Delta Green: Strange Authorities
Page 34
Lepus turned away, started running once more. He ran and ran and did not look at the thing on the temple.
Until it roared. Then Lepus looked.
It was huge, its skin little more than blood-red muscle tissue. Where its face might have been there was a hideous, extended organ that might have been a tongue or an arm or something else entirely. The organ flexed freely, like an elephant’s trunk, casually smashing portions of the temple. Lepus felt a warm sensation on his legs and was vaguely aware that he’d pissed himself. He thought he might just stand here forever, staring at this awesome God—for if he knew nothing else, he knew he was in the presence of a strange and terrible deity.
Then the world exploded.
The pair of f-4 Phantom jets came by so fast that Lepus didn’t even see them, though he heard them wailing through the air perhaps a thousand feet off the ground. He barely caught sight of the whoosh of smoke from the missiles as they deployed and struck the temple.
But the explosion—that he could see just fine.
The fireball was immense; it was given scale by the living, screaming thing that was at the center of it. The temple blew into billions of pieces, rubble and slivers of rock radiating out. Lepus hit the ground. The foliage encircling the grassy clearing was torn to shreds. The grass caught fire as great arcs of flame whoomped out from the center of the blast. The heat was incredible. The sound was deafening. The force was staggering.
The beast was still alive.
The missiles must have struck it dead on. It should have been atomized. It was burning, sure, but if the missiles hadn’t taken it out right from the start, Lepus felt little hope that fire would do the trick now.
Worse, whatever force had held the beast in check seemed to have been destroyed by the blast. The thing was free. Its vast legs swung out over the edge of the temple and into the flaming fury of the high grass. It roared and trumpeted, free of its prison.
The warm sensation on his legs brought him back to reality. He’d pissed himself, again, standing in an examination room beneath OUTLOOK’s Facility B on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, flanked by his men, thirty years distant from the horror in Cambodia that was somehow just as fresh and as present as it could be. He smelled the ozone, felt the power coming from the man in the bed, heard the strange music whispering at the edges of his hearing.
“Sir?” one of his men said, glancing at the stain on Lepus’s pants.
“Evacuate,” he whispered, so low no one could hear him.
“Sir?”
“Evacuate,” he said, louder now. “Evacuate! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!” he screamed, cold sweat pouring over his pale face, spittle flying from his gold-and-white teeth.
“What about them, sir?” the guard said, nodding at the agents clustered around the bed.
“FUCK THEM! GO! GO! GO!” Lepus turned and shoved his men forward towards the door, and they ran from the room, hauling ass down the hall.
The agents looked at each other, confused and slightly dazed from the strange sensation pouring off David Nells.
“What the hell was that all about?” Abe said shakily.
“He’s got the right idea,” James said. “Let’s go.”
“David?” Stephanie said guardedly to the smiling man in the bed.
He looked up at her. “Go on. You’ve freed me. Daddy’s coming home now.”
“Are you sure?” she said, taking his hand for a moment. His skin no longer felt human, and there was a strange pulsing coming from deep within his tissues. He was transforming, being born anew. The man she’d known was fast receding, the evolving look in his eyes chronicling his departure and the arrival of something else.
“Go,” he said, his voice resonating strangely in the room. The walls shimmered, changing color and composition and dimension, black geometric shapes flickering in and out, the twinkling lights of stars manifesting through the plaster and tile. “Thank you.”
“Come on,” James said fiercely, pulling at her shoulder. Stephanie backed away slowly, the thing that used to be David Foster Nells watching her placidly, and then the group turned and fled.
They ran right into a dream. Emerging from the exam room, they found themselves in the cargo compartment of a large transport plane, mostly empty. The noise of the twin engines was all around them, but it was overpowered by the rush of wind from the open cargo door.
A Chinese woman in an unfamiliar uniform was pulling a parachute pack onto her back. She looked at them and smiled, then jumped out the open door and into the dark clouds beyond.
“What the fuck?” Abe said as they looked around, disoriented.
James spotted a door into the main compartment and hurried towards it. The others followed his lead.
They emerged into the cabin, a scene of carnage. There was a dead and bloody man lying in the aisle, dressed in an Army uniform. A splash of blood and brain on the ceiling towards the front was dripping down onto another soldier, lying sprawled over the cushioned seats. Closer to the rear was a clot of women in saffron robes, dead from gunshot wounds. Standing in their midst was a third man, also bloody, wearing a white suit. He turned to face them.
“Hello again, Captain,” Stephen Alzis said. “I didn’t expect to see you here, but that’s causality for you. Shake it up a little and you surprise even yourself.”
“What the hell’s going on, Alzis?” James said tensely. The others gathered around him, confused; they had no idea who the man in the white suit was.
“Just a little family reunion. You shouldn’t wait around. It takes a lot of energy to birth a God. Tends to be a little destructive.”
“Are we even, Alzis?”
“We’re even, Captain. You’ve done remarkably well. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of your little situation when I’m done here.”
“How do we get back?”
Alzis shrugged. “Use the exit, I suppose.” He turned away and stepped out to the aisle; as he did, he vanished into thin air.
James thought for a moment, then he spun around. “Go back!” he said. “Find parachutes! Now!”
It was night on Vieques Island. Agent Nolan sat in the driver’s seat of the Range Rover, fidgeting. A few minutes ago, klaxons had begun sounding at OUTLOOK Group. He almost started driving then and there, but decided against it. He was waiting for either a flare or the sound of gunshots. If he went too soon, he could end up dead or captured before the team was even outside.
Then he heard a sound, somewhere overhead. It was a low thrumming noise, getting closer. He stepped out of the vehicle for a moment and looked up into the night sky.
The first parachute opened, and then four more over the next minute. Five people were swinging down out of the clouds towards Sun Bay.
What the hell? he thought.
Then he saw the plane.
Andrew Nells’ twin-prop c-46a Commando “Bathing Beauty” broke through the clouds, its twin Pratt & Whitney engines whirring into the night. It sped down at a steep angle, and within a minute it reached its destination.
OUTLOOK Group.
The plane slammed sharply into the rear of the main building’s roof, erupting in flames, and the wreckage flipped forward, slapping upside-down onto the bulk of the structure. Then there was an explosion and the walls blew out in flaming chunks, mowing down smaller buildings nearby. A massive fireball emerged, smoke and debris billowing upward, and then the basements collapsed and there was a rush of air that fed the flames. Just offshore, a roiling rush of escaping wind vomited up from the waste pipe. On the grounds of OUTLOOK, people were running and vehicles were starting up. Across Camp Garcia, lights went on and emergency vehicles rolled out, lights and sirens blaring.
Nolan stared, incredulous. “Fuck,” he whispered.
In Sun Bay, five parachutes collapsed and spread on the surface of the water. James and Jean freed themselves immediately—James releasing the parachute pack, Jean simply ripping out of it—and swam around, helping to free the others as soon as they could find them.<
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Within a few minutes, the five agents staggered to shore. James and Stephanie held hands. They stood on the sand and silently watched the inferno, gawking tourists in some strange and alien land.
Epilogue
∞
There’s a room as big as all outdoors. I rise from the still body in the bed and stride forward purposefully, embracing my future. As I near the far wall, the plaster ripples and parts like a curtain of obedient water.
Beyond? Beyond is everything. The cosmos in its strange null entirety, the mad planets whirring in space, the expansion and contraction of the universe, the dancers at the soul of time, the lint in the giant’s navel.
I step through the wall, and it all starts to happen. This is the end and the beginning.
Acknowledgements
I relied on a number of people and works in the course of writing The Rules of Engagement, and gratefully enumerate them here. Any strengths of verisimilitude this novel achieved is due to them, whilst any failings of same should be chalked up to my authorial hand-waving.
The chapter titles all consist of phrases from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, a poem of remarkably rich and varied language; flitting through it is rather like casting the I Ching. Dennis Detwiller filled the role of first reader and, as always, my invaluable idea sounding board, as well as creating a number of the characters and organizations seen herein: Club Apocalypse, Stephen Alzis, and Belial; OUTLOOK Group, Dr. John Baker, Dr. Bart Strysik, and Dr. Albert Yrjo; and the Phenomen-X characters Stuart Prendergast, Tommy Prendergast, Robert Hoggard, David Carmichael, and Allen Eddington; all originally appeared in Pagan Publishing’s roleplaying game sourcebooks Delta Green and Delta Green: Countdown. Scott Glancy, Esq., served as a reservoir of intelligence-community and federal law-enforcement lore, and created the characters Joseph Camp, Matthew Carpenter (referred to herein as Agent Adam), Reinhard Galt, Forrest James, Greg Mason, and Jean Qualls for Pagan’s roleplaying game sourcebook Delta Green. Robert McLaughlin created the character Harley Patton for Delta Green. Dr. Graeme Price hypothesized the lipopolysaccharide neo-tissue treatment, the leucopararosaniline spray technique, and credibility-checked the medical scenes in chapter five; he also created Dr. Grant Emerson for Delta Green: Countdown. John H. Crowe, III, provided information on civilian law enforcement, the military, the c-46a Commando, Southeast Asian geography, and firearms. Janet Wray of the Fort Leavenworth Public Affairs Office supplied information on the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks and generously answered many, many questions. Damon Lipinski did the research for Greg Mason’s photography equipment and darkroom shopping trip. Shane Ivey and Steve Keck offered information on Wackenhut Corporation. Rebecca Strong and Michael Tice provided some Los Angeles local color. Evan Ferguson kindly supplied first-hand Vieques Island knowledge and photographs (Viva Vieques Libre, Evan!). Eleanor (Em) Frothingham, Jenny Scott, Kim Stewart, and Allan & Karen Tynes all gave support and encouragement. Em also explained the difference between a gaffer and an electrician and consulted on SCUBA diving. Melissa Reizian Frank’s friendly cat Clotho appeared in the role of Stephanie Park’s friendly cat Clotho. The National Weather Service’s assorted websites provided meteorological data for the dates and places cited in the story. The websites welcome.topuertorico.org and www.bolack.com offered tourist information for Puerto Rico. The website www.biobay.com provided material on Vieques Island’s bioluminescent bays. Brian Appleton, Adam Scott Glancy, Heather Hudson, Shane Ivey, and John Nephew read the manuscript and pro-vided helpful comments. Ted Arlauskas, Rob Heinsoo, and Chris Womack caught some errors in the limited-edition printing that I corrected for this edition. A Rand McNally Atlas was wantonly marked up to determine the fictional locales of the story (Bountin, Maryland and Groversville/Promise, Tennessee). Reference works consulted include Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage, Revised Edition, by Norman Polmar & Thomas B. Allen (New York: Random House, 1998) [useful for all kinds of intelligence research]; The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence by Victor Marchetti & John D. Marks (New York: Dell, 1980) [provided information on Civil Air Transport and the CIA’s China/Tibet/Taiwan work in the 1950s–60s, and also described the historical incident on which this novel’s scene of the botched assassination of PARIAH was loosely based]; The New York Public Library American History Desk Reference (New York: Macmillan, 1997); Bigger Secrets by William Poundstone (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986) [if you’re curious about the reference to Disneyland’s Club 33, read this book]; The Encyclopedia of World Air Power (New York: Crescent Books, 1986) [consulted for the Commando, naturally]; You Are Going To Prison by Jim Hogshire (Port Townsend, Washington: Loompanics, 1994) [could also be called Prison for Dummies—it’s sort of a user’s manual for arrest, sentencing, and incarceration]; The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison by Pete Earley (New York: Bantam Books, 1993) [Earley’s book deals with the federal civilian prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, not the Fort Leavenworth USDB, but it still provided critical insight into life behind bars]; Military Small Arms of the 20th Century 6th Edition by Ian V. Hogg and John Weeks (Northbrook, Illinois: DBI Books, Inc.) [guns, guns, guns]; and “Life Inside Leavenworth” by SSgt. Alan Moore in Soldiers magazine, September, 1997 [this set of articles dealt directly with the USDB]. The vast majority of this novel was written in February and March of 1999 at the College Inn Pub in Seattle’s University District. Much like the narrator’s childhood home in Lovecraft’s short story “The Outsider,” the Pub is dim, subterranean, windowless, and affords no measurable sense of time’s passing; unlike its literary counterpart, however, the Pub’s incomparable nachos are half price on Mondays. When in Memphis dine at Payne’s on Lamar, and try their smoked sausage. If you liked this book, please hand it to a friend; if you really liked this book, write your name in it first.
About the Author
John Scott Tynes is an award-winning game designer and writer in Seattle. He currently designs Xbox 360 videogames for Microsoft Studios. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of Pagan Publishing and Armitage House and his best-known projects include Unknown Armies, Puppetland, Delta Green, The Unspeakable Oath, and Call of Cthulhu D20. He has served as a film critic, videogame critic, graphic designer, web designer, videographer, and screenwriter. His film The Yellow Sign is available on DVD from Lurker Films and his novel Delta Green: The Rules of Engagement litters the shelves of used-book stores worldwide. He is very fortunate to have married the love of his life, Jenny, and to have a brilliant daughter, Vivian. He smokes a pipe and drinks brandy from a snifter because by God, someone should.
Copyright
Delta Green: Strange Authorities © 2012 John Scott Tynes. “Final Report” © 1994 John Scott Tynes. “The Corn King” © 2001 John Scott Tynes. “My Father’s Son” © 1997 John Scott Tynes. “The Dark Above” © 1997 John Scott Tynes. “The Rules of Engagement” © 1999 John Scott Tynes. “Foreword” by Kenneth Hite, © 2012. Cover illustration by Dennis Detwiller, © 2012. Illustration of the author by Toren Atkinson, © 2012. Published by arrangement with the Delta Green Partnership. The intellectual property known as Delta Green is ™ and © The Delta Green Partnership, who has licensed its use in this volume. Quotations from other sources are © by their respective authors. All rights reserved worldwide.
Published March 2012 by Arc Dream Publishing
12215 Highway 11, Chelsea, AL 35043, USA
www.arcdream.com
ISBN 978-0-9853175-1-5 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-9853175-0-8 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-9853175-2-2 (ebook)
Table of Contents
Dedication
Contents
Foreword
The Corn King
Final Report
My Father’s Son
The Dark Above
The Rules of Engagement
Prologue
Chapter One: The Violet Hour
Interlude: Thirty Six Fifty and a Wake-Up
Chapter Two: The Awful Daring
Chapter Three: The Lady of Situat
ions
Interlude: Thirty Four Forty Three and a Wake-Up
Chapter Four: The Profit and Loss
Chapter Five: The White Road
Interlude: Thirty Three Thirteen and a Wake-Up
Chapter Six: The Expected Guest
Chapter Seven: The Sound of Horns and Motors
Chapter Eight: The World Pursues
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright