* * *
There were other moments like that. None of them good. Staring into my mother’s eyes as she slipped over the edge of life and fell into the big black. That precise moment when, even through the cancer and the drugs, she found a moment of clarity and knew—knew—that she was dying. In that moment. Right then. The mixture of hope, regret, and doubt was unbearable. Hope that there would be something waiting. Regret that she was leaving her sons and her husband. Doubt that the fall would just go on and on and on.
And the day Cathy called me to say that she hadn’t been able to get in touch with Helen. Cathy asking me to go to Helen’s apartment. Me going. At Helen’s door. Smelling what there was to smell. Kicking the door in. Finding Helen days too late. Seeing the empty bottle of drain cleaner by her bloated hand.
Later still, holding Major Grace Courtland in my arms, inhaling her last breath as the assassin’s bullet took her away from me. Feeling her begin to cool; believing in the moment that it was the black ice in my heart that was stealing away her heat.
* * *
On and on, all through the night.
Fighting monsters. The walkers created by the Seif al Din pathogen. Genetically engineered soldiers deep in the dark of a military research lab. Being hunted by genetic freaks beneath the Dragon Factory. Looking into the eyes of berserkers. Facing the Red Knights and their bloody appetites.
And on and on. Year after year.
Then the God Machine.
The device created by the young and tortured madman Prospero Bell. Getting caught in the energetic wave as the machine pulsed. Feeling myself being torn out of the now and into the nowhere. Fighting zombies after the world ended.
* * *
Walking on the beach of some other world, seeing alien spacecraft cut across the sky while some monstrous thing—a demon or god or something there isn’t a name for—rose above me, wings spreading, eyes burning red above a beard of writhing tentacles.
So much. Too much.
I screamed myself awake. I could feel the scream coming from way down deep inside of me. Deeper than the pit of my stomach, deeper than my lungs. Maybe from the bottom of my soul. I don’t know. It rose up, soared up, ripped its way up and burst from my mouth as I twisted free of whatever held me and the sound of it shattered the air as I fell to the cold floor.
I lay there, hearing the scream echo around me. It was not a wordless scream of pain or fear. No.
What I’d screamed was “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!” It was the prayer to the dark god of that other world.
I sat there on the floor. Ghost stood five feet away from me. Invisible in the utter darkness. Growling.
At me.
INTERLUDE EIGHT
THE GREEN CAVES
BELOW TUVALU, POLYNESIA
SIX YEARS AGO
It took Svoboda’s team, coordinating with Dr. Beaufort and Valen, two days to excavate the cavern wall. Most of that time was used in assembling timber-and-steel support beams for the ceiling. A separate team double-reinforced the exit tunnel in case the drilling caused a collapse. Once that was done, the jackhammers and pick-axes went to work.
The wall, even cracked, fought them. It was old stone, hard and stubborn, and they encountered anomalous veins of iron.
Valen and Svoboda tried to make sense of it, because as they cut their way into the wall, the cracks Marguerite had discovered made less and less sense. For one thing, they did not follow the standard irregularities and stress points in the stone. There were clearly preexisting fracture points and mineral weaknesses that should have been where some kind of tectonic shift would naturally create fissures. Those were untouched. Instead, the cracks were in what could best be described as random places. Svoboda kept urging Valen to stop, to allow him to do tests, take samples, document the phenomenon. Valen’s answer each time was to order the diggers to up their game.
They broke through into the pocket near midnight on the second day.
“Mr. Valen,” called the worker who broke through the wall, but Ari and Valen were there, pushing him aside, crowding past him. They froze in the ragged entrance, shocked to stillness by what they saw. Marguerite, Svoboda, and the others tried to crowd around them to get a look.
“No,” cried Valen, though to Marguerite it wasn’t clear if he was telling them to stop crowding him or making a statement of flat denial at what he saw in the pocket.
Then Valen sagged sideways against the edge and ran a trembling hand over his face. His knees buckled, and he would have fallen if Ari had not caught him. Valen grabbed his friend’s arm and clawed his way up it like a drowning man coming over the edge of a lifeboat.
“Ari,” whispered Valen in a hollow croak of a voice, “get them back. Get everyone back. Please, for God’s sake.”
Ari stood a moment, too shocked to move, then he blinked and whirled and roared at the others. “Get back. Get the fuck back. Everyone out of the tunnel. Now!”
They retreated with great reluctance. Everyone was scared, confused. Marguerite tried to linger but Valen shook his head and she finally backed away, turned, and followed the others out.
When they were alone, Valen went into the hole and stepped gingerly into the exposed pocket. He saw that, although the plants had looked fresh through the fiber-optic scope, it was clear that they were dying. At first, he thought it might be because of exposure to different air quality now that the pocket was opened, but it became apparent that this, like so many assumptions, was wrong. All of the plants, and the roots of others, were severed. Every single one of them seemed to have been sheared through as if the whole pocket had been carved out of a natural landscape and somehow transported into the center of a rock wall. Impossible as that was.
“Are you seeing this?” he asked Ari, who stood in the tunnel mouth.
“Jesus Christ…” was Ari’s only reply.
Valen knelt by the crystal gun. It looked like something out of an old science fiction novel. Or a kid’s toy. All knobs and bulbs and blunt barrel with no opening. Valen’s eyes, though, were not fixed on the gun but on the thing that lay partly across the handle. Through the scope it had appeared to be some kind of dead animal. A lizard or something, but the foliage had blocked most of it. Now Valen and Ari could see the whole thing. It wasn’t any kind of small animal.
No. It was a hand and part of a wrist. Neatly severed. It had a thumb and three long fingers, each of which ended in a thick dark nail, sharp as any claw.
And it was scaly and green.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE WAREHOUSE
DMS FIELD OFFICE
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
2:33 A.M.
I held my hand out for Ghost to sniff but he hesitated a long time before he would even look at it. His dark eyes were filled with strange lights, but I knew that the strangeness was mine and he was merely reflecting it. Reacting to it. Fearing it.
“Please,” I said, and reached another inch closer.
Ghost finally took the tiniest of steps forward, moving with a mincing delicacy for so large a dog. Like he was stepping onto thin ice. His wet nose twitched as he sniffed. All the hair along his spine still stood up, thick and stiff as brush bristles.
Then his tail moved. A wag. Half a wag. Enough of one.
I slid off the edge of the bed and onto the cold concrete floor. Ghost came to me and I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him against my chest. A sound, not quite a sob, broke from my chest and I really could not tell you why. The dreams. Something about those dreams.
I’m a grown man, a skilled fighter, a practiced killer, and a special operator. But not at that moment. In that moment I was very young, and very small, and there were monsters. Not in my closet or under my bed, but in my dreams. In my head.
I clung to Ghost and the night closed around us like a fist.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CITADEL OF SALAH ED-DIN
SEVEN KILOMETERS EAST OF AL-HAFFAH, SYRIA
&nb
sp; TWO DAYS AGO
They ran toward the strange, booming voice. They ran toward the sound of men screaming in pain and terror. They ran toward the rattle of gunfire and the roar of something that was too alien, too weird, too big to exist down here. They ran.
Why the fuck are we running toward all this? That was the question pounding through Harry Bolt’s head. He was positive that he was completely unprepared for whatever the hell this was. And yet he ran.
The pillars were so many and so thick that they blocked the view of whatever was happening. Green light flung impossible shadows on the walls. Men, their outlines distorted to capering goblin shapes, fighting something that writhed and twisted like a nest of giant snakes. Gunfire flashed and thunder boomed. Violin, running far ahead, rounded a corner and vanished into the green madness. Her shadow loomed like a giant warrior woman from some ancient myth.
Then Harry was there, rounding the same corner, seeing what Violin saw. He skidded to a stop, tripped, fell. Lay there staring, unable to do anything else. His heart punched the inside of his chest cavity over and over again.
The intense green light poured out through a doorway. Or a cleft. Or a hole. He could not understand what it was, because it seemed to hover in the air. It was not a door in the wall. It was not anchored to anything. It was merely there and it was open, and from the other side of that doorway stretched a dozen …
His mind tried hard to refuse the word.
Tentacles.
Gigantic tentacles were stretched through the doorway and they curled and thrashed and beat at Ghul. They curled around the shrieking tomb raiders. They crushed them and tore the men to pieces and dragged them, bleeding and dying, back through the doorway. Harry caught Ghul’s eyes for a moment, and even though they were strangers, even though they would have otherwise murdered each other, there was a pleading and desperate appeal. Person to person. Human to human. But when Ghul opened his mouth to scream for help, he vomited a torrent of dark red blood.
However, it was not the tentacles, nor the impossible doorway that rooted Harry to where he lay and made him stare with eyes so wide they ached.
No. It was what he could see on the other side of the doorway. Beyond it was … daylight. Bright sun shone on hills and fields, and above them machines flew through the sky. He could see them quite clearly, silhouetted briefly as they flew in front of the moon.
The several moons that hung in a sky that was a luminous green instead of blue. The sky of another world.
That’s when Harry Bolt screamed and screamed and screamed until he passed out.
INTERLUDE NINE
PARK HYATT SYDNEY
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
SIX YEARS AGO
Ari sat on one side of the table in the suite overlooking the bay. He was drunk, but Valen could not blame him. Neither of them had been entirely sober since the opening of the pocket in the Green Caves.
Valen sat across from him. There were wine and whiskey bottles everywhere. A thousand-dollar bottle of Pappy Van Winkle had fallen over and leaked a puddle onto the carpet, but neither of them cared.
The hand was wrapped in plastic and sitting in a cooler packed with dry ice. The green crystal gun lay on the table. Gadyuka was sending someone to collect them. All Valen told her via coded message was that there were unusual “artifacts” she needed to see.
Valen’s cell phone rang, and he tensed when he saw the display. “It’s the site.”
“Valen,” cried a breathless Marguerite, “you need to come back here right away.”
“Whoa, wait … why? What’s happened?”
“We found something else. God … how soon can you get here?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MANDARIN ORIENTAL HOTEL
WASHINGTON, D.C.
DMS special agent D.J. Ming wrapped the blood-pressure cuff around Aunt Sallie’s upper arm and began squeezing the rubber bulb.
“You’re making it too damn tight,” she complained, but D.J. ignored her. He had been her driver, bodyguard, and private nurse for two years now and had become so hardened to complaints and abuse that his friends joked that he was literally bulletproof. No one in the DMS was harder to work for than Aunt Sallie.
She was in a blue nightgown with little white flowers on it. It made her look like a senior citizen in a nursing home, and she knew it. Her dreadlocks hung limply down beside her rounded cheeks and the jewels in them caught little bits of lamplight. Dots of beauty around a sad, angry face.
D.J. finished pumping and then eased pressure as he looked at his watch. The digital meter told the story: 161 over 98.
“Jesus Christ,” he breathed, appalled.
“It’s better than it was this morning,” Auntie said defensively.
“This morning I was going to drive you to the ER.”
“You can’t drive with my foot up your ass.”
D.J. removed the cuff and stepped back. Not for perspective, but to be out of range. “Auntie, I’m just going to say this one more time—”
“Don’t bother.”
He ignored her. “Your blood pressure is off the charts and your blood sugar scares the hell out of me. Don’t get me started on your balance. The fact that none of this scares you, scares me even more.”
“It’s fine. It’ll go back down once I knock in a few heads tomorrow.”
“And how long’s that going to take?”
“A day, tops.”
They both knew she was lying. Auntie was the queen of power phone calls. The fact that she couldn’t unravel the mess involving Captain Ledger and thought coming here was a good next move told D.J. that the knots were tied way too tight. A day was a laughable estimate and they both knew it.
The agent-cum-nurse walked across the room and placed the cuff on the dresser next to her blood glucose monitor and insulin supplies. He turned, leaned back, and folded his thick arms. D.J. Ming was in his middle thirties and had been a Navy SEAL for seven years and a DMS operative for nine. He was one of the most highly qualified experts in small-arms and hand-to-hand combat in the agency, and would have had a chestful of medals if the DMS gave out any. Instead he had scars and memories. It was fair to say that there wasn’t a whole lot that scared him.
Aunt Sallie did, but not for the reasons she scared everyone else. He knew the difference between bluster and real threat. He could take her barbs and insults and complaints without blinking. But he cared very deeply for her, and her declining health worried him more than any battlefield he’d ever been on. If he could put himself between her and her own self-destructive nature and somehow fight that enemy, he would do it without the slightest hesitation. Auntie, despite everything, inspired a level of loyalty that ran very deep in people like him. In soldiers. D.J. was a third-generation American citizen and a second-generation special operator. His mother and Auntie had run field ops together years ago. Now D.J. was watching her wither away. Maybe die. And it was killing him.
She was the deputy director of the Department of Military Sciences, second only to its founder, Mr. Church. No one crossed her. No one went behind her back. Ever. D.J. was giving it some real thought, though. It was a balancing act—betrayal or broken heart.
Before he could try another tack with her, Auntie heaved a sigh and held up a hand. “Look, kid, give me one more day. I promise to take better care of myself. Go fetch my pills and syringe and all that crap.” When he didn’t move, she smiled. It was a ghastly attempt at relaxed affability. “Trust me, this will all be fine.”
He nodded and turned to begin sorting out her pills. And, mostly, to hide the tears that kept trying to form in the corners of his eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE WAREHOUSE
DMS FIELD OFFICE
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
Something woke me from another round of bad dreams. I sprang awake, thinking it was an explosion or an attack. Ghost started barking. I grabbed my sidearm and whipped the door open, expecting to see flames and armed hostiles. Instead, a f
ew other confused and sleepy DMS staff came out of bedrooms, peering around like confused turtles.
One of the science techs stood listening, then nodded to himself. “Minor earthquake.”
“You sure that’s all it was?” I asked.
“Positive.”
We stood and listened to what a grumpy Mother Earth had to say, but apparently, she rolled over and went back to sleep.
Eventually everyone went to their rooms. I sat on the bed and stroked Ghost’s fur. The following morning we’d be on a plane back to California, and leaving all this behind. The crap in Washington was going to be sorted out by Aunt Sallie, who would kick ass and take names.
“It’s okay, Ghost,” I said. “It’s all okay.”
Which neither of us believed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE BASILICA OF THE NATIONAL SHRINE
OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The priest was middle-aged and he’d seen it all. Desperate drunks looking to make a bargain with God. The broken heart who had no other lifeline to grab. The fallen and the falling. The displaced ones who came because the doors were open. Those sad ones who came in just to see if they were still welcome. People whose faith was cracking but who wanted to cling to belief.
So many kinds. Father Steve often mused that he could fill a book with the different types. Multiple volumes. He knew that only half of them still identified in some way as Catholic. The rest were a mixed bag of Christians, lapsed-somethings, agnostics, or atheists who were having a crisis of their own lack of faith. Why Immaculate Conception? Easy. It was in a part of town where the crime rate was low enough to risk keeping the doors open all night. A lot of cops came in here. People from the crisis centers took the Metro to come here.
It was all the same to him. Father Steve was a practical guy. He’d been a chaplain in the First Gulf War and had logged time as a missionary attached to crisis hospitals in five different African countries. Since then he’d been running Immaculate Conception, mostly doing counseling, taking confessions, and working the night shift. It was a big church and there were three priests, of which he had middle seniority and no ambition to run the whole shebang.
Deep Silence Page 11