Doomsday Exam [Bureau 13 #2]

by Nick Pollotta

  “Huh?” I demanded.

  Looking confused, Mindy added, “But the scale only goes to ten!”

  “Not ours,” the professor said, reading while she talked.

  “So what the hell is an eleven?” I demanded, pulling out my Magnum hand. When in doubt, grab a weapon, that was my motto.

  With a gasp, the professor dropped the paper. I made a snatch, but the security fax was already blank.

  “Jailbreak,” she breathed.

  FOUR

  Everybody was out of their seats and moving before the team even knew what they were doing. Typical.

  “Instructions?” Mindy asked, sword unsheathed.

  Swallowing the last mouthful of popcorn, Raul shrugged, “Don't ask me.”

  “Professor, the students!” I cried.

  With a curse, Prof. Burton swiveled to the control panel, flipped a gangbar, pressed three buttons and grabbed a microphone. On the theatre screen, lights brightened Hell House and blinking markers appeared on the wooden floor. The student team dropped into a defensive formation and waited for the expected attack.

  “This is an Alpha One Emergency,” Burton intoned. “This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill! Cancel command Egress.”

  “Barnum,” Ken Saunders answered, giving the acknowledgement code. “What's the situation, sir?”

  “Steve McQueen,” the professor replied.

  Her face bisected by the edge of the screen, Katrina Somers gasped. “A great escape?”

  “No, my dear,” Sir Reginald primly, taking a pinch of snuff. “Papillion is a mass escape.”

  “Papillion is a single escape, fool!” Patricia snapped rudely. The gypsy turned to directly face the hidden video camera. Now how did she know where it was? “What are your orders, Prof. Burton?”

  “Hit the arms locker,” the professor ordered. “Take every weapon you can carry. Hell House has been deactivated. Git!”

  They got. Fast.

  “How long till the prisoners break out of the hut?” I asked, as the professor clicked a switch and the theatre screen darkened to its former featureless silvery white.

  Burton glanced at her wrist and a watch appeared. “Roughly six minutes. I only hope Warden Lapin and the warehouse can hold ‘em. I'm calling Gordon at HQ, alerting General McAdams and the Phoenix Team, activating the nuclear fail-safe and moving the exit portal.”

  “To where?” Jessica asked, then added. “Here?”

  “Yes,” the professor said gesturing at the floor. “Right here in this room.”

  Reaching out, I touched her arm. “Sir, we are yours to command.”

  The professor nodded. “Great. Get out of this booth and stay out of my way. Don't let anything into this building, and pray.”

  “Done.”

  Always in a rush, Mindy was already dashing down the colonnade. “Come on, folks! Let's strip the van and get ready for a siege!”

  “Wait!” I shouted, reaching for my wallet. Rummaging about in the leather fold, I unearthed a small plastic envelope and ripped it open to offer a single orange pill to every member of my team. As each swallowed, they blurred out of vision and departed moving at quadruple normal speed.

  Now we had twenty-four minutes, and counting.

  In a shower of glass, our RV bounded into the lobby of Base Command and screeched to a halt on the smooth terrazzo floor in front of the reception desk. The unflappable Mrs. Cunningham didn't blink an eye at our superspeed intrusion. At a snail's pace, she was throwing switches on an angled control board next to a hooded monitor. Steel shutters leisurely rumbled into position over the door and gaping hole where the front window had just been located, sealing us inside.

  Grinding gears, I moved the RV further into the lobby. Chipping paint and plaster off the walls, I maneuvered its tail into a hallway intersection so that the missile pod on the roof of the van could have a clear field of fire at the front, back and side doors.

  Going to a supply locker in the RV, Jessica began tossing out bits and pieces of bodyarmor, while George and Mindy carried out the weapons locker and ammo trunk. The trunk had been bolted to the floor, but Ms. Jennings indestructible sword made short work of that minor obstruction.

  My team was already wearing torso armor, molded to our individual contours. But this was no time for half way measures, so we also strapped steel greaves on our shins and thighs, titanium vanbraces to our arms, added a magical zero-weight flak jacket over our personnel armor and topped off the arrangement with a Bureau 13 combat helmet.

  Absolutely SOTA for at least another week, the helmet provided full head coverage, was proof against a .50 AP round, and 20,000 volts of electricity. They also had built-in scrambled radios linked together and the visors were shatterproof, infrared sensitive and Kirlian positive. They even came with a Killjoy sensor that made the helmets violently explode if fully inserted into anything's mouth. Better dead than dinner, I always say.

  Just then a squad of people in similar combat armor walked by in exaggerated slowness, the distortion due to our accelerated speed. Telepathically, Jess asked what they were doing and a man mentally replied they were going to establish a sandbag redoubt on the roof. Other folks were moving like molasses in the building, closing and locking doors, setting traps and erecting machine-gun nests. Faintly from outside, I could hear the thrum of helicopters rotors overhead.

  Easing a clip into her NATO 10mm Falcon, Mrs. Cunningham sluggishly suggested parking cars outside the doorways as additional protection. But I vetoed that idea. It would designate this location as someplace special, and that we did not want to do at any cost. The boojums couldn't attack if they did not know we were here.

  At max velocity, Mindy began loading our missile pod with the six Amsterdam Mark IV rockets. In the past, we normally only traveled with them on a combat assignment. But after an embarrassing incident in upstate New York, we don't drive to the local grocery store without those babies on board. Sure were a big help in getting a parking spot on those busy holiday weekends.

  Meanwhile, Raul had used his wand to tack-weld every window shutter closed, and our trapster supreme, George was rigging a Claymore mine to the external door. Base Command was starting to resemble a posh hotel in downtown Beirut.

  I debated working on the elevator, but according to Cunningham it was already such a deathtrap I couldn't think of anything more to add to its lethal array.

  From the weapons cache of the building, Jessica and I primed a M-1A flamethrower and stacked a pile of HE shells next to a 75mm recoilless rifle. A delightful find was a case of plastic spray seltzer bottles filled with Holy Water. Neat! An arbalest would have been nice, but we only found the six-foot long arrows. There was no sign of the giant crossbow. If I survived this thing, there was going to be a nasty letter sent to Supply & Requisition.

  Pausing a moment to rest, I saw Raul tearfully unleash Amigo, our pet lizard who lived in the RV, and dispatch him to guard the basement. With a flick of his tiny forked tongue, the magical collar around his neck glowed with power and Amigo was gone. I wished him luck. Sure hoped I would see the little suitcase again.

  At about this point, the speed pills wore off and reality blurred, then clarified, as we returned to normal. Ugh. My head hurt, my mouth was dry and I was starving. With Father Donaher on vacation, Jessica took over as medic and distributed canteens of water, cold sandwiches, Strength potions, Healing potions and antacids. Nothing worse on the mind and body than life in the fast lane. Except visiting my in-laws. They were such noisy people.

  Exiting the van, Raul was armed for warfare with a bulging pouch draped over both shoulders, a copper bracelet on both wrists, a necklace and two glowing earrings. I could only hope those were all weapons. Either that or he had more in the closet than just a pile of bones named McCoy.

  Seeing to my own weapons, I loaded both of my .357 Magnums, took a 9mm Uzi sub-machine gun and a bag of mixed grenades. Small and squat, the Uzi was no big-punch weapon, nor did it have excessive range or pene
tration. However, it was almost 100% reliable. I once saw a demonstration where a sergeant opened the weapon, poured in a full bottle of pancake syrup, closed the breech, slapped in a magazine and fire off the full clip without a single misfire. It wouldn't jam, no pun intended. That nifty factor alone was often more important in saving your butt than caliber, distance or foot-pounds combined.

  Also, I slid sweatbands on my wrists. There wasn't anything more embarrassing that dying because you dropped a weapon in the middle of a firefight. Or so I had been sheepishly told by several clumsy ghosts.

  Waddling into view, George had on so much stuff strapped to his body, I could barley see him under everything. Mindy naturally had her sword, but also a bandoleer of throwing knives, plus a bow and quiver of arrows. Jessica had the van, a taser in her belt, a Mac-10 spray-n-pray machine pistol, and on the seat beside her was a 12 gauge Remington shotgun normally reserved for Father Donaher.

  God, I wish we had some real weapons with us.

  Scratching away, as Raul always did when near major evil, our mage took a position in the right corridor, Mindy the left, George covered the rear entrance, and I took the front. Situated in the middle, Jess stayed as our anchor in the van to operate the missile pod and other weapon systems. As a precaution, I jammed the side door open so she would have a fast escape route. Then I set the self-destruct and left the keys in the ignition. My poor wife had a very grim expression of her face as we parted and I flashed her a grin. The gentle telepath hated lethal combat, but from past experience I knew that she could kill when absolutely necessary.

  As ready as ever in such a short time, my team cut the overhead lights, sprinkled thumbtacks, communion wafers, kosher salt, wolfbane and marbles on the floor, then settled in to wait.

  During this, Mrs. Cunningham had been busy at the reception desk activating every automatic defense and offense the building possessed. In the cool quiet darkness, she had shifted the position of the video monitor on her desk so that we could also see what was happening outside the steel shutters. Currently, the glowing screen showed a small aerial picture of the Quonset Hut on the grassy knoll surrounded by the deserted traffic circle. Everything seemed peaceful with nothing out of the ordinary. I glanced at my watch, three seconds to go, two, one ... now.

  In a boiling wave, a hundred monsters stormed out of the hut, a hodgepodge of every conceivable boojum, including a few that I had never seen before, and a couple that I couldn't properly focus my vision on. There were vampires, werewolves, basilisk, giants, elves, gnomes, squids, vapors, golems, lumbering robots and shapeless, disgusting blobs. Oh him again, eh? Filling the television, a brace of scaled titans had the pitiful remains of men and women in guard uniforms held before them as living shields. I recognized old friends, but over my helmet radio, I heard Warden Lapin order the warehouses to attack with a sob in his voice.

  Instantly, the view withdrew to show the warehouses extending their sides and joining together to form an unbroken hexagon. The cinder-block walls fused with a blinding light that expanded to engulf the Quonset. Then a solid expanse of dirt filled the area, earth that visibly hardened into gray rock, then solid granite. It was the first of the Elemental defenses.

  In the dim lobby, I held my breath. Looking good, guys.

  On the monitor, a giant fist broke through the granite, its owner climbing out of the hole with a dozen smaller creatures scampering along the behind. In a hundred other spots, the granite was smashed into gravel and more of the bedraggled hellspawn clambered into view. Precisely on cue, the rest of the stone vanished and the creatures tumbled painfully down to the pavement. Ha!

  Next the warehouses hosed a Niagara of water at the monsters. The crushing spray a deluged the boojums in a torrent of rivers that became raging wild ocean. Drops of moisture blurred the picture and the scene shifted to another camera. Tidal waves rose and fell with pile-driving force, smashing the prisoners against each other. Topsy-turvy, the creatures churned hapless and helpless in the endless brutal cascade of the megaton tsunami.

  Momentarily, a mass of wiggling tentacles came into view to snatch a fellow creature and hurl the horned demon through a wave crest and straight towards the ring of warehouses.

  The beastie almost made it when a brisk wind came from nowhere, flipped the escapee over and hurtled it right back into the monster soup. Steadily increasing in force and noise, the air above the warehouses went round and round, faster and faster, until a howling hurricane formed above the indomitable barrier.

  Reaching out of the darkness, Mrs. Cunningham's translucent hand rotated a dial and lowered the volume on the rumbling speakers to a more bearable level. I couldn't begin to imagine what it was like out there at ground zero.

  On the monitor, screaming tornadoes formed to skip along the churning water, grabbing anything that came near and dismembering the being by sheer centrifugal force. More than once they succeeded, and the tumultuous sea was starting to get a tad disgusting with floundering limbs and bobbing heads. But even disassembled, the prisoners were still trying to reach freedom. Then the sky darkened ominously.

  “Go get ‘em, gang!” George cheered, snapping a salute.

  As if in response, sheet lightning blasted into the churning ocean, electrifying the noxious brew nigh incandescent. Coronas of static discharge danced among the wave crests and it became difficult to see through the primordial barrage. But occasionally a glowing inhuman skeleton could be spotted as something got a gigawatt of nature's best smack in the kisser. Oh, that had to hurt.

  Without warning, a heavy rain began to descend on the monsters, the sheer volume distorting the picture. A torrential downpour, it must have added a million gallons to the battle zone. Yet the wing of warehouses did not swamp or overflow.

  Outside the thick shutters, I heard a convoy of tanks rumble past our building. Reinforcements on their way to form our next line of defense.

  Suddenly, the temperature visibly dropped, and the monitor took on a bluish tiny as the rain became snow. Then hail the size of your fist hit with sufficient force to punch holes through the unkillables. The lightning ceased, but the wintry winds maintained and a bitter cold engulfed the waterlogged leviathans. In seconds, the ocean became slush with chunks of frozen monsters bobbing about like ugly icebergs. Steadily, the thick mush congealed into a single, seamless glacier whose frosty interior was dotted with motionless blots. In gradual stages, the winds died away and a deadly arctic calm settled upon the polar landscape. Once more the abominations were trapped.

  An aged head turned in my direction, her face half cast from the glow of the monitor. “Think this will work?” Mrs. Cunningham asked hopefully.

  “No,” Mindy replied somberly, a hand nervously twisting the grip of her sword. “It will not.”

  As I pushed the volume switch for more sound, it was possible to hear a scratchy crunching, munching sound. The view dollied in for a tight zoom, and I could see that deep underneath the ice were countless figures moving slowly towards the warehouses. Damnation, the clever bastards were trying to eat their way to freedom!

  Instinctively, I seized the Magnum on my belt. Rats! That's what we needed, a couple million trained rats to eat the monsters. Indestructible did not mean indigestible. It was a last-ditch attack my team had actually used once against the Artichoke of Doom. My only regret had been the lack of a decent hollandaise sauce or a nice white Zinfandel wine.

  If the ice fell, only a single Elemental defense remained to try. The picture on the monitor receded to the original viewpoint. In astonishing speed, the glacier melted and the water began to bubble and steam. Gouts of greenish fire vomited from below and many howling beasts were sent hurling into the sky, their hindquarters trailing smoke. The land rose to form a crater, replacing the water with sticky boiling mud, then red-hot molten lava from the center of the Earth. Lambent flames danced across the yellow-hot magma as it belched superheated poison gas. I could imagine the stench of sulfur and brimstone mixing freely with the stink of roast
ed meat and burnt hair. Probably worse than New Jersey in the summer. Well, maybe not that bad. The television nearly went blank as the searing plasma flow reached white heat levels and continued to accelerate until the artificial volcano approached solar temperatures in which an exploding thermite grenade would have constituted a cool spot.

  “Not quite hell,” Raul noted, his silvery staff clearly discernible in the dim light. “But close enough.”

  He would know, too.

  In a primitive luck ceremony, I crossed my fingers, then cursed as the monitor was divided by an impossible tower of black glass rising upward from the bubbling molten inferno. Soaring skyward, the angular column loomed high above the broiling morass until it went off the screen. Rapidly, the camera pulled back to show the entire length of shiny dark glass. What was this, some bizarre means of escape? But as the octagonal glass rod reached azimuth, the top broke off and came hurtling down to smash on top the warehouse with a terrible crash. Awash in blazing lava, the fiends were still attacking! Thankfully, no visible damage was done to the warehouse. But the shiny pieces of stone on the roof began to take root and rise into the air once more.

  Beneath the desk, Jessica took my hand and we exchanged a private moment. We could see the end coming. Under the awful accumulated weight of the growing ebony substance, a section of the reinforced roof finally cracked and collapsed. In a twinkling, the molten magma vanished and lying on the cool ground were a thousand limp forms painfully crawling towards the smashed section of the defensive ring.

  Succumbing for a second, I closed my eyes to the awful scene on the monitor. Incredible. The monsters had broken through our primary and secondary lines of defense in less than ten minutes. Now everything depended upon only a handful of Bureau personnel to halt these behemoths from escaping into America.

  God help us all.

  FIVE

  On the video screen, there was a series of flashes, and the Abrams assault tanks appeared in a circle around the warehouses.