by Jeff Long
“My husband was killed less than two months ago,” she started. “My child has been stolen. I have no money or power of my own. What is there to use?”
Two could play the pity game, he with the remains of his face, and she with her old song and dance. It felt old anyway. Try as she had to keep Jake close, the memory of her husband had gotten sucked away in the whirlwind of events. Close her eyes and the only image that came was Sam’s face. The living trumped the dead.
Clemens grinned. He’d heard her pitch too many times. It might play well on TV and before donors and church groups, but he was immune. “Trusting Hunter is a mistake, that’s all I’m saying.”
“I should trust you, then?”
“Not at all,” said Clemens. “Doubt me, too. Doubt every damn one of us.”
“I can’t do that,” she said. “I am already too alone.”
“It’s a different kind of alone, Rebecca. You’re up on top of the mountain. That’s why all of us have come here. To win you back from the gods.”
The grandness of it—the absurd, old-fashioned, round-table chivalry—startled her. She tried to think of a reply. “I am relying on you,” she said simply.
“And I am relying on you, Rebecca.”
“Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Clemens?”
Clemens lifted one finger to the scar tissue that substituted for his lips. Frog lips. It was almost as if his hadal captors had been trying to create an animal from a man. She wondered, yet again, why had they taken such time on his torture? That wasn’t even the question. Why had they let him live?
The way Clemens told it, he had escaped from the city called Hinnom, her destination. But in talking with others about the obstacles and dangers underground, Rebecca no longer believed his hero’s tale. The hadals ruled the darkness. It seemed unlikely, no, utterly fantastic, that a crippled, bleeding, half-blind prisoner could have outrun such creatures. Which meant they must have released him. But why? What purpose did he serve for them?
“Yes?” she said.
“A smudge,” he said.
“What?”
He touched the edge of her mouth and brought his nubbin of a finger away. It showed a tiny smear of lipstick.
“There,” he said and stepped aside for her. As if she were his masterpiece. “I do believe you’re ready for the rest of the men.”
18
GUAM TO MINUS-ONE MILE
Rebecca descended ahead of her army, carrying Jake’s Glock and her mother’s old Bible. Not so long ago she had seen each of those things as a root of evil, and done what she could to keep them out of her house. Now she couldn’t decide which gave her the greater comfort.
The elevator system from Agana, Guam, to the subterranean city of Travis Station was the newest and deepest of all the DEEP penetrators. When she was in high school, kids learned that the lowest point on earth was the Marianas Trench. Now a pod was carrying her to a city built eight hundred feet beneath that.
As the shuttle pod plunged into the earth, she met every slight jostle of air on metal with dread. Seven miles deep. The walls seemed to constrict. The ocean would crush them.
Clemens interrupted her terrors. “We’re lucky ducks,” he said to her.
“What?”
His breath smelled of cinnamon chewing gum. Somewhere he’d picked up little gold earrings for his fringed earlobes.
“Seven years ago, it took me and my film crew eight months to get where we’re going this afternoon. That was eight months of rappelling down holes and floating down rivers. Eight months of claustrophobia and gut fear. Four thousand miles on foot and by boat and by rope, and with no retreat possible. Now all you need to do is sit back, take a nap, and you’re there. And if you get scared, you can hop on the elevator and be back on the surface in…” He checked the brochure. “Three hours and twenty-two minutes.”
Rebecca tried to staunch her headache. She hadn’t slept in days. What was he going on about? How could he be so relaxed?
“It won’t be this easy for long, though,” he said. “The caves will blood us quick enough.” He was in high spirits.
The monster is going home, thought Rebecca. How could he bear to return after what they had done to him? What lay in wait for them? Where will we find them? What will be left?
She closed her eyes and imagined Sam. It would end like a fairy tale. Hand in hand they would float in a pod up to the sun and flowers and live happily ever after. They could shovel the nightmare back into the dirt where it belonged.
It seemed like forever that this place had been tormenting her. She was sweet sixteen when the inner earth had first been revealed. Mankind lost its virginity the same year she lost hers, that’s how Rebecca framed it. “Hell exists,” the president of the United States had grimly announced on TV. Rebecca could still remember the carrot she was eating, and how the house seemed to shrink around her and the night swell against the window.
They had closed the schools for a month, and set a curfew, and, over the local bat lovers’ objections, dynamited the cave entrances at Barton Springs. National Guard troops patrolled the neighborhoods at night. One afternoon her father had sheepishly brought home an assault rifle.
Not for another three years after that would the plague arrive to kill the devil in his nest. But by that time the devil had already killed her world. Her father died of a stroke, and her brother joined the army and went deep, never to return, and her mother destroyed what little remained of her sight in Bible-study classes. Then Jake had come along and married her, and Sam was born, and Rebecca had been so sure the bad days were over forever.
The DEEP pod clanged to a halt.
They had arrived at the backside of the moon. Rebecca pictured the Interior as an untouchable place a million miles away. Unbuckling her seat belt, she expected darkness and enormous quiet out there.
But when the door opened, there was light, a thousand points of light, flash cameras firing, klieg lights glaring. A sea of voices roared in at them. The media circus she had left above was waiting below.
Rebecca lifted her chin. She faced the lights. Soon enough there would be just tubular night.
Even as she gave what had become her signature salute, Rebecca was feeling for a sense of this place. Was the gravity heavier down here, the darkness darker, the air more…something? She drew at it, and it smelled like machine grease and sweat and electricity, like an old factory. Nothing like brimstone.
The wall of cameras and lights parted. A little girl stepped forward. Rebecca gasped. The child had golden braids. The backlight gave her a halo. “Sam?” she whispered to herself.
The girl was not Sam, of course. But she was so identical in every detail that Rebecca knew this could not be an accident. Someone had meant to rouse her shock in front of the cameras and exploit her tears. But who would stoop to such a cheap trick, and who would benefit from her tears?
The child held a bird-of-paradise flower. “Welcome down,” she said with a curtsy, and handed Rebecca the flower.
Rebecca dropped to one knee and thanked the girl with a kiss and a hug, all the while searching the crowd for whoever had set her up. She didn’t have to search for long. “Rebecca,” bellowed a voice. “Rebecca Coltrane!” A big man came wading through the crowd.
She had never met the former U.S. congressman from Dallas, but Tommy Hardin was easy to recognize with his white teeth and blacksmith’s jaw. Immediately she knew this was the skunk behind the Sam charade. His political theatrics were legend. After losing his seat over ethics charges, Hardin had famously donned a coonskin cap and told his unfaithful constituents that they could go to hell, he was going to…hell. And down he had come, and promptly gotten himself elected the local governor.
He started to give the dry-eyed widow a big embrace, but Rebecca evaded it with a handshake. The man had awful breath. Oddly, that cheered her. A skunk inside and out. Clasping her hand, he turned to the media.
“Welcome down, ma’am, from a fellow Texan,” he bo
omed. “We have no bluebonnets to offer you, and this is a long way from Austin. But I do believe you’ll recognize our hospitality. And tonight’s barbecue sauce.” His eyes actually twinkled. How did he do that?
“On behalf of my men,” she said, “thank you for taking us in, putting us up, and speeding us on our way.”
“If there is anything more we can do for you here in Travis Station…” He bowed his head humbly. In fact, there was a lot more he could do. People might call him “governor,” but everyone knew him as a common warlord. His security force—some termed it a death squad—was well armed, well paid, and ruthless. It was also unavailable for rescuing children.
Rebecca had asked him once, in the early days, for military aid. She could have asked him again, in front of the world. But they had agreed to certain terms. He would allow her to pass through his city without the “exit tax” so long as she passed quickly and without incident. The last thing either of them wanted was a clash between their militias.
“Rebecca,” a reporter shouted. “Even before the San Francisco incident, when a man was beaten and nearly burned to death, critics were calling your followers a mob of vigilantes. Are you afraid of what your own army might do down here?”
Microphones thrust at her like a gangbang. Rebecca felt her fingers getting squeezed and looked down at the little blond Sam double. The horde was frightening her. She could have sent the girl off to her mother or father, wherever they were waiting. But on second thought, she bent and gathered the child up onto her hip.
“There, is that better now?” she whispered to the girl, who nodded yes. “Then let’s talk to the people.” Disgusting, Rebecca chided herself. But political theater seemed to be the order of the day. Armed with the blond waif, she faced the media.
“First of all, I would trust these men with my life,” she drawled. Like her lipstick and combat boots, the belle-speak had become part of her stagecraft. “Am I afraid of what they might do down here? You’re asking the wrong person. Ask our enemy. They’ll be the ones on the receiving end.”
Sound bite accomplished. And Rebecca had managed not to address the mob violence, which continued to puzzle and challenge her. Voices clamored. “How many of you are there, Rebecca?”
Every time she counted, the number changed. Volunteers kept pouring in, though not as fast as the disenchanted and homesick had started leaving. Hunter labeled them deserters, but Rebecca saw them as guys with big hearts and soft spines. Reality had caught up with the testosterone, that was all. Plus it was Bowl season.
“How many?” she said. “More than Haddie bargained for.”
“Do you have any idea where you’re going?”
“Into the enemy’s heartland. We are in hot pursuit of the enemy.”
“On this issue of hot pursuit…” A woman with hard eyes stepped forward. “Yesterday USA Today ran an editorial condemning your volunteer army as a dangerous precedent. From now on any nation can justify a war of conquest by sending so-called volunteers in so-called hot pursuit of anyone they label an enemy.”
Hardin stepped forward. “That was quite a mouthful,” he said. “Was there a question hiding in there, or do you work for USA Today?”
There was a smattering of uneasy laughter.
“I’d like a response,” said the woman. She added, “From the general herself.”
The honeymoon is over, thought Rebecca. She wasn’t surprised. The press had been far too cozy with her for far too long. She had read the USA Today editorial and happened to agree with every word in it. But she couldn’t afford to say so.
“Let me be clear,” said Rebecca. “We have come to take the fight to the enemy. Our enemy is not China or any other human nation. It is those who stole our children and brought slaughter into our homes. If anything, this should bind our nations together, not drive them apart.”
“Can you tell us, please, what percentage of your army is composed of members of the U.S. military?”
“There are no active-duty troops in our ranks,” said Rebecca.
“None?”
Clearly the woman knew something about Hunter and Drop Zone, Inc., and probably a lot of other things that Rebecca suspected, too. “None,” she said.
“Have you had contact with the vice president’s office?” the woman asked.
Rebecca didn’t confirm it, she didn’t deny it. “From top to bottom,” she said, “the government agencies treat me like their crazy aunt.”
“Meaning what?”
“They want me to stay in the attic where the neighbors can’t see me. But here I am in the basement.”
Smiles all around. They had the fever. Rebecca was sick of it. Sick of the bloodlust. Sick of her face on TV and the covers of magazines. Sick of living in the skin of this other woman she had become. She wanted peace, but first she had to make war.
A famous war correspondent with sagging jowls was next. “Before boarding ship in San Francisco, a number of your followers burned the Institute of Human Studies. And yet you met with its director, Alexandra Von Schade, and asked for her help just a month earlier. Is it fair to say that she rejected you?”
Rebecca’s headache came back. “Ali and I had tea and cookies. She lost a child years ago, so she understood what this feels like. She also knows how dangerous it can be down here. She declined to come with me. That was it. She wished me well. I’d like to believe we are friends.”
“So she gave you no information?”
“She said I was looking in the wrong places.”
“Meaning she must know the right place?”
Rebecca listened carefully. He was fishing for something more than a riot motive. “Meaning she told me to go home.”
“And she didn’t mention to you where she was heading?”
“Where she was heading?”
“Her expedition.”
“I’m sorry. What expedition are we talking about?”
“They went under three days ago.”
Rebecca’s heart jumped.
“Where they inserted, what their destination is, how many of them went…” The reporter shrugged. “She said nothing about this?”
Suddenly Rebecca was able to forget the yellow ribbons and bumper stickers, the White House and its back channels, the bagmen from the land and mining and rail and oil companies, the factions in her army, and all the rest of it. Ali was on her side. She was not alone in this wilderness of men. “Not a word.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Hardin interrupted. “It is time for us to adjourn and for our guests to relax before their journey.”
That night she went to the governor’s mansion for barbecue. The house was built of limestone and wood, in the Hill Country style. Sitting on a cliff overlooking the city, it had a rooster weather vane and a Lone Star flag.
Hardin gave her the tour. Rebecca strolled across the quarter acre of AstroTurf with her plate of ribs and coleslaw and a bottle of Black Diamond beer from the local brewery. A waterfall issued from the wall, feeding a stream stocked with trout for fly-fishing. The groundskeeper had created a golden “horizon” with filters and a spotlight.
“That’s a pretty sunset,” said Rebecca.
“It’s supposed to be the dawn,” said Hardin. “A new day is rising down here, Rebecca. A fresh start for those who are willing to reach out and grab for it. Have you thought about returning here after this is all over?”
“Here?”
“With your daughter. You should think about coming back.”
In short order she knew all about his recent divorce and his vision of building an empire along the lines of the early Texas Republic. “Everywhere you go down here, it’s terra incognita,” he said. “A person only needs to put his name on a thing or a place and it’s his to keep.”
Tomorrow morning they were boarding the rail that led to the farthest edge of the frontier, beyond which lay the wild caves and Hinnom. Rebecca wanted nothing more than to get away from this pumped-up Sam Houston clone and go to bed. Luckily, s
he could not think of the proper excuse to leave.
The governor was going on about self-rule versus annexation by the United States, and his prospects for a subterranean presidency someday, when his butler approached. “A gentleman has asked to see Ms. Coltrane,” he said.
“Damn it, Robert,” said Hardin, “I told you the lady needs a night off.”
“This is important,” said Robert.
“I’m sure he thinks so.”
“It’s important, sir.” Robert held out a shoe box. But to Rebecca, not his boss.
There was a doll inside. It looked like something from the garbage, a dirty, armless Barbie with no clothes. Most of its long hair had melted. Rebecca lifted it out, mystified.
On the back someone had scratched “HELP.”
The box fell from her hand.
“What in Jesus’ name is this?” Hardin demanded. He took the doll, full of suspicion. In his hands, with his flair for the con, it almost seemed a hoax. But it wasn’t. It was too sorry a thing to be made up.
“He said he found it on the trail,” said Robert.
“Yeah, and my father’s the Dalai Lama.”
“I’ll talk to him,” said Rebecca.
Hardin sucked his teeth. “All right, bring the man over. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”
The butler returned with a trim man dressed in Spartan fashion, Levi’s with a white T-shirt. He was shorter than Rebecca, and clean. His pants bore a hand-sewn patch. He took care of himself. But his eyes had a haunted look.
“Name,” said Hardin, the old warhorse of a lawyer and politician.
“Beckwith.”
Hardin brandished the Barbie doll. “What’s this supposed to mean?”
Beckwith looked at Rebecca. “It’s clear enough, isn’t it?”
“ ‘Clear’ is not the word I was thinking of,” said the governor. “This is about as mean-spirited as it gets.”
Beckwith ignored him. “I was looking for them,” he said to Rebecca. “This was jammed into a crack.”
“I’ve had my men scouring the tunnels for a week for any sign of the children,” said Hardin. “I’m talking dogs, biosensors, missing posters, reward offers. Add it up and they covered over a thousand tubular miles. Mr. Beckwith, there was nothing out there.”