached. “Two men through that door there.” He pointed to a steel door with no handles at the bottom of the escarpment leading to the facility.

  “Agent Jeffries, you’re with the lead team. The Device will be in the subbasement. Do not use live rounds or TASERS down there—only blades.”

  As SWAT descended with Jeffries in tow, Cotes yelled down to them. “If you see Miss Montaigne, take her out. But no live rounds anywhere near the Device.” They ran down to the door, set explosives on it. Three SWAT members remained huddled around Cotes by the Caddy.

  “Follow me,” he ordered. “Same rules apply. And if you see a blurry man, do not fire at him. Capture and detain only.”

  “Sir,” one of the soldiers interrupted. “What do you mean, ‘a blurry man’?”

  “You’ll know when you see him.”

  Moonbeams and falling starlight glinted off the goggles of the black-clad soldiers but shied from the dull finish of their sighted rifles. They moved as a cohesive unit behind Cotes who marched straight for a loading bay. Knapweeds climbed the posts and pierced the cushioned pad that hung limp against the concrete loading bay. Soldiers followed Cotes up the steps, their footfalls silent and deadly against the twining knapweeds.

  Cotes took note of a blood trail as he reached for the handle and pressed down, raising his Glock 19 as the handle gave and the door swung open, revealing darkness. He motioned in two of the soldiers and followed them with weapon raised and flashlight held high. The air had a drowsy delicacy, like walking into a freezer after a session in the sauna. They moved through it with the stealth of longsuffering career soldiers.

  The deep humming continued in a loud but muffled manner in the building, making them deaf to all other sound. Resorting hand signals and light flashes, Cotes led the men down a flight of concrete stairs. The hum increased to unbearable decibels. SWAT inserted soft orange plugs in their ears and offered a pair to Cotes. He declined, continued down the long flight of steps. Five treads from the floor he held up a hand; SWAT froze behind him.

  A sound through the hum, coming from up ahead. Cotes clicked his light off. A second later it was picked up by a miniaturized version of the amethyst beams outside. Cotes jerked back to avoid it. Hitting the steps hard, he grunted and pushed to the other side, motioning for one soldier to step forward and initiate contact. Another one-inch diameter beam of searing brilliance cratered the wall near the soldier. Concrete sprayed like buckshot. The soldier turned the corner and fired off a three-shot volley.

  Another stream illumined the stairwell. The soldier wobbled; now headless, he fell. Cotes dove and turned the corner in one fluid motion, a snake uncoiling. A single shot from his Glock flashed out, burrowing into the chest of the man with the handheld Teleforce weapon. The dead man’s white trilby swiveled and then went still.

  Cotes motioned the other two soldiers down and they scouted ahead. He retrieved the weapon, looked it over carefully, fingering knobs and eyeing buttons.

  His headset crackled with the muted cries of the vanguard team on the other side of the facility. “Do not engage anywhere near the Device,” he warned. A flash in the darkness ahead, followed by a soldier running back.

  “It’s not that way, sir!”

  Cotes barely caught the words over the hum of the works, but he read the lips and turned to find another way. Halfway up the steps he grabbed the soldier, shouted, “Find the lights. I can’t fight in this blasted darkness!”

  As the soldier ran off obediently Cotes made his way to the hallway where he stood flat against the wall. He smiled and followed its smooth contours. His hand tracing its thick painted length, Cotes raced through the blackness. At the muffled sound of a door swinging on creaking hinges a few dozen yards later, he stopped and ducked.

  Chapter 39

  Lexi swung weary feet over the peak to clamber down the escarpment. As she slunk down she caught, among the blazing firestorm raining down all around her, a pair of lights swerving in the distance. The two lights darted back to the path they had been on and she tried to think no more of it. But it hung there on the precipice of her mind—what the hell was that?

  “Shut up,” she murmured.

  Another stream of light burst out from the facility in a terrifying abuse of sound. Nothing man-made should be
this loud, like a mechanized hurricane. Her struggles down the side resulted in little avalanches of sand, dust clouds that lingered in the dark air. Lexi repositioned the SG 550 around her shoulder, the strap biting the youthful scar beneath her breast.

  She slipped once, her hands grasping thin dead air for one harrowing moment before finding solidity in the form of stubborn knapweed roots.

  Inhaling dust and air she continued this downward trek, tasting the salt in the yellow earth. Triumphant breathing as feet pressed down upon solid ground fifty feet from a loading dock. She ran up and onto the dock, slicing her leg on a piece of bent iron railing. Blood dribbled onto the platform as she relaxed into throes of pain.

  An attempt on the door proved it was locked. Figures.

  There was only one other door and it was flush steel. She considered using the rifle, but was loath to announce her presence. As a bowling-ball-sized meteor exploded twenty-feet up the hill, Lexi flinched and noticed a loose grate on the wall a few paces from the door. She moved for it and, reaching it, yanked back. It came loose so easily she fell back onto her ass.

  The tight chute within was an abyss coated in dusty cobwebs. She hesitated there on the edge of darkness, contemplated giving up. You give up now you best just shoot yourself.

  She plunged inside.

  The sound of labored breathing echoed in the funereal chamber in medley with the give of the thin steel underneath the weight of her body. The throbbing in the back of her skull finally dulled to a manageable ache but the ease of pain invited recollections. “Tomb,” she said in hope of banishing the word. But this exercise only led to “sarcophagus” and then to “sepulcher.” She imagined someone coming along centuries from now, finding her mummified remains encased here in this labyrinth, like King Tut.