Is This The End?

by Craig Sargent

  “Stand up,” a voice commanded brusquely, and Stone jerked his head to the right. There were five men all wearing ankle-to-neck olive green uniforms with all kinds of patches and insignias on their sleeves and chests. They were apparently very image-conscious down here. All wore plastic glasses, not really sunglasses, but high-tech looking things with narrow slits to let light in. They covered the fronts of their faces so everything from nose to eyebrows was covered.

  Stone rose from the Harley and stepped off and as he got both feet on the ground, turned a tad toward the back of the bike to see if Excaliber was all right.

  “Face front or we fire,” the voice said, not even rising in tone as if it couldn’t care less whether they did fire or not. All the fingers tightened on their triggers.

  “Whoa, easy boys,” Stone said turning quickly around and making sure that they saw his hands were up and away from his weapons. “I’m not going to try anything—I’m not crazy. I was just going to mention my dog, he’s on the back in a box and—”

  “Don’t talk,” the head of the six-man NAUASC team, which their shoulder patches identified them as, said, stepping around the bike and looking in. “We’ll take care of everything. Now stand, keep hands up.” The head of the unit reached down and frisked Stone, taking out his two guns, which Stone saw go with a sick feeling. Without his equalizers he didn’t feel too equal.

  “Do you have any other weapons? Tell me now or you will be severely punished later.”

  “No,” Stone muttered, wondering what the punishment would be—no supper, no TV for a month. Somehow he figured it was probably a little worse.

  “Come!” the man of few words said as three NAUASC guards fell in on each side of him. They marched him forward down the corridor and Stone eyed everything, trying to remember the route back to the elevator with precision as his life might depend on it. He mentally jotted down an odd-shaped black steel doorway that they passed that rose overhead like a Greek column. Then an incomprehensible wall of chromium tubes that kept revolving. He used his father’s method of keeping track of things—landmarks in units of threes—easy to learn, and almost impossible to foul up once applied properly.

  The deeper they walked down the tunnel the more mystified and nervous Stone became. It was the sheer scale of the place that was hard to come to grips with. Every corridor they passed stretched off to a distant blur and every one was filled with streaming dots of humanity. All of them were so purposeful, rushing around, carrying papers, boxes, pushing large computers, machines on forklifts. What in God’s name were they all doing down here? Confusion more than anything will cause fear. Confusion and not knowing what the hell’s going on. Stone found his backbone stiffening up with every yard of concrete walked. The dudes down here were awesomely powerful. He felt like an ant waiting to be squashed beneath a million-ton boot.

  “This way,” the head greensuit said, as the little column made a sharp left and headed down another cylindrical tunnel, this one slightly smaller in width than the main thoroughfare. The place was high-tech enough to make a yuppie, had there been such a thing anymore, have wet dreams. Recessed lighting in the ceilings sent down an even amber curtain over the tunnel. Seamless concrete walls reinforced with dull black steel beams were set right outside them every twenty yards or so. And what got to Stone even more than the Buck Rogers gear itself was the fact that it all worked, every goddamned bit of it. Not a light out, not a concrete section caving in. And this in a world where most towns didn’t have lightbulbs anymore, let alone electricity, and where he hadn’t seen a shack that wasn’t caving in.

  They walked on another hundred yards or so and then came to an immense steel door that was sealed shut. Two machine gun posts built right into the wall with only barrels protruding from concrete slits sat on each side of the steel doors. The head of the unit guarding Stone exchanged some words with whoever was inside one of the machine gun nests and then slid a plastic card through a steel slot in the wall. After another ten seconds or so, green lights blinked on and off in the walls on each side of them and then with a whirring sound that made the very cement beneath their feet shake, the immense doors slid open. They must have been five feet thick and solid as the inside of a mountain. They sure as hell were protecting whatever was on the other side.

  Stone was marched through the doors, which began closing the moment the last man had passed through. The place they were entering was much larger than anything he’d seen thus far, a square room a good two hundred feet on a side and perhaps twenty feet high. There were ticking machines, maps lit up like neon lights, all kinds of communications equipment beeping and blinking like mad. Stone’s eyes darted back and forth trying to make heads or tails of the whole operation. He felt like a monkey in a cyclotron.

  Suddenly he saw ahead, the far end of the room was empty of equipment but for a long black steel bench about twelve feet above the floor at which ten men sat staring down, waiting for him. It was more subdued lighting at that end and Stone couldn’t see all that clearly until he was within about fifty feet of them. Then he saw all too clearly. The freaks. The ones he’d been told about. He couldn’t see their full bodies, just their heads and shoulders—those with shoulders—for all were seated in their places behind the bench so they were more or less poking up about the same height above the thing. They were hideously ugly, twisted like they’d been put through meat grinders more than once. And sitting in the middle, his armless egg shape clearly silhouetted by a greenish light thirty feet behind him on the steel wall—was the Dwarf.

  “Thanks so much for coming,” the Dwarf spoke in high-pitched timbre as he looked down from the steel heights.

  “Kneel down before the Tribunal,” the head greenshirt standing alongside Stone said, suddenly slamming at the back of his legs with a truncheon he pulled from a clasp on his side.

  “Oh, he’s an old friend,” the Dwarf laughed, “no need for the usual formalities.” The guard pulled back instantly, stopping a second blow in mid-swing. The rest of the guards stepped a few feet away from Stone, but made it clear that if he tried anything he was fertilizer. Stone took a quick 180 of the place looking for any exits. He saw nothing, just the same seamless metal walls and on various high emplacements resting on metal platforms, gunners, cameras, machine guns ready to deal out a fusillade if the need arose. These guys were better protected than the President had been.

  “God, do I wish I’d done you in when I had the chance,” Stone said without malice. To him the little monster was a disease, it was beyond a personal thing.

  “Ah, but you didn’t and therein lies the very fickle path of history. For I am alive—and you—well, for the long run, I must confess your chances don’t look too good.”

  “What are you guys, casting directors?” Stone asked, sweeping his eyes back and forth over the uglies, “looking to get a crew together for your next monster picture, no doubt.”

  “Yes,” the Dwarf squeaked, “we are monsters. In body and soul. What is the darkest thing there is?” he asked, looking down at Stone through black pinpricks of eyes.

  “You Dwarf, no doubt about that,” Stone answered, keeping his arms clasped behind his neck as he saw every guard watching him close.

  “No, Stone, the darkest thing of all is when a man loses the last thing he has, the last thing connecting him to this earth. And for you Stone, that’s your sister. I’m going to marry her Stone. The lucky woman has been chosen to bear my children. To be my—queen.”

  In spite of himself Stone lost it completely and rushed straight toward the high bench. So many guns were trained on Stone that the “safety off” clicks could be heard echoing off the steel walls. At the very instant they were about to tighten the triggers a voice screamed out.

  “No! The man who fires will die hard.” The fingers relaxed quickly. They all knew what the Dwarf had done to those who failed or annoyed him. “He can’t reach us,” the egg-shaped man went on. And it was true. Though Stone made it to the base of the steel bench,
knocking down two of the greenshirts who tried to grab him, he couldn’t begin to reach the freaks. Within seconds, even as he clawed madly at the hard surface, the guards overpowered him, knocking him to the ground. When he rose thirty seconds later he had bruises around his face and his hands were tied with nylon behind his back.

  “There, feel better?” the Dwarf asked with mock concern. “Get it all out, your little tantrum. Don’t worry, Mr. Stone, you’re not going to die, at least not right away. I have all kinds of plans for you, oh yes I do. Not the least of which is that you’re to be my man of honor at the wedding ceremony. I’ve been counting on it.” The Dwarf laughed again, sounding like a teapot whistle going off. The sound made Stone cringe. He felt sure he was going to lose it all. He wondered what it would be like to just— crack.

  “What the hell’s going on down here, Dwarf? Who are the others? What—”

  “My, you are an inquisitive fellow, aren’t you?” Dwarf replied, pointing his right stump at Stone. “But all in good time, my man of honor. We have many, many things to discuss. We shall dine—tonight or tomorrow perhaps. I’ll have to check my schedule. I didn’t know for sure just when you would be arriving, you understand. But meanwhile let me have our men make you comfortable, let you freshen up a little. Take him.”

  The guards grabbed Stone under each arm and began dragging him away from the Tribunal chamber. He struggled furiously, his mind a boiling red rage of fire and fury. He wanted to kill the bastard, with his bare hands if he could. But what drove him to the point of total despair was the fact that April was so near, maybe just behind the wall. And he had no way in hell of reaching her.

  CHAPTER

  Thirteen

  IT could have been Frankenstein’s laboratory. Stone didn’t like the looks of the place the moment the guards dragged him roughly inside. The place had clearly been designed as a medical facility from the start, nothing makeshift about this. The walls were all stainless steel, glistening and mint. There were beeping life support systems, tubes and wires, operating tables, rows of scalpels and cutting implements, like a surgeon’s warehouse. The place had been built for the rich and powerful of America who had hoped to survive down here. They hadn’t, but their medical facility taking up an entire twenty thousand square foot level of the place had.

  “Face forward, scum,” one of the guards screamed, slamming the butt of his weapon into the side of Stone’s head. Only because he was able to pull his head with the blow did Stone avoid a serious injury, but it hurt like a bitch and his eyes clouded up for a few seconds as if he’d been sniffing onions. When they cleared again he knew he was in trouble.

  As they passed into a second operating room with five operating tables set up around the rounded, brilliantly lit chamber Stone saw that bodies were lying on each of them. And they had been cut up terribly, sliced into parts and then reattached with thick thread. He could see immense stitches around shoulders, elbows, knees, even a neck. War victims? Transplants? He could barely try to imagine what it all meant. But it was hideous, as if someone was cutting up human bodies like they were paper dolls to be twisted and mutilated.

  All of them were in terrible agony, moaning and tossing their heads this way and that as if undergoing the most exquisite tortures imaginable. Clearly whatever was occurring here had been going on for a while. Some of the stitches looked many months old. And as he walked on, his eyes clearing a little more, Stone saw that it was worse than he had first realized. The limbs were all twisted around—elbows on backwards, knees pointed to the inside. Stone saw that one of the poor bastards had had breasts implanted onto him, another an extra arm that had been sewn to his abdomen. The groans of these had an extra element of suffering in them.

  Stone thought he was going to puke. But even as he felt the bile rising he told his stomach that his head was going to get hit again for sure if he upchucked all over the nice green suits. And his head wouldn’t like that at all. His stomach subsided.

  “Here, scum,” the guard behind him said as they entered another room. This one was as large as the operating chamber, but it contained electrical equipment, all kinds of implements that looked as if they could be used for torture. “Welcome to your little personal entertainment center,” the greenshirt laughed. Stone was led to a long stainless steel table that had no one on it. They pushed him into a sitting position and then slammed him back down on it, reaching out and tying his hands and ankles at each corner of the thing. They then stood back, letting their weapons lower now that he was immobilized.

  “Ah, you’re here, my timing is excellent,” a voice suddenly spoke out from behind the guards, who quickly stepped out of the way and snapped to attention. They were clearly scared of the man by the sheer speed of their move-ments. But then, who wouldn’t be scared shit of a bastard who ran an operation like this.

  “Usually I’m late for things, I don’t know why, I try to be on time. But it’s a fact that all great men have always been a little absent-minded about details.” Stone squinted as he tried to see the speaker against the bright lights, which filled the ceiling. Pain was so much better when lit up. Whatever Stone had been expecting to look into view was not what ended up standing before him. He didn’t even loom, being only about five feet and an inch or so tall. He looked more than anything like an accountant, bland-faced, tightly combed hair, suit just so, brown and boring, everything so innocuous it was as if he might just sort of slip away and vanish against the apparatus around him. Hardly menacing.

  “Allow me to introduce myself. I do believe a doctor and his patient should know one another, don’t you?” He smiled a tight quick smile that made his eyes twitch a few times. Stone didn’t return the gesture.

  “I’m Dr. Wolfgang Kerhausen, head of surgical—and other procedures here in NAUASC. You and I will doubtless get to know each other quite well.”

  “Tell me, where did you learn how to inflict so much pain, bastard?” Stone asked, his face filling with flushed anger. “What you’ve done to those men out there is—”

  “Is science Mr. Stone, science. I am a man who is trying to advance the course of medical knowledge, of man’s ability to transplant, to even grow new limbs.”

  “But the suffering you’re putting those men through—it’s not justified. Nothing can justify that.”

  “Ah, but you’re wrong there,” Kerhausen went on, as he motioned for his guards to get something and three of them rushed off toward the far side of the room. “All is justified in the name of progress. I learned that well at an early age from the greatest of teachers—the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. He understood that the use of war prisoners and Jews for medical experimentation was progressive—even humanitarian. I was a young doctor then with the medical corps. I was lucky enough to be drafted into Dr. Rulger’s Jew Dissection Unit, where we were given all the living bodies we could handle for years. It was in the early days of microsurgery and transplantation—and damn, we learned a lot. Oh, I won’t admit we didn’t have our fun as well. There is much fun in pain.”

  “Not for me,” Stone said, pulling slightly at his bonds to see if there was the slightest chance of escape. There wasn’t. He was held down with steel wire that looked like it could contain a raging bull.

  “Ah, but you like the others have no choice. That is the way it all works. The great universal system of master and slave. Some were meant to rule, others to be ruled and give their lives for and to the state. Some were meant to experiment, others to be experimented on. It is all part of God’s plan.”

  “I don’t think God has anything to do with your ‘experiment,’” Stone said bitterly. “And I think when you die, you might be in for a big surprise.”

  “Yes, I probably will, won’t I? I am looking forward to that. Quite curious. Anyway, we must get on with it. First of all, Mr. Stone, just so you understand what’s going on. You’re not going to die. Not right now anyway. The Dwarf has his own plans for you. But I am allowed to play with you for my own amusement, an appetizer before the main c
ourse. And knowing that you won’t die, can’t die, because the pain being produced is being controlled so precisely that it can bring you to within a fraction of an inch of going over the abyss, but it doesn’t—oh, you’ll see quite soon.”

  Guards wheeled a huge contraption with dials and hookups and cords with suckers on the ends of them. It looked crazy.

  “I’m so proud of this machine,” Kerhausen said, as his white-gowned operatives cut Stone’s clothing free with scalpels and then attached the appropriate suction pads and clips onto him. “It’s really quite amazing,” Kerhausen went on as he walked slowly around the operating table looking down at Stone’s naked body like a banker counting money in his vault.

  “This is a new generation in pain production equipment. It’s something I’ve been working on myself for the last four years, since the Council of Ten installed me as the head of Medical and Information Collection facilities. It’s an all-purpose torture machine. That is, it will affect every part of your body, Stone, not just the skin or flesh, but every part—you’ll see.”

  Stone wriggled around as they hooked him to the thing but it was a futile struggle. They had him tied down like a calf at a rodeo. They put a helmet over his skull which covered over his whole head down to the neck. Inside were earphones on each side of the thing and a kind of screen built into the helmet just inches in front of his face which he could barely see by the dim blue light it gave off. Electrodes were attached to various parts of his anatomy, including his testicles. Stone had to admit he felt fear, down to the very core of his guts.

  “Can you hear me, Mr. Stone?” Kerhausen’s voice came through the speakers inside the helmet, booming out. Stone didn’t answer. “Hold onto your synapses.” Stone dimly heard the click of a switch and then he was thrust straight into hell. Everything was exploding in on him. Sounds were booming and screaming like sirens and bombs all going off at once. Brilliant multi-colored lights were being flashed onto the screen directly in front of his face, causing his eyes to instantly feel as if they were on fire and burning horribly. But as bad as all that was, the pain shooting through his every nerve from the electricity being delivered to him at two dozen points was absolutely overwhelming. Especially his testicles. He could feel his whole body jerking violently around as his muscles pumped like mad, but because he could only move a few inches he kept slamming against the chains, which ripped at his wrists and ankles and throat.