Ground Zero rj-13

by F. Paul Wilson

  “No.” He didn’t even know if the word applied to the egg or the thing that hatched from it. “Why would I?”

  “I don’t know. The Alarm . . . at the end it was clear that I had to tell someone who could do something about it.”

  “And you chose me?”

  “Well, the Sentinel would have been best, but no one knows where he is, do they?”

  The Sentinel . . . that was what these folks called the point man in the war against the Otherness. Others called him the Defender. They ascribed all sorts of power to him, but he was just a man now, an old one. Jack knew his real name, but the old guy preferred to go by the name Veilleur.

  “So, since I couldn’t tell him,” Diana was saying, “it seemed pretty clear I should tell his Heir. And that’s you.”

  Yeah, he thought. Me. Lucky, lucky me.

  What was he going to “do” about something he’d never heard of?

  He’d have to wait until he could ask Veilleur about it, but he seemed to have dropped off the face of the Earth the past couple of months. Maybe the Compendium had heard of this finnymacaca or whatever it was. But even if it was in there, could he find it? Worth a try.

  “Got an idea,” he said. He rose and retrieved a pen and a napkin from the bar. “Okay. What’s this thing called again?”

  Diana repeated the name and Jack spelled it phonetically: fint-MAHNCH-ka. One weird word. Didn’t seem to fit any language he’d ever heard.

  Suddenly Diana shot from her seat.

  “He’s here!”

  Jack saw Davis instinctively reach for his empty shoulder holster. They both looked around, wondering what she meant.

  “I feel him!” she cried.

  The whole place was staring at her now. Someone at the bar said, “Hey, you can feel me too! Anytime you want.”

  Jack shot a look toward the bar, searching for the comedian. Couldn’t tell so he turned toward the front window and saw Veilleur’s face peering in. An instant later he was gone.

  “He’s outside!”

  She rushed toward the front door. Davis tried to grab her arm but missed, so he rose and followed on her heels. Jack held back. He wanted to see Veilleur too, but had to let him go.

  Diana stepped outside and peered up and down the street. Finally she gave up and came back in.

  “I know it was him,” she said with a despondent look as she dropped into her chair.

  Jack knew the answer but felt obliged to ask. “Who?”

  “The Sentinel. He was right outside. I felt him.”

  “Are you sure?” Davis said.

  “Of course I’m sure,” she snapped. “Sometimes you just know things, and I know he was out there.” She looked at Jack. “Why didn’t he come in? If I can sense him, I’m sure he can sense me. Why would he avoid me when I could tell him about the Alarm?”

  For all Jack knew, Veilleur could have been stopping by to see him after all this time. He certainly understood why he wouldn’t want an Oculus and a yeniçeri to see him in his present condition.

  “Maybe he already knows,” Jack said, realizing it sounded lame.

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand. It feels like everything is slipping away. The Adversary seems to be getting the upper hand, and the Sentinel does nothing.”

  Because he can’t, Jack thought. Because he’s not the Sentinel anymore. There is no Sentinel. Just an old man and his supposed Heir.

  But he couldn’t say that. No one could know, or even suspect—especially the Adversary . . . the One . . . Rasalom.

  “I’m sure he has a plan.”

  “Well, if he does, he’d better act soon, because there’s not much time.”

  She pulled off her glasses and he had a glimpse of her startling, all-black eyes before she covered them with her hands and sobbed.

  Jack wanted to reach over and hug her against his side and tell her it was going to be all right. But she knew too much to believe that anyone could promise that. And how convincing could he be when he didn’t believe it himself?

  He saw Davis’s stricken look and knew he felt the same way.

  “Did you see anything else?”

  “No,” she said without looking up. “But I had a dream after the Alarm, and it was what I didn’t see then that scares me.”

  Jack knew immediately what she was talking about.

  “You mean the future?”

  She nodded. “I saw the Nantucket house in the summer as it is now. And then in autumn with the leaves falling. Then covered with snow. Then the trees budding. Then . . .” She lowered her hands and leveled her black gaze at him. “Then nothing . . . nothing but blackness.”

  Jack held her gaze. “I know.”

  “You know? How?”

  “You’re not the first to see that. Over the past year I’ve heard exactly the same thing from a couple of other sources.”

  The late Charlie Kenton for one. And during her coma, Gia had experienced something similar to Diana’s dream.

  “Then that means the Adversary is going to win,” Diana said. “And if that’s true, then all this is for nothing.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut as tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’m never going to be fifteen.”

  Jack grabbed her hand. “I have it on good authority that what you’re seeing is how it will be if we do nothing. But we aren’t going to do nothing. We’re going to stop him and the Otherness.”

  He didn’t know why, but he needed to give her hope.

  “How?”

  “The Sentinel—once he’s alerted to the danger, he’ll act. He’ll come charging in and make the Adversary wish he’d never been born. He’s kicked Otherness butt before and he’ll do it again. That’s why the Adversary is being so sneaky. He knows if the Sentinel gets wind of his schemes, he’s cooked.”

  Jack marveled at how easily he mixed lies and truth. And Diana seemed to be buying it.

  “But why doesn’t he do something now? I have an awful feeling about this Fhinntmanchca, whatever it is.”

  “I’ll look into it,” Jack said.

  If he couldn’t find it in the Compendium, maybe Veilleur would know—if Jack could find him. Damn, he wished he knew where he lived.

  The three of them lapsed into silence and Jack glanced at the PBR clock over the bar. Noon was approaching.

  Diana took a slow, shuddering breath and pointed to the black orbs of her eyes. “I don’t want this.”

  “Diana,” Davis said softly. “You were born to it.”

  “Then I wish my parents had never met. I don’t want to know what’s coming. I don’t want to look like this. And I don’t want another Alarm.”

  Jack had witnessed her father in the throes of one and it hadn’t looked pleasant.

  “Painful?”

  “You wouldn’t believe.” She replaced her sunglasses. Her voice edged toward another sob. “I didn’t ask for this.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  She leaned toward Jack. “You’re the Heir. You’re supposed to be itching to take on the Adversary.”

  Jack held back a laugh. “You’re kidding, right? I’ve met him, and believe me, that’s the last thing I want to do.”

  “But you’re supposed to be noble, a hero.”

  Teenagers . . .

  “I don’t know who’s doing all this supposing, but it doesn’t change who I am. I’m just a guy from Jersey who’s learned a few tricks. This is the only way I know how to be.”

  “But how . . . how will you defend us if your heart’s not in it?”

  “Defend you?” Jack looked at her, then Davis, then back to her. “I don’t know you well enough to put my life on the line for either of you.”

  “She was talking about the rest of humanity,” Davis said.

  “Hey, I know the rest of humanity even less. But I do know a couple of people in this town I will die for if I have to. So if you wind up benefiting from my defense of them, then lucky you. But you won’t have to
thank me, because I’ll have done it for them.”

  Diana shook her head. “I don’t believe you. You’re better than that. You’re the Heir.” She said the last word as if repeating it would somehow morph him into her preconceived image.

  “So I’m told. Be nice if someone had checked with me first.”

  “If you’re the backup,” Davis said with a sour expression, “then let’s wish the current Sentinel continued long life and good health.”

  Jack raised his coffee cup. “I’ll drink to that.”

  4

  “What is that?”Hank said.

  Drexler had led them to a closet in a small room off the main basement space, and pulled up a trapdoor in the floor. He’d explained that all the Order’s lodges were built with subcellars and escape routes. “Just in case.”

  Down a wrought-iron spiral staircase to a dark, dank space that echoed like a cave. Then Drexler hit a switch somewhere and the place lit up.

  Yeah, kind of cavernous, with a domed ceiling strung with hanging lights. Then Hank saw it. How could he miss it?

  A big, oblong thing, like a huge, blunt-ended football that needed some air, lay on its side at the far end of the space. He guesstimated its size at maybe ten feet long and four feet high. Light from the overhead incandescent bulbs reflected dully from its surface.

  “Yeah,” said Darryl at his side. “What is it, man? Looks like a giant booger.”

  Hank had to smile. Darryl had pretty much nailed it—like a transparent football filled with snot.

  “How quintessentially you,” Drexler said.

  Darryl shrugged. “How’d you get it in here without any of us noticing?”

  “You never noticed because we moved it in long before a single Kicker set foot in the building.”

  Hank didn’t see any door big enough to fit it through. “What you do—bring it in in pieces?”

  “No, that would have been quite impossible. The task required a bit of demolition and subsequent reconstruction, but we succeeded.”

  Hank had noticed signs of repair on the rear wall of the Lodge, and now could see signs of the same in the roof of the chamber.

  “You must have wanted it in here really bad.”

  “Oh, we did, Mister Thompson. We did.”

  “Back to my original question: What is the damn thing?”

  “We call it the ‘Orsa.’ ”

  “Orca?” Darryl said. “You mean like a whale? Don’t look like no whale I ever seen.”

  “No,” Drexler said with a definite edge to his voice. “Orsa. It’s Latin. It means ‘first.’ ”

  Hank stared at it. “What’s it supposed to do?”

  “Change the world, Mister Thompson. And I believe you know the change I’m talking about.”

  Hank nodded slowly. He did. His daddy had talked about that change. He’d called it the Plan and it involved beings, the Others, locked out from the world, waiting for ages to return, and a way to help them back in.

  But the Plan was all about a bloodline, Hank’s bloodline, leading to a very special baby, a baby now living in a teenager’s belly, a pure-blooded child who would unlock the gates that prevented the Others from returning to the Earth and reclaiming it.

  When they returned they’d reward those who’d unlocked the gates. Or so he’d been told.

  “Yeah, I know. But the way to make it happen didn’t involve anything like this.”

  “There is more than one route to that end, Mister Thompson, and all are being pursued. Opus Omega is stalled, at least in this country, due to some unfortunate scandals involving the Dormentalists.”

  Darryl snickered. “ ‘Unfortunate,’ all right.”

  Drexler looked like he’d just sucked a rotten egg. “Must he be here?”

  “Cool it, Darryl.”

  Hank stepped closer for a better look. He could see pretty much all the way through it—like looking through churned-up water, only nothing was moving inside. It sat about chest high and he realized it wasn’t entirely empty. Through the ground-glass transparency he saw a thick, four-foot-long streak of chunky, brownish powder—looked like dirt—floating near the right end.

  Darryl came up and bent at the waist for a closer look at the deposit, so close his nose almost brushed the Orsa. He put his hand out to lean against it but snatched it away and leaped back as soon as he made contact.

  “Jesus!”

  Wondering what was the matter, Hank touched it himself. It felt soft, rubbery, almost like—

  A tremor rippled over its surface and he too snatched his hand back.

  “You feel that, Hank?” Darryl said in a hushed tone. “The freakin thing’s alive!”

  5

  Jack arrived at the northeast corner of Columbus Avenue and 80th Street a little after noon. He checked himself in a store window. With his beard and a Mets cap worn low over wraparound sunglasses, he was virtually unrecognizable. So even if this was a setup—he’d royally pissed off more than his share of people over the years—no one would spot him until he wanted to be spotted.

  He searched the far side of the intersection as he pretended to wait for the walking green and found a trim, athletic-looking guy with longish sandy hair; he looked about Jack’s height and age. He wore a tan suit and stood with his hands in his pockets as he peered about. Could be him. Or just a guy out to grab some lunch.

  The light changed and Jack crossed Columbus with the crowd, but the suit stayed where he was, glancing at his watch and still looking around. The odds increased that this was the guy. Jack studied him some more as he waited for the signal to cross 80th to his corner, trying to guess what he did for a living. Good quality suit but not designer. Office job, obviously. Advertising? Wall Street? Lawyer? Whatever, his expression was concerned, maybe even worried.

  Afraid “our Jack” wouldn’t show?

  Another green light. Jack hesitated, then figured what the hell. The guy looked okay—in fact Jack had an inexplicable good feeling about him, and that was unusual. Maybe together they could figure out the “our Jack” thing.

  So he crossed and passed him, then turned and stopped just sunward.

  “Looking for someone?”

  He gave a little jump, then turned and raised a hand to shade his eyes.

  “You’re Jack?”

  “ ‘Our Jack,’ in the flesh. EPC, I presume.”

  He looked puzzled for an instant, then gave a crooked smile Jack found oddly familiar. “Oh, yeah. The initials. I felt a little queasy about leaving my name.”

  Queasy . . . that seemed to set off something in Jack’s head. Why?

  “Smart,” Jack said. He pointed east along 80th toward Central Park. “I assume your presence here means you’ve had no word from your sister, so let’s walk.”

  But the guy stayed where he was. “This is a little too weird. I don’t know a thing about you, yet I’m meeting you here on a corner because my missing sister asked me to call you and I don’t even know if you’re really the guy I was supposed to call.”

  “Point taken. And the thing is, I probably won’t be able to help you, but—”

  “What are you? A cop? A detective? What?”

  “Just a guy who’s curious about how your sister knows me. What’s her name?”

  “Louise Myers.”

  Louise Myers . . . didn’t ring a bell, even faintly.

  “Never heard of her.” Jack pointed toward the park again. He didn’t like standing on the corner. “Walk a ways and tell me what makes you think she isn’t simply on a trip to Maine or somewhere?”

  As they started to move, EPC reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He handed it to Jack.

  If I’m missing

  Don’t call the police

  They can’t help

  Get in touch with Jack

  Please honor me on this

  Our Jack can find me

  If I’m missing . . . That didn’t sound good.

  “Sounds as if she expe
cted some foul play to go down.”

  He sighed. “Well, yeah. She did. She always did.”

  “Did she have enemies?”

  He tapped his temple. “Only up here.”

  “Paranoid?”

  He shrugged. “A little, maybe. At first they said she was bipolar, then she was this, then she was that. I’ve come to the conclusion that Weezy is just . . . different.”

  Jack’s stomach dropped and he stopped so abruptly a woman bumped him from behind.

  “Idiot!” she said as she slipped past him.

  Jack ignored her and stared at the guy. “Did you just say ‘Weezy’?”

  “Yeah. That’s what we called her growing up and—”

  “Weezy Connell?”

  His eyes widened. “Yeah. How do you—?” He leaned closer. “Jack? Oh, Christ, it’s you! I don’t believe it!”

  “Eddie!”

  They embraced, back slapping, then stepped back and looked at each other.

  Now that he knew who he was looking at, Jack could see his boyhood friend, but it wasn’t easy. Chubby Eddie Connell had grown into a lean, fit-looking man.

  “You know, Eddie, I was looking at you and there was something about you, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I mean, how could I? You’ve got cheekbones!”

  He laughed. “Hey, it’s Ed now. And look at you with the beard. Who’d’ve thought? ‘Our Jack.’ It all makes sense now.”

  They both sobered at once.

  “Weez . . .” Jack said. “You really think something’s happened to her?”

  The idea was hard to take. He hadn’t seen her since high school, but they’d been soul mates as kids.

  “What else can I think?”

  “But you said her enemies were all in her head.”

  Weezy had been eccentric as a kid, for a while very much into what she called the Secret History of the World. Come to think of it, Veilleur had said there truly was a Secret History, so maybe she had been on to something. She’d spent time on and off medications for mood swings. Definitely “different,” as Eddie-now-Ed had said, but hardly a threat to anyone.

  “She’s become something of a recluse, rarely leaving her house except to go food shopping and to Internet places.”