The Spirit in St. Louis

by Mark Everett Stone

  Now for a shower and a clean T-shirt. My bloody jeans would have to wait.

  The barn had burned to its foundation by the time Dad arrived.

  “Come back to me, Lovey-Dovey. Come back to me.”

  No, not again. Never again. This time I was armed with something a little more effective than a screwdriver.

  I turned around and let loose with a dozen blasts from the Brave Bull auto shotgun at the Uncle Carl creature that followed me down the fleshy hall.

  I’d loaded the Brave Bull with brand-new rounds called Hyperion manufactured by our Special Branch guys. With an effective range of about a hundred yards, the compounds in shell heat the buckshot to approximately five thousand degrees and create a whiteout effect in low-light conditions. Fortunately, the DRAFTlite compensated for the blinding effect of the Hyperion rounds. As for the buckshot, when they impact on human tissue at that speed in a semi-liquid state, the effects are catastrophic, to say the least.

  What was left of Uncle Carl lay splattered all over the tunnel in either a red stain or a black smear of char.

  Chest heaving, I stood there panting as smoke slowly exited the barrel of the Brave Bull, sweat running down my back beneath my armor. I knew that when I took it off there would come with it a serious stink.

  “Gotcha, you bastard,” I snarled. There were tears in my eyes that I angrily brushed away. “I’m not your little victim anymore.”

  “Oh, Lovey-Dovey,” crooned Uncle Carl’s voice. “That wasn’t nice. Not nice at all.”

  The voice came from behind and I turned, letting loose another fusillade that blew this Uncle Carl apart just like the first one.

  “So angry, my little Dovey.”

  After that, I went on autopilot, reloading and shooting and reloading again until the air was redolent with the faintly porky smell of burnt tissue and the odor of freshly spilled blood.

  But more came.

  More Uncle Carls, and my mind couldn’t quite grasp it, couldn’t get around the fact that no matter how many times I killed him, he kept coming back. Then, when I ran out of ammo, I had to draw the tomahawk strapped to my thigh and get to work. hacking away until my arm tired and went numb from killing him over and over again. Then I had to decide to slice my throat or let him take me.

  Again. Like before.

  No.

  There was a third option because, according to the AI Specter, we were in the belly of the beast, and if you disturb a beast, interesting things happen. I unloaded at the wall from five feet away. I felt the heat against my exposed face, felt my hair begin to burn, but I kept firing and the fleshy rock wall started to bleed and there was a hole, a big hole, that leaked foul black fluid. From far away came the cry of an angry animal, a leviathan enraged, and I smiled through the second-degree burns on my face because if I died here, so would all the Uncle Carls and it would be over.

  My hate drove me and I became it, became the loathing and revulsion at what he had done to me, at what I’d allowed him to do and that hatred sustained me as I fired the Brave Bull until there was no ammo left and the shotgun went silent. Done. I was done and I felt pretty damn good, despite the fact that there seemed to be two more Uncle Carls coming at me from opposite directions. But that was all well and good because I felt better than I had in years. I almost wished Alex was here so I could hold him as I watched the result of my handiwork unfold.

  Through the big hole came darkness, a black fluid that flooded the tunnel, and a kind of anti-light that flowed like an angry river. But I felt no pressure against my legs, no sense of mass or matter, just the darkness, and I welcomed it, craved the release that would come from not hurting, not remembering anymore. I strode through that black river that kept rising and rising, toward the leaking hole, toward the black deluge and I walked through.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ng

  Overkill

  Okay, time for a recap. Dead and swiftly rotting blobbies all around and the mother of all hairy horrors coming my way out of the water and my hand broken so badly that it was swollen to nearly twice its normal size.

  The K-bar in my hand dripped blobby blood on the tough, scrabbly grass while the rotten smell of dead things covered the still air like a blanket. Above me the night sky empty of stars stared down and I was reminded of Friedrich Nietzsche and his quote about looking into the abyss: the abyss also looks into you. Or something like that. Still, I shivered at the thought of what might be staring down on my little spot on this dark and wet world.

  “Spooky, any ideas?” I asked my AI companion.

  “None, I am afraid, sir.” A pause, then he added in his static-y voice, “I am sorry.”

  The big blobby, the blobby mother, was much closer and almost a third of the way out of the water, wet tendril hair waving as if pulled by unseen currents. Thanks to the enhanced vision capabilities of the DRAFTlite, I could view the blobby mother in fine detail, as if rendered into yellow HD. Not your normal nightvision; my guess is that it was a thermal reading, or perhaps electromagnetic. Either way, the big blobby was as yellow as a canary and moving inexorably closer to my little island.

  “I’m out of ammo,” I muttered, staring at my swollen hand. The K-bar was gripped listlessly in the other and sweat rolled down my forehead and into my eyes, stinging.

  “You have your knife,” said Spooky. “A pair of belt punch-knifes, a garrote, three shuriken, and a ballistic knife. You are hardly unarmed.”

  A garrote wouldn’t do me any good—I’d need two hands—and the punch knives were too short against the big mother blobby. But the ballistic knife ….

  I fumbled for the device. It fit snugly in my palm, feeling good. A slight bit of hope bloomed in my chest. Perhaps I would live through the encounter. Perhaps I could find my way back. Perhaps.

  A low chuckle hit my throat, chuffing out into the still air. My first real op as an Agent for the BSI, and it looked like it would be my last.

  Finding out about the World Under and the BSI definitely changed my view of reality. Agent Alsate let me join up for the op in Chicago because I hadn’t given him a choice. The murders there happened on my watch and I intended to see that the job was done, finished.

  Of course I had to join the BSI. It represented the pinnacle of a career dedicated to the protection of others and the pursuit of justice. Not quite military, but more than law enforcement, being an Agent of the BSI meant that no one, anywhere, was better than you and that sounded pretty good to me.

  Pride goeth before the fall and all that, right?

  The first tendril from the mother blobby hit the dirt and the creature seemed to shrug its way onto my little island. Before I had time to think, I pressed the trigger on the ballistic knife and the small, blank pistol charge shot the knife blade out of the handle toward the large creature. With a slight shunk the blade buried itself deep, disappearing from view.

  The effect was immediate. The mother blobby spasmed, and the tendrils, each about three feet long, withdrew, curling into the main mass of the creature. It shrunk from ten feet across to about four, less than half its original size, like a cat dunked in a tub. I knew right then and there that this was my chance.

  I leapt forward, K-bar arcing in a vicious vertical slash, but before the knife connected, a tendril lashed out, smacking me right in the chest. The impact was enough to knock me back on my butt. Without thought I used my wounded hand to break my fall and the pain as the broken ends of the bones smashed together drove the light from my eyes.

  When I came to, it was to the sight of the mother blobby still curled in on itself, unmoving on its end of the small island. I lay on the other. I must have been out for only a few seconds or the monster would have had me for breakfast.

  “Are you all right, sir?”

  “Depends on your definition,” I answered, holding up my wounded hand. The fingers still looked like overstuffed sausages ready to burst through the casing of the armored glove. I was perversely glad that I couldn’t see what they look
ed like, all purple and swollen.

  Getting up took some doing, but I managed an unsteady stance and took stock of the situation. Eventually I found what I expected.

  NewTanium is one of those new alloys that can be created in zero gravity because the metals can’t separate. Lightweight and harder than steel, NewTanium, when covered in a Kevlar weave, can stop a 20mm round dead in its tracks, although the impact would be enough to crack a rib or two. Still, it’ll keep you alive and that’s what counts. Too bad it costs more than a fleet of Cadillacs to produce, but that’s the beauty of paranoia and working for the BSI—we Agents get the best of everything; price is no object.

  There was a hole the size of a nickel on my Kevlar chest plate, which had been torn away. The NewTanium underneath was dented in sharply, a concavity about one centimeter across and half as deep. The dent pushed sharply into my sternum—a small, silvery finger constantly poking.

  “Darn it, Spooky,” I breathed, “that tendril nearly broke the NewTanium!” It was far too easy to imagine what would’ve happened to my chest had I not been wearing the armor.

  “I can see that,” came the almost hesitant reply. “It would seem that this larger creature is capable of tearing you to shreds. It is fortunate that you have temporarily disabled it with your ballistic knife.”

  “Temporarily?”

  “It seems that the creature’s tendrils, which seem to be its method of locomotion, are slowly uncurling, and that in approximately two minutes it will recover enough to attack.”

  My testicles shrank in fear. “Any ideas? I could sure use some help right now.” Spooky was right. The mother blobby seemed to be growing larger as its tendrils gradually uncoiled from its central mass.

  “Hold the DRAFTlite underwater for a moment.”

  “What?”

  “I assure you the device is water resistant.”

  What could I do? It’s not like I had a ton of choices. The world went dark, utterly black as I took off the glasses, so dark that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Fortunately I didn’t have to take more than two steps backward before hitting water. I knelt and submerged the glasses. After a few minutes, Spooky told me he was done. I slipped the glasses back on and once again was able to observe the world as water dripped down my neck.

  “Mr. Ng,” began Spooky, “using a crude form of sonar, I was able to deduce that the water plunges to several dozen feet deep. Unless you plan on removing your armor, you have no effective recourse but to engage with the large creature before it regains full mobility.”

  I knew what that meant and I was afraid. No … not afraid. Too tame a word. I was terrified, but for the better part of a year I’d been training to become an Agent, to be the best of the best. and that meant something to me, to be the best.

  We all have those things that shake us to the core. My mother is afraid of spiders, my dad is so frightened of heights that he’ll pass out if he takes a window seat on a flight to Florida, and my sister is claustrophobic. Just being near an enclosed space sends her into a tizzy.

  My fear … failure.

  Silly, really. Failure. Everyone fails at something; it happens all the time. Even Hakala failed from time to time, though that’s not something everyone knows—him being the poster boy for the BSI and all.

  Ever since I was a kid playing stickball in Brooklyn, I was afraid to fail. At anything. Math tests, soccer, Quantico, and even Texas hold’em at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. I had to win; I had to beat everyone and everything. Even when I lost, I used the experience to come back twice as hard, twice as tough, and twice as nasty so I could win, so I could beat the odds. An obsession, a fear, and the driving motivation of my life all rolled up into a greasy psychological ball and God help those who got in my way.

  I even reasoned that through the BSI I might beat Death one day. Crazy, huh? Only problem was that if I lost once, it was over. No take-backs, no do-overs.

  It sure looked like my ultimate failure was staring me in the face right now.

  Strange thing, though. That’s when the fear drained away, sluiced right on down the toilet, so to speak. Gone was the gut-watering terror. The flight reflex vanished and something else took its place, something primal that exists in the belly of all humans: the angry need to destroy.

  Hakala called it the Rage, at least when his sister inhabited his psyche. It drove him into fits of superhuman strength and speed. I had a feeling that even though she was gone, he could still work up a good case of fury, that enough juice was left in him to allow for something … terrible. He denied it, said that the rage that fueled him passed with his sister’s soul, but anyone could tell. It was there, plain as day, etched into the corners of his eyes, the fire of his irises. There was plenty of angry still to be tapped, plenty of destruction ready to be let loose.

  I let loose my own well of fury, a scream fountaining from my mouth, a deep roar that shook my chest as I barreled toward the mother blobby in a mad rush, K-bar forward, ready to pierce the heart of the beast.

  A tendril shot from the thing, impacting on the right deltoid plate of my armor. It felt like getting hit by a line drive at a Met’s game, but I kept on, my weight and momentum keeping me on the straight and narrow as another tendril bounced off my left vambrace and the Kevlar tore with the sound of rotted cloth.

  And then I was in the embrace of the beast, face first among the whipping tendrils. I was stabbing, stabbing, and stabbing some more, the K-bar becoming slick with rotting blobby blood while lines of fire blossomed across my cheeks as tendrils scored me to the bone, but I kept screaming in fury, foul blood staining my teeth and tongue. Lines of fire erupted around my skull, but the pain was nothing compared to the pain in my heart at the thought of giving up and failing. Failing …. My phobia turned to anger then violence that consumed my heart, consumed my very being, and I hacked and slashed and stabbed, severing tendrils and letting blood fly.

  Deeper and deeper into the beast I plunged, filled with anger and hate and the drive to destroy consuming me. I knew nothing else because at the moment I was nothing else, no one else, the embodiment of the need to kill the thing that was grasping, tearing at me. The rotting blobby blood was thick in my nose and it covered my face, stinging the cut skin and coating the DRAFTlite so I couldn’t see, but I didn’t need to see because I knew where to stab and slice and I did, over and over again, and it felt good.

  I was winning.

  Then I was through.

  Into a cold darkness that froze the breath in my lungs …. It ate at me, crystallized my eyeballs as I flailed uselessly, my hands meeting no resistance at all. No blood, no flesh, no blobby, only darkness, only freezing air that hurt my chest, my eyes, and my sinus cavities.

  Time didn’t exist, only the stinging cold, only the blackness, and my wild flailing as I floated/fell/moved to whatever destination awaited. I tried to breathe in the cold, but there was nothing to take in. I tried to reach for something, but my hands met no resistance, not even air, and my flesh was too numb by then to register touch anyway.

  I felt my consciousness fading as my lungs burned with cold and lack of oxygen and I wondered if this was what drowning felt like. Farther and farther away went the concerns of my body and I knew the end was near. Oddly enough, the thought didn’t fill me with fear. This was not a failure because I realized that dying wasn’t a failure, but the inevitable end to a good fight, the last fight I would ever engage in.

  I gave into the everlasting darkness and stopped flailing, peace settling over me like a blanket. I’d tried, tried to be the best and maybe for a brief moment I was, but my story looked to be over and that was okay by me.

  Light stabbed me hard in the eyes, sharp and sudden. I found myself lying on my back with no transition from the blackness to where I lay. Steam wafted gently from skin and armor as a coating of frost I didn’t even know I wore began to dissipate. I moved, just a fraction, and heard a hard crackling sound as rimes of ice broke.

  “Wha…?” I
mumbled through frozen lips as I blinked, eyes gone cold. It took a moment for me to realize that the DRAFTlite was no longer on my face, but lying next to me, covered in frozen, black blood.

  “Are you all right, sir?” buzzed Spooky’s voice from the patch behind my ear. Its suddenness startled me.

  I tried to find my breath in lungs stinging with frost. “Think … so.”

  “I cannot see. The cameras seem to be malfunctioning.”

  “They’re c-covered in b-b-blood,” I stammered.

  “That would explain it.”

  I was on my hands and knees, dizzy, with black spots shooting across my eyes. My stomach heaved once, twice, three times, but nothing came up except bile that burned my throat.

  I wiped my lips clean, but my throat still stung, and getting to my feet took a few minutes. During the struggle to stand on shaking legs, I took a good look around. A hallway, blue carpeting, plants torn free of their pots …. It seemed familiar, and it hit me that I was in the Quint Building, back where it all started. “We’re back, Spooky,” I croaked.

  “Back?”

  “The Quint Building.”

  A voice, a familiar one I thought I’d never hear again, hit my ears. It was weak and hoarse, filled with a thick, phlegmy rattle but warmly welcoming nonetheless. “What took you so damn long?”

  “Robert?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Buffalo

  Don’t Fear the Reaper

  My throat hurts—been talking too long—but things need to get said, so I’m saying them. Still, I’m out of water, so decide to give myself a bit of a breather before continuing.

  But my leg still hurts.

  “You could take an opiate, sir,” says the AI, sounding all solicitous and whatnot, like a real person.

  I shake my head, which sets my skull to pounding. Guess that hurts too. “I hate taking Oxy, or anything else for that matter. Never was a big believer in chemistry.” I work up some spit and hit the wall opposite. The loogie starts to drip down, leaving a snail trail. There’s some red mixed in with the milky green. “Not my style. Besides, pain teaches us something.”