Kingdom of the Seven

by Jon Land

  Rachel and Jacob, meanwhile, would work their way about the kingdom itself, planting powerful plastic explosives at key stress points and within the shells of uncompleted structures. There would be no need to plant charges in the connecting chambers as well; the resulting blasts would cut them off or destroy them.

  The platform finished its descent with another slight jolt. In the cab before them, the driver revved the engine and shifted into gear. The truck thudded atop a scaly, uneven surface and edged its way along. It rumbled to a halt after five minutes. Blaine moved to the truck’s rear and cracked the flap slightly. As expected, they had come to a stop in a line of trucks waiting to unload their cargoes at a central depot. The area around them was packed with trucks, heavy construction equipment, and a number of corrugated steel sheds of varying sizes undoubtedly used for storage. The nearest ongoing construction project was forty feet away where a pair of cement trucks hovered over a sixty-foot-square foundation form waiting to be poured; a central storage drop-to-be probably, judging by the location.

  McCracken lowered himself from the back of the truck first and reached up to help Karen Raymond follow. Then he stood watch while the twins and Johnny Wareagle emerged through the flap. Wareagle led the way to the cover provided by a huge John Deere 744E loader parked near the foundation hole, the top of its cab nearly twelve feet off the ground, with its tires alone making up almost half that height. The loader’s front end was composed of a sharp-toothed excavating shovel with a massive fourcubic-yard and nearly two-ton capacity. Given time, the 744E was capable of moving mountains and, in point of fact, very likely had done just that through the course of the kingdom’s continuing construction.

  McCracken allowed himself a brief gaze about their surroundings. The Kingdom of the Seven was everything Sister Barbara had indicated it might be: an underground city. Unfinished streets wide enough to carry even the largest of the construction equipment crisscrossed between the buildings. At first glance the symmetrical layout of the structures gave Blaine the impression they were all interconnected, or meant to be. But a second look showed him the design was more like an ultramodern city block with no wasted space whatsoever. The whirring, pounding, and slapping sounds of construction, meanwhile, dominated the thin air. They combined to form a rattling din he blessed for the added cover it would provide.

  Up to this point, Blaine had taken the kingdom’s lighting for granted. More comfortable with the surroundings now, he turned his gaze up at the massive solar-powered gaseous lighting built into the mine’s ceiling. The huge fixtures, ranging from twenty square feet to as much as fifty, were laid out in no discernible pattern, their randomness, he judged, being due to their placement within workable areas of the ceiling. These supplied upward of fifty percent of the mine’s light, the rest emanating from powerful floods mounted upon the completed shells of buildings.

  The sight was altogether mesmerizing, the costs to turn this underground world into a reality incalculable. From his vantage point, McCracken was able to glimpse only a few of the additional connecting chambers Sister Barbara had mentioned and used his imagination to conjure up pictures of their unfinished residential structures. The Kingdom of the Seven as a whole was still years from completion, but its mere existence served as testament to the depth of Frye’s commitment and the madness of his vision.

  The kingdom headquarters Sister Barbara had described was located beyond three taller unfinished buildings several hundred yards away. It was five stories in height, with an additional three located beneath the mine floor. The layout was comparable to a medium-sized office building, though the inside had been built to Frye’s unusual specifications. Blaine couldn’t see the building from where he stood, but the route to reach it was clear from the map she had drawn. He looked back at the twins.

  “Set your detonators for two o’clock sharp,” he told them.

  “Just over two hours from now,” noted Jacob, after a gaze at his watch.

  “Plenty ,of time,” said Wareagle.

  Blaine and Johnny waited for the twins to move away from the huge loader before setting off themselves in single file, with Karen Raymond between them. The various construction equipment, debris, and partially completed structures afforded plenty of cover on their route to the kingdom’s main and sole totally functional structure. The building itself was a simple rectangle, dotted with windows in apparent haphazard fashion. It was cream-colored to make best use of the mine’s lighting, its finish creased with an unfinished, stuccolike quality.

  McCracken was surprised to find security virtually nonexistent in the area around it. Then again, Frye would never believe an interloper could get this far, especially now that he believed the Seven’s most dangerous adversaries were dead. He noted only an occasional guard, patrolling either on foot or in a motorized golf cart, and easy to evade in either case.

  Entrance to the building, though, was another matter. The doors had no knobs and required either a special identification card or keypad code to access. Blaine knew they could not force their way in and risk tripping an alarm system. What, then?

  The answer was revealed moments later when a guard riding one of the golf carts pulled up near a side entrance. McCracken saw him move toward the keypad and nodded at Johnny Wareagle, who sprang into motion instantly. The guard saw nothing of the big Indian other than the arm that looped around his throat, after the door had popped electronically open. Blaine led Karen across the brief stretch of open ground and lifted the guard’s unconscious body into the golf cart before Johnny pushed it toward the nearest position of cover.

  They entered the building, moving quickly and cautiously, and proceeded down a narrow entry hall to a set of glass doors just beyond a staircase. Sister Barbara had seen the first two floors of this building before leaving the Seven, and nothing resembling a laboratory had been contained on them. That meant the kingdom’s scientific facilities were on some higher floor.

  Blaine pointed upward when they came to the staircase, and Johnny motioned to Karen Raymond to accompany him. When they had disappeared up the stairs, he crept along the main corridor, the layout Sister Barbara had provided recalled in his mind. She couldn’t be sure where the information Blaine sought could be found, since the building had no command post or planning center when she had left. The closest thing to it might well have been the small private theater that Harlan Frye had designed to the last chair. He was obsessed with media and video. A master manipulator of both, the Reverend relied on visual input far more than anything else.

  “He needs to see everything,” Sister Barbara had said, further explaining that the theater had been the first completed interior project in the entire kingdom. It took up an entire corner of the building and rose three stories in height.

  Blaine moved quickly toward the theater, still alert to the possible presence of guards. He reasoned that Frye would entrust the kingdom’s existence to as few people as possible. The more individuals he utilized, the higher the odds that the true nature of the kingdom would leak out. Despite the lack of guards, the Reverend would feel safe and invulnerable down here in his domain.

  The theater was exactly where Sister Barbara described, accessible through a door that rested apart from the others at the end of a hall on the first floor. The door was open. As Blaine approached, a shadow fell across the hall floor in front of it, signaling him to take cover within a small alcove. Four men emerged and strode stiffly past him. The quick glance he managed to grab was enough to identify the four from the descriptions provided by Sister Barbara as the remaining members of the Seven.

  Blaine was tempted to overpower the four evangelists and do away with them on the spot. He restrained himself by recalling that his only meaningful target here was Harlan Frye. Risk exposure by slaying these men and he ran the very real chance of forfeiting his opportunity to get to the Reverend. Obviously a briefing of some sort had just taken place within the theater. Unless Frye had taken a different route out, he would still be inside.<
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  McCracken detected no signs of activity when he drew closer to the open door leading into the theater. He stopped just before reaching it and pressed his shoulders against the wall. Peering in, he could see connected rows of chairs neatly arranged upon a sloping rise before a screen that covered a portion of the front wall’s length. A still image was projected upon that screen now, unidentifiable from this angle. The door provided access to the front of the theater, near the screen.

  McCracken dropped down to all fours and crawled into the theater on his belly, pulling himself along with his hands and letting his feet drag behind him. He wormed his body beneath the bottom rows of seats for cover and curled his frame tight, once he was all the way under. The vantage point still precluded view of the screen, and Blaine had started to angle himself for the aisle in an attempt to better that view when a click sounded. Instantly the screen went dark and soft lighting lit the theater to replace the still image that had been projected. Footsteps rapped his way down the central row of stairs. McCracken froze and looked upward, catching a glimpse of a pair of small feet encased in expensive velvety loafers before the face of Harlan Frye slid by above him.

  Blaine had known the Reverend only through poor photographs and a single brief appearance on the Future Faith channel he’d seen while inside a hotel room earlier that week. Frye was a short man of medium build who seemed average in every respect and detail, except for his face. That face seemed ageless, unmarred and smooth even without the aid of makeup. Blaine hadn’t glimpsed him smile here in the theater, but he knew that smile would be incredibly warm and reassuring. People looked at Harlan Frye and trusted him, and McCracken found himself briefly questioning how such a man could be responsible for the coming of Judgment Day. He shook himself as if from the effects of a spell. The Reverend had that effect on people.

  Another man descended the stairs a few steps behind Frye, his left arm hanging stiffly by his side. Blaine followed both sets of steps until they had almost reached the open doorway. The door closed with a whooooosh after the pair exited, and Blaine cautiously waited a few extra minutes before snaking his way into the single aisle. He rose into the theater’s half-light and retraced Harlan Frye’s steps up the stairs. At the very top a remote control device had been left in a specially tailored slot within a chair arm at the end of the row. McCracken picked it up and pressed the ON button, eager to see what the Reverend had just shared with the other members of the Seven.

  The still image reappeared on the huge screen below him, slightly fuzzy due to the lighting in the theater. Holding the remote control in his hand, Blaine began to descend for a clearer view of what could only be Harlan Frye’s plan for Judgment Day.

  CHAPTER 33

  The laboratory was located on the building’s fourth floor, easily identifiable thanks to a sign in bold view on a windowless steel door:

  RESEARCH WING

  RESTRICTED ACCESS

  NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL

  Johnny Wareagle eased Karen Raymond behind him and tried the security guard’s identification card in the slot. The two of them remained tightly pressed against the wall as the door slid open. The Indian spun away from it and lunged through the door in a blur Karen’s eyes could barely record. Barely a yard inside, he froze and motioned Karen forward with the submachine gun gripped in both hands.

  The huge laboratory was deserted. Desks sat unmanned, the computer screens atop them dark. A series of separate glassed-in booths and cubicles were empty as well. More, though, was missing than just people. None of the lab equipment looked in any way operational. Everything seemed pristine, virtually untouched. Karen had expected to find a lab teeming with activity. She had expected Johnny Wareagle would need to hold everyone at bay while she inspected its contents.

  Her eyes locked on a single grouping of test tubes placed on a waist-high platform that ran the length of the side wall beyond the cubicles. She approached and lifted one of the tubes carefully. The plastic tube nearly compressed in her hand, because it was composed of a gelatin-plastic mixture similar to that used in the manufacture of time-release capsules. The test tube was thicker and stronger, but equally pliable; and, as with the thinner timecapsule version, it would dissolve gradually in any liquid, thereby freeing its contents.

  Before Karen could consider the ramifications further, Johnny Wareagle quickly drew her back against the wall. The test tube slipped from her hand and plopped to the floor, rolling away. Her eyes darted to the center of the lab where a pair of figures was descending a staircase that spiraled upward for the next floor. They were wearing white lab isolation suits, complete with individual oxygen supplies. The Kevlar gloves on the figures’ hands perfectly traced the contours of their fingers to allow for delicate manipulations.

  Karen had used such suits herself, usually to avoid contaminating an unstable mixture, or in situations requiring quarantine procedures. Her eyes followed the suited figures as they approached a set of inner security doors constructed of glass rather than steel. The glass doors slid open and the suited figures continued toward the main entrance. They stopped near a series of hooks to shed their suits, turning toward their unwelcome visitors in the process.

  Johnny Wareagle sprang.

  Karen Raymond had never seen a man move so fast, didn’t think a man could move that fast. He covered most of the ground separating him from the figures before they had even recorded his presence. One turned and grabbed for the other’s shoulder. Karen could see the panic in his eyes under his faceplate.

  The big Indian pounced, huge arms stretching outward. He took a head in either hand and smashed them viciously together. The suited figures crumpled to the floor, helmets shattered. Johnny looked back at Karen, and then dragged their unconscious frames into one of the cubicles.

  “Let’s go, miss,” he said when he reemerged, eyes darting from her to the stairwell.

  “There could be others,” she pointed out.

  “There aren’t.”

  “How can you be so—”

  Johnny was already approaching the glass doors leading to the stairwell. They parted automatically when he drew close enough, and he remained between them until Karen was safely through. He climbed the stairwell ahead of her, and Karen hurried to keep his pace. Her boots clanged against the metal steps. She reached the top just behind the Indian and saw that a glass wall lay twenty feet before them, running the floor’s entire width. Wareagle took a few steps forward and froze. Karen could feel him go tense and drew up even to share his view.

  “Oh, my God,” she muttered at the sight before them.

  The twins’ work was progressing smoothly. Although the amount of extrapotent plastic explosives contained in their packs was not nearly enough to cover the entire expanse of the kingdom, it was enough to topple a huge measure of it. Beyond that, the stifling and poorly ventilated confines of the mine would facilitate the spread of flames, an inferno certain to be raging in no time.

  Preston Turgewell had spoken often of such a day to Jacob and Rachel through the last several desperate years. But everywhere they turned their efforts at penetrating the Seven had been stymied. Their resources and contacts dwindled. The Fifth Generation itself had been compromised, so many members turned against them that they could no longer trust its ranks. With Sister Barbara’s continued refusal to involve herself, Benjamin Ratansky’s pilfered list became their best chance to deal Frye’s grand scheme a crushing setback by executing all the people whose names it contained. But now, thanks to Blaine McCracken, the twins were in position to do far more than that.

  Destroy the Kingdom of the Seven here and now, and the Reverend Harlan Frye’s plans for Judgment Day would be canceled forever.

  Jacob and Rachel split up to maximize their effectiveness. They started at the darkest, outermost reaches of the kingdom, in shells of buildings at the earliest stages of construction. From there they worked their way toward the congestion of nearly and partially completed structures where work was ongoing. Their
sweep was precise, routes designed to converge at a point closest to Frye’s command center where they would rendezvous with the others.

  The setting of each charge was as simple as wedging a brick-sized mound of plastic explosives against a structural stress point and activating the detonator. Each timer was set for two o’clock sharp. Rachel had just planted her ninth mound of plastique and was readying her tenth when she heard what sounded like a light footstep scuffing the rocks and gravel here in the Kingdom of the Seven’s outer reaches. She remained perfectly still as she traced the sound in her mind, gauging distance and direction; swung, finally, with pistol held tight and ready.

  No one was there. She relaxed briefly, then heard a similar sound from the exact opposite side. Again she twisted. Again her eyes found nothing.

  She was being stalked, toyed with!

  An unfamiliar jolt of fear stung her, and Rachel raised the walkie-talkie to her lips, one of the only two they had brought with them on this journey.

  “Jacob,” she said softly.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “Someone’s here.”

  Normal accommodations were impossible to conceive of for Earvin Early. He had lived virtually without structure ever since renouncing his physical self. Without a physical self to be concerned with, shelter was more a burden than a luxury. Of course, within the kingdom there was little to choose from, though Early made the best of things in the dark recesses of the shells of buildings in the kingdom’s rear. He felt reasonably at home in them, although sleep had become little more than a memory since he had returned.

  He recalled the sensation of pain from his previous life and imagined that was what his bulky shell must be feeling. The wounds in his arms inflicted by the dogs had begun to leak brown ooze through the makeshift bandages holding his flesh together. The last time he had changed them, he noted that the flesh had taken on a greenish tint. He could not see his split lip, but the feel of it was enough to tell him how puffy it had become, swollen to the point of peeling away from his mouth to expose his upper teeth. Each breath from his nose drew in thick gobs of something that felt like resin and smelled like death. The ripped side of his face had become one big oozing scab, festering, and his only vision was through his right eye.