“Not both of them! Lord, no! How could you? Not both of them. Not after all I’ve been through.”
She shook his body violently and tried in vain to resuscitate Benjamin but her lack of training did little to revive him. She was in a state of panicked shock and she bolted from the house screaming for help at the top of her lungs. A man walking his dog heard her and came into the house, looked around in shock, and decided Benjamin was the only one that had a chance. He started CPR and told his mother to call an ambulance.
Bart watched Benjamin turn and stare into the light. He heard a soft voice calling Benjamin’s name and a girl emerge from the glowing orb above him. She held out her hand and he clasped it in hers. She was so beautiful.
“Why are you here?” Benjamin asked.
“To guide you, but it’s not your time Benjamin. You must return and you must remember.”
“What do I remember?”
“Everything,” she said and her hand slipped from his.
Bart watched the scene change as Benjamin looked down upon his body again. Paramedics were working on him and one was trying to defibrillate him with little success. Apparently the paddles were not charging properly. Finally, they were able to shock him. The music faltered, then resumed. Another jolt and a flash of light and then the scene change to a strange room where he was surrounded by women in white with his mother crying softly next to him. She saw he was awake and gasped.
“He’s alive! He’s alive!”
The NDE ended.
“Very good, Benjamin,” Bart said through the intercom. “Sit tight while we bring in Shannon Marsden.”
Benjamin looked a little strange. “What for?” he said.
“You’re going to kill her, of course.”
Benjamin smiled. “Already?”
“Yes. Already.”
Bart turned to Elise, “Bring her in and hook her up.” She smiled and left the control area.
Shannon Marsden was led into the chamber looking drugged, which she was. Elise was struggling with her and Bart thought he might have to help her, but she was able to handle it on her own and got her sitting in the spare chair they had set up next to Benjamin. She proceeded to connect her to the computer system while Benjamin watched.
“Are you going to leave me connected to The Machine too?” Benjamin asked.
“Yes,” Bart said.
“What will happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m scared.”
“So am I,” Bart said and he was. Whatever was going to happen would be very powerful. Since John Miller’s episode, Bart expected things to be that much stronger. “It will be fine, Benjamin. We’ll be right here to stop things if they get out of hand.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“You’re going to kill her while we play back your experience and we hope a doorway will open.”
Benjamin smiled. “Cool.”
“Yes.”
“Where does it lead?”
“We don’t know. We’re hoping you’ll be able to tell us.”
Benjamin grew quiet at this and Bart watched Elise make the final connections. She had a small smile on her lips, but one he could not read. She took a shiny new hammer from a bag outside the room and placed it in Benjamin’s hand.
“I assume you know what to do with this?” She asked.
“Oh yes,” he said and hefted its weight. It would be a little awkward from his laying position, but it could still be done.
“Benjamin, now you must follow my instructions precisely,” Bart said. “Can you do that?”
“Yes.”
“We’re going to play back your experience and you must wait to perform the deed until I tell you. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll have the urge to put an end to it but you must wait or this will be for nothing. Got it?”
“Come on. I got it. I don’t understand why you had to drug her though. Takes away all the fun of it.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“Will this work?” Elise asked.
“You saw what happened last time. I’m actually a little concerned it may get out of hand,” Bart said. “Why don’t you wait in the other chamber? I know you’ll be safe there.”
“Do you really think I would miss this? Besides, you may need my help.”
He nodded. She was probably right. Who knew what was going to happen?
Bart hit play.
~ ~ ~
Benjamin held the hammer and waited. He didn’t like this. He wanted to enjoy the kill and this was defeating the whole purpose. It was as sterile as putting a grasshopper in a jar and dropping an alcohol soaked cotton ball in with it and sealing the lid. Boring. At least he’d still be swinging the hammer. He glanced over at Shannon and saw her sleeping like a baby. Then the vision blasted its way into his mind and he almost dropped the hammer.
“What the hell is happening?” he shouted. His Near Death Experience was being broadcast into his body as if he were some kind of electrical receptacle. There was no turning it off. He was going to relive it again no matter what and he did not like being out of control. “You need to turn this thing off!”
“Be patient, Benjamin,” Bart said into the intercom. “You can do this.”
He was suffocating. The pillow was over his face and he was suffocating all over again. The panic he felt was real and it took all he had not to drop the hammer and start unplugging things. His chest was going to burst and the process of dying was bringing all the panic and all the fears right back into the light of day. He fought to remain conscious, but in the end he knew he was going to black out. Suddenly the music broke through and a relief sweeter than anything he had felt before washed over him and he was floating. The world beneath him was in turmoil, but he was above it all and watched with clarity the scene of his death and the scene inside the chamber.
In the chair he thrashed, the hammer held tightly, trying to find its evil purpose but he could hear Bart yelling, “Not yet! Not yet!” A roaring rose over the noise and then a ripping sound brought a bright purple light streaking forth from an opening that had formed from thin air over the chairs. The doorway. He knew what is was and yet, had to see it all. Voices were calling his name now and he could tell they were coming from inside the opening.
“Benjamin…Benjamin. You must not. Benjamin…no.” The voices moaned in protest, though they had little emotion attached to them. It was as if they were voices of the damned and they could care less one way or the other, but still had to attempt to convey the message.
“The balance, Benjamin…you must not upset the balance.”
Faintly he heard another voice call his name. It was making its way through the noise and music and seemed to have an urgency about it the other moaning, droning voices did not.
“Now Benjamin! Now! Do it, before it closes!”
It was Bart. Benjamin willed his arm to rise and he watched from above as his body reacted below him. The hammer slowly lifted in his hand and then with a violence that even surprised him, swung down upon Shannon Marsden’s head in an arcing blur. A sickening crunch could be heard and blood splattered the chairs and Plexiglass. Her body shook with spasms from the damage and seized in the chair. His arm rose again and again until her life ceased to exist, a very powerful musical chord announcing her death.
Then, pain.
Pain he had never felt before coursed through his soul and he cried out in anguish as it consumed him. Even outside his body, the pain was worse than anything he could imagine. He screamed and then everything went blank.
~ ~ ~
Bart was sure the lab would self-destruct. An earthquake was consuming the building. Or at least it felt as if the structure would collapse around them. The hurricane force wind threatened to tear the lab apart as the noise of the music drowned everything else out. Elise was curled on the floor, her hands over her ears as she tried to hide from the horrible screeching that emanated from the speakers. Bart wa
tched the temperature of the cooling system hit the 100% mark and stay there. Nothing he could do. The system had long since taken on a life of its own as the abort procedures elicited no response from the computer. He would have to ride it out or die trying.
The gaping void over the chairs pulsed like a heartbeat and Benjamin’s screams of agony could be heard through the noise of the maelstrom around them. He was in that much torture. The rumbling in the floor grew in strength and Bart had to hold on to the counter to keep from toppling over. The music reached a crescendo, peaking in intensity, and he watched as Benjamin’s body was pulled into the void and it clapped shut like thunder, a purple kind of light shooting out of the space as it closed. Then silence.
Bart was panting and then he could hear Elise whimpering on the floor. He couldn’t believe he was still alive. He went to her and touched her. She flinched. He spoke to her gently and she slowly uncurled, clinging to him and shaking. This surprised him. He knew she was capable of brutal acts and this simple letting go like an infant was a complete departure from her normal persona. He rocked her and calmed her down. Then they heard shouting.
“Hey! Get me the fuck out of here!” A voice that neither recognized called to them over the intercom. It brought her out of her shock and she looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. She let him go and stood, shakily.
“Hey! Is anybody there? Come on!”
Bart and Elise went to the chamber door, unlocked the mechanism and entered. Shannon Marsden lay in her chair, soaked in blood, her face unrecognizable. Elise went to the chair Benjamin had been in and lifted the body mold. John Miller stared back at them.
“About time. Get me out of this thing.”
Bart stared at Elise who only smiled. Benjamin was nowhere to be found.
Chapter 13
NORAD. Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Lucky Cardmen sat at his console and drew circles. Small circles, big circles, medium circles, black, blue, red—all intertwined on his latest work of art. It was really just doodles, but his friends always wanted them when he was finished. He never considered himself an artist. It was just something to do to keep the mind-numbing boredom at bay. God he hated this job.
He wanted to be a pilot, but his vision had kept that from happening. 20/40 in one eye was his curse, and even though it was corrected with lenses, the medical requirements were quite strict and he could not pass no matter how many times he tried. The Air Force had its standards.
So, he was stuck in the mountain, this cavern, sitting in front of an array of computer consoles watching satellite imagery and detection equipment, waiting for nothing to happen. At least the cold war boys his father’s age had some excitement and maybe a little purpose to their work, but not anymore. Iran, China, and Korea were the only real threats and Lucky believed they didn’t have the balls to do anything with what they had.
He drew circles in seemingly random patterns to pass the time.
“That one is pretty cool,” Ginny Sanderson said, sneaking up behind him. He didn’t even flinch, just added another medium sized circle to his Picasso.
“I’ll give it to you when I’m done,” he said.
“You know, you should charge for those. It might make you some money.”
“Nah. It would put pressure on me to make more and I just do it to pass the time.”
Ginny was thirty-five and had two kids. She was divorced, but still smoking hot even after popping out a boy and girl in her early twenties. Lucky had a thing for her, but she had no interest in men now. Her girlfriend was a bull dyke that could probably bench press him. She was nice enough company, though, and he had fun sneaking peeks at her cleavage, even the sterile cleavage the Air Force uniform provided.
She sat down on the console next to him and he could feel the warmth radiating out to him from her body. She was that close. She probably had no idea what she did to him. He stopped doodling and looked up at her sideways.
“You okay?” he asked.
Her face broke and he watched a tear tumble down her cheek. Uh oh. Maybe he should have kept his big mouth shut.
She got herself under control and said, “Pam tossed me out.”
Pam was the bull dyke. “Aw, I’m sorry Gin. She doesn’t know what she’s losing.” He smiled at her and she smiled back.
“It’s my own fault. I cheated on her.”
Lucky wasn’t sure what to say to that, but he sure would have liked to be a fly on the wall during whatever tryst had happened between Ginny and whoever. He squirmed a bit in his chair thinking about it. He drew another circle to take his mind off it and mumbled, “Maybe you and Pam need a break.”
“I just may get a break whether I want one or not.” She sighed. “I don’t mean to drag you into all this. I guess I just needed a shoulder to cry on. Nobody else to talk to. My kids are with the asshole and my mom hasn’t spoken to me since the divorce.”
Lucky knew all this, but let her talk uninterrupted. “So talk,” he said, then grinned and wiggled his shoulder at her. “And here, my shoulder awaits.”
She smiled sadly and leaned down, putting her cheek to his shoulder. He had been sincere, but had not expected the offer to be accepted. He hesitantly reached up and stroked her back as she cried into his neck. Her breath felt warm and moist against his skin and he could smell some lavender scent on her that he really liked.
“Pam can be such a bitch,” she mumbled into his neck. “Sometimes I don’t know what I see in her.”
“She can kick people’s ass in a bar,” he offered and he could feel her smile against his skin.
“She does have pretty cool hair.”
He smiled because he knew Ginny hated Pam’s hair. It was almost a Mohawk. “Isn’t she part Apache or something?”
Ginny giggled and then pulled away. “See, I knew you’d cheer me up.” He wanted her back on his shoulder so he could hold her again. She must have sensed something, because she looked away, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “Why do they call you Lucky anyway?”
“It’s my winning personality.” He grinned. “And I kick ass at poker. It’s my one weakness.”
“You’ve never told me this before.”
“It never came up. I figured a sophisticated lady like you could care less about gambling. Why bore you more in this Mecca of entertainment we call Cheyenne Mountain?”
“What’s your real name? I don’t know that either.”
“You don’t want to know. My parents were cruel.”
“Come on. It can’t be that bad. Let me guess.”
“Shoot.”
She thought for a minute and he was glad her mind had wandered off the subject of Pam. “You look like a Luke.”
“Do you think I would be embarrassed by Luke? Try again.”
She smiled. “I was being nice. All right, how about Arnold?”
“Arnold? You’re kidding right? No. You’ll never guess.”
She smacked him in the arm. “Give me a clue then.”
“It starts with an ‘E’.”
“Egbert?”
“Is that even a real name? No.” He chuckled. “How ‘bout we just stick with Lucky. I like my nickname.”
“Emory?”
“Where do you come up with these? My name is Lucky.”
“Come on! I need to know. We’ve gotten pretty intimate here and it’s the least you can do. I’ve told you my secrets.”
He looked at her sideways again and then squirmed in his chair. He drew another circle in red. “Eugene,” he mumbled.
“What? Speak up. Spit it out.”
“Eugene, all right? It’s Eugene.”
“What’s wrong with that?” she asked.
“If you have to ask, then you don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand.” She gave him a withering look.
“Eugene Fitzherbert Cardmen. That’s my full name.”
She started laughing and then tried to stop. “I’m sorry. Fitzherbert
? You’re right, your parents were ruthless.” She started laughing again.
“I told you.” He got up and went to the water cooler.
She stopped laughing and said, “My real name is not Ginny.”
He stopped and turned to her. “Now you’re mocking me more.” But he smiled. “So, what’s your real name?”
“Martha.”
He grinned. “That’s not so bad.”
“If I was living in the middle ages, maybe. My middle name is Jennifer and that’s where Ginny comes from. I am not a ‘Martha.’”
“Eugene and Martha. Martha and Eugene.”
“Lucky and Ginny. Definitely sounds better,” and then she kind of turned away smiling. Not quite a blush, but almost. She cleared her throat. “So, Eugene, you never answered my question. How did you end up with Lucky?”
He filled the little paper cup with water and brought it back to the console, sitting. “The poker thing is partly true. I am pretty good at it and with ‘Card’ in my last name, it kind of fit. But my buddies in high school gave it to me when I kicked the winning field goal in the state championship my senior year.”
“Oh great,” she said. “A sports’ hero story.”
“Hey, you asked.”
“I never pegged you for a jock.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t have to be upset,” she said. “What I mean is you don’t have the jock mentality. At least like my ex.”
“I was the kicker. Not really a jock, anyway.”
“You won the game.”
“It was luck,” he said. “Remember, they called me Lucky after that.”
“I’m sure there was some skill involved. You don’t become the team’s kicker because you look good in the uniform.”
“I did look good.” He grinned.
She gave him another look. “How long were you the kicker?”
“Three years.”
“So, you must have been good or they would have replaced you.”
He shrugged. “There was no one else. Small hick town in Texas.”
“From what I understand, football in Texas is the whole town’s life. They don’t mess around.”
Near Sighted (A Jake Townsend Science Fiction, Action and Adventure, Thriller Series Book 2) Page 6
