The Creation: Let There Be Death (The Creation Series Book 2)

by The Behrg

A rattle came from the kitchen followed by the hollow sound of a bottle being overturned and rolling back and forth on its side. The rolling stopped, replaced with the thunder of shattering glass.

  The monkey screeched sharply.

  “Spree!”

  Donavon pushed off the couch, navigating around furniture toward the kitchen. The spider monkey leapt over dishes with hardened food, then scampered up Donavon’s side, resting on his shoulder. Glass was everywhere on the filthy tile, Captain Morgan split into tiny jagged pieces.

  “Bring the broom,” Donavon shouted, pushing slivers of glass with one booted foot.

  Spree chittered, swiping one hand at Donavon’s ear. Probably hungry, though Donavon had no idea what Sir William fed the thing. Besides booze.

  “Alright, let’s find you something to eat.”

  He stepped over broken shards, splinters crunching beneath him, and opened the door of a pantry. Tiny cockroaches scrambled into the cracks of rotted shelves and behind canned goods, stacks of tuna fish and spam collecting dust. Bottles of vegetable oil, mayonnaise, ketchup and honey, but the true discovery was the top-shelf bourbons.

  Elijah Craig. Presidential Select. Pappy Van Winkle’s.

  Sir William had been holding out.

  Spree leapt from Donavon’s shoulder, swinging from shelf to shelf toward the back of the pantry. The monkey snatched a bundle of some kind of fruit the size of baby peaches that was strung together like grapes. He banged one of the brown husks against a shelf, cracking it open and began to suck on the strange pinkish meat beneath.

  “Well, if you’re happy, so am I,” Donavon said, sifting through the bottles and snagging the Pappy’s. He took the Select as well. Just in case.

  He heard the popping of glass from the kitchen. Kenny appeared in the doorway holding a broom.

  “Here, turn on the light.” Kenny pulled a small chain hanging from the short ceiling. Rather than a bulb coming aglow, the ceiling swung out, hitting Donavon on the head.

  “Aww, watch it!” He rubbed at his eyes, dust clouding the air.

  Kenny pulled at the lowered staircase, which stretched to within a foot above the ground. “Secret staircase. Kinky. What do you think’s up there?”

  “Probably nothing. Storage boxes, crap like that.”

  “Nah, I bet Sir William was hiding something good. Something dark. Maybe he was transgender.”

  “Push it back up so I can at least get out first,” Donavon said.

  Kenny went up first, after finding a flashlight in one of the kitchen drawers. Donavon trailed behind, ducking his head as he climbed the wooden slats leading to some kind of crawl space. It was a strange place for an attic, considering it wasn’t located off the second floor.

  The scurry of rats along baseboards kept Donavon from using his hands on the ground to prop himself up. That, and of course his injured wrist. The thin beam of light darted around the small chamber, a crawlspace barely wide enough for the two of them, though it stretched much farther than he would have thought.

  “Let’s hope this don’t open a second ladder,” Kenny said, locating a string rope that practically disintegrated in his hand. “Watch your head.” He reached up higher, grabbing hold of the tangled knot that still hung together and gently pulled.

  A bare bulb spit several times before finally casting its yellow glow on the room. They both stood in a shocked state of awe.

  “I don’t think Sir William was just an astronomer,” Kenny said.

  “You bring that joint? I think we’re gonna need it.”

  Verse IX.

  Dugan and Oso moved quickly through the halls, encountering no resistance. Still, every camera they passed made Dugan all too aware of just how exposed they were. He needed to be in three places at once; if anyone else had been with him he would have sent them off to cover at least one errand, but Oso, he knew, wouldn’t leave his side.

  “Where are your knives?”

  Oso pulled a marker from behind his ear, flipping open the small spiral bound notebook he carried with him at all times. His pace didn’t slow as he wrote. He tore off the sheet and handed it to Dugan.

  They took them

  A second sheet of paper joined the first, writing just as crude.

  Said not trust us

  So Stanton pulled off stripping Dugan’s men of their weapons, probably implying one of them could have been the mole that tipped Gutierrez and his soldiers. It was a smart move.

  “Everyone make it back?”

  What Dugan really meant was whether everyone had survived. He had passed out back in the field and Oso was the only one of his men he had seen since awakening. There hadn’t been time to ask the question earlier.

  Not Zephyr

  Deep within the fog of Dugan’s mind he vaguely remembered watching the massive black man fall. Had he been shot? He couldn’t remember.

  Oso ripped off another sheet.

  Alive but injured

  Lost his arm

  A memory resurfaced of Zephyr standing amongst wreckage, his arm dangling at his side by tendons and little else.

  “He’s here?”

  Oso gave a curt nod.

  “We’ll have to leave him.”

  While tactical, the decision felt heartless. Zephyr was, above all things, rash and destructive, but he was also one of Dugan’s best soldiers. The fact that the man was a sociopath with no moral compass only made him more useful. Zephyr was chaos on a leash, a tool Dugan had learned to use and handle. But he could never fully count on a man who was that injured, who wouldn’t be operating at his full potential. Better to leave the wild card out of the deck.

  “Did you know the Shaman healed me? When you cut me open to remove the bullets. Did you know I would survive?”

  Oso’s writing was interrupted when an armed guard leapt out toward them from an intersecting hallway.

  “Stop,” he yelled.

  He didn’t have time for more.

  Oso swung his arm up, clipping the guard and raising his gun toward the ceiling — no pistol this time; this was a Colt SMG, basically a closed bolt M16 automatic rifle.

  Before the guard could muscle the firearm back down, Oso thrust his marker into the guard’s eye, shoving him up against the wall. He buried the thin felt tip in with enough force that the marker protruded out like the hilt of a dagger.

  The guard reacted defensively, twisting his head back and trying to escape when he should have spun the gun around and fired.

  Amateurs.

  Oso grabbed the back of the guard’s head, bringing it forward. He simultaneously slammed his open palm like a hammer into the end of the marker sticking from the guard’s eye. It disappeared, driven deep within the socket. Gray and white tissue bubbled out like a cracked egg, slipping down the man’s face.

  The man made a last guttural cry and then fell to his knees before slumping to the floor, face down. Oso retrieved his dropped notepad along with the man’s machine gun before continuing on. Thankfully, he left the marker.

  They walked in silence.

  “I’m underestimating my enemies, aren’t I? First, the Shaman, then the general. And now Marcus. Even my own daughter.” Dugan stopped in the middle of the hall. “You would tell me if I was making a mistake. If you sensed something. Wouldn’t you?”

  Oso slapped at his pants pockets, then brought his hand into the shape of holding a pen and scribbled in the air. “Aughck,” he said, the guttural noise rising from his throat. The only noise he was capable of making, his tongue having been removed long ago.

  Dugan contemplated asking the native to grunt for a yes, shake his head for a no, or raise one arm for a yes, the other for no, but ultimately decided playing twenty-one questions would be demeaning. They just needed to find him another pen or marker.

  Verse X.

  Chupa greeted them with a half wave then drove the basketball straight to the hole, his dreadlocks whipping around his neck. He shouldered into Kendall so hard, the man fell back to the floor. Then
Chupa was in the air, ball in hand, ball in basket, hand on rim, as he hung suspended in the air.

  “Boo-ya,” he shouted triumphantly.

  The bodies of a dozen or so men were slumped along the perimeter of the court, curled over each other in a discarded fashion. A silent audience for the game.

  Rojo grabbed the fallen ball, throwing it against the back of Kendall’s head. It wasn’t a light toss. “Where were you?”

  Kendall launched himself up off the floor, tackling Rojo, both of them falling to the hard wood floor and attempting to assert dominance.

  “So, Dugan, we overstay our welcome?” Chupa asked, leaping back down to the ground.

  “Something like that.”

  “Why they send us boys to kill? Don’t they know only Doctor Morley prefers them young?”

  Rojo and Kendall continued to roll on the floor, Rojo finally catching the taller man across the jaw with an upper hook. Kendall immediately loosed his grip, scooting back from the bearded man on the floor.

  “Not the face, man,” Kendall said, opening his mouth wide and stretching his jaw.

  “Glad you’re okay, boss.” Rojo stood, coming over to join them, wiping his hands over his bald scalp and full beard. “We were worried. And you feel all … put together?”

  Dugan lifted his shirt, revealing the scars from the bullet wounds.

  “Unbelievable,” Rojo said.

  “Where’s Cy?” Dugan asked. The Vietnamese-American lieutenant was the only one absent from his band of merry men. Not counting Zephyr, that was.

  “Preparing a little send off for our friends here,” Rojo said. “You seen outside yet?”

  Dugan felt Oso tense beside him. What else had he missed while he had been out?

  “Oh, you’re in for a treat,” Kendall said.

  “What’s outside?”

  “A sun that landed on the earth,” Chupa said. “A bomb that explodes only light.”

  “We don’t know what it is,” Rojo interjected. “But it sure as hell has everyone staying inside.”

  “The Shaman?”

  “Our guess, but who knows. Stanton has the place on lockdown, not that anyone could leave if they wanted to.”

  “I want to see it, but first, we deal with Stanton. You know where he is?”

  “We have an idea.”

  They left the court, circling through the gymnasium housed on the lower level of the Facility. It was odd not seeing a single person in the room; the line of treadmills and weight machines always had a few occupants, day or night.

  Dugan spotted a body floating in the Olympic sized pool, another one of Stanton’s men. Wisps of blood swirled around the body like the thin trails of smoke from a cigarette.

  They took the stairs up, Dugan not trusting the elevators. His eyes hovered to each enclosed micro-camera they passed, mounted on the ceilings, until Kendall eased his mind.

  “Don’t worry about the cameras, Cy took care of ‘em. We own the control room.”

  Cy wasn’t where they had left him, the queen sized bed littered with the remnants of stripped wire and L1A2 detonator casings. All of the orange packs of SEMTEX were gone, enough plastic explosives to bring down the entire Facility.

  The bedroom was spacious, one of the many rooms in the Facility created specifically for conjugal visits. Most sleeping quarters were arranged in less comfortable accommodations consisting of long corridors with bunks hollowed out into the walls. The fact that very few of those living in the Facility were married didn’t stop the Caution Rooms, another name garnered from an old sci-fi flick, Alphaville, from being in constant use. Each of the rooms had sign-in sheets to reserve availability. Even sex had to be scheduled when there was so much work to be done.

  They made their way toward the control room when the building shook with the sound of an explosion.

  “Cy getting a jump start?” Kendall asked.

  “Something’s wrong,” Dugan said. “That’s coming from —”

  “The garage,” Rojo said.

  They ran through the halls, shouldering past a few engineers and workers that had gathered to investigate the noise. One of the workers grabbed Dugan by the arm as he strode past, stopping him.

  “Dugan! You’re alright?”

  He turned, surprised to find a woman he recognized before him. Her long straight brown hair was braided and pulled back, making her thin nose almost disappear on her face. High cheekbones and lips so full they should have been filled with collagen. She wore tight grey shorts and an even tighter shirt, putting her unbelievable figure on display without really meaning to. As a personal trainer, tight clothing was just a part of the job. Umner Corp believed its people operated better when healthy, or at least they wanted to give that impression.

  “It’s Alice,” she said.

  “I remember,” he lied. Though he did remember the night they had spent together, however many months ago. He had never known women could bend in so many ways.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. “Are we under attack?”

  “If we are it’s from within. Get everyone back inside. And don’t go down to the cafeteria!”

  “But that’s where we were told —”

  “Don’t!” He left before she had a chance to respond, pondering why the only names he ever remembered were of the deceased.

  As they made their way through the barracks, approaching the long corridor that connected to the carport, Dugan expected to meet with resistance. Instead, the corridor was empty. None of his men had the heavy artillery they would normally be carrying for such a venture, their weapons consisting of what little they had taken from the guards.

  At the end of the hall, the plated double doors leading to the covered carport were lit up as bright as the sun. Dugan took it in, the alien gleam of an unnatural light pouring through the panel windows set into the doors.

  “That light’s not from the explosion,” Kendall said.

  “It’s like this everywhere?”

  “Everywhere we’ve seen. Mostly through exterior cameras,” Rojo said.

  “The end of days,” Chupa said.

  “Or the start of a new one,” Dugan said softly.

  Oso seemed agitated.

  “Anyone have a pen?”

  “Like to write?” Chupa asked.

  “No, to corral a bunch of hogs. Of course, to write!”

  The men looked around, coming up blank.

  “Sorry, Dugan,” Rojo said.

  “You think maybe the light ignited something in the garage?” Kendall asked. “Tank of petrol, maybe? Could explain the explosion.”

  “Then where’s Cy?” Rojo asked.

  “I want to see it.” Dugan started forward, keeping his sight on the ground. Even at a distance he felt his eyes burning from the glare at the end of the hall.

  Kendall pulled out a pair of sunglasses, offering them to Dugan who waved them off. “From the cameras in the control room, we saw dead birds all around the compound. Almost feels like we’re in Egypt, facing Moses’ plagues.”

  “God’s plagues,” Rojo said. “Moses was just the messenger.”

  The echo of their footfalls carried back to them. The light grew more intense, coming through the bulletproof three-by-five dual plated glass.

  Oso grabbed Dugan from behind, handing him a handkerchief he had doubled over. This time Dugan accepted the help, tying the kerchief around his face.

  In front of the double doors, Dugan rested a hand against the thick plate of glass. It was cool to the touch, no heat transferring from the obscene light. Rather than shining through the windows in a single direction, he realized the light refracted outward as if striking a prism, bending in all directions at once.

  “Has anyone gone out in it?”

  “There weren’t many volunteers,” Rojo said.

  Dugan brought his eyes up to the glass, peering through the handkerchief at the carport outside. It was difficult picking out objects, and he could only keep his eyes open for a few seconds at a
time before the water forced them closed.

  “What did Stanton have to say?”

  “Don’t know. We were too busy killing the men he sent after us,” Chupa said.

  Out in the garage, shapes became vehicles, a line of tires stacked behind the service trucks. Within the white glare he thought he saw a second glow, this one wavering. Something aflame.

  Then he recognized it — one of their Humvees. Or what was left of it.

  “Someone’s taking out —”

  A second explosion drowned out his words, a wave of heat blasting against the solid doors. Chunks of pulverized metal flew through the carport before Dugan ducked his head, no longer able to keep his eyes open with the light.

  “The vehicles,” he said, eyes closed yet still watering, a white ghost image playing on the back of his eyelids. “Both of them are gone.”

  “Someone’s out there.” Chupa stood next to the glass, staring out. “They know we’re here.”

  The overhead lights in the corridor suddenly shut off, the glowing light from the windows only appearing brighter.

  “Dugan,” a voice called from the far end of the hall. “Glad to see you’re okay.”

  “Marcus,” Dugan answered, immediately regretting their decision to come down this hall. How had he let his men walk into a trap? The bright light illuminated him and his men perfectly while Stanton, and whoever was with him, remained encompassed in total darkness.

  “I have ten men here with two sights on each of you. Set the weapons down and let’s talk.”

  “Do your girl scouts know how to fire a gun?” Chupa shouted back.

  A single shot rang out, glass splintering in the window next to Chupa’s head. The ringing continued, bouncing through the hall.

  “Come on, Dugan, you know it doesn’t have to be like this. We’re all after the same thing, on the same side. But we can’t have you leaving the Facility. Not with what’s inside you.”

  “It’s not inside me,” Dugan said. “Not anymore. Maybe not ever.”

  “If we have to, we’ll take what we need posthumously. But that decision is entirely up to you.”

  Another explosion rocked against the doors from outside. Chupa mouthed the word, “Jeep.”