In Albany, New York, in the subbasement of the Erastus Corning Tower, all of this was duly noted, and correlations were quickly drawn between the grisly discovery at Moonlight Ranch and the ailing spacecraft. Nothing escapes the all-seeing gaze of Albany, except, of course, when it does. Vermont in November 1927, for example.
Tiddley-pom.
And so it goes.
We move on to the matter of a secret history.
Ten days from its closest approach to Pluto, New Horizons passed less than one hundred miles from what might, for the sake of convenience, be described as a cloud. A thousand times denser than the hard vacuum surrounding it and as wide as the Mediterranean Sea, it squatted in the path of the probe. Deep inside its heart, electrical impulses raced along an intricate maze of hydrocarbon dendrites and axons, relaying detailed observations of New Horizons, building a profile of this strange visitor from the inner solar system. Without eyes, it saw. Without hands, it touched. Launched ten millennia ago from a dwarf planet far beyond the orbit of Pluto, the cloud has waited, patiently, for this encounter. Here, in this moment, is its purpose fulfilled. The cloud is a voyager, too.
In 1933, both James Whale and Edgar Rice Burroughs dreamt of the cloud.
In 1945, an actor who’d once played a hero determined to rescue an imperiled alien princess also dreamt of it. A few months later, it was the last thing on his mind before he died of a heart attack.
In 1971, three astronomers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, all engaged in a search for a hypothesized “Planet X,” repeatedly suffered nightmares of a cloud from deep space that swallowed the world. Writing in his private journal, one of these men referred to the monstrous cloud as Jörmungandr.
In 2009, Drew Standish turned a page in an ancient, wicked book (we will say that a book can be wicked) and read a description of the cloud penned three and a half centuries before the birth of Christ. The book named the cloud, though it’s a name that Standish has never dared to speak out loud. He knows the cloud is a harbinger. He knows the cloud is an angel with a golden trumpet. He knows the cloud guards the gates of Eden.
Six years later, it sent a message that briefly shut down New Horizons, and a billion miles farther out than Pluto, buzzing fungal things in black towers hunched over their own machines, receiving and analyzing everything the cloud saw.
What rough beast, indeed.
These things happen.
And these.
And these.
9. The Puppet Motel (July 11, 2015)
EVERYTHING FOR MILES AROUND has post-apocalyptic cowboy movie names. If John Wayne had been a spook, he’d have thought of names like these. Flying in low, the Signalman ticks them off: Jumbled Hills, Mercury, Yucca Flats, Fallout Hills and the Paradise Range, Tikaboo Valley, Papoose Lake, Sedan Crater. It’s better than thinking about what-the-fuck-ever is waiting for him down below. The Janet airlines Boeing 737-600, dirty white with that crimson cheatline slash just for emphasis, begins its final descent, dropping towards a landscape so desolate and scorched that God’s own nuclear arsenal must have been called in for the job. To the north he can see the paler playa expanse of Groom Lake proper, a funny name for something that last held water ten thousand years ago. He’s been told that whenever it rains, tiny shrimplike bugs called copepods wriggle their way up from the salty clay, shaking off dormancy, only to be devoured by hungry flocks of seagulls that fly in all the way from California for the feast. The plight of the copepods, thinks the Signalman, is a pretty good metaphor for every goddamn thing about Area 51 and, for that matter, every goddamn thing about his life.
Five more minutes and they’re on the ground, and the dingy Boeing—purchased cheap from Air China—is taxying towards the terminal. This is the first time he’s flown since 1995, the same year this plane rolled off the assembly line. He waits until it has come to a complete stop, and then he waits almost five minutes more before unfastening his seat belt and retrieving Immacolata’s briefcase from the overhead compartment.
Back on the train, Jack Dunaway kept eyeing the briefcase like it was a rattlesnake coiled and waiting to strike.
“How much less of a mess would we be in,” he asked, “if those Limey sons of bitches hadn’t spent the last hundred years keeping us in the dark?”
“She’s not a Brit,” said the Signalman. “She was born in Tennessee. At least, that’s what they say.”
“I didn’t mean her,” said Dunaway. “Well, I didn’t mean only her. I didn’t mean her in particular.”
“Ain’t no point in getting pissy because the other side’s better than us at lying, cheating, and burying the truth. She does her job, just the fuck like you.”
“Whose side are you on, anyway?”
And the Signalman almost asked, You really think that’s how it works, us against them? You really gonna berate me for not cheering on the home team? But Dunaway is exactly the sort of douchebag who tries to advance in the Company by ratting out his betters. Joe McCarthy would have loved the guy. The Signalman keeps his questions to himself.
“They’re cooperating now,” he says instead.
“Sure they are. Now that they’re scared. Now that it’s too late.”
“There, there, Little Buckaroo. We’re not talking doomsday. Not just yet. Anyhow, where would we be if Y hadn’t shown a little mercy and left us the prize back in ’78? Not like they had to. Credit where credit’s due and all that.”
“Credit? We should have nailed them to the wall just for showing up in Rhode Island, never mind sending two of our agents on a wild goose chase so Barbican could snatch the right of first refusal.”
“And you think I’m the one with anger problems,” the Signalman said, and poured himself another shot of J&B.
The exit door opens, letting in the desert heat, letting in the terra-cotta light of the fading afternoon, and he makes his way along the narrow aisle, then down the foldout airstairs and onto the cracked tarmac. There’s no one waiting to meet him, but he hadn’t really expected there would be. The Signalman’s not exactly the sort of errand boy who rates a welcoming committee. He’d hoped there might be time for a shower, a quick bite to eat, maybe another drink before the party begins. And if wishes were horses, he’d still be on that train. He flashes his credentials for a couple of bored guards, and they let him pass. Neither of them looks him in the eye or says a word. It’s usually like that, when security sees a red shield, especially if it’s their first time. For most of these guys, Albany’s little more than a black-budget fairy tale, an intelligence community urban legend, until you’re face-to-face with the undeniable fact of it.
Cut to the chase. Get on with it, already.
They’re holding her in Zone 17, and that means a short ride on Dreamland’s very own underground maglev. There’s a whole goddamn city down here, a rat’s maze of tunnels and bunkers, substations, railways, and maintenance shafts, two dozen layers stacked one atop the other like a birthday cake. This is the beating heart and mind of the base, safe from satellites and Google Earth, hidden from the UFO and conspiracy nuts who lurk about the perimeters with their cameras and telephoto lenses.
The Signalman dislikes being below almost as much as he dislikes flying.
But this is where they’ve brought her, so this is where he goes.
Her name is Chloe Stringfellow, and she was the last of Standish’s fourteen unfortunate recruits, the one most recently infected, the least advanced case. She’s also the only one of the bunch considered a survivor, though that’s not going to last. He’s been told that she has a few hours left, maybe less; she isn’t likely to make it until morning. He’s also been told that she’s scared, and if he’s lucky, that’ll work in his favor.
The laboratory smells of ammonia and recycled air. There are two men in white coats who show him to the containment cell. He’d hesitate to call them doctors.
The merciless glare of fluorescents has erased every trace of shadow.
“We’ve got her on a cocktail
of dimethylamylamine and amphetamine,” one of them tells the Signalman. “We’re doing our best to keep her lucid, but whatever this pathogen is, it’s acting as a powerful hypnotic.”
“If I were you,” says the other, “I’d hurry.”
Her cell is fronted by a thick sheet of Plexiglas, and there’s a metal folding chair parked in front of it, waiting for him. Inside, she’s sitting in an identical chair, head bowed, shoulders slumped, staring at her open palms. He takes his seat, and one of the men in white coats switches on an intercom. The Signalman’s seen the corpses of people who’ve died of Ebola, leprosy, radiation poisoning, not to mention any number of biological and chemical weapons. But somehow this is worse. Maybe it’s because she’s still alive.
“Chloe,” he says, his voice rendered flat and tinny by the intercom, “I need to talk with you. I know that’s probably the very last thing you want to do right now, but unless you cooperate, I can’t guarantee my bosses are ever going to let you leave this place. Unless you help me, I can’t even guarantee they’re going to keep treating you. They let people die. I need you to understand that, Chloe. The men and women I work for, they let people die all the time.”
“I’ve seen you before,” she says without looking at him, and her voice is as raw as uncooked hamburger. “At the ranch. You’re one of them.”
“Yeah. That’s right. I’m one of them. But I want to help you. I really do, and I can’t unless you’re willing to help me.”
“You don’t know what I’ve done,” she says. “None of you. You don’t have any idea what I’ve done. You couldn’t imagine.”
“Then how about you give me a hand with that?”
She laughs, and he thinks it’s one of the worst sounds in the world, that laugh.
“I want some water,” she tells him. “They won’t even give me a drink of water. I asked over and over again. I told them how thirsty I am, but they won’t listen.”
The Signalman glances at the men in white coats, and the one who told him to hurry shakes his head. When he turns back to the girl, she’s looking at him. Her eyes are the color of gangrene.
“Answer a few questions for me,” he says. “You do that, and I’ll see you get whatever you want. Water, a Coke, iced tea, whatever the hell you’d like.”
“My throat is so dry,” she replies.
“Where is he?”
“Where is who?”
“Standish. Where is Drew Standish.”
She narrows those rotting eyes, then goes back to staring at her hands.
“Where are the others?” she wants to know. “Did you bring them here, too? You’re not cops, are you?”
“No, I’m not a cop. And the others are here, not far away.”
“It isn’t fair,” she says. “I’m his favorite. As soon as he found me, I was his favorite. Madeline said so. It isn’t fair that they’d go before me.”
“Who’s Madeline?”
“It isn’t fair at all.”
“Was she still at the ranch when we got there?”
“No,” the girl answers. “Madeline is the Sixteenth Trump. Madeline is the Tower. She went with him. She left me to watch over the others, and she went with him.”
“And where did he go? Where is he now?”
“Are they dead?” she asks him. “Did I kill them?”
The Signalman hesitates, weighing his lies, weighing consequences.
“I don’t think that I meant to kill them,” says Chloe Stringfellow. “I was angry, that’s all. I kept waiting for the television to call my name, but it was too busy talking to them. Like I wasn’t even in the room. Like maybe he’d made a mistake, bringing me there, and I was just some sort of accident. But that can’t be. Drew said, ‘You are the path unto deliverance. There are no accidents here.’”
“What if he lied to you? Have you thought of that? You have to have considered that possibility.”
She shakes her head very slowly, shrugs her shoulders, and licks at her lips. It seems to him as if her every movement requires tremendous effort, some force of will that’s almost beyond her.
“You have, haven’t you? In fact, that’s what you’re thinking right now, that maybe none of it was true. That maybe he used you. Maybe he used all of you.”
“No,” she says, so quietly that he almost misses it, and she shakes her head again.
“Why are you still protecting him, Chloe? That’s what I want to know. Look what he’s done to you. You trusted him, and he’s betrayed that trust. He left you there in that house to die. He got cold feet, and he ran. He left you—all of you—behind.”
“No,” she says. “Drew saved me. If anyone’s a traitor, it’s me, not him.”
The Signalman leans forward, resting his elbows on the knees of his cheap suit. “Your were abandoned,” he says. “Is that how our saviors treat us?”
“If you could have seen me before—”
“Are you really expecting me to believe you were worse off than you are now? This thing is eating you alive, you know that, right? It’s using you, just like Standish used you, taking what you are and changing you into something it needs. He isn’t a shaman, and this isn’t divine transformation. It’s a disease. A parasite.”
“You haven’t seen what I’ve seen.”
“That’s right, and I don’t fucking need to,” the Signalman replies. There’s anger in his voice, bright and violent, that he’d not intended to show. It’s too early in the game for that. If he isn’t careful, he’ll blow the pantomime and lose her.
Don’t fool yourself. You’ve already lost her.
She looks up again, and whatever he was going to say next, he lets it go. There’s an ugly swelling on the left side of her face that wasn’t there a minute ago. The skin is taut, shiny, ready to split open.
The fungus spreads through an ant’s body, maturing inside its head—and this is where things really get interesting.
“You didn’t come here to help me,” she says. “You’re frightened. He told us, all the world will be frightened, until they understand. Fear is an affront to the messengers, and the heart of the passage is a release from the prison of our fears.”
“You were better off on heroin,” he replies. “At least it never promised you anything it couldn’t deliver.”
Chloe shuts her eyes, and she manages a crooked sort of smile.
“I wish you could see,” she sighs. “I wish I could show you.”
“Her BP is dropping,” says one of the white-coated men, his voice calm and smooth as vanilla ice cream, like the bastard sees this shit every damn day of the week. “Her body temperature, too.”
“Is she on anything for the pain?” the Signalman asks.
“No. Only the stimulants. Our orders were very specific on that point.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” she says, right on cue. “It doesn’t hurt at all.”
“She’s probably telling the truth,” says the other white-coated man. “The pathogen seems to be producing a compound that acts as a neurotransmitter and mimics endorphins, pretty much the same as morphine.”
Behind the Plexiglas, the girl lifts her right arm, and she points at the briefcase. The Signalman set it on the floor beside the metal folding chair. For the first time in more than twenty-four hours, he’d forgotten all about it.
“I know what’s in there,” she says, slurring her words. “The gift of Babylon the Great, Mother of All Prostitutes and Obscenities in the World. The lies by which she would deceive every living soul. He told us she was coming. He told us about her, about the diner in Arizona, about the filthy whore seducing you, hiding herself behind that name. The Immaculate Protector, the Sacristan. But you’re such a clever one. Surely you can see behind the demon’s mask.”
“We’re running out of time,” says the Signalman, speaking to Chloe Stringfellow or the men in white coats or only to himself.
“And you,” she murmurs, “you’re the Twelfth Trump, the Hanged Man. You don’t know it yet, but you are. Pittur
a infamante, dangling by one ankle from a withered gallows tree. Babylon didn’t put you there, no, but she pulled the knots of that fylfot cross so much tighter than they’d ever been pulled before.”
The bulge on her cheek has turned a livid red and has grown until it’s almost as large as a tennis ball. She scratches at it, and the Signalman wants to believe he only imagines the movement beneath her skin.
“You dance for her, dangling,” she says, only it’s not her voice any longer. But it’s a voice he’s heard before, on a CD from Immacolata’s briefcase. It’s the voice of the man she’s given her life for.
“Who am I talking to?” he asks.
“You,” says a man talking through the dying girl, ignoring the Signalman’s question, “you dance for her, hanging, her long black hair drawn out tightly, fiddling whisper music on those strings. And bats with baby faces . . .” But the voice trails off then, and the girl’s body shudders violently. She slips off the chair to the floor.
“She’s flatlining,” says one of the men in white lab coats.
“We need to shut this down,” says the other. “It’s over.”
And the Signalman is up and on his feet then, suddenly more afraid and more confused than he’s been in a very long time, even more than he was at the ranch by the Salton Sea, when he stepped into the room filled with the smell of mushrooms and the insectile drone of television static. When he first saw Chloe Stringfellow, standing over what was left of her thirteen companions, a shotgun cradled in the crook of one arm. Whatever’s happening in the cell, it’s nothing he expected, nothing he was warned could happen. If Y knew, it’s something they’ve kept from him. He steps forward and places his right hand flat against the Plexiglas divider.
Agents of Dreamland Page 6
