Doomsday Exam [BUREAU 13 Book Two]

by Nick Pollotta

  If the ice fell, only a single Elemental defense remained to try. The picture on the monitor receded to the original viewpoint. In astonishing speed, the glacier melted and the water began to bubble and steam. Gouts of greenish fire vomited from below and many howling beasts were sent hurling into the sky, their hindquarters trailing smoke. The land rose to form a crater, replacing the water with sticky boiling mud, then red-hot molten lava from the center of the Earth. Lambent flames danced across the yellow-hot magma as it belched superheated poison gas. I could imagine the stench of sulfur and brimstone mixing freely with the stink of roasted meat and burnt hair. Probably worse than New Jersey in the summer. Well, maybe not that bad. The television nearly went blank as the searing plasma flow reached white heat levels and continued to accelerate until the artificial volcano approached solar temperatures in which an exploding thermite grenade would have constituted a cool spot.

  "Not quite hell,” Raul noted, his silvery staff clearly discernible in the dim light. “But close enough."

  He would know, too.

  In a primitive luck ceremony, I crossed my fingers, then cursed as the monitor was divided by an impossible tower of black glass rising upward from the bubbling molten inferno. Soaring skyward, the angular column loomed high above the broiling morass until it went off the screen. Rapidly, the camera pulled back to show the entire length of shiny dark glass. What was this, some bizarre means of escape? But as the octagonal glass rod reached azimuth, the top broke off and came hurtling down to smash on top the warehouse with a terrible crash. Awash in blazing lava, the fiends were still attacking! Thankfully, no visible damage was done to the warehouse. But the shiny pieces of stone on the roof began to take root and rise into the air once more.

  Beneath the desk, Jessica took my hand and we exchanged a private moment. We could see the end coming. Under the awful accumulated weight of the growing ebony substance, a section of the reinforced roof finally cracked and collapsed. In a twinkling, the molten magma vanished and lying on the cool ground were a thousand limp forms painfully crawling towards the smashed section of the defensive ring.

  Succumbing for a second, I closed my eyes to the awful scene on the monitor. Incredible. The monsters had broken through our primary and secondary lines of defense in less than ten minutes. Now everything depended upon only a handful of Bureau personnel to halt these behemoths from escaping into America.

  God help us all.

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  CHAPTER FIVE

  On the video screen, there was a series of flashes, and the Abrams assault tanks appeared in a circle around the warehouses.

  As the monsters rallied, the bulky war machine cut loose their .50 machine guns in a steady chatter, the 120mm cannons blasting thunderous volley after volley of high-explosive shells, thermite charges, silver shrapnel, and depleted-uranium slugs. The beings were torn to pieces, but none of them stayed that way for very long

  Moments later, an F22 Raptor lead a squad of screaming Harrier jumpjets into position in the sky. Banking sharply, the fighters lifted prows and stalled in the air, stopping perfectly still on their rumbling belly jets. It seemed impossible, but the Raptor actually appeared to be carrying more weapons than before.

  In spite of their arrival, I was less than thrilled. For over twenty years the best minds of the Bureau had designed and redesigned the material, vibratory and ethereal protections of the Holding Facility, and now we were down to the emergency reserves of teachers, students, and us.

  We are formidable, Jess sent.

  Not that formidable, I answered in blunt honesty.

  "Ed, I want a transfer to Clerical,” George said, out of the corner of his mouth.

  "Take me with you,” I whispered back.

  Unexpectedly, the picture on the monitor pulled back to the roof of this very building. In the gray sky, twelve of the Harriers engaged in a furious dogfight, banking turning, zigzagging, doing loops, their weapons constantly firing. Three were englobing a winged demon skull, four were busy with a flying saucer that had fangs, and five battled something invisible. But we could see the grisly effect of its energy weapons; shimmering golden rays that lanced past the jumpjets to impact on the ground with devastating force. Then I noticed a fighter spiraling into the distance, thick smoke trailing from a damaged tail section. Gil?

  Unknown.

  The camera did a sharp cut and out of the east rose squadrons of Apache helicopter gunships, skimming low over the town, rocket pods spitting 35mm death. Another video cut, and from the west rose a majestic flight of dragons. My team cheered. The Bureau had no Great Wyrms as prisoners in the Holding Facility. These were more guards. Belching organic flame, the winged dinosaurs disintegrated stores, exploded cars and generally annoyed the fleeing monsters, but few of the prisoners vanished in the billowing allotropic fire.

  At this point, the battle became pandemic with no rhythm or reason, reduced to just the stark madness of war. People were running inward, monsters dashing outward. The monitor segmented into six smaller pictures, each showing a different section of the town.

  Slithering along the lawns came a ten-foot-thick snake with a mouth large enough to eat a two-car garage, its scaled length slamming aside garbage cans and pickets fences. Just then, a bazooka team leapt out of hiding in a two-car garage and blew off the creature's fanged head. But a new head simply blossomed from the burnt stub of the neck, and it attacked.

  Grinding my teeth, I clenched the checkered grip of my weapon. Madre mai, this is why most of these abominations were here in the first place, they were unkillable. What were we supposed to do with handguns against legendary colossi?

  Drifting over the mixed combatants came a giant floating human brain, whose slimy throbbing pons threw blue anti-magic lightning bolts. A mage in pajamas hit it with countless spells, but each was nullified. As the exhausted woman dodged out of the way, a platoon of soldiers attempted to give the damn thing a gunpowder lobotomy, and failed. And died.

  Over the supermarket, the black glass tower started rising into the sky once more. Two of the Harriers broke off from the saucer and dove into a strafing run. A score of liquid-filled balloons dropped from their bomb bay and hit the crystal rod, bursting apart to gush out frosty white foam. Instantly, every piece saturated turned clear and ceased to grow. But not every piece was hit and those which weren't started rising again.

  In breathless silence, my team was clustered tight around the video screen on the desk. The scene zoomed in and the central square changed angle. Sneaking along an alley was a large pulsating blob wriggling forward on a nest of slimy tentacles. Troops attached from several directions, but magical fire and steel bullets only punched holes in the gelatinous mass, minor wounds which closed completely. Then it began to feed.

  "Somewhere out there is a werewolf with no heart,” Mindy said, standing very close to the wall. “With my name tattooed on its arm."

  Nodding glumly, George added, “And Vampire X."

  "Plus, that outer-space carrot bastard from the North Pole is starting to grow its hellish garden once more,” Raul growled. “Using us as the fertilizer."

  "Using our blood,” Jess corrected angrily, massaging her temples.

  She seemed to be suffering from a bad headache, so I offered her a morphine pill. Aspirin would have been useless. My wife dry-swallowed the tablet whole. The negative psychic vibrations from out there must be nearly deafening to such a sensitive telepath. Even worse than a Shriner's convention during the guest of honor speech.

  On a lower square on the monitor, four ghostly figures galloped boldly along the middle of the street; one was in a military uniform and riding a white horse, the second was wearing only rags, holding a sickle and astride a red horse, the third was only a grinning skeleton on a black horse, and the last was a hooded figure holding an hourglass while atop a pale horse.

  Human and monster, everybody got the hell out of their way.

  Just then, a chill touched the back of my ne
ck and I quickly looked around, only to find the rest of my team doing the same thing. While our attention had been elsewhere, something had slipped into Base Command.

  Flipping my visor into position, I instantly saw two black shadows ease through a hair-thin crack of the shutters, and another was already stalking our way. Yikes. Humanoid in shape, they didn't appear to have any physical mass.

  "Alert,” I said calmly. “Incoming, one o'clock low."

  "Shadow warriors,” Mindy spat, adjusting her visor.

  Crackling his knuckles dramatically, Raul raised his hands. “Tunafish!” he shouted.

  Through my closed eyelids, I could still faintly see the glimmer from the blinding light flash generated by our mage. However, upon opening them again, it appeared as if the Dazzle Spell had no effect on these creatures of the night.

  A strident burst of gunfire announced the fact that George was on the job. Crouching behind the desk, Mrs. Cunningham gave them a good long taste of her 10mm Flacon, and I added a few silver rounds from my Uzi, plus a HE grenade. But there was no effect. Bullets and bombs simply passed through them to loudly clang off the shutters, or tore chunks out of the marble floor.

  Gliding close, Mindy gave a shadow five fast passes of her rainbow sword, with the expected effect that steel should have on an immaterial being. Absolutely nothing. In return the black figure raked a clawed hand at her chest, ripping off the flak jacket, blouse, and gouging furrows in the magical bodyarmor underneath. Damn, these guys were dangerous!

  Twirling his wand around like a baton, Raul then leveled the silver with the concave business end pointing at our uninvited guests.

  "...!” Raul shouted in the incomprehensible language of a wizard.

  The staff actually recoiled as a blast of raw ethereal energy vomited forward in a swirling cone of colors and noise. I recognized it as a mix of three different Death spells. Way to go, Raul! Frantically, the shadows tried to get out of the way with no success. They were lifted up, thrown down, shaken, rattled and rolled. But as the pyrotechnics faded, the shadows jumped to their talons appearing to only be seriously annoyed.

  "Ah, apparently I was wrong,” the wizard said, quickly stepping back. “They are not technological in construction."

  "Brilliant deduction, Sherlock,” I growled, firing both of my Magnums.

  Advancing into the fray, George tried a flamethrower on the black four. It didn't please them, but no real damaged was done either.

  Think fast, Alvarez, I commanded myself. Immaterial and spectral, yet not a ghost or vapor. Pure energy, phantasmagoric, pan-dimensional, or something else entirely? Hmm, get a hunch, bet a bunch.

  Shouldering my machine pistol, I grabbed a seltzer bottle and squirted a stream towards the lurking black shaped approaching the reception desk. Contemptuously the monster seemed to sneer at me, which was the last thing it ever did. As the bubbling spray hit the phantom, it vanished with an echoing scream. Sneaking a peek through my visor, there was only a sizzling wet spot on the floor and small pile of gray dust. Bingo!

  "Will-o-wisps!” I bellowed, shaking the bottle hard. “Routine six and seven!"

  Scampering to the RV, Jessica tossed one of our pre-made plastic pentagrams on the floor. We frantically clustered inside and tried to appear scared. Eagerly converging on us, the swamp gas manifestations futilely caressed the magical boundary with their incorporeal claws, and when they were in a nice tight group, we spritzed them with a barrage of Holy Water.

  Screams, smoke and a few seconds later, there were only piles of dust on the floor littered with spent brass shells and the honey-sweet smell of fresh magic thick in the atmosphere. Of course, the will-o-wisps weren't really dead. With the coming summer solstice they would rise to life once more. Even if we scattered the dust across the four corners of the world it would make no real difference. Wisps were not wimps.

  For some reason this scenario reminded me of when our van had broken down in a small ghost town in the badlands of Nevada, and we spent thirty six hours trapped in a circle of salt and flickering candles fighting an entire village of lunar zombies along with the omnivorous toad master. Technically, I guess we won. But the ghost town, which supplied employment to a dozen people had been totally destroyed, and the poor old prospector who had accidentally summoned the boojums was killed. In my book that wasn't winning, but merely surviving.

  As we reloaded weapons and tossed around a couple of pine tree air fresheners, a sharp series of beeps sounded on our helmet radios. Oh what now?

  "Alert,” a calm voice said. “Prepare for option two. Repeat, prepare for option two!"

  I felt my antacids neutralized by stomach acid.

  With a grim face, Mindy nudged me, “Ed, what is option two?"

  "Don't know,” I replied honestly. “But I don't like the sound of it."

  "Me either,” Raul said, nervously savaging a candy bar.

  "Why?"

  "Means option one failed."

  We gathered at the monitor again. Almost a minute passed with nothing noticeable happening, then a brilliant green dome completely filled the sky. A prismatic sphere, wow. Was that it, option two?

  "Tunafish, Team Tunafish,” Professor Burton said over our radios. “Calling Team Tunafish."

  I touched the transmit switch with my chin. “Tunafish here, professor. Go."

  "Shakespeare,” she said solemnly.

  "Bacon,” I replied.

  "We have a slight situation here, Ed,” Burton stated.

  My team exchanged puzzled expressions. There was a prismatic dome covering the whole town. Certainly nothing could leave with that up and running. Not even us. America must be safe.

  "What's the problem,” I asked, not really sure that I wanted to hear the answer.

  She gave a delicate cough. “That's not our dome."

  "What?” I cried aghast. “You mean it's from the prisoners?"

  "Goddess no. It is a Bureau 13 prismatic sphere,” she relented. “Just not the one for this base. Our prismatic sphere generator has suffered a malfunction. Or maybe a dysfunction, I'm really not sure which.” She paused. “As did the fail safe."

  George spit out his lollipop, Raul hit himself in the head, Mindy mimed slicing her own throat and Jessica covered her face with both hands. Oh brother.

  Prof. Burton continued. “Horace Gordon has sealed off the base from outside and given us a thirty minute deadline. We must regain control of the prisoners in 29 minutes, or else he will seal the dome into place. Permanently."

  With us trapped inside this mini-universe with the hordes of hell to play with forever. Lovely. With the feeling of placing my neck in the noose, I asked what she wanted my team to do.

  "We need a suic ... ah, a volunteer squad to try and get into the Holding Facility and turn on the fail safe by hand."

  Weighing options, I took two long breaths. Then took two more breaths. They could very well be my last.

  "Well?” she asked urgently.

  Tilting my head, I asked my team a silent question, and they nodded assent. What the hey, today was a fine day to die. Said so on my Bureau issue calendar.

  "Done,” I sighed, then hastily added, “How about some reinforcements?"

  "You can have the senior class,” Burton said. “Everybody else is busy."

  Meaning dead. Great, six students still wet behind the ears. Monster fodder at best. “Recognition code?” I asked.

  "Dirty. Counter sign: Dozen."

  At least the prof still had her sense of humor. “How soon can you get them here?"

  There was a shimmering flash and the Hell House five appeared in the middle of the lobby. Heavily beweaponed, they were dressed in similar bodyarmor, only not so well tailored as ours. Which was understandable. Our bodyarmor was personalized while their stuff came from General Supply. I saw that the twins had also switched their handcuffs into different wrist and understood why. The telepath Connie was now holding an M16 carbine as far away from her brother the wizard as possible. Gunpowder
and magic did not mix.

  "Good luck,” Prof. Burton said and clicked off.

  "Thanks, Joyce,” I muttered to the dead link. “We'll need it."

  Switching the radio to normal frequency, I turned about and inspected my little army. There was a faint glimmer of promise in this odd assortment of fighters; a private investigator, a telepath, a medium-level mage, a beginner mage, a professional soldier, a magic/telepath team, a martial artist, a Healer and a heavily armed giant slab of muscle. Hey, we could take this show on the road and write our own reviews.

  Appearing bigger than ever, Ken Sanders stepped closer and saluted. Hmm, I would need to break him of that nasty habit real fast.

  "Dirty,” he announced proudly.

  "Dozen,” I said. “Okay, let me brief you."

  "We are fully aware of the dire situation, sir,” Saunders said crisply. “Jessica contacted Connie and we held a fast group telepathic conference."

  "Its called doing a Picnic,” I said.

  "Yes sir! We're on a do-or-die to level 17, section 3, of the Holding Facility, and the mission has been rated more important than any, or all of us. Correct?"

  It was correct, just rather tactless to say it so bluntly.

  "By the way,” Raul asked, glancing around. “Where's Sir Reginald?"

  Steven kept a straight face. “Dead. We were guarding the hospital when a big hairy thing ate him."

  "So we strike in his name!” Katrina Sommers said grimly, the busty blonde shaking her wand like a Hottentot with a halberd, or something like that.

  She prefers Katrina, Jessica sent.

  Fair enough.

  "We can't kill them,” Mindy reminded. “That's why the boojums are here."

  The Russian mage frowned. “Da. Sorry, comrade ninja."

  "But we sure can kick the shit out of them!” Saunders declared brandishing a Thompson.

  Ah, youth. But I did like his enthusiasm. “How to get there is the first problem,” I commented, going to a wall map of the city. “We have three choices; magic portal, psionic teleport or drive."