The Dark River fr-2

by John Twelve Hawks

  “That’s correct. Thank you.”

  Boone pulled on his jacket and got out of the helicopter. The two mercenaries and the pilot stood on the tarmac, smoking cigarettes and talking about job offers in Moscow. During the last three hours, everyone had been waiting at a small airfield outside of Killarney. It was late in the afternoon, and the amateur pilots who had practiced their crosswind landings had tied down their planes and driven home. The airfield was in the middle of the Irish countryside, surrounded by fenced-in pasture. Sheep grazed on the north side of the field; dairy cattle were south of the Quonset huts. There was a pleasant smell of cut grass in the air.

  A small pickup with a steel shell covering the truck bed was parked about two hundred yards away, directly inside the entrance gate. Mr. Harkness got out of the truck as Boone walked across the tarmac. Boone had met the retired zookeeper in Prague when they had captured, interrogated, and killed Maya’s father. The old man had pale skin and bad teeth. He wore a tweed sports coat and a stained regimental tie.

  Boone had hired and supervised a great many mercenaries, but Harkness made him uncomfortable. The old man seemed to enjoy handling the splicers. It was his job, of course. But Harkness got excited when he talked about these genetic distortions created by the Brethren’s research scientists. He was a man without power who now controlled something that was highly dangerous. Boone always felt as if he were dealing with a beggar who was juggling a live grenade.

  “Good evening, Mr. Boone. A pleasure to meet you again.” Harkness bobbed his head up and down respectfully.

  “Any problems at the Dublin Airport?”

  “No, sir. All the papers were stamped and signed properly by our friends at the Dublin Zoo. Customs didn’t even look in the cages.”

  “Were there any injuries during transit?”

  “Every specimen looks healthy. You want to see for yourself?”

  Boone was silent while Harkness opened up the back of the truck’s shell. Four plastic cargo containers-the size of airplane dog carriers-were in back. The airholes were covered with a thick wire mesh, but all four boxes emitted a foul odor of urine and rotten food.

  “I fed them upon arrival at the airport, but that was all. Hunger is always best for what they might have to do.”

  Harkness slapped the flat of his hand on the top of a container. A raspy barking noise came from within the box, and the three other splicers answered. The sheep grazing in the nearby field heard the sound. They bleated and ran in the opposite direction.

  “Nasty creatures,” Harkness said, showing his stained teeth.

  “Do they ever fight one another?”

  “Not often. These animals are genetically engineered to attack, but they have the same general characteristics of their species. This one in the green carrier is the captain and the other three are his junior officers. You don’t attack your leader unless you know you can kill him.”

  Boone paused and looked straight at Harkness. “And you can handle them?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve got some heavy pincers in the truck and an electric cattle prod. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “What happens after we let them out?”

  “Well, Mr. Boone…” Harkness looked down at his shoes. “A shotgun is the best tool once they’ve done their job.”

  Both men stopped talking when a second helicopter approached from the east. The chopper circled the airfield and then settled onto the grass. Boone left Harkness and walked across the tarmac to the new arrivals. The side door opened, a mercenary lowered a short ladder, and Michael Corrigan appeared in the doorway. “Good afternoon!” he said cheerfully.

  Boone still hadn’t decided if he should call the Traveler Michael or Mr. Corrigan. He nodded politely. “How was the flight?”

  “No problem at all. Are you ready to go, Boone?”

  Yes, they were ready. But it bothered Boone that someone other than General Nash could ask that question. “I think we should wait until night,” he said. “It’s easier to find a target when they’re inside a building.”

  AFTER A LIGHT supper of lentil soup and crackers, the Poor Clares left the warmth of the cooking hut and went down to the chapel. Alice followed them. Since Maya had left the island, the little girl had resumed her self-imposed silence, but she seemed to enjoy hearing the prayers sung in Latin. Sometimes her lips moved as if she were singing along with the nuns in her mind. Kyrie eleison. Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy on us all.

  Vicki stayed behind to wash the dishes. Sometime after they’d gone, she realized that Alice had left her jacket beneath the bench near the front door. The wind had picked up again, blowing from the east, and it would be cold in the chapel. Leaving the dishes in the stone sink, Vicki grabbed the child’s jacket and hurried outside.

  The island was a closed world. Once you hiked around it a few times, you realized that the only way to break free of this particular reality was to look upward at the heavens. In Los Angeles, a smudged layer of smog concealed most of the stars, but the air was clean above the island. Standing near the cooking hut, Vicki looked up at the sliver of a new moon and the luminous dust of the Milky Way. She could hear the distant cry of a seabird that was answered by another.

  Four red lights appeared in the east; they were like twin sets of headlights, drifting through the night sky. Airplanes, she thought. No, it’s two helicopters. Within a few seconds, Vicki realized what was about to happen. She had been at the church compound northwest of Los Angeles when the Tabula had attacked the same way.

  Trying not to stumble over the rough chunks of limestone, she hurried down to the lower ledge and entered the boat-shaped chapel. The singing stopped immediately when she slammed open the oak door. Alice stood up and glanced around the narrow room.

  “The Tabula are coming in two helicopters,” Vicki said. “You need to get out of here and hide.”

  Sister Maura looked terrified. “Where? In the storage hut with Matthew?”

  “Take them to the hermit’s cave, Alice. Can you find it in the dark?”

  The little girl nodded. She took Sister Joan’s hand and pulled the cook toward the doorway.

  “What about you, Vicki?”

  “I’ll join you there. First I need to make sure that the Traveler is safe.”

  Alice stared at Vicki for few seconds and then she was gone, leading the nuns past the chapel and into the night. Vicki returned to the middle ledge and saw that the helicopters were much closer now-the red safety lights hovering over the island like malevolent spirits. She could hear the dull thump-thump-thump of the revolving blades pushing the air.

  Inside the storage hut, she lit a candle and pulled up the trapdoor. Vicki almost believed that Matthew Corrigan could sense the approaching danger. Perhaps the Light would return to his body and she would find Gabriel’s father sitting up in his tomb. Once the trapdoor was open it took her only a few seconds to climb down the stairs and see that the Traveler was still motionless beneath the thin muslin sheet.

  Quickly, she returned upstairs, lowered the trapdoor, and covered it with a plastic cloth. She placed an old outboard motor on the cloth, and then scattered around a few tools as if someone were trying to repair it. “Protect your servant Matthew,” she prayed. “Please save him from destruction.”

  That was all she could do. It was time to join the others in the cave. But when she got outside she saw flashlight beams on the upper ledge and the dark shapes of Tabula mercenaries silhouetted against the stars. Vicki slipped back into the storage hut and shoved the steel crossbar into its holding bracket. She had told Maya that she would protect the Traveler. It was a promise. An obligation. The Harlequin meaning of that word came to her with a terrible force as she pushed a heavy storage container up against the oak door.

  More than a hundred years ago, a Harlequin named Lion of the Temple had been captured, tortured, and murdered alongside the Prophet, Isaac T. Jones. Vicki and a small group within her church believed that they had never repaid this sacrifice. Why had
God brought Maya and Gabriel into her life? Why had she ended up on this island, guarding a Traveler? Debt Not Paid, she thought. Debt Not Paid.

  THREE OF THE beehive huts were empty, but the fourth hut was locked and the mercenaries hadn’t been able to force open the door. Before coming to Skellig Columba, Boone had read all the available data on the island and knew that the ancient buildings had heavy stone walls. The walls made it difficult to use an infrared scanner, so Boone’s team had brought along a portable backscatter device.

  When the two helicopters had touched down on the island, everyone had jumped out with a desire to capture or destroy. Now this aggressive impulse had melted away. The armed men spoke in low voices as their flashlight beams cut across the rocky landscape. Two men came down the slope with the equipment from the helicopter. One part of the backscatter device looked like a refractor telescope on a tripod. It shot X-rays through the target, and a small parabolic dish captured the resulting photons.

  Hospital X-ray machines worked on the principle that objects with a greater density absorbed more X-rays than objects with a lesser density. The backscatter device worked because X-ray photons moved in a different way through various kinds of materials. Substances with lower atomic numbers-like human flesh-created a different image than plastic or steel. The citizens living within the Vast Machine didn’t realize that backscatter devices were hidden throughout major airports and that security personnel were peering beneath the clothes of passengers.

  Michael Corrigan came up from the chapel with two mercenaries. He was wearing a warm-up jacket and running shoes, as if he were going to jog around the island. “No one is in the chapel, Boone. What about this building?”

  “We’re about to find out.” Boone attached his laptop computer to the backscatter receiver, turned on the device, and sat down on a chunk of limestone. Michael and a few other men stood behind them. It took a few seconds for the gray-and-white backscatter image to appear. A woman was inside the storage hut stacking boxes against the door. It’s not one of the Poor Clares, Boone thought. The backscatter would have displayed a shadowy hint of the nun’s robes.

  “Take a look,” Boone said to Michael. “There’s one person in the building. A woman. Right now she’s blocking the doorway.”

  Michael looked angry. “What about my father? You told me that either Gabriel or my father was on this island.”

  “That was the information I received,” Boone said. He rotated the image to check different angles of the room. “This could be Maya. She’s the Harlequin who was guarding your brother in New York and-”

  “I know who she is,” Michael said. “Don’t forget, I saw her the night she attacked the research center.”

  “Perhaps we can question her.”

  “She’ll kill your men and kill herself unless we can force her out of the building. Ask Mr. Harkness to come down with the splicers.”

  Boone tried not to sound annoyed. “It’s not necessary at this point.”

  “I’ll decide what’s necessary, Boone. I did some research before Mrs. Brewster and I agreed to this operation. These old buildings have incredibly thick walls. That’s why I wanted Mr. Harkness to be part of the team.”

  WHEN THE MEDIEVAL monks had piled up stones to construct each building, they had left a few gaps in the upper walls to let out smoke. Many years later, these airholes had been turned into windows on the top floor of the storage hut. The windows were between twelve and sixteen inches in diameter. Even if the men from the helicopter smashed the glass, they wouldn’t be able to crawl inside.

  Standing in the shadows, Vicki heard the door handle rattle, and someone hammered his fist on the door. Silence. Then there was a loud slamming sound. The oak door vibrated and strained against the heavy steel crossbar, but the brackets were cemented into the walls. Vicki remembered hearing the nuns talk about the Viking raids on the Irish monasteries during the twelfth century. If the monks couldn’t flee into the countryside, they would retreat into a stone tower with their gold crosses and jeweled reliquaries. They would pray-and wait-as the Norsemen tried to break in.

  Vicki pushed more storage containers over to the door and stacked them up on top of one another. The pounding started again and then stopped. She walked over to the base of the stairs and saw a flashlight beam jabbing through one of the little round windows on the upper floor.

  In his letter from Meridian, Mississippi, Isaac Jones had told the faithful to Look into yourself and find the well that will never go dry. Our hearts overflow with bravery and love….

  Just a few months ago, Vicki stood in the Los Angeles airport-a church girl feeling timid and scared as she waited to meet a Harlequin. She had been tested many times since that first moment, but had never run away. Isaac Jones was right. The bravery had always been within her.

  A sharp cracking sound came from upstairs as someone shattered a window. Shards of broken glass fell onto the floor. Can they get in? Vicki thought. No, only a child could crawl through that opening. She waited for the sound of a gunshot or an explosion. Instead she heard a raspy screech that sounded like a bird being killed.

  “God save me. Please, save me…” Vicki whispered. She searched the room for a weapon and found two fishing rods, a bag of cement, and an empty fuel can. Frantically, she pushed these useless objects to one side and discovered some garden tools stacked against the wall. At the bottom of the pile was a mud-crusted shovel.

  Vicki heard a low grunting sound and retreated into a corner. There was a figure on the staircase-a squat little dwarf with a potbelly and broad shoulders. The dwarf got halfway down the stairs and then turned his face in her direction. That was when she realized that it wasn’t a human at all, but some kind of an animal with a dog’s black muzzle.

  Shrieking and chattering, the animal leaped over the staircase banister and ran toward her. Vicki raised the shovel up to her shoulder. When the animal jumped from the top of a carrying case, she swung her weapon as hard as she could-striking it in the middle of its chest. The animal fell back onto the floor, but it scrabbled to its feet immediately and leaped forward, grabbing her legs with five-fingered hands.

  Vicki jabbed the shovel downward and the tip hit the creature’s neck. Shrieks filled the room as she began using the shovel like a club, swinging it down again and again. Finally the animal rolled over on its back and bared its teeth. Blood trickled out of its mouth and it moved its arms stiffly. The animal tried to get up, but she kept hitting it with the shovel. Finally, it stopped moving. Dead.

  Two of the candles had fallen over and sputtered out. Vicki picked up the only candle still burning and examined her attacker. She was surprised to discover that it was a small baboon with yellowish-brown fur. The monkey had cheek pouches, a long, hairless snout, and powerful arms and legs. Its close-set eyes were still open, and it looked as if the dead creature were glaring at her.

  Vicki remembered Hollis talking about the animals that attacked him in his Los Angeles home. This was the same kind of thing. Hollis had called the animals…splicers. The baboon’s chromosomes had been manipulated and spliced together by the Tabula scientists, creating a genetic hybrid whose only desire was to attack and kill.

  The men outside smashed a second upstairs window. Vicki held the shovel with two hands and moved quietly around the room. Her left leg was bleeding from a cut. Blood dripped from the cuffs of her pants, and her shoes smeared it across the floor. For a minute or so nothing happened; then the light from the single candle flickered slightly and three splicers came down the stairs. They stopped, sniffed the air, and the leader made a raspy barking sound.

  There were too many of them and they were too strong. Vicki knew that she was going to die. Thoughts appeared in her mind like photographs in an old scrapbook-her mother, school, and friends-so many things that had once seemed so important were already fading away. Her clearest memory was of Hollis, and Vicki felt a deep sadness that she would never see him again. I love you, she thought. Know this forever. My love will
never be destroyed.

  The splicers smelled her blood. They leaped off the staircase and came toward her at a furious speed. The animals were shrieking and the sound filled the little room. Their sharp teeth reminded her of wolves. No chance, Vicki thought. No chance at all. But she raised the shovel and met the attack.

  26

  Sophia Briggs had told Gabriel that every living thing contained an eternal, indestructible energy called the Light. When people died, their Light returned to the energy that was present throughout the universe. But only Travelers were able to send their Light to different realms and then return to their living bodies.

  The six different realms, as Sophia explained it, were parallel worlds separated by a series of barriers made of water, earth, fire, and air. Gabriel had found the different passageways through each barrier when he first learned how to cross over. And now, while his body remained in the back room of a Camden Market drum shop, he felt as if he were floating through space, surrounded by an infinite darkness. Gabriel thought about his father, and he suddenly felt as if he were propelled forward into the unknown, guided by the intensity of his desire to find this one person.

  THE FLOATING SENSATION vanished; he felt wet dirt and sharp pieces of gravel under his hands. Opening his eyes, he saw that he was lying on his back a few feet away from a large river.

  He got up quickly and looked around him for any sign of danger. He was standing on a muddy slope littered with wrecked automobiles and rusty pieces of machinery. The blackened ruins of several buildings were twenty feet above him, up on the edge of the riverbank. Gabriel wasn’t sure if it was day or night, because the sky was covered with a layer of yellowish-gray clouds that occasionally broke apart to show a lighter shade of ash gray. He had seen clouds like this a few times in Los Angeles when the smoke from a hillside brushfire had combined with air pollution to blot out the sun.

  A collapsed bridge was a half mile upriver. It looked as if the structure had been blown up with explosives or bombed from the sky. Brick pilings and two graceful arches remained in the water. They held up twisted girders and the fragment of a road.