Sleeper Agenda

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

“We’re going shopping,” Tyler said, taking hold of her arm and pulling her along.

  Tom stopped at the edge of the shadow.

  He had continued down the seemingly endless corridor, opening door after door and immersing himself in moments of memory, fragments of a childhood that defined him as the person he was now and others that showed exactly how a killer was made. From learning how to ride a two-wheeler to making explosives with items found in a typical kitchen, as soon as the doors were opened, the memories belonged to him.

  The corridor was growing darker. The shadows seemed unusually dense here, the very atmosphere thick with something that made him jittery.

  Tom stopped at a discernable line of shadow, trying to see farther down the hall into the swirling murk. There were more doors on both sides of the corridor, but there was also something else. He squinted, curious to see what awaited him, and stepped into the thickening shadow. It was as if he was wrapped in a blanket of cold mist, the shadow seeming to converge on him—to embrace him—but he continued forward, barely able to make out the shape of something ahead.

  At first he couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d been traveling this upstairs hall for what seemed like days, and what appeared through the shifting clouds of shadow at the end of the hallway was another door, but this one—this one was different.

  The darkness swirled, and he found himself becoming colder, rubbing vigorously at his arms and chest, trying to get the blood circulating as he continued on. It was almost as if he were drawn to it—a supernatural current pulling him along. He wondered briefly about the other doors he passed, but he couldn’t take his focus from the door ahead. It was as if the darkness didn’t want him to see it, blowing thickly like smoke, trying to hide it from his sight.

  Too late.

  The door was large and appeared to be made of tarnished metal. It reminded him of one of those huge bank vault doors in the movies, completely out of place in the hallway of a run-down mansion. The closer he got to it, the farther away it seemed to become, but that just intensified his desire to reach it. There was a breeze in the hallway now, moving the darkness like a fog, attempting to push him back, but he continued forward, planting each foot solidly on the floor, inexorably moving closer.

  Tom reached a point where he thought he could almost touch it and extended his arm and then his fingers—the tip of his index finger almost connecting with the hard, dirty surface.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” asked a voice from somewhere in the shadows, and he pulled back his hand, whirling around, heart racing with terror as he realized he was no longer alone.

  “I suggest you come away from there right now before you hurt yourself,” the voice commanded.

  It seemed to be coming from all around, and as Tom searched for its source, he realized that he knew this voice.

  “Have you done your homework yet?” it asked. “I’m free right now if you want help with that geometry assignment.”

  It was the voice of his father.

  “I was … I was just looking at this door,” Tom explained, moving away from it toward the voice, the unnatural wind at his back assisting him.

  “Well, come away from it,” the voice ordered. “There’s still a lot to be done tonight before you can goof off.”

  Tom thought he’d figured out where the voice had come from and was focusing his eyes on a particular area of darkness when he felt the pull. It was as if somebody had tied a rope around his waist and was pulling him backward. The door was pulling him toward it again. He turned, seeing it as if for the first time, partially hidden behind veils of swirling black, and again felt the compulsion to touch it.

  “Tom, didn’t you hear what I said?” his father bellowed.

  He cringed at the sound of anger in his father’s voice. It took a lot to make him that mad; his dad very seldom raised his voice.

  “Your mother and I have been very concerned about you,” his father said. “You’ve seemed distracted, as if there’s something on your mind.”

  Your mother and I. The words were like shards of glass rubbed into his chest.

  “You’re not my father,” he yelled into the darkness as he turned away from the door.

  Something shifted, a figure blacker than the darkness around it. It disengaged itself from the shadows and moved toward him.

  Tom felt a trembling weakness in his legs, and a scream tried to slither up his throat as his father came into view. The man had been burnt, and there was nothing to distinguish him as Tom’s father other than the dark green cotton shirt and chinos he had been wearing the last time Tom had seen him—when the two had fought and the man had tried to kill him.

  There also had been explosions that day—two houses blown to bits. Tom remembered the searing flash and the sound of every bad thunderstorm he could remember all rolled into one as the houses were obliterated. He had escaped—it didn’t look like his dad had been so lucky.

  He was practically a skeleton; what might have been charred pieces of skin drifted gently down from his body like flakes of black snow. But his clothes appeared fine.

  Nightmares are funny that way.

  “How could you say such a thing?” Mason Lovett asked—sounding far better than he should have in his condition. “I think it’s time that the two of us sat down and had a long talk about your attitude.” He extended a blackened hand. “C’mon, son, let’s have ourselves a little chat about the future—about your future.”

  Tom stumbled back, away from the hand and closer to the door.

  “Get away from that goddamned door!” Mason screamed, and lunged, grabbing hold of the front of Tom’s T-shirt, trying to pull him from the door. “You’ve become a different person, Tom,” Mason Lovett’s burnt corpse scolded.

  “I am different,” Tom found himself saying. He grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted it, forcing it to release its grip on his shirt. “And don’t touch me again,” he told the corpse as he shoved it away from him.

  “Ever.”

  The charred version of Mason stumbled backward, then reached behind him and pulled out a glinting butcher knife. “I’ve had just about enough of your bad attitude, young man.”

  Haven’t we done this already? Tom thought, his body immediately tensing as the corpse lunged at him, the knife blade aimed at his heart.

  Tom sidestepped the thrust, grabbing hold of the arm in one hand and in one fluid move bringing the elbow of his other arm down onto Mason’s. There was a loud snap followed by a shrill scream as the arm was broken, the knife clattering to the floor.

  Tom squatted down, reaching for the fallen blade, but his father lashed out, kicking him in the face and causing him to fall backward.

  “Don’t know what could’ve gotten into you,” Mason grumbled, reaching down to retrieve the knife with his good hand while the other dangled uselessly at his side. “But I’m going to do my damnedest to make sure I cut it out.”

  Tom was nearly on his feet when Mason attacked again. Tom tried to avoid the slashing blade, but he didn’t move fast enough. The butcher knife sliced a gash through the front of his shirt and across the tight muscles of his abdomen beneath. The wound burned like fire as he jumped back. Tom touched his stomach, his hands coming away stained red.

  “That’ll teach you to talk back to your father,” the corpse said, its features twisted in a disturbing attempt at a smile.

  Mason charged at him again, and Tom felt his anger explode. He sprang off from the ground, his shoulder connecting with his father’s midsection and driving him back, the tip of Mason’s knife glancing off Tom’s shoulder as the two landed on the floor in a struggling heap.

  “You’re in for it now, mister,” Mason roared, attempting to plunge the blade into his son’s throat.

  Tom turned away, managing to avoid its bite. “I’ve had enough of this,” he growled, wrenching the knife from the corpse’s hand, flipping it deftly in one hand, catching it, and driving it down through his father’s chest.

 
; Mason screamed—a disturbing, high-pitched cry—as he tried to pull the knife from his chest. Tom stood, staring for a moment at the hideous scene before him, then turned back to the door.

  The shadows parted again to reveal the metal obstruction. It seemed larger than before as he slowly approached it. Tom reached out, laying his hands on its surface. He expected it to be cold beneath his touch but instead found it comfortingly warm.

  He stepped back, studying the hard metal surface, trying to determine how to open it.

  “I’m going to be very angry with you!” Mason’s voice slurred behind him. “Go through that door and things will never be the same.”

  “Shut up,” Tom snarled, again pressing his hands to the door’s warm surface.

  “Don’t you talk to me like that!” Mason screamed. “I don’t care what you think, but I’m still your father and—”

  Tom couldn’t control it anymore, suddenly lashing out at the metal door. “You’re not my father!” he bellowed, pounding his fist down on the hard surface.

  The door shook with the force of the blow, and bits of plaster rained down from around the frame. Tom stepped back, surprised by his sudden strength.

  “Listen to me,” his father begged. “It can be like it was before. Wouldn’t you like that, Tommy?”

  Tom pounded on the door again, his anger seeming to flow through his body, escaping from his fists as he beat on the metal obstruction. “It was all a lie,” he said, hitting the door again and again.

  He paused momentarily. The door was dented, and he felt the strength surge through his body, sensing that one more strike would bring it crashing down.

  “Don’t do it!” his father warned, pushing himself up on his one good arm. “I guarantee you won’t like what you’ll find.”

  “I’ll just have to take that chance,” Tom said, and brought his fist down into the center of the door.

  He watched, stunned, as the twisted metal fell forward through the frame, tumbling down into a sea of darkness below. The pull on Tom began to intensify. For a moment he fought it, straining the muscles in his upper body as he tried to force himself back from the edge of the precipice, but then he came to the frightening realization that that was where he needed to go.

  “Tommy, don’t,” his father croaked, reaching out to him with a blackened, skeletal hand.

  But Tom closed his eyes, resisting the pull of the darkness no longer, allowing himself to be drawn over the edge.

  Falling into oblivion.

  Chapter 15

  MADISON HAD NEVER really thought of herself as claustrophobic, but she was seriously considering the possibility as she slowly backed her way down through the narrow metal shaft.

  The Enviro-Safe facility had been locked up tight, not a door to pick the lock on or a window to break, and part of her had breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that maybe, just maybe, Tyler would give up and they’d leave.

  “How are we doing?” he asked from in front of her, and she almost told him to kill the sweet act, but she held her tongue.

  “I’m good,” she answered instead, concentrating on not losing her traction. The shaft was slick with the residue of a grainy substance.

  They must have been looking for over an hour, examining every nook and cranny, trying to find a way in. They had finally found a section at the far back of the building, near what looked to be loading docks, where the siding came away to reveal a square metal hatch attached with clamps. Within seconds Tyler had removed all four of the clamps and discarded the cover, telling her to crawl inside.

  She hadn’t argued with him; there was a look in his eyes and a tone in his voice that said it wouldn’t have been in her—or Tom‘s—best interests. Tyler had been acting weirder by the minute, at times going strangely quiet, as if listening to something that only he could hear.

  It kind of freaked her out. Almost as much as climbing down a greasy metal shaft into a top secret government facility. Almost.

  She brought a hand to her face, sniffing the odd substance coating the sides of the shaft. It wasn’t a bad smell, reminding her strangely enough of potatoes. She came to the realization that this gritty substance wasn’t the residue of anything mechanical.

  “Crumbs,” she said aloud.

  “What?” Tyler asked.

  “This stuff—in the chute here—it’s like cookie—”

  And then suddenly there was a shriek of bending metal, and Madison felt the support beneath her give way. The shaft broke and she tumbled out, hitting the ground hard and knocking the wind from her lungs.

  She just lay there for a moment, her body thrumming with the shock of the fall. Slowly she began moving her arms and legs to be sure there were no broken bones. Everything seemed all right, and she rolled onto her hands and knees in time to see Tyler drop down from an open area of wall where the chute had once been attached.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, feigning concern as he lowered himself silently to the floor.

  “I’m just fine,” she snapped back. Madison brushed away the oily crumbs from her clothes as Tyler walked around the small room in which they now found themselves.

  “What were you saying before?” he asked. He was standing in front of a gray square box, positioned directly below where she had fallen.

  “I said the stuff that was coating the shaft—that’s all over us?” She showed him her fingers and then brushed them off. “It’s like cookie crumbs or something.”

  “I think you’re right,” he said, moving closer to the box and hitting a circular red button. There was a slight hum, and four cookielike objects dropped down into a basin beneath the opening. Tyler picked up one of the biscuits and smelled it.

  “Smells like a potato,” he said with the slightest hint of a twang, and she felt her pulse rate flutter.

  He dropped the unappetizing-looking snack to the floor. “Some kind of distribution source for food, looks like.” He walked around the box. “Over here there’s a spigot for water.”

  She watched as he put his hand beneath one of the metal tubes protruding from the body of the box, his hand coming away wet. Tyler’s eyes darted around the room, checking out every shadowy corner.

  “Why would food and water be here?” she asked him. “I thought you said this was some kind of storage place.”

  Tyler said nothing, heading toward a door.

  “Hey,” she called, following him. “I asked you a question.”

  “Let’s just find what we came for and get out of here,” he said gruffly.

  “And just what is that?” she asked him. “I know I’ve asked you this a million times since we left Washington, but why did we come all this way?”

  He stopped and glared, and for a minute she thought that he might just hit her. But then his expression softened.

  “Things aren’t the way you think they are,” he told her.

  You got that right, Madison thought.

  “But I think that once we get what we came for here, it’ll all start to make sense.”

  There was a desperation to his look, as if he actually wanted to believe the crap he was shoveling. Something was definitely wrong with Tom’s other personality, and she had to wonder—had to hope—that Tom might have something to do with it.

  She nodded, seeming to accept what he said, and continued down the hallway beside him. A few feet down, it opened up into a huge warehouse space, filled with storage containers of all sizes and shapes, some plain wooden crates and others more modern, like futuristic pieces of luggage.

  She slowed down, taking it all in. Almost every corner of the huge room was filled with some kind of box, crate, or container. There was stenciled writing on some of the boxes that she couldn’t quite make out and symbols on others. Madison saw the symbol for radiation on quite a few of the more modern, plastic cases.

  She jumped as Tyler’s hand touched her shoulder.

  “Are these all weapons?” she asked him.

  “Most, I guess,” Tyler answered. “All the
stuff Pandora doesn’t want falling into the wrong hands.”

  “There’s so much of it,” she said, allowing herself to be led from the room.

  “And this is only the tip of the iceberg,” he told her as they passed through yet another doorway into an even larger room, this one filled with all kinds of vehicles. There were trucks and airplanes and even what looked to be a submarine hanging from a heavy-duty harness attached to rigging in the ceiling.

  Her head was spinning. The facility was enormous, seeming to go on forever, room after room of items capable of who knew what, stored beneath the ground in Oregon. Man, this world just kept getting weirder and weirder.

  How can I ever look at it the same way again?

  They found themselves in another sparsely lit corridor, descending to a high-tech security door. Tyler approached the keypad lock at the side of the door and punched in a numbered code.

  “You’d think they would have changed the combination after all this time,” he said as a light began to flash red, bathing the hallway a sickly pink shade as the metal door slid open with a hiss. “But then again, this is the government we’re talking about.” He smiled and stepped through the doorway into another short corridor that led to yet another room. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

  A large, thick-paned window to the side of the door gave them a view of the room’s contents: row after row of metal shelving containing canisters that reminded her of the thermos her father took to work with him every day.

  Madison thought of her parents again, wondering how they were and wishing that she was with them. But then Tyler had the door open after punching in another number code on a keypad and was pushing her out of the way. She followed him in, the door sliding closed behind her. She watched as he moved up and down the rows, carefully examining the canisters.

  It was freezing inside, and goose bumps erupted across the surface of her flesh. She stopped to read the words stenciled on a row of canisters.

  Pasteurella pestis.

  There were other words too, but these were the ones that stood out. She knew these words. Madison recalled junior-year biology, when Mr. Divirgilio had spent at least a week teaching them about a period during the late Middle Ages when one-third of the English population had died because of plague—the Black Death.