by Jim Geraghty
The small room had once been a workshop. Alec looked forlornly, thinking what he could do with a crowbar, or just getting close enough to put the claw end of a hammer through her skull. Unfortunately, the workshop had long been stripped of anything useful decades ago. The room just held a dust-covered worktable, a few boards and planks, tin cans full of rusty bolts and wing nuts—useful fodder for a bomb if he could find any explosive. Dang it, this was the sort of situation where Ward was practically MacGyver. Alec thought about the time in Spain when Ward had used an industrial spring and a ballpoint pen to shoot a guy’s eye out. Ward loved to tell that story every time he saw A Christmas Story on television.
Alec looked behind the workbench. Something glinted in the light from his phone—something long and metal—rusted in some spots, but it would do.
***
The room was once a small office; now it simply housed a rusted metal folding table and provided a home for varieties of mold and mildew growing on the walls. It was all Gholam Gul really needed, though. Up on this level, the phone’s signal seemed strong enough. He was, as far as he could tell, live-streaming from a Facebook account. Fabrice Vuscovi or the broadcast team would have to check the account, set up under a fake identity. But eventually, this message would go out. And when it did, he would unleash chaos across the United States.
Gul kneeled before his phone, hoping to be seen clearly and centered. He wished he had brought a stand or tripod; he had to balance his phone on its side. Still, as long as the signal was strong enough and the message went through, it would work. He held his gun in his hand at his side, knowing that someone was still chasing him. He had heard gunshots, a cry of pain from Sarvar, and then an explosion. The mortar that hit another part of the airport was unnervingly close.
He hit “go live.”
“This is our moment, Atarsa. We have made them bleed, and yet they have not yet bled enough. They are gasping for air, clutching their wounds, feeling their vision go blurry, gripped by fear …” He realized he was partially describing himself at that moment. Something hit the airport terminal building hard—could it possibly have been a mortar?—and he wondered if he would ever see her again.
From the moment she had stepped into Gholam Gul’s life, Sarvar pulled at him, as if he wore an invisible leash around his neck. She seduced him because he had wanted so badly to be seduced, convinced him that together they could tear the world down to its foundations, and rebuild it as they wished. She convinced him that VEVAK was wasting his talents; he spent years there secretly arranging the tools and resources to begin this campaign. The ayatollahs built arsenals to oppose the Great Satan, but were too afraid to use them. Gul would show that with simply enough nerve and a few hundred thousand dollars, he could cripple America.
Through her, he had begun to hear the Voices. Gul didn’t understand everything about the Voices, but he knew enough. The Voices growled, their throats rippling with hunger, demanding sustenance in the form of fear from others. He knew they had existed as long as there had been people, and that while they seemed to have no tangible presence, he could feel their influence, in strokes of luck and coincidence and the actions of others. He knew schizophrenics could hear the Voices and that the West’s foolish modern science dismissed them as insanity. He knew that the more Atarsa attacked, the clearer the Voices came, as if that abundance of fear was strengthening them.
Gul knew Rashin was much stronger than he was, that she heard the Voices much more clearly, and he suspected they whispered more to her than to him. He might die, quite soon, but she would figure out a way to carry on their work. He adored her.
“Now we tear America apart, and curse its sinful peoples to an eternity of fear and mistrust, a life of perpetual threat. We have adhered to the power of unity, as all of the great teachers instructed. The Old Ones, the Voices, are pleased with the nourishment we have offered. Go forth, my children. Strike now, where they least expect, in their beds, in their houses, in their schools and workplaces, let every corner of their wretched land be drenched in blood, and let them tremble in their homes; their gods will fall, and Aka Manah will enjoy eternal sustenance. We have introduced them to fear, brought fear into their homes and dreams, wrapped them in fear, violated them with fear—”
He was so focused on his phone that he didn’t see the figure rushing at him through the doorway. Gul looked up, just in time to see a Caucasian man swinging a four-foot span of pipe and bringing it down hard against Gul’s hand holding the gun, right on the wrist. Pain shot up and down Gul’s arm as his trapezium, trapezoid, and scaphoid bones shattered upon the impact. He let out a howl and the gun dropped from his grip.
***
The small phone camera eye saw Gul look up and a long, metal pipe come down on his arm. Alec, just off screen, brought the pipe up again and slammed it up underneath Gul’s chin—breaking the jaw and pushing his teeth up into the roof of his mouth. Gul staggered backward and stumbled, giving Alec just enough space to get into a batting stance and swing with all his might, right at face level. The camera captured the blood and teeth suddenly flying across the room, then the impact of Gul’s body on the floor caused the phone to topple to the ground, the camera facedown on the table.
Alec placed his foot on Gul’s neck. He leaned down, eyes glaring at the bloody, confused face.
“You want fear, Gul?” Alec spat. “Fear us.”
Groaning, blinded, gasping to breathe, nasal passages and mouth filling with blood, Gul’s hand flailed around, hoping to grasp his gun. Alec raised the pipe above his head and slammed it down on the crown of Gul’s head, as hard as he could. Gul’s skull fractured instantly. Alec raised the pipe and slammed it down again, like a lumberjack chopping wood.
“Feel this!” Alec screamed, eyes welling with tears.
It was fifteen or twenty strikes, pummeling Gul’s head over and over and over again, so badly that brain matter was visible. Alec, breathing heavily, finally stopped when his arms and shoulders were sore. Gul’s head looked like a cracked egg beneath him.
“That’s for Sarina,” he whispered.
Alec looked up and realized the phone might still be broadcasting and smashed it with the pipe; it shattered and pieces flew around the room.
With Gul a bloody mess at his feet, he looked down. After a moment, he awkwardly laughed and dropped the pipe. Then he felt a sudden exhaustion and leaned on the table. He let out a mad giggle and stumbled to his knees. He couldn’t quite suppress a sob, relief and rage that the world had driven him to this point, a little unnerved that beating Gul’s head into a pulp had felt so satisfying. He gasped for air, regaining control of himself from the wave of emotions. Whatever he had done, it was finally over. Finally, finally, finally over.
And then he felt a gun at the base of his neck.
“Mister Consequences.” Sarvar.
Alec screamed a word that started out as a profanity and just turned into a primal howl of frustration. How the hell had she crept up on him so quietly?
“This will be your last lesson,” she said, pressing the gun hard against the top of his spine. She looked down at the unrecognizable scarlet glob that was once the face of her lover.
“You think you are the consequence,” she moved the gun slightly down, between his shoulders. “Today you experience your own consequences. I’m trying to decide whether to kill you or leave you paralyzed.”
“I’ll bleed out either way, so the joke’s on you.”
“The joke?” Sarvar asked. “Let me give you a final lesson from the Voices. There is no consequence, no cosmic justice. Only chaos. The persistence of life’s random injustice means there is no justice. The perpetual destruction of innocence means there is no innocence. Everything you stand for is an epic lie, meant to soothe you as you avert your eyes from reality. Your life, everything you do, is the joke. Your final thoughts will be acceptance of this—and the realization that when you are gone, your wife will learn that as well.”
He realized she
must have noticed his wedding ring.
“I’d try to bribe you with this ring, but you’re short one ring finger,” Alec taunted.
“One of my fingers will shatter your wife’s world,” Sarvar hissed. “Let your last thought be of the pain she’ll endure.”
“You don’t know her!” Alec shouted with a defiant laugh. “She’s as hard as a … brick. She won’t waste time shedding a single tear until she’s put you down. See what I just did to your boyfriend there?” Alec hoped Sarvar would look down, be distracted, lash out, or something, but he felt the gun against his neck, steady. “That’s nothing compared to her. She’s a modern samurai. You’ll never see her coming, and she will make … you … hurt.”
“And how does she cope with that curse, a natural gift for the art of murder?”
Alec heard a gunshot, but it came from too far away to be from Sarvar. He felt the gun slide back from his neck, down his back, and to the floor. He twisted around and saw two holes in Sarvar Rashin’s head—one where the round had entered, and a messier one where it had departed, carrying a lot of brain matter with it.
“I’m learning to live with it,” he heard Katrina say from the doorway.
CHAPTER 66
ROUTE 50
FAIRFAX COUNTY, VIRGINIA
SATURDAY, APRIL 3
Ward awoke, realizing he hadn’t even finished his thought before passing out in the greenhouse. He found himself shaking … He reached for his gun and realized he couldn’t move his arms. He was seated in a chair, and felt his hands tied behind him—plastic ties. Somebody had the audacity to bind him with his own zip-ties while he was unconscious.
Even worse, his gun was missing. In fact, all of his guns were missing. When he felt particularly unnerved about where he was heading, such as the excursion to the greenhouse, Ward liked to carry a SIG Sauer, a Glock, and a Smith & Wesson 380 in an ankle holster. He felt pain on the side of his face and wondered if his head had ricocheted off one of the metal greenhouse tables when he fell down. Make it even easier for them, Ward fumed, pulling against the plastic restraints. He looked around and realized he wasn’t in the greenhouse anymore—he had been moved to a large, almost entirely empty supply shed behind the greenhouse.
A lone lamp stood beside him the corner, the shade tilted to illuminate him and shine in his eyes whenever he looked up. His pupils couldn’t seem to adjust—beyond the light in his eyes, the rest of the room was pitch black.
“Ward Rutledge,” a voice in the darkness whispered.
Ward felt his heart pounding, ready to burst out of his chest, and his clothes were wet with sweat. His hands were still shaking. He coughed. Gas, he remembered. The greenhouse suddenly stank of something—some sharp, earthy smell, something between topsoil and honey and freshly cut wood.
He saw movement in the dark corner of the greenhouse.
Francis Neuse’s fear drug, Ward realized. They aerosolized it and hit me with it.
“Ward Rutledge …” the voice whispered again. Damn it, they must have taken his wallet and ID.
“What do you want?” Ward barked, looking around. The only light came from that standing lamp, plugged into the corner, casting harsh light upon him and not much anywhere else in the room.
He saw more movement in the dark, but it seemed to be scuttling, animal-like, not moving like a person. A dog? A crab? But the whisper was coming from there. Heck, maybe I’m hallucinating all this, Ward realized.
“Your fear …” the voice said, only slightly louder.
“Yeah, well, I’ve seen worse than you,” Ward grunted. He tried to force his heart to stop beating so fast and hard, felt the sweat trickling down his forehead, neck, and back, and tried to sit up. She had bound his legs with multiple plastic ties. Good. He could wiggle around a bit. The chair was wooden. Maybe he could smash it against the wall and it would break apart, freeing his hands.
“No, you haven’t,” the voice responded. And then he heard a buzz.
And then, before him, was a giant termite-woman.
It seemed impossible: something distinctly feminine in its mannerisms and voice, but was simply not human; giant eyes, wiggling mandibles, no discernable clothing, creating a strange effect with the feminine curvature, her chest a twin-lumped thorax, her hind now a gigantic segmented abdomen reaching all the way down to the floor. Some exterminator’s commercials from years ago had imagined human-sized insects trying to sneak into a house, and Ward wondered if somehow he was encountering some giant animatronic puppet, but there were no strings. She waddled closer on ugly, spindly, long legs; additional mandibles extended from within her mouth, letting out a clearly inhuman hiss.
Ward screamed. A lot.
He kicked his legs back in horrified desperation. He rocked the chair back and to the side, into the standing lamp, knocking it to the floor and knocking off the dusty lampshade. The lighting in the room changed for the brighter. As far was Ward could tell, he was beset by a six-foot-tall queen termite.
“We’ve been hard at work for a long time,” the buzzing voice of the termite woman said. “You fear being too late to stop us. You are indeed too late. Your society is in a state of decay. Easy pickings for us. We’re already in the woodwork. We’re already inside the walls.”
Ward rocked back and forth and backed himself to the lamp. His bulk obscured the light, and the Termite’s features were again hidden in darkness.
“I’m not too late …” Ward whispered defiantly. He wasn’t quite sure if it was a boast, self-reassurance, or a prayer.
“Your culture gives birth to our drones,” the termite said.
Her giant insect head leaned down, antennae nearly touching Ward’s sweaty forehead.
“Everything you’ve spent a life building—and your fathers and your grandfathers—is about to fall apart, right before your eyes,” she continued. “We’ve been inside. Using you. Consuming you from within. Changing you to suit our purposes. It’s going to look like you, but it won’t be you anymore. You won’t recognize your allies as you watch them betray you, one by one. Betraying everything they ever claimed to stand for.”
“No,” was all Ward could muster. He pressed hard against the lamp behind him, as he remembered a line from a book: “Humanity is inconceivable without heroes; we are not egalitarian members of an ant farm, shuttling from cradle to grave, indistinguishable from one another and easily replaceable.”
“We’re so … close … already,” the termite gleefully hissed.
The Queen Termite was quite stunned when Ward’s hand came free and punched her in one of her giant compound eyes—the hot plastic from his cuff burned her and his wrist as well. While she had been approaching, whispering, he had been pressing his plastic cuffs against the hot lightbulb. His wrists were scorched, but his hands were free, and he intended to beat the living hell out of the impossible beast before him.
Ward yanked hard and pulled the plastic binding around his feet down and off the chair leg. He hit the termite again. Scrambling to a wall, he found a hand rake—he turned and swung it—metal pierced flesh and ripped. He heard a garbled, twisted, inhuman scream, a buzzing hum twisted around a woman’s soprano, until it gurgled and coughed and spat.
Ward blinked and looked down. A woman lay on the floor, bleeding badly across her lower neck. Her top was black with yellow trim and two-toned reddish-blond hair with black roots and dark eyeshadow, wearing giant round black sunglasses. She wasn’t a Termite Queen, just a woman. The hallucination had ended.
He slumped to the floor, exhausted.
He realized he should start searching for his guns and phone, but the sound of the sirens suggested he would soon have help looking for them.
He smiled, then giggled. His mission was complete. He let his head fall back to the floor, and closed his eyes, feeling relaxed for the first time in weeks.
Then his eyes popped open. He suddenly remembered he needed to tell someone where to find Norman Fein in the woods.
CHAPTER 67
DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
MONDAY, APRIL 5
Upon stepping off the plane, Alec succumbed to the temptation to put down his carry-on bags, get on all fours, and kiss the ground.
“What are you doing?” Katrina asked quietly, mildly embarrassed, averting her face from the people around them staring in bewilderment.
“The hostages did this in 1981,” he answered, rising to his feet. “A good tradition for when an American escapes an Iranian trap.”
He looked up and felt surprise at what he saw: Ward, Raquel, and Dee waiting for them, along with several men in dark suits who did a terrible job of hiding their government affiliation.
Ward ran to Alec as he emerged through the doorway and hugged him, nearly bowling him over.
“Thank God you’re all right, man!” he said. “I leave you for a few days and you nearly get yourself killed in a plane crash and executed! We’re never doing that again.”
Alec nodded. “We’re all right,” he said, giving Katrina a grateful look, knowing that she was all that prevented him from coming home in a coffin and becoming another star on the wall of the lobby of CIA Headquarters. “Knocked around, but in one piece.”
“Nice shooting over there,” Raquel said, giving Katrina a hug. “I wish I could let you rest up, but Mitchell wants you debriefing him personally and immediately.” She looked toward Alec. “Both of you.”
Alec’s back straightened. Finally, an invitation to the exalted ground of the seventh floor. He grinned and turned to Ward.
“What’s this I heard about you squishing a bug or something?”
***
Alec found the debriefing felt uncomfortably similar to a trial. A variety of old men that he didn’t recognize lined both sides of the table, with Acting Director Mitchell sitting at the head. At his left, Patrick Horne glared at Alec with seething disapproval. He felt like it was every uncomfortable judgment rolled into one—a job application, a loan application at the bank, and biopsy test results from the doctor’s office—before an irritable panel of senior citizens who had already repeatedly told you to stay off their lawn.