The Eden Plague

by David VanDyke

  The Eden Plague

  Prologue

  -1-

  -2-

  -3-

  -4-

  -5-

  -6-

  -7-

  -8-

  -9-

  -10-

  -11-

  -12-

  -13-

  -14-

  -15-

  -16-

  -17-

  -18-

  -19-

  -20-

  -21-

  -22-

  -23-

  -24-

  -25-

  Epilogue

  © 2012 by the author. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  Thanks to my friends and fellow authors Vaughn Heppner and Brian (B.V.) Larson, for persevering and showing me the way.

  Thanks to my readers – my lovely wife Beth, my father Chet, my friend and game designer Mike “Shades” Schaeffer, and the members of the Springfield Writer’s Group, and Vaughn as above (yes, he gets two mentions), and my fellow author Ryan King – for their excellent critiques; their feedback has made me a better writer and this book a better novel.

  Thanks to Daria Lacy who put together the cover design. You can find her and other great people helping ebook authors at LiberWriter.com

  Visit the author's web site at DavidVanDyke.org.

  The Eden Plague

  Prologue

  Long, long ago.

  The woman stared at the glittering metal snake as it wound itself around the tree. Good or evil? Desire for knowledge beckoned her closer.

  It shone with beryl and gold; many tiny legs glittered as it moved over the branches, its fangs delicately penetrating fruit after fruit, leaving holes glistening with slime.

  Aroma overwhelmed the woman, tempting her to pluck a sweet growing orb and eat. Finished but unsatisfied, she seized more fruit to bring to their garden, to offer it to the man.

  The robotic snake slithered off to find more trees for its deadly gift.

  -1-

  You know it's a bad day when you shoot your future wife. A weird, fateful day, the start of all the changes.

  Let me tell you about it.

  Something was out of place when I came home from work that afternoon. The side door to my house stood open. I turned into my driveway in the suburbs and pulled my beat-up old van to a stop. I shut it off right away, listening. Dale City was quiet, just the thwock - thwock of tennis balls in the court across the street.

  I stared at the open door. Something was wrong, because I live alone. Ever since Becky left, I live alone.

  Echoes in my head: Crazy brain-damaged loner.

  I reached under my seat to pull out my car gun. The stock full-sized Springfield Arms XD rested in my hand, and two extra mags slid into a clip-on holder. My carry piece, an XD compact, became my backup, nestled on my right rear hip. God bless Dixie, the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Second Amendment.

  I lived on a corner – generally a bad idea, far too much traffic – I’d usually lived on military bases before – sorry, getting off track. My thoughts do that sometimes. Keep it together, DJ. They said it was the organic damage, so that I can't focus like I should. Explosion, concussion, brain injury, three-two-one-boom.

  Focus, Daniel. I forced my mind back to the now.

  Debating calling the cops for about three seconds, I realized my phone was dead. Forgot to recharge it last night in the house, stupid car charger’s broke, gotta get a new one. Hell with it.

  The serpent in the back of my head woke up.

  I needed some chemical concentration now. Pharmaceutical brainpower. I pulled a ziploc bag full of jelly beans out from under my seat. The purple ones were gel-caps. Good way to hide your stash from the cops, and I couldn’t afford to get busted. I chewed two of them, along with some of the candy to kill the taste. The stimulant-painkiller combo flooded into my bloodstream. I really wished I’d had a cortisone syringe handy for my knee.

  I took a deep breath, forced it out.

  Exiting my van and onto the concrete, I kept the XD in front of me and low in a tactical crouch. My left knee was stiff, courtesy of that Taliban IED, but the pain was dulling now. I gritted my teeth, concentrated on the job in front of me and powered through it.

  Probably some kids doing a daylight break-in, though they were stupid to have left the side door open to be seen. I opened that with my left hand and looked around inside without entering. Nothing looked damaged. I let my eyes adjust for a moment, and then eased in, listening.

  Quiet.

  I took a quick look at the door hardware. Didn’t look broken. Deadbolt was intact. Had I forgotten to lock it this morning before work? What if I hadn't come home early? Maybe they had already left. Yeah, that was it. Odds were they had already ripped me off and were long gone. Still, Dan Markis goes by the book. Always do the right thing.

  I was having less difficulty focusing now. Better living through chemistry: dexedrine, hydrocodone and a little epinephrine. My heart hammered.

  I cleared my house room by room, looking for anything out of place. Ground floor, my widescreen and my desktop computer still there. Then upstairs to the bedrooms and bathrooms. No one. Nothing missing or disturbed that I could see, either.

  I left the basement for last. If there was anyone in there they should have heard me moving around. At least I hoped so. The house was forty years old, and it creaked. I hoped they had bolted out the basement walkout into the back yard, over my useless waist-high Housing-Association-approved rail fence and across the neighbors' lots to escape. I didn't want to shoot some stupid kid or pathetic junkie.

  I'd shot much better men for much better reasons and it wasn't something I hoped for anymore.

  I crept down the basement stairs. I knew this was a bad move, if I wanted to catch someone unawares. Obviously I should have gone back outside, and tried to come in the sliding glass door of the walkout. But I wanted whoever it was, if there was anyone, to leave out that door. Never corner a rat, unless you mean to exterminate him.

  Always leave him a way out.

  At the bottom of the stairs I turned sharply left, back along a short hallway which opened out into the main finished part of the basement. I didn't hear anyone, but I smelled him. It was easier for me than some people, because everything I use is fragrance-free. Artificial scents bother me; they’ll make my eyes water and my nose clog up. This smell was faint but unmistakable, man-cologne. Something expensive. I rubbed the bottom of my nose with my offhand finger to keep from sneezing.

  From being fairly relaxed, comfortable on the chems, in a combat-mode sort of way, everything inside me shifted sharply into overdrive. This wasn’t some kid. The world crystallized in that way it does when my life was truly in danger. The serpent in my head knew someone wanted Daniel J. Markis dead, erased, blotted out. It charged out of its cave and sank its fangs into my hindbrain like a terrier on a rat. Everything took on a cut-glass clarity, with slightly rainbow edges.

  I surveyed the part of the basement I could see from the end of the hallway, an open room. There was a door into the unfinished part to my left, another door to the three-quarter bath to my left front, the walkout glass doors right front, and the door to the basement bedroom to my right.

  The XD swung left automatically. A faint sound marked him in the bathroom. I crouched behind the end of my battered sofa, set the weapon comfortably on the armrest, and called out, “Come on out of the
re, you.” Not eloquent, but it got my message across.

  A moment’s pause, then the door exploded from the inside. 12-gauge shot, a part of me said, the shooter hoping to catch me napping. Some kind of automatic, since he fired four rounds quick, bang-bang-bang-bang, and I didn’t hear the distinct chack-chack of a pump.

  He swept the room from his left to right, firing blind through the thin hollow-core door, spraying clouds of splinters with each shot. The sound was deafening. The last blast struck the top of the sofa about a foot in front of me, sending pieces of cushion flying. I was already fading back and moving left, to avoid the next one that never came, low in a duck walk.

  Cursing myself for not retrieving my shotgun from my bedroom, I realized I couldn’t expect to penetrate two thicknesses of wall at the corner and do any damage with a pistol. And I wasn’t stepping in front of that door.

  But local knowledge is always a huge advantage, and this was my own house. I opened the door to my left into the unfinished section of the basement and slid in silently, pushing the door almost shut behind me. Now, immediately to my right, was a single thickness of drywall behind two-by-four studs. No insulation, and on the other side, that bathroom and the shooter.

  From point-blank range I unloaded seven rounds through the wall, walking them diagonally left to right and slanting from low to high, knee to chest level. The expanding loads punched through the thin gypsum, leaving thumb-sized holes as they went, and I heard a grunt and the thud of a body falling.

  The serpent cheered.

  I was moving already, taking cover to my left behind my water heater, and finished firing off the magazine into the tiny bathroom at about calf level.

  Reloaded. Waited.

  No sounds, but I smelled blood and feces. That was a good sign, in this case. It usually meant death.

  The serpent rejoiced.

  I glided silently up to look through one of the holes in the drywall. Bright red splash, a jumble of flesh and dark clothing, the stink. I stood back up, weapon held in close to my sternum, pointed forty-five degrees down, still in a shooter’s grip. None of that aiming skyward Hollywood crap you see on TV.

  I moved carefully back through the door, took my left hand off the weapon and pushed at the shattered bathroom door. The body blocked it, and as I was pretty sure the man was down and out, I moved to brace myself to shove it open when I heard something behind me.

  Clap. Clap.

  The serpent coiled, wary.

  A slow, sarcastic clap.

  Crap.

  -2-

  Hoping the clapping meant he held nothing in his hands, he had the drop on me anyway, so I didn’t do anything sudden. I turned around, smoothly, weapon still ready but pointed low.

  He was a suit. Mid twenties, about five ten, dark hair cut short, straight and expensive, the five-o’clock shadow curse of the swarthy on his face and chin. He looked like Agency to me. You know, OGA, the Other Government Agency that everyone likes to talk about in those breathless hushed tones, like they think it’s so cool, like they’re in love with its very existence, they don't even actually use the acronym. C. I. A. I realized it was his cologne I’d smelled, not the dead shooter’s, though that had helped me anyway.

  “Hello, suit,” I said. “What the f– …what do you want?” I’d promised God to try to curb my vulgarities after all the jams He got me out of, and I was a man that tried to keep his promises.

  I took a breath. “Why are you in my house, and why did you just make me kill a man?” I hung on to the tension between us, because I could feel the post-kill nausea trying to make itself known, and if I started on that I’d get the shakes and I’d want a drink and I really needed to stay away from that dark hole. Pharms, I could control.

  No, really.

  But alcohol was a treacherous sneaky thing.

  “Not a man, but don’t worry about her. She’ll keep.” Flippant. Cold son of a bitch. The kind that would expend people like cartridges, like the one on the floor in there dead.

  She? Dammit, had I just killed a woman? I hadn’t had much choice, right?

  “Let’s go upstairs,” he said, jauntily.

  So we did go up, him first, my front sight fixed on his spine, center mass, just out of reach if he suddenly turned and made a grab. He angled right at the top of the stairs, walked through my kitchen, and sat down in my dining room. I reached over and pulled the curtains shut, flipped on the light.

  The suit took out a silver cigarette case, a matching lighter, and lit one. “Smoke?” He took a deep drag.

  “I don’t smoke,” I said automatically.

  “Of course you do. You have a display case of Turkish meerschaum pipes right there, and some of them are used. And a humidor with some nice Cohiba. I was tempted to get one.” He gestured toward the case in my living room.

  “Are you a liar?” I asked him.

  His eyes widened, baffled by the conversational turn. “No. Not the way you mean.”

  “But you’ve lied before?”

  “Sure. Most people have.”

  “I rest my case.”

  He rubbed his eyes, the gesture condescending, like he was dealing with a child. “Okay, I get it,” he sighed theatrically. “Occasional user, no dependencies, right? You quit drinking, quit smoking cigarettes; you’re an exercise junkie now. Nothing but endorphins, meditation, yoga, martial arts, the Quantico Shooting Club, going to church, anything to keep the nightmares and the demons at bay.”

  Showed how much he didn’t know, but that was good, since it meant my little chemical issues were well hidden.

  “I’m surprised you don’t have a dog or a cat,” he went on.

  “I have a serpent.” I barked laughter, a little too loud, on the edge of control. “And I had a dog. But my ex has him for now. I didn’t want to separate hers and mine. But to hell with all that. Start talking.” I sat down, because I was coming down. I really wanted a drink, but I clamped down on that desire.

  I rested the XD on the table, still pointed at his chest, my finger off the trigger but close, very close. The serpent kept trying to wrap around my finger, make me squeeze it.

  He took another drag, then looked at his cigarette, speculatively.

  It occurred to me that he had no ashtray, so I got up, took a cereal bowl out of my cupboard and slid it across my dining room table to him. Since I was up anyway, I also filled a tall glass with orange juice from my fridge. After violent action, the next best thing to alcohol was sugar. I didn’t get the suit any. He had his smoke.

  I sat back down and sipped, feeling the cold sweet run down my insides. It steadied me a bit. I took a deep breath. “Okay, talk.”

  He smiled, smarmy, superior. “Just like that. The secrets of the universe?”

  The serpent and I kicked him under the table, hard, somewhere near his left knee.

  He convulsed forward, dropping the cigarette and clutching for the pain, and I reached over, put my left hand on his head and mashed his face into the table. With my right I used the magazine extension of the automatic to grind out the burning cigarette. “Now you owe me for a new tablecloth.”

  With my weight still on his head, I put the pistol down out of his reach, picked up the still-smoking butt and dropped it in the bowl. I scooped up the gun again.

  “You can’t play conversation control games with me, you stupid suit.” I made that word into an epithet. “I’ve been through every resistance training course, every combat psych and psy-ops and mind-freak exercise, and you are in my house now.” I felt violated, and it fueled me, and what control I had left drained away like water through a colander of pasta.

  The serpent egged me on.

  “MY HOUSE!” The snake and the dexedrine seized control, the worm in my hindbrain that I prayed about and tried so hard to keep caged every day since the IED and the brain damage, my nemesis, that God-damned satanic serpent, forgive me Lord. This idiot, this suit, was a child playing with blasting caps and batteries in a toybox full of explosives
and he might die, right here, right now, for that ignorance and stupidity. I was on the edge of a whiteout, and the snake longed for it, longed to throw itself and me into that bright hot place where all I had to do was destroy. Annihilate every threat, kill everyone that wasn’t on my side, and this fool, the serpent screamed, was NOT ON MY SIDE.

  I wrapped my fingers into his hair and dragged him to his feet, moving around the table. I was a hair under six feet, 200 pounds and muscular, but the beserkergang closing in made me shake him like a rag doll, lifting him onto his toes with one hand. Nose to nose, the muzzle of the XD jammed hard into his solar plexus, I screamed into his face, “I just killed one person, and I just. Might. Kill. You. Too. So. TALK!”

  I threw him into his chair. He almost went over backward, but caught himself, and I stood over him, shaking. We were both shaking, me with barely-suppressed chemical rage, him with dawning fear.

  Finally afraid. “You can’t kill me,” he said, shuddering.

  Wrong thing to say. Oh, so very, very wrong.

  A silent explosion in my head, and the serpent took me, wrapped me up and dragged me under.

  I watched my hand move of its own volition, watched myself as I shot him twice in the chest.

  It felt so good.

  The serpent writhed in ecstasy.

  He gaped at me, then looked down. Touched the entry wounds. Tried to speak. Slumped and was still.

  Crap.

  -3-

  The house was silent as I stood there, and I suddenly felt dizzy, ice cold, drenched in sweat. Numbly I reached over, bumped the thermostat up a couple of degrees, then leaned against the wall, sweating. Listened to the silence. Mostly silence. The serpent still gibbered in my hindbrain. Too many chemicals, I knew. Steroids and painkillers and speed, and they had betrayed me this time.

  But I heard something else. A rushing sound, not the forced air of the heating system either. Water. It sounded like a shower. It sounded like the shower in the basement was on. Had a pipe broken? Did one of my rounds damage something?