Nothing. My left hand still throbbed and stung, and the pain of it made me dizzy. I dropped a year’s pay for a school teacher onto the dirt.
Through the ringing in my ears and the pain in my hand, I ground out a few words, “Spooky, what gives with the gem?”
“I do not know.”
Not useful. I tried again, another spell gem meant for pain relief. Again nothing. Sweat stung my eyes as I eyed the blobbies, so many of them, coming nearer and nearer. The smell from the first blobby was doing terrible things to my stomach, and I would’ve puked but I didn’t have time. Awkwardly, I reloaded my weapon and sent bursts at those blobbies closest to shore, those that were already halfway out of the water. As they burst apart, emitting more dead smells, I screamed in pain and frustration, because they kept coming, rolling toward me as they cleared the shore. Turning in a circle, I saw them all around. When it ran out of rounds, I dropped the Mac-10A and unholstered my Ruger and sent 9mm death into the nearest blobbies. More rancid smells filled the tepid air as they kept coming out of the water, more and more of them.
When the chamber racked dry, I reloaded, but it was slow and two managed to affix themselves to my legs before I was done. They began to climb, tendrils wrapped along the creases of my armor, but that didn’t matter because the clip was in and I shot my own legs, confident that the NewTanium armor would prevent them from turning into so much shredded meat and bone. It worked; the beasts practically exploded. I fired until that clip went dry, but there wasn’t time to reload before I was swarmed, so I began stamping on them, using my weight to crush their hairy bodies against the ground. A K-bar appeared in my hand—I didn’t even remember drawing it or dropping the Ruger—and I began to slash and stamp and slash and stamp, the world a multi-hued blur all around with the blackness of the sky looking down upon the mayhem happening on the tiniest island ever.
Hack, stomp, hack, stomp …. My leg armor was covered with malodorous blood all the way to the crotch, and it was every rotten thing I’d ever smelled. The bodies of the blobbies rapidly decomposed right in front of me, going from hairy basketballs to slime in under a minute, like some capricious god had hit the fast-forward button.
Over, all over. Surrounded by the liquefying remains of blobbies, I fell to my knees, spent and panting, sweat streaming into my eyes and off my chin and holding my injured hand to my chest. I knew what I had to do. I really, really didn’t want to do it because I was so damn afraid of what I’d see. My eyes settled on my wounded hand and beheld what I had wrought.
The Kevlar glove with its NewTanium plates prevented the rounds from the Mac-10A from turning my hand into a stump, but the impacts had done the small bones wrong.
Only my thumb had survived unscathed. The fingers were bent every which way, and upon closer examination, I saw tiny holes in the Kevlar where blobby tendrils had cut through like hot needles through butter. I wanted to take the glove off, but with my fingers pointing in every direction at once, that wasn’t going to happen unless I bit the bullet and did what needed to be done. I gently grabbed the ring finger and pulled hard.
“Aaaaarrrghhh!!!!” My vocal cords ripped as my ring finger popped. My vision went white, then black, and I lay, forehead pressed to the ground, as tears dripped from my eyes and snot ran out of my nose. I gasped one breath, then two.
“Are you in distress, Mr. Ng?” asked Spooky.
“You … could say that,” I managed. “Now … shut up and keep … an eye out if possible. I’m … busy.”
Spooky stayed shut up as I went for the next finger. More popping sounds and more pain that sent ribbons of fire up my arm and the next finger was more or less straight. I sobbed, curled around myself as I went to work on the third. Then everything went black.
When I came to, nothing had changed. Mounds of mostly liquid blobby were still spread around me, so I must not have been out for too long. Cringing, I grabbed the last finger, the pinky finger, and yanked.
When I woke next, it was in a puddle of my own bile, and my mouth tasted like acid and ass. With a groan, I made it to my knees and slowly, carefully, popped the clip into the Mac-10A, reloading. Two clips to go. You’d think that would be plenty.
Getting to my feet took some work, but I managed. Barely. I stood there looking out over that placid sea with its dark mysteries.
“Mr. Ng?”
“Yes, Spooky. What is it?” My left hand felt hot and tight as it swelled inside the glove. Four sausages almost bursting their casings.
“Look behind you, sir.”
“What is it, Spooky?”
“Let me show you, sir.”
An image appeared in the DRAFTlite, a feed from the rear-facing micro cameras mounted on the temple arms of the glasses.
A yellow blobby was making a beeline toward my little island. The only problem was, while the other blobbies were the size of basketballs, this one moving toward me at speed looked to be a good ten feet across.
“Oh, swell,” I breathed, lifting my weapon. “Here we go again.”
Chapter Ten
Buffalo
Cuts Like a Knife
This is the last entry of Robert Atkins, first-year Agent for the Bureau of Supernatural Investigation. I’m sitting here watching the blood leak from me with slow inevitability, and all I can think about is my ridiculous handle. Strange what your mind conjures up when your life is coming to a close.
But, I mean, Buffalo? Really? Can you believe it? C’mon, Kal, you could’ve picked a better one. Don’t get me wrong; earning a name from Agent Hakala is an honor, unless you get stuck with a bad one for a major screw up, like Douchebag or Hairball. But Buffalo? Still, it would’ve been nice to be called Mustang, or Thunder.
Oh well.
Damn, my leg hurts.
I check my watch. Hell, it’s broken. The crystal, supposedly shatterproof, is too busted up to see the dial. Guess it doesn’t matter, but I like to think it’s still daytime, that the sun is shining down on this [CENSORED] building and that, in daylight, there’s still some hope for me to get home alive.
Kind of doubt it, though.
The copy that Ghost sent to my DRAFTlite system is recording this for posterity in the case someone manages to find it so they can know what really happened. I can hardly believe it myself, and I was there. Sounds kinda crazy, but when I’m done, you’ll understand.
Where do I start? Let’s see … the screaming orb thing that kicked our asses in the lobby? No, I figure the real Ghost has that already tucked away in his memory banks or whatnot, assuming he survives. Sure hope someone is still alive.
“I have no doubt that Ghost will survive, Mr. Atkins,” says the AI.
Sure he will. If rumors around the Bureau are true, he’s a good buddy with Kal, and that’s who he’s with right now and the two of them together … fuggedaboutit. They’re probably kicking ass and taking names.
I wish they were here, though, to could get me out of this spot.
But if wishes were fishes no one would starve. My grandmother, God rest her soul, said that whenever I wanted something my parents couldn’t afford. I used to hate that saying until I grew up, then I understood. If wishes were fishes ….
I wish ….
Back to business. I should start the moment I woke up from whatever that orb did to me. To us.
I woke in a janitor’s closet, of all things, eyes crusty with sleep sand and feeling pretty good, as if I’d slept for a solid eight hours. Thanks to the DRAFTlite, I saw that only a few minutes had passed and I didn’t need a flashlight or anything.
“Mr. Atkins.” And that was when, with me sitting on an overturned mop bucket in a tiny little closet filled with cleaning supplies, the copy Ghost gave me told me of his mission to help me survive. I gave him control of the DRAFTlite, which kept me from having to use verbal commands. He told me then that he wasn’t able to contact the others, which worried me more than a bit. I sure didn’t fancy being on my own, but what choice did I have? If wishes were fishes ….
After taking stock and finding that everything was as it was supposed to be—all weapons and supplies present and accounted for—I decided to get a move on.
Through the closet door and into a hallway. Instead of the .50 cal, the Ruger filled my right hand, and I was ready to kill me some bad guys, should they try to do me wrong.
Nothing. Just an empty hallway filled with corporate art and potted trees meant to liven up the sterile environment. They’d been de-potted and the soil dumped all willy-nilly. Looked like someone was pissed.
Was I still in the Quint Building, or did the orb put me in another? Only one way to find out.
I went left and started alternating turns—left, right, left, etc.—backtracking when the hallway ended at a door. Most seemed to be locked, and I really didn’t want to waste time breaking into offices, especially since the noise could attract a Supernatural or two. My goal was to find the other members of my team, then complete the mission if possible.
All in all, though, I really wished we’d sent a bunker-buster missile through the lobby doors instead of checking out what happened to Omicron. If wishes were fishes ….
“Mr. Atkins, may I ask you a question?” The AI’s voice was eerily like Ghost’s, but more polite, deferential. Fortunately, the voice came through the bone-induction pad behind my ear, so no eavesdropping Supernaturals could hear.
“Go ahead,” I subvocaled.
“Why did you join the BSI? Mind you, Ghost did not download your file into this DRAFTlite system.”
“Why are you so curious?” Left, then right. This hallway was longer, with a spot of bright light at the end. Could be an outside glass wall.
“Ghost created me with—for lack of a better term—an insatiable curiosity. Perhaps in an effort to make a more complete file on the events that occur in his absence.”
I thought about that for a moment. “So your brother copies are bugging the other team members?”
“Most likely.”
“So none of us is getting any peace.”
“Most likely. Although, sir, you can order me to be silent.”
“Not necessary.”
“Then, sir, will you answer my question?”
The light at the end was an exterior glass wall that curved to the right. I walked up to the glass and looked down.
Holy cats! The city spread out below me, the people merely black dots scurrying to and fro while cars and buses were slightly larger blood cells rushing through the city’s arteries. Vertigo turned my guts into water as I stared, but a moment later I settled down. The trick to vertigo, Granny had said, was to treat what you saw like a painting, or something on TV—that way it’s not real and there’s no reason to be afraid. It even worked every now and then.
From my vantage point, I guessed I was one or two stories from the top. Backing up, I unlimbered the .50 cal and took aim at the glass at an oblique angle. Didn’t want to die from bullet fragments.
Blam!
The .50 bucked hard and the round hit the glass at an angle and bounced. The high velocity round broke apart after hitting the glass, turning into deadly shrapnel flying down the hallway at over two thousand feet per second. Some fragments shredded the interior wall as the sound seemed to reverberate throughout the building.
I rubbed my shoulder. Normally I wouldn’t fire the damn thing without the bipod and stock monopod, but the M82 .50 was clumsy enough slung across my back without them. Only so much I could easily carry, after all.
“With that amount of noise, Mr. Atkins, I would assume you have just alerted any Supernatural roving this floor.”
“Getting bored, anyway,” I said aloud, slinging the .50 on my back. “Next, we should find the roof. You wouldn’t happen to have any blueprints of the building, would you?”
“No. Ghost surely possessed them, but in his haste to provide every team member with a copy of himself, he may have forgotten to include the data.”
“Let’s find a stairwell or elevator, then.”
It didn’t take long to find the stairs and I proceeded to go up and up and up. Maybe that strange force field that surrounded the building exterior and interior glass didn’t extend to the roof.
Only two flights of stairs and I was faced with a green-painted steel door. Locked, of course. I fumbled for a spell gem, wedged it tight under the door, and ran down the steps.
“CRACKNOODLE!” I yelled up the stairs.
I waited. And waited some more.
“Something’s wrong.” I rubbed my dome, which was covered in a slick of sweat.
“Indeed, sir.”
Up the stairs. I checked on the gem … still wedged in tight under the door. I added another gem and repeated the process, but the results were the same. Damn.
“Why aren’t the gems working?” I admit it … the fear was getting in deep and I couldn’t stop my hands from trembling. Slightly.
“Perhaps all the magic upon your person is no longer active. If that is the case, then the rest of the team is most likely bereft of magic as well.”
I gave the door the sole of my boot five times. All it did was let out a booming sound that echoed down the stairwell. Bruised my heel a bit, too. Still, it made me feel somewhat better. Next I tried a round from my .50. Despite my being halfway around the landing and shooting up at an angle, a bullet fragment came damn near to taking my head clean off and didn’t even scratch the ugly green paint.
“Looks like I’m not getting out any time soon.”
“Then I recommend down, sir. It’s your only option left.”
Of course. I didn’t bother to tell the AI that I had nowhere else to go. I fished into my Bat Belt for a granola bar and washed it down with some tepid water from a small canteen.
“Are you going to answer my question, sir?”
“About why I joined the BSI?”
“That’s the one.”
“Don’t be snooty.” I took another sip and licked my lips. Water tasted like tin. “When the news came out about the World Under and the BSI and all that other [DELETED], I was working in a bar. You know, the kind of place with a karaoke machine and open mic night where most of the customers order beer and leave the high-dollar stuff alone.”
“You were a bartender?”
“No.”
“Bouncer, then. You are certainly big enough.”
I shook my head and pulled out a plastic Baggie full of beef jerky. Just what I needed. “Server. Made decent tips and I was good at it.”
“Why were you serving drinks? Couldn’t you make more money in, say, construction?”
“Naw.” Munch, munch. Good jerky, just the right amount of pepper. “Used to work construction back in the day. I actually made more money serving than in construction, and I needed to make some money.”
“Why?”
“University. I wanted to get a higher education.”
“So why did you join the BSI?”
I decided to plant my ass on a step. If I was going to tell stories, might as well be comfortable doing it. Can’t say I really blamed the AI for being nosy, seeing as how that’s what Ghost intended. Besides, doesn’t everyone like talking about themselves?
“When the Director pushed Agent Hakala into the limelight, you know with Colbert and Kimmel and the like, he looked the [CENSORED]ing part, you know? He was all smiles and jokes and perfect—the true-blue American hero, a poster boy for the BSI. A blond Superman.”
I took another bite of jerky. Damn, it was good. I wanted more. “I remember Colbert, all serious and stuff, leaning back and asking Agent Hakala, ‘What do you hate the most about the job?’ Without missing a beat, Kal said, ‘All the damn Supernaturals.’ Of course the audience clapped and whistled like they were going to shake the studio apart and Colbert nods like he knows exactly what Kal’s talking about. He’s got a little smile on his face like it’s just the two of them there sharing a joke no one else knows about and he says, ‘What do you love most about your job, then?’ Again, without hesitat
ion, Kal says, ‘All the damn Supernaturals.’ ”
Another sip of tinny water and the taste of jerky washed down my throat.
“Is that it, sir?”
“Naw. After I saw that Colbert interview, I began researching everything I could on the BSI, just like everyone else was doing at the time. I was in pretty good shape back then, lean and all up and down. I could run a few miles without a hitch in my stride and I could bench press three-hundred pounds in ten reps. A strong guy, you know? Real strong, and I figured that being strong and tough was good enough, so I raced to join up, to get a piece of the rich Bureau pie.
“Made it through the first cut, which was like a football tryout but without the footballs. Me and a few thousand other guys and gals in a soccer stadium running and jumping and passing physicals. Only about a dozen people made that cut, and boy did I feel proud. That pride only got bigger when I made the next cut. Me and a guy named Saunders passed six hours of psych evaluations. It was brutal, but I was smart enough to handle it. Then came Coronado, and let me tell you brother, that took my pride down a peg or three, but I made it. I didn’t ring the bell.” My quiet laughter barely hit the walls. “Turns out during all that testing, they rated my IQ at one forty-two. MENSA material. I should’ve paid more attention in high school. I could’ve gotten a scholarship and really made my Gran proud.” I paused. “But, if wishes were fishes, you know?”
“That does not answer the question,” droned the AI.
I sat there for a while, wishing for more jerky and staring off into the distance. Had I said too much? Why was I spouting off at the mouth? Maybe I needed to talk to someone. The Bureau is a good place to work; the money is great considering they lowered the pay by half—which still made it the best paying government job by far—but it doesn’t foster much closeness. You never know who’s going to die on the next op. Look at Sixer—dead before he could retire, even if he was a bit of a douche.
The Spirit in St. Louis Page 10