The muffled explosions outside urged her to overcome the claustrophobia right quick.
Percussion blasts shook the exhaust vent, tearing it from its mounts. She plunged head first down the vent, slamming against the floor and scuffing her hands. Raw flesh throbbed. Biting back pain, Lexi climbed out of the chamber into darkness.
Why was it so dark? Where were the stretches of fluorescents that always hugged the ceilings of such places?
She could feel the chill and smell the deadness in the air, the vertigo sense of falling as she plunged blindly into the gloom. Lexi walked on, utterly alone. This new world. This new life she’d embarked upon through a cursory interest in the contents of an old oak box.
She might have laughed it she hadn’t wanted to cry—or vice versa.
Feet snarled on a chair leg. Cold fear crept up her back and nestled in the crest of her mind. No doubt it had no intention of leaving. But fear had become a constant bedfellow and as inevitably happens between intimates, she was able to neglect it and continue on.
Flames from a fireball outside offered attenuated light through a small window positioned high on the wall, revealing a black chest at the foot of a desk. She opened it. Tossing aside Scientific American magazines, she found a flashlight.
The streaming bead displayed an empty office. The raining of the heavens outside continued, sometimes splashing sand against the building. It sounded too much like morbid ocean spray crashing against a shore. Lexi left the office, moving faster now, trying to find the stairs that would bring her to the Device. She had no idea how she was going to destroy it but where there’s a will … she hoped the rest was true.
A report sounded somewhere below her feet in the bowels of the facility. “Gunshots,” she gasped and quickened her pace. Passing through a collage of doors Lexi at last stumbled on one that was locked and using the flashlight, broke the window. She reached inside and turned the deadbolt, slicing a fine three inch gash on her forearm as she withdrew it. There was no flinching involved, only the momentary glance at the sight of blood welling in fat beads, dripping slowly across the peach fuzz on her arm.
Nice one. You deserved it anyway.
She ignored the dungeon, used the pain to focus and to gain psychic strength. As she entered the Cimmerian room in sedate steps, another report rumbled below. The switch on the wall proved useless and with this simple fact she knew: “He knows I’m here.”
But why then was there shooting below? “They must be here too, the trilby people.”
A meteorite struck just outside the window of the room, throwing a thousand stone shards in all directions. One bit the block glass window and ate clean through, inviting inside the light and the sound of the flames outside.
Under the flickering orange glow the walls unveiled their secrets. Dozens of photographs, most of them yellow and faded, plastered two walls like pieces of a puzzle, the frames different sizes and the whole of the patchwork pieced in almost geometric perfection. The flame light danced in waves, breathing life into the dead images, giving them a phantasmagoric aura.
As she inspected them with tired eyes, Lexi knew she was close. Each picture boasted the appearance of the man known as the Tower. In some he was merely a faded blur, a ghost of humanity, but others displayed him in more revealing poses such as in the uppermost photo where he was shown shaking the hand of a lean man with smooth, gentle features and a quiet mustache set as a garnish for his nose. She recognized the lean man as Nicola Tesla.
There was one photo near the center of the patchwork which she removed to read the inscription on the back. In a whisper she read, “Howard Hughes, 1948.” They were not shaking hands, but it was obvious they were in cahoots in some way. The picture, frame and all, crashed to the floor and lay there conspicuous. Whatever it meant, if she had her way this would all be gone in a few minutes, though she still had no idea how.
She shuffled out of the office, passing through corridors sliced with lines of light, moving with the finality of one who has accepted imminent death. There was nothing after this, she knew, just the blank slate that eventually beckons everyone. The willowy light reminded her of a forest path she used to jog through around GCC. The gravel beneath her feet clinging to her running shoes; the path lined with old sycamore’s filtering rays of morning light.
How she longed for those simple days again, for a time when her greatest fear was whether or not her agent would find a publisher for the manuscript. Pathetic nostalgia.
A drumfire not a hundred meters behind. She ran over the linoleum corridor, the rubber of her worn shoes screeching against the plastic beneath. A red door to the right appeared and she crashed through it shoulder first, shocked as it gave under her momentum. Inside she noticed the handle lock was broken but there was a deadbolt that still worked. This she used.
Knelt low against the wall, listening, trying not to shake as footsteps echoed past and shadows crept against the line of light sneaking through the bottom of the door. Inhaling, Lexi snuck into the depths of the room, eyes darting to locate the source of a muffled modulation.
She raised the SG 550, aimed it at the gloom. Began to move. Each step forward cost ten heartbeats and every yard gained stole a year of her life. She felt as though she had stepped into a Poe story, something with broken-hearted waking dreams or the reality of joy departed.
That low resonating sound continued.
She stumbled against something navel high and the moaning sang louder as if it were right beneath her, inside her.
“Help me,” her muted groans becoming words, a nightmarish Eldritch waking.
Lexi looked down, aimed the weapon and then lowered it at the sight. With the flashlight out she looked at the man cuffed to the gurney.
“Lewis? What the hell happened—” Her words caught, strangled by the sight of the mangled man before her. Lewis’s left arm had been replaced by a gleaming brass mechanical appendage, complete with tiny finger joints and the cold hard reality of the loss of humanity. His left leg had been severed mid-thigh, replaced by a limb of servo-controls and whining gears at the knee.
She tried to ignore the eye, the dead gaze of the red left eye staring up at her. She had seen much in the past few weeks, but to see such a thing shook something off a shelf somewhere deep inside her.
The man writhed in tune with his moans, the half-brass skull gleaming against the background of crimson stained sheets.
“Oh my God, what has he done?”
In the dead monotone of a mechanical voice, “Kill me.”
“Tell me how to stop him,” Lexi leaned close, swallowed the urge to vomit. “Where is the Device?” She grasped his functioning right hand.
“Armory. Bomb.” He went on in stunted speech to explain where to find the armory and where to place the bomb. “Take it—to the—Subbasement—Freight—Elevator.” Mechanical Lewis pointed to the elevator outside the room. “Kill me. Pleeease.”
She positioned the rifle over him so that the barrel stuck in his mouth and the trigger lay by his brass thumb. In spite of weeks of hell, Lexi could not stand to watch. With her back to him, Lexi jumped when the gun went off. She reacted fast, swiveling in time to catch the rifle (but also quick enough to avert her eyes from the brain matter painting the wall.
Ran for the doors. The sound of clapping boots on linoleum roaring behind as she found the elevator doors. She pressed the Down button and waited, squirming.
Do you have to board an elevator, or piss your pants?
“Shut up.”
The clanging of heavy metal announced the arrival of the car and, with a ding too loud the doors opened wide. As she ran to the far wall of the car, soldiers arrived and fired.
Two slugs bit deep into the back wall of the car, but the doors closed before any more could enter. The scared, scarred woman huddled in the corner, hands over her head, labored breathing, clothes clinging with sweat, sticking with blood.
Chapter 40
1986
On the way home
from the funeral Virgil stole glances at his granddaughter on the other side of the cab. She had yet to shed a tear for her father, just as he had yet to shed a tear for his son. There was love on both sides, he knew, but it seemed that neither possessed the ability to properly express this most important of emotions.
If she was like him she would need to be trained how to handle it so she could at least fake it and use this unique nature to perceive the truth in others.
“Lexi, darling. Have you ever heard of kinesics?”
“No, Gramps,” little Lexi said as she played with the frills of her funeral dress. “Is it a game?”
His face creased in a sad smile. “Sure as sure. It means listening to what people say without hearing them.” He waited to see if she was interested. It would be much easier that way.
“You mean hearing them with my eyes?” the little voice earnest, the words unnervingly insouciant. They drove down Main, the storefronts of J.J Newberry’s and Cars all gussied up with a myriad of colors designed to catch and feed the eye, to invite unsuspecting customers.
“Yes. Kinesics involves reading a person’s facial expressions, the turning of the corners of the mouth, how fast or slowly they blink their eyes, and a thousand other things like—”
“Like at the lawyerses, when that mommy looked away from that boy when she told him his daddy would be back?”
The Dodge bumped along on its way to Vernon, Virgil feeling every rattle, each little knock and ping. It seemed somehow wrong to teach such a little girl how to read people, but he knew what it was like to be lied to. If she was indeed like him, it would drive her crazy.
“Yes. Exactly. It also means watching how they position their body, like if at a table a man leans forward when you speak, that means he is either listening intently or is nervous, depending on the placement of his arms.”
“That’s how daddy always listens to me!” Lexi enthused, turning to Virgil. “When I tell him about my day at school he leans forward and smiles. Does that mean he is interested?”
His brow wrinkled at her words spoken in the present tense. Perhaps she was not like him but merely unaware that her father was gone. “Yes of course. Your daddy loved you dearly and enjoyed everything you had to say, sure as sure.” He waited, using the space between his words as emotional pads to cushion the blow. “Alexis, do you know where your daddy is now?”
“He is in heaven with mommy,” words spoken as only an innocent child may speak them, with heart-wrenching honesty and simplicity.
They bumped along the old rutted blacktop of Vernon Ave to number 17. Virgil slammed on the brakes fifty yards from his driveway. There was a black Cadillac parked across the street, its license plate boasting the little blue letters indicating Federal status. He parked the truck on the shoulder. “Stay here Lexi. No matter what happens, don’t leave this truck. You’ll be safe in the truck.”
She watched him wide-eyed, and nodded. “Sure as sure.”
The air smacked of autumn, hot and sticky and New York to its core. Virgil ran through this air to his house, sweat clinging to his neck and face and arm pits. He glanced back only once, to see Lexi sitting placid and tiny in the cab, blessedly ignorant of the wider world around her.
Sure he’d locked it, the front door stood open, with no visible damage to the trim and locks. He stepped inside. As he passed through the kitchen he noticed the paraphernalia of tea mucking up his shelf: the sodden teabag sitting in a small copper-colored puddle, the sugar-flecked spoon and the teakettle resting half empty on the stove. Flabbergasted, he crept to the bureau beside the TV.
Second drawer down slid out with a mouse chirp of complaint. He grabbed his old police issue .9mm, flipped the safety off and slid it between the belt and pants in the back. The knife came next, the serrated edge salient and yet, thus far, innocent. He preferred the knife, not for sadistic reasons but for a pragmatic excuse; its quiet nature—neighbors already gave him looks.
Listening with the focus of a world-class conspiracy theorist, Virgil detected scuffling in the spare bedroom. This is it, he thought, they’ve come for my trove. The Tower must be on the move again.
With knife held to his thigh he slipped his shoes off and stepped towards the spare room, keeping tight to the walls where the floors did not squeak. Ten steps in the scuffling stopped, replaced by the terrifying sound of deliberate silence. He heard me, and he knew he was dealing with a professional.
He stole three more steps, positioning himself outside the door way where he bent down and remained still. His old knees creaked with age and his gnarled fingers ached with antiquity. Seventy-seven is too old for this shit. Virgil was sure the spook could hear them. The metallic click of a bullet being chambered followed the static of rustling papers. Virgil tensed, his breaths quick and shallow, knees screaming for relief.
Come on already!
“I can hear you out there,” a droning voice came from the bedroom. “You breathe like a man with one foot in the grave.” Four steps, loud and reverberating in the oak-floored room.
Poised, Virgil moved to slam the blade through the man’s foot. But the foot was not there. The professional kicked Virgil’s hand, sending the knife clattering five feet away. He stood and reached for his gun but the spook kicked it and brought his own .9mm to bear, this one black and sleek and modern.
When he aimed it at Virgil’s temple, the old man slammed a fist into the spooks’ wrist. The man dropped his gun and grabbed the bruising wrist, grunting but not saying anything.
As they dived for their guns Virgil aimed a blow at the man, striking his bicep and receiving an expletive in return. He raced around the corner into the dining room/den when he realized the man would still reach his gun first. It was a game of hide-and-seek then, with the fed playing the seeker. He was silent this time, stealthy in every way.
Why isn’t he panting from the pain?
Virgil tiptoed into the kitchen and rummaged through a drawer—but sighed when all he came up with was his new potato peeler. He stopped and listened, his knees hot with pain.
The floor creaked, the specific tone and volume of it telling him exactly where the spook was. Moving faster than he thought he could at his age, Virgil turned the corner with the peeler and cleaved the air with it. It caught on the spooks face, peeling off a bloody groove of flesh from ear to chin. The agent released a wail eerily like an ocean liner, popped off two rounds.
Virgil moved back into the kitchen but the man recovered quicker than seemed humanly possible. The fed pressed the barrel of the gun into the flesh of Virgil’s skull. “Wait!” Virgil shrieked. “If you’re from the Bureau then you must have orders not to kill me.”
No shot yet, I still have the touch. “The Bureau needs me and my trove.”
The gun eased back, leaving a circle of puckered skin.
Virgil exhaled. “I called the police before coming in. If you want to keep your job and someday climb the ranks, then I suggest you take whatever you have and leave.”
The fed released his hold, cursed, and rushed for the door. Virgil watched him bleed as he jogged for his caddy. Lexi was on the front lawn, staring at the federal agent as he passed.
Later that day Virgil took the chests that comprised his trove to a storage facility called Everything Fits, where they would collect dust for the next quarter century, until the day his granddaughter came to collect them.
Chapter 41
Lexi stood as the doors dinged open. She stepped out with the SG 550 held steady in her arms, safety off, the red dot of the sight targeting the stillness of the latest corridor. “Bend to a low crouch, close my eyes to listen better,” she said, recalling Gramps’ teaching.
You’re getting good at this.
The only sounds were the distant mutter of raining fire and the constant droning of the Device somewhere below. She lowered the rifle, raised the flashlight. Mote-speckled light spilled over a steel bench lining the wall. Lexi threw the beam over the far reaches of the room but it failed to
reach that far, illuminating only the benches holding a hodge-podge of weapon casings, shell boxes and gun-cleaning instruments.
Wooden cabinets hovered over the benches with empty molds of rifles and pistols embedded within. She tried not to acknowledge what this revelation meant; that she would have to avoid not only the feds who had followed her here, but Dorl’s men as well.
They will kill you, the sibilant voice of the dungeon warned.
“Not if I destroy this place first.”
Each cupboard was either thrown open or forced open, but eventually they all confessed their contents—or former contents. “Where is it?” She cast desperate eyes about until she spotted a concrete reinforced case sitting at the end of the bench. She undid the stainless steel hasps. Inside slept wooden boxes branded SEMTEX. Lexi reached in with both hands and, as if handling an egg, hoisted a SEMTEX box out—and nearly dropped it when the strap of the SG 550 slipped off her shoulder.
Breathing ceased as the box came out in tender increments, sweat lining Lexi’s skeletal arms. At last it was free. She placed the SEMTEX on the floor to retrieve her fallen rifle.
A bullet ricocheted off of the bench top, whizzing past her face. Muscles tensed. Dashing backwards, Lexi fired her rifle haphazardly. The shot flew across the darkness, stopped with a fleshly splatter. She listened, motionless as a statue, as somebody grunted and slumped. A skull-cracking sound finished the dirge.
For a few ticks she remained where she was, crouched down behind the bench, a block of SEMTEX at her side. Locked and loaded SG-550 in her arms. Sweat beaded on her brow, dampened her blouse and panties. And as her skin grew hot, she began to experience a change, a powerful shift in her emotional world: falling waves of frustration crashed, reassembled and transformed—into hate.
Nothing’s more potent than hate.
Her lips pressed into a horizon, brows lowered, the corners rising to peaks, and even the young shadow lines were pulled taut. She yanked back on the bolt, felt the next bullet rise as she chambered it. Maneuvering the gun around the bench, Lexi fired. Two shots answered hers, one glancing off the floor sending a spray of concrete in her face.
The Fifth Descent of Lexi Montaigne Page 24
