The Devil_s Workshop

by Stephen J. Cannell

  "Race and Faith!" Fannon shouted at the bubbles in the water as they sped away.

  They were soon out in the middle of the lake. Fannon wondered who, or what, had risen from the water's depths to capture Cleve. The bald man had not resurfaced. Fannon had pulled the nine-millimeter, firing a shot directly at the mud-demon from the lake. But the gun had refused to discharge. Was it a sign? Was this the devil of the mud races rising from a crater lake that stretched deep down to the gates of hell? Fannon believed that signs were messages from God. The taking of Cleve was a message. The mud man in the lake was proof that God's enemies from the mud races were trying to destroy Fannon's mission. He was being told by God to hurry. He now pushed these thoughts aside and turned his attention to the shivering scientist huddled on the middle seat of the boat.

  "Where is the position?" he demanded of Dexter, who jerked his head up like a frightened child and engaged the fiery gaze of Fannon Kincaid. Intense mania shone from Fannon's eyes, revealing the madness inside his head.

  "It's halfway out," Dexter said softly. "Position the boat directly off the flagpole on the prison tower, then line it up on the other side with that large silver pine over there." He pointed off to a huge tree that stood down by the water's edge on the east shore.

  Fannon nodded to R. V., who slowed the boat and moved it into line with the prison tower. From across the water they could see that most of the wooden prison buildings had suffered extensive damage in the fire.

  "Right about here," Dexter said dully. "There's an underwater buoy anchored to the bottom. It has a pull cord attached through rings. Find the buoy and then pull up the cord," he said. "The bio-weapon is in two orange watertight pressure containers attached to the cord."

  Fannon nodded at two members of the Choir, and they stripped off their shirts and pants. Clad only in ratty underwear, they dove into the cold waters of the lake, splashing moonlight around the perimeter of the boat before kicking hard and disappearing under the surface.

  "God is a refuge and a fortress," Fannon said softly.

  "Bless Jesus," R. V. muttered from behind Dexter, who jerked his head around and saw that the man with "Fuck You" and "Eat Shit" tattooed on his forehead had bowed his head and was praying reverently.

  God in heaven save me, Dexter thought, issuing his own desperate plea to the Almighty.

  Then, as if by magic, one of the divers poked his head above the surface. "We found it!" he yelled.

  "Praise Jesus," R. V. and Fannon said in unison.

  Fannon looked at the old Timex watch with the broken band that he carried in his overalls pocket. It was almost eleven-fifteen. He knew that even though the Sons of Manas-seh had sent the mud apparition in the lake, God had managed to use the demon to warn Fannon of the need to hurry. Once Dexter had told him of the secret plague, he had looked up the verses in Revelation that foretold of this event and found some striking details: "The fearful and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, shall have their part in the lake which burnetii with fire and brimstone." This lake had burned with fire and brimstone, Fannon thought. The verses continued: "This will be the second death… And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and he carried me away in the spirit to a high mountain, and showed me that great city, the Holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God." This had all been written in the words of the Prophets two hundred years after Christ, but surely it was no coincidence that these events so perfectly described in Revelation were coming true here in Texas, as prophesied.

  Suddenly his divers came to the surface, carrying two large orange canisters. The men pulled themselves into the boat. Fannon looked at the wet canisters in wonder. "God has arranged our timetable," he said. "We have been given a sign from heaven to leave this place immediately. The Southern Pacific unit train will pass through the Black Hills in twenty minutes. If we hurry, we can make it."

  Then R. V. started the boat, and they headed toward the eastern shore of Vanishing Lake.

  After Cleve died, Cris had washed the mud off in the lake, then went back to the Blazer. He got the sniper's rifle with the long sight out of the back.

  "What is it? What happened? Why are you wet?" Buddy pestered, and Stacy waited for Cris to explain.

  "Follow me," Cris said, and carrying the gun, he moved off in front of them, heading back down to the lake.

  When they got there it was quiet. Then suddenly, from across the water a mile away, they could hear the outboard engine start. Cris found an old tree and slammed the heavy sniper rifle into the crook of a limb and sighted through the scope. He adjusted the focus, and could now see the boat starting to move, its wake a moonlit tail of silver, heading away from them toward the other side.

  "Are you gonna shoot 'em?" Buddy asked, surprised.

  "No, I'm just tryin' to see. Here, take a look, Stacy." He pulled his eye away, allowing her to take his place at the scope. She could just make out the five men in the boat. One of them definitely looked like the silver-haired Fannon Kincaid. Huddled low, in the middle, she thought she recognized Dexter DeMille.

  "It's them," she said, pulling away from the scope, so Buddy could see. Her heart was pounding. "What're they doing back here?"

  "Maybe Dexter's doing the same thing we are-looking for evidence to use against Zoll," Cris said.

  "No," she said. "No, it wouldn't be that." Then she fell silent.

  "What are you thinking?" Buddy asked.

  "I can think of only one reason why Dexter DeMille, who's wanted by every law enforcement agency in the country, would ever come back to Vanishing Lake." They waited for her to finish. "He's hidden some of his Pale Horse Prion here," she said.

  Chapter 29

  LAST TRAIN OUT

  They had turned off the highway and were moving too fast along a rutted dirt road that Stacy remembered would cut several miles off the distance around the lake.

  "Are you seriously trying to catch them?" Buddy yelled.

  "They have to be heading for the rails." She looked over at Cris, but he said nothing.

  "Let's slow down and think this out," Buddy yelled from the back seat. "We screw this up, we'll never get the toothpaste back in the tube."

  Neither Cris nor Stacy answered him.

  "We're just three people. They're armed lunatics. This is nuts." Buddy was more or less shrieking now. "Isn't that right, Cris?"

  Again, Cris didn't say anything. He just sat in the passenger seat of the Blazer with his eyes on the road and a grim look on his face.

  The headlights swept the darkened road ahead of them each time they rounded the frequent and sharp switchback curves. Several times, Stacy had to reach down and shift into four-wheel drive as they climbed steep or sandy sections of the firebreak. Then she would shift out of four-wheel and rocket dangerously along on the narrow rain-rutted path.

  Suddenly, they heard the low, mournful whistle on the eleven-fifteen unit train.

  "Shit," Stacy said. "There's a train coming. We'll never get there in time."

  "Turn right up ahead and shoot across the meadow," Cris said. "It's a shorter way to get to the tracks." It was the first thing he'd said since they got in the car.

  "Can we fuckin' please slow down and discuss this a minute?"

  Nobody answered Buddy. Cris could feel a heavy fatigue settling over him, like a fatal shroud.

  "We need to have a plan!" Buddy yelled. "Fer Chrissake, you're just gonna drive up and fuckin' yell at 'em? We're gonna all get killed!"

  "Do you wanna get out?" Stacy yelled back, as she geared down and stopped the Blazer. "You can walk back." She glared at the movie producer with fire in her eyes.

  He had never seen a woman look so dangerous. "All I said was, I wanta know how we're gonna do this."

  "We'll think of something. My husband died trying to stop these killers. If DeMille has this Prion and I can get my hands on it, I can prove what went on here. Without it, I can't pro
ve shit. I'm going to get the bastards who killed Max, so either stay in the car and shut up, or get out and walk. But make up your mind, and stop whining!"

  In the back seat, Buddy was jerking slightly, little conflicting reflex movements, as if one second he was starting to get out, the next instant some invisible cord was holding him there. Then the low moan of the train whistle drifted across the night.

  "Shit," she said, still looking at Buddy, who nodded his head weakly.

  She put the Blazer in gear and gunned it, throwing stones and gravel as she shot up the next hill, then cut right off the dirt firebreak they were on and headed across the two-mile-wide meadow as Cris had suggested.

  The car was first bogging, then accelerating as it hit mud and then hardpack. Occasionally a wheel would go into a hole, so she would hit four-wheel drive and blast out. The progress was slow, but a mile up ahead and to the left, she could see the train headlights wigwagging on the engine's nose, cutting figure eights over the steel rails in front of it. "Cris," she said, and he looked over at her. "Are you okay with this?"

  He said nothing.

  "The train's coming. You need to tell us what to do," she said. "They're going to get away." He just sat there with his shoulders slumped, looking out the windshield as the Blazer bounced along. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" she yelled.

  "I don't know what to do," he said.

  Cris had told Stacy about the man he had killed at the lake; after that, Stacy thought, he had stopped functioning. She put the Blazer in low and started powering up the hill, trying to head off the train. As they got to the rise, in the moonlight they could see forty men and women crouching down in a ravine about four hundred yards away, waiting for the train to pass. One of the men saw the Blazer and pointed at them.

  "Turn off the lights," Cris said softly.

  "Huh?"

  "Turn off the headlights and move the car. You're about to take fire."

  Then the Blazer rocked, and they heard the shrill whine of ricocheting metal. A second later they heard the report of the gun.

  "We're taking rounds," Cris blurted. She finally flipped off the headlights and turned left, exposing Cris as she started to drive along the top of the hill.

  Several more shots rang out. Then the right front tire blew and they were riding on the rim, swerving badly until they plowed to a jarring stop.

  "Out of the car," Cris ordered.

  He and Stacy scrambled out. Buddy decided to stay huddled down on the back floor. Cris came back and snatched open the door. "Get the fuck outta there," he yelled.

  "Safer in here."

  "This thing is gonna draw fire parked up here. Those are armor-piercing slugs! Get out." Then he grabbed Buddy and dragged him. They ran along the hill, although visible in the moonlight, so Cris found cover behind some rocks and pulled them out of danger.

  The Southern Pacific locomotive flashed past the place where the Christian Choir lay in the low ditch, trying to stay out of view of the engineer.

  "They're getting away," Stacy said, as she stuck her head up and watched.

  Cris was sitting with his back against the rock; his hands were shaking, his muscles twitching. He was done and he knew it. Then he rolled over and vomited bile onto the ground.

  "What're you doing?" Buddy asked, appalled. "This sucks! You're puking 'cause you're scared?"

  " 'Cause I'm sick," Cris said softly. "I'm an alcoholic. My body is fucked up. Nothing's working right."

  "Great," Buddy whined. "Just great."

  Stacy was looking at the F. T. R. A. S, who were beginning to make their parallel run up the embankment toward the slow-moving train. In twos and threes, they boarded the cars. "Dammit! We've gotta do something."

  "Whatta you wanna do?" Buddy snarled. "We can't make it over there in time."

  Off across the meadow one of Fannon's men was facing her, his hand out in front of him.

  "Why's he pointing at us?" she said, as a bullet hit the rocks by her head and zinged off into the night.

  Cris reached up, grabbed her, and pulled her down hard. "He's not pointing at you, he's shooting at you."

  She sat beside him, her back against the boulder, until the train was gone. Then she stood and looked at the spot four hundred yards away where the hobos had been. "Where're they going?" she asked.

  "Waco," he answered. "There's a big switching yard there. It's a hub. From there they could catch out to anywhere."

  "What're we gonna do?" she said, her voice frail with distress.

  He sat there in silence, so Buddy threw in his opinion. "I think we need to go to the authorities," he said. "Let them handle this."

  "And what if the authorities are in on it?" Stacy shot back. "The Pentagon, the CIA, a lotta people had to be fronting this, and they'll want to see it covered up. We can't prove anything. We need evidence." Then she looked at Cris. "What do you think?"

  "I need a drink, that's what I think." After a long moment, he stood. "Why don't we put on a new tire, go down to the lake, and see if we can find their boat. Maybe they left something behind."

  Chapter 30

  THE OLDEST CLICHE IN MOVIES

  Buddy didn't want to go to the lake, he wanted to go home. He had been shot at twice now in two days, and quite frankly, it was nothing like the paintball tournaments he'd had in the hills above Malibu, where, dressed in brand-new cammies, face guard, and shooting gloves, he had crawled around giggling, armed with his top-of-the-line C02-operated paintball "Devastator" rifle. He had done mortal combat with a hand-picked gang of stone-eyed killers from the William Morris Talent Agency. During those tournaments, Buddy had been dismayed to learn that he was surprisingly easy to hit. He was usually the first to get knocked out of the game. Geeks from the studio mailroom outlived him. Even so, he always enjoyed the contests. This was much different. The sound of bullets impacting deep into the side of the Blazer, or pinging off the rocks where he was cowering, was like nothing he'd ever before experienced. He visualized a bullet heading right at his surgically enhanced profile.

  He'd spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on plastic surgery. He'd added surgical implants to his cheek and chin bones. He'd liposuctioned the fat from under his chin and stitched his forehead up under his scalp to eliminate the onset of forehead wrinkles. Buddy and Dr. Eugene Haliburton had spent at least ten fascinating hours adjusting his look on the virtual reality computer in the doctor's office, turning the image of the new square-jawed Buddy from full face to profile to three-quarters. They added a little mass here, nipped some there. He watched the screen in awe as the little stylus erased wrinkles and added a chin dimple. All of this facial artwork took place before Buddy nervously submitted to surgery. The idea that his expensive cosmetic redo would end up being splattered all over the Texas landscape by a whining piece of lead fired by some religious zealot with a fourth-grade education appalled him.

  After Buddy and Cris changed the bullet-punctured tire, they drove along the east shore of the lake looking for the discarded metal boat. Buddy wished he had the inner strength to persevere, but the fact was, he desperately wanted to split. He played out a few excuses, looking for a usable exit line. "Shithe might say, 4 7 forgot I have a damn music and effects run at the studio on Friday for 'Starfighters.' It's a fucking command performance. Fd do anything to not have to go, but…" Or perhaps, "I gotta loop Barbra Streisand on Friday. Babs goes tits up if I don't stand there and feed her every single line. If it wasn't for that, you know I'd…" Or some fucking thing, anything that would get him out of here with his outlaw rep intact. But every time he was on the verge of reciting one of these excuses, he would get the mild taste of chocolate in his mouth… which he had now come to dread, because it was immediately followed by such loneliness and self-disgust that he knew he had no choice but to stay.

  His mind would then shift gears. They had killed his son. He had never been there for Mike. Never even tried to find out who Mike was. With his son's death, he could make up for it all by trying to cat
ch the bastards who killed him. The problem was that Buddy couldn't escape the fact that he was so scared he could barely function. He wished he had some inner strength to fall back on. There was nothing for him in the arcane tradition of the Jewish faith. Buddy needed a hipper religious gig.

  He had tried Scientology; Tom Cruise and John Travolta had gotten him enrolled. Scientology had been a fun excursion for a while. He loved their snappy military-style uniforms with the cool ornamental braid. He wore the uniform of an Operating Thetan. He had his tailored at the studio wardrobe department, so it fit him perfectly, no sags or wrinkles. He looked like Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman. He also read the basic dictionary of Dianetics and Scientology from cover to cover. He had Scientology E-meter tracks made, which drew mental pictures of his state of being, graphing such notable psychic landscapes as his interior pain or perceived threat to his survival. He had tried, for almost six months, to obtain the level of Operating Thetan Three (OT-3), which was the State of Beingness, and would give him full control over Matter, Energy, Space, Time, and Form of Life. He had sat with his counselor and told her that he felt he was on the verge of going "clear," which in Scientology indicated a pure spirit. He had smiled blissfully and bragged about his spiritual purification to the actors at the celebrity center, but in reality, he attained none of the inner peace that he sensed the others derived from the religion. Worse still, he was paying through the nose for the experience.

  After another three months of bluffing, he dropped out. The night that he quit, Heidi told him that life wasn't about control over energy or time or the form of life. It was just about getting laid, so she sent Michelle Fortner over to prove her point. Michelle gave him an incredible weekend of tube cleaning, but spiritually, Buddy was still bankrupt. Now he felt so alone and confused that he was on the verge of jumping out of the Blazer and running. But some invisible force wouldn't let him.