Beyond Armageddon IV: Schism

by DeCosmo, Anthony

  "Now Dante, we've had this discussion. It's about sacrifices. It's about the greater good."

  "No it's not. I believed in you. I listened to you. You talked about doing things right this time. But something changed in you."

  Godfrey tried to assure, "Dante, that's what this is about. It's about doing what's right for the people. I know what is right. That's why you trusted me."

  Dante placed a hand on his forehead as if staving off a headache and shut his eyes.

  "You changed. Somewhere along the line you changed. Oh man, and I didn't see it. I've been such an idiot. It's not about ideas any more, is it, Evan? You talked a great game but all along it was about beating Trevor; about winning, wasn't it? And now that you beat him…now that you're the President like you always wanted…now you're just the same dictator he was."

  "Enough, Dante. I won't tolerate disobedience."

  "And I helped you get here! I listened to you! You're a phony, Evan!"

  "Oh spare me! Just spare me the lecture, Dante," the President abandoned kindly persuasion. "Why did you do it, Jones? Why? Because you wanted to live in the perfect democracy? Because you desired a new Constitution?"

  Jones tried, "Too much power for one man. He was too powerful. We saw that when he disappeared three years ago. Even if he meant well, it was too dangerous for just one man to--"

  "Yes, yes, tell yourself that, Dante. Maybe you actually can sleep through the night believing that lie. Do you know why you did it, Dante? Do you want to know why you helped kill your friend? I'll tell you. You didn't do it for freedom. You didn't do it because you thought him a despot. You did it for something far more personal."

  Jones raised a hand as if to ward off the assault.

  "No. No, Trevor was my friend. It was hard to do. I did it because one man can’t be that powerful, no matter how much he tried. So I believed in you; that you were different."

  "You would have believed anything I told you as long as you could justify betraying your friend. And you know why, Dante?"

  Evan stalked toward Jones who, in turn, retreated one step then another.

  "In the old world you and Trevor were friends, yes. But you were the leader, weren't you? You had all the answers. He was your lackey. You told him the way of the world because Dante Jones knew it all. And Trevor listened. And he did what you said because you were the one in charge. You were the Alpha male and he followed your lead."

  "We were friends! I did this for the people!"

  Dante retreated against the wall; nowhere left to run.

  "You did it for your ego! You couldn't stand being second fiddle to Dick Stone. You couldn't stand that he was the man with the answers; he was the man in charge and you were his lackey. He gave you the job in Internal Security like a Christmas gift so that his friend had something to do. You knew you were in over your head and you knew he knew it, too. And that's what bothered you. You were nothing in the new world and Trevor felt sorry for you; he fed you his table scraps so you wouldn't starve. Each year The Empire grew and each year you were more out of your league, but Trevor still supported you for no other reason than you were his friend!"

  "That’s bull shit. I didn’t envy him. No one should have that power, not him, not you!"

  Godfrey ignored any counter arguments and pushed on, "He scared you, too, didn’t he? You saw what he could do at places like New Winnabow and in California. Hell, you saw it back at Five Armies. How many Red Hands did he slaughter that day?"

  "That’s the point, he was too powerful. He was—"

  "He was leading the human race back from extinction and playing the hero. People called out his name. Trevor! Trevor! But you could only remember Richard Stone, the kid you took under your wing. But the tables turned, Dante. It's been eating at your ego for years."

  "He was my friend. He stood up for me. I did this for the sake of our world."

  "I just needed to give you a reason. Yes, to turn your anger into a righteous cause. And oh how you struggled with your conscience and you told yourself how noble you were to betray your best friend because it served the greater good. Oh Brutus, how you fooled yourself! Well now you have to live with it, Dante. I don't care what you tell yourself at night, but you belong to me, now. If word gets out of what we've done then yes, I am finished and what is left of humanity will fall apart in one great schism. But you, Dante, the lowest circles of Hell are reserved for those who betray friends. There will be no cleansing of your sins."

  Dante breathed hard but could not respond. Beads of sweat trickled along his cheeks.

  Evan's face turned from scowl into smile.

  "But it doesn't have to be that way. We’ve come this far, we need only go a little further."

  Jones shook his head and mumbled, "I didn’t want this…this isn’t how it was supposed to be."

  "Nothing goes according to plan," Evan’s voice seemed almost fatherly as he adjusted his speech, his tone, his volume to accommodate the emotions of his audience.

  "It's falling apart. Brewer…"

  "Brewer is irrelevant. Without Trevor he is a ghost of his former self. Still, we must make a public show of things. Too many whispers and rumors are causing uncertainty. We must make a show of how well things are going. Yes, yes, I have an idea."

  The President turned away from his beaten victim and spoke almost to himself, "I will hold a news conference here, at the White House. I will invite key Senators and—yes—several prominent military commanders. We will show unity. We will announce that the conspirators in this military-intelligence coup have been identified. With time, we'll get confessions. In the midst of the fear and commotion we will break the old-guard once and for all."

  Dante shook his head either in disbelief or disgust.

  Evan consulted his desk calendar: Friday, July 11th.

  "I'll need a few days to put together a guest list and fly them in. I’ll need a good speech, too." His finger fell on Wednesday, July 16th. "Yes, Wednesday will work. That gives me enough time. Cheer up, Dante. Next week we're going to put an end to all this. Yes, in a few days this will be settled once and for all."

  24. Infiltration

  Gannon watched the Missionary Man savor the moment as he approached the child's holding cell. Red and yellow fibers stretched across the green skin-like door there. Monks armed with swords—more like sharp metal rods--stood guard to either side.

  Brad Gannon asked anxiously, "So, like, is everything ready and all? Can we off Stone?"

  "You will wait until I rip apart the boy's mind and present it as a gift to my Lord."

  Gannon huffed but his position allowed no room for bargaining.

  The Missionary placed his hand on a soft brown patch in the wall and the membrane withdrew, opening to a pulsing chamber where an organic bench provided JB with a seat and a round orifice in the floor offered a means of waste disposal.

  Jorge Benjamin Stone held half of a stale candy bar in his hand and a jug of water sat nearby. Bags of red skin surrounded his otherwise blue eyes in a sign of how little he had slept since his abduction. He still wore the black polo shirt and tan shorts his mother laid out for him two days ago, but those clothes had grown wrinkled and ragged.

  A part of Gannon felt guilty for having delivered the boy to that place of evil. But Gannon long ago became proficient at hiding guilt in a dark closet at the back of his mind.

  "Come out of there, child," the Missionary commanded.

  JB moved slowly at first; another sign of fatigue. But he straightened, swallowed a deep breath of resolve, and exited the cell. Gannon saw the Missionary's smile of victory falter for a second, perhaps in surprise at the boy's fortitude.

  "Hey, sport," Gannon spoke in as friendly a tone as his limited acting skills could muster.

  Jorgie ignored Gannon and asked the Missionary, "What is going to happen to me?"

  The agent of Voggoth answered, "You're going to visit with your father."

  To Gannon's surprise, the boy showed no enthusiasm. No ma
tter how young his age, apparently Jorge was no fool.

  JB told the Missionary man, "You should not be doing this."

  As Voggoth's minion led them along a circular artery-like corridor lit by small glowing orbs he said, "I came looking for your mother many years ago; before she knew she carried you in her womb. Had I found you that first day this conflict would almost certainly have been settled quickly. Oh, how glorious that would have been."

  Gannon asked, "What do you mean? You went looking for him?"

  "Voggoth sent me to draw a blade across her throat."

  Gannon wondered exactly how long the Missionary had served Voggoth.

  In response to his captor’s revelation JB muttered, "I’ll remember that."

  "As for your father, several of Voggoth's children were sent to greet him. I understand they found his parents, but of course he escaped."

  "You should not be doing this," the boy repeated in a voice filled with a surprising tone of authority. "Your Master does not know."

  "Quiet, child. You are a present to my Lord. After I break you apart I will take you to Voggoth when I make my pilgrimage. He will demonstrate to all the inferiority of your species and perhaps hasten final judgment upon your people. My reward will be great"

  "You don't live," the boy said. "You are empty. This whole place is a big empty space that needs to be filled."

  The kid’s words caused Gannon’s arms to bubble with goose bumps; he saw The Order in a similar vein as young Jorge. However, unlike Jorgie Brad Gannon chose to serve Voggoth in the name of self-preservation.

  The Missionary argued, "You know nothing of The Order. You are of an inferior race. Your people are ignorant and fragile. Voggoth is strength. He is a living God."

  "He is no God, and he is not alive. You're dead. You're all dead!"

  The debate halted as the corridor opened to the large room where spindly leg-like appendages churned atop a blob of machine. At the bottom of the pulsing, beating, rumbling contraption laid Trevor Stone, his eyes covered by a fibrous mask and slimy appendages wrapped around his body.

  "Father…" JB's voice shifted from defiant to that of a scared little boy. "Father! What have they done to you?"

  Sobs came one after another in heaves as he raced to Trevor's side and studied the motionless man. JB’s face twisted, alternating from agony to repulsion and back again.

  But just as Brad Gannon felt certain the curtain would fall on Jorge Benjamin Stone’s composure, the child’s disposition took a turn in a new direction. More specifically, JB’s eyes grew sharp and so cold that it seemed the temperature inside the chamber dropped a dozen degrees in an instant. Then those eyes found the Missionary man and dug in like daggers.

  The Missionary did not seem to notice; he was too busy soaking in the glory of what appeared to be a victory for him. As the agent of Voggoth spoke, Gannon worried that perhaps this particular minion’s surprising cache of ambition might prove his undoing.

  "Your Father, the great leader of mankind, is weak. We have done nothing but remind him of his deeds. He is being destroyed by his own fears, his own guilt, his own sense of loss. And look at him…his mind has failed him. Surely the champion of humanity should be stronger. But like all of your species, he is weak."

  "You are a bad man. This is a bad place. You will wish you hadn't done this!"

  "Quiet! You are in the presence of greatness. And now you can join your father."

  Another platform protruded from the wall alongside Trevor. A circular bulge grew from the machine at the head of that platform. Tiny tendrils wriggled there like worms squirming through rotting meat.

  The monks who guarded Trevor followed the Missionary's orders and lifted the little boy on to the table. Jorgie offered no resistance; his eyes remained fixed on his father in an expression suggesting a thin line between sorrow and rage.

  JB warned, "You are not supposed to do this. It's not allowed."

  The wormy tendrils reached from the bulge and clamped on the child's head like suction cups. Thicker appendages squirmed from the platform and coiled around JB's wrists and ankles, securing him in place. The Missionary hovered alongside while Gannon stood several paces away, unsure if he wanted to watch. The guards—the monks—waited.

  JB grunted and closed his eyes. His lips quivered, perhaps in pain. The Missionary leaned in and his eyes grew wide.

  "Yes! Yes! The machine is pushing into your mind and sifting through the building blocks of your body. The Bishop says you are the purest sample of your race's life pattern. Now I will rip that pattern apart and expose it as weak and unworthy."

  As he spoke, the agent of Voggoth reached to the machine. As the Bishop had done before, a bulb-like appendage sprouted from the wall and enveloped the Missionary's hand.

  Gannon watched, sparing a glance to the top of the contraption high up where the things that resembled the legs of a giant spider stuck in taffy cranked away at their hideous work faster and faster. The droning of the machine grew louder.

  "Let me in your mind," the Missionary urged through clenched teeth. "Let…me…IN!"

  ---

  Tucker used his fingers to silently count to three. When he raised the third digit, one of the other Internal Security agents—the one with a barbed wire tattoo on his bicep--kicked hard, snapping the latch and busting open the apartment door.

  Tucker led the three men inside, swiveling his pistol from side to side as he surveyed the living room. He saw DVDs and compact discs scattered on the carpet in front of a modest entertainment center. He caught a whiff of a harsh chemical smell then spied an open nail polish bottle on the coffee table.

  "She's here," he said to the other two agents. "Denise! Come out, your mother sent us!"

  The men slithered through the apartment. Tucker barged into a small bedroom decorated with old school rock and roll band posters including Led Zeppelin and DEVO. Bright sunlight and a warm July breeze blew in through an open window there. Tied to one leg of the small bed was a rope, the rest dangled out the window.

  Tucker scanned outside and saw nothing but a patch of closely grouped White Ash trees two stories below.

  "Damn it! She's gone rabbit. Let's go."

  Two minutes later Tucker knocked at a first floor apartment where a placard indicated "Supervisor". A one-armed chubby fellow with splotches of sweat all over his green tee shirt opened the door.

  "Yeah? Whatya want?"

  Tucker flashed his Internal Security badge. "I'm looking for Denise Forest. I've got a message for her from her mother. She wasn't home. Do you know where we can find her?"

  "Denise?" The chubby fellow grew a frown as if Denise's name caused a sour taste in his mouth. "Don't surprise me that she wasn't home. Probably out causing trouble."

  "Do you know where we can find her? It's urgent. Important business."

  "Oh yeah, important business," the man considered. "Well, she goes off on her bike and hangs out with friends sometimes down at Church Circle. You might find here there in some of the abandoned buildings. Kid knows how to hide, so she's gunna be tough to find."

  "We'll find her," Tucker assured and then led his men outside to a sedan. The chubby caretaker watched them go and then closed the door.

  Denise popped up from behind the counter of the eat-in kitchen.

  She asked Barney, "Where's Church Circle?"

  ---

  The Order's massive machine pulsated like a beating heart. The strange legs or arms or whatever they were at the top of the mound moved up and down and around faster and faster. The steady drone grew louder and louder sending a tremble through the walls.

  JB lay on the table secured by tentacles with smaller tendrils stuck to his head. His face seemed frozen with his eyes closed and his lips tightly sealed as if chomping a bit.

  The Missionary loomed over the child with fiery wide eyes. One of his arms remained attached to the roaring contraption.

  "OPEN YOUR MIND! OPEN IT TO ME!"

  Two zombie-like monks stood
silently by with no reaction to the Missionary's struggle but Gannon instinctively stepped back, ready to retreat. His finely honed sense of self-preservation suggested that things neared a breaking point; a breaking point not for the boy but for The Order's monstrous machine.

  "YOU INSOLENT CHILD! STOP…FIGHTING…DO NOT RESIST!"

  The ribs supporting the fleshy walls of the vile mechanism bulged then retreated then bulged again as if a great force pushed out from within. Gannon retreated another step.

  The Missionary's glare changed. The fury on his face—pure rage—slipped away. His eyes stayed wide not in anger but in…but in fear.

  "No! NO!"

  His attention shifted from the boy on the table to his arm attached to the raging machine. He tried to yank it free but could not.

  "Let go!"

  The boy's eyes snapped open. The machine churned harder and faster and louder.

  "Let GO OF ME!"

  A horrible sickening crunch sounded beneath the scream of The Order's machine. The Missionary gasped and collapsed to his knees. As he did, what remained of his arm finally snapped away from the hideous contraption revealing a bloody stump.

  Voggoth's Missionary man screamed. The stone-faced Monks wavered but for lack of orders did not move.

  The tendrils on JB's head drew back as if shocked by electricity. The slimy bonds around his wrists and ankles warped from green to gray then fell to the floor and squirmed like wounded snakes.

  The Missionary stumbled to his feet staring at his stump as JB sat up.

  "Like, what the shit is going on?" Gannon gaped at the young boy. For the first time since he watched Tokyo die, Brad Gannon wondered if he had chosen the wrong side.

  "Your machine is empty!" The boy shouted. "I am filling it! It belongs to me now."