The Terminals

by Michael F Stewart

  Leica’s diamond-hard eyes held me, and a wave of adrenaline lifted the fog of shock.

  “Shit,” I said, when the camera panned to Handso.

  As the light from the fire burned over the heads onscreen, the general cranked the volume and the speakers distorted.

  “Who was the woman who fled the scene of the crime?” Leica asked.

  I winced.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Christine Kurzow of the U.S. Army entered the building against the advisement of both the police and the FBI,” Handso replied.

  “That’s not true,” I complained. “I had their agreement.”

  “What happened after that, Captain?” Leica asked.

  “Captain, she can’t even get that right,” I said to the general. “He’s a lieutenant.”

  “American viewers don’t know that,” the general replied. “This is syndicated across the country.”

  “She cleared the building,” Handso continued.

  Handso’s sarcasm made the reporter smile, but she still managed to frame her glee as a question.

  “But it wasn’t clear, was it, Captain?”

  “No.” From Handso’s haunted eyes, the camera panned to the fire. “She missed a bomb.”

  “How did the lieutenant know to come here?” Leica’s face contorted with concern.

  “I don’t know and she won’t tell us.”

  “And American law enforcement officers are paying the price, aren’t they?” Her false sympathy made me want to vomit. “Just as you paid the price on another occasion, didn’t you?”

  The camera zoomed back in to Handso, focusing on the facial bandages.

  “The families deserve answers, ma’am,” he said. “This is America. We don’t keep secrets from each other.”

  I rolled my eyes, but as ridiculous as Handso’s performance might seem, I knew it had worked. Hypocrisy never lacked friends.

  “This is Leica Takers reporting for TTV.”

  The screen blinked off, leaving the sound of the general clapping softly. “I’ve had a dozen calls.”

  I shrugged.

  “That’s a lot considering only three people outside of the unit know of … know the reality of our existence. And it’s twelve more than I like to get.”

  It was the first time I’d noticed the thirty-year-old phone. A push button, but pushing rotary era. This unit ran on a shoe string.

  “I missed a bomb. They shouldn’t have sent forensics in with the bomb squad. Really sloppy.” What little strength remained in me, I imagined being like the filaments that held the eyeballs. The hooks propped me up and held me, manipulating my limbs.

  “That’s not the point. You shouldn’t have gone inside in the first place. You shouldn’t be the public face of this thing. We’re secret!”

  His anger gave me wind. “The very purpose of my entering alone was to prevent what happened.”

  The general shook his head. “That bitch Takers is out for blood, and she can smell you on the rag a country mile.” The general clenched his hands into fists. “But we still have a mission and missing kids.”

  I groaned; the kids were probably dead. I’m not sure we had a mission left. Over two days missing, they’d be unconscious by now, or deceased.

  His thick fingers lifted a slim file from the desk. “Got another Euth for you, flying in from Vermont, Julie Wilshire.”

  I choked.

  “I won’t …” The words barely made it out.

  The general leaned forward.

  “What? You won’t, what?”

  I fumbled for my phone. The general just regarded me while I started the database application.

  “I won’t let anyone else die for me,” I said.

  “She’s a dead woman anyways.” The general tossed the file, which opened mid-flight and scattered its pages at my feet.

  “So you say.”

  “Who says this has anything to do with you?”

  Julie Wilshire’s name was scrawled across the manila folder, but there was no photo clipped to it.

  I shifted my attention back to the phone’s screen and entered Morph’s username and password. I was prompted to enter the constraints of my search. American, Terminal, All Databases, Gnostic, Military.

  No results.

  “She’s civilian,” the general said.

  I glanced up, but the general was picking at his nails. He’d told me it was a Euth.

  I deleted the military constraint. Still no results. Feeling somehow vindicated, I typed in her name. A gray silhouette was where a photo should have been, and beneath it:

  Name: Julie Wilshire

  Age: 35

  Profession: Nurse

  Religion: Theosophist, modern Gnostic

  Medical: Requires Coronary Bypass

  Notes: Poor credit rating and indebted to collections agencies, Julie Wilshire cannot afford the $75,000 surgery

  “Thirty-five? She’s not terminal,” I said.

  “She’s going to die of a massive heart attack,” the general said. “Use her.”

  “Her condition is treatable, curable even.”

  “You fork over the cash,” he said, but then waved off the comment. “It’s too late. She’s on her way and we need her.”

  “What about Charlie?” I asked.

  “Charlie’s not getting the job done.” The general cracked his knuckles. “If he were military, I’d give him a dishonorable discharge.”

  But I didn’t see people as expendable, terminal or not. My gut told me that the general’s substitute for Charlie bent the rules. I was going to find out how much.

  Chapter 25

  Charlie braced against the pain, his scream for Astaphanos echoing in his mind. His groin encrusted with old semen. His belly raw and weeping. He plunged thumbs into his eye sockets as if that might cleanse them of his filth. But his hunger and rage and lust were gone. Only the guilt remained. Broken vows. Broken trust. Human weakness assured. But worse. That which made him repulsive. That which left gnosis hidden. He knew why he hadn’t helped Josephine. Why he’d left her to die. His drunkenness was no excuse. His youth was no defense.

  Spite. She’d hurt him. Hurt his pride.

  Darkness settled over Charlie, a shawl over his mantle of guilt. One moment he’d ascended through a ladder of light; the next, he neither landed nor stopped in any discernible way. The only change was the elimination of all light and the knowledge that he was there. He could no longer feel his toes or his fingers. He was without sensation. He listened for signs of Hillar, but heard nothing. Hillar, it appeared, knew all the names of the Archons and easily stayed ahead. Charlie’s only hope was that Hillar had not garnered the meaning of his experiences in the deeps and remained as close to gnosis as Charlie—which was to say, nowhere near. He heard the echoes of Jo’s screaming. Never near.

  For some minutes nothing happened, and the darkness oppressed, deepening his despondency. Finally, a ripple traveled through the dark. Not light, rather a movement. It was so still and so black that even quiet whispers rustled the darkness. Shrouded in a conspiratorial hush, they grew louder and overlapped. With more than one speaker, at first Charlie couldn’t distinguish one from another, but if he concentrated he could pluck out a voice. He hadn’t heard it for decades. It was that of his brother.

  “Petey?” But the deep remained dark.

  Unbidden, the sound of Peter’s head as it knocked against the windshield rang out. Traffic shattered around Charlie, who was left untouched amongst crumpled and wretched metal and screams. Eight years old and quaking.

  His mother leaned through the darkness and told him that she had never again looked at Charlie without seeing a reflection of Peter, twisted and dead. Charlie’s father had hardened to him.

  “It should have been Charlie,” he overheard one night, to which he pleaded
, “I was only trying to save Puppers.”

  Petey’s voice dispelled the illusions of memory.

  “… guilty of the charge of listening to my brother. When he said, Puppers! I had to run. He’s my big brother, you see? I didn’t do nothing wrong except that. Did what I was told.”

  Puppers had been his golden retriever, and Charlie remembered the smear of it on the pavement even as he remembered burying his fingers in its soft fur. He felt the fur now, sticky with blood. He stumbled into the darkness toward what he thought was the source of the voice, but the voices grew neither nearer nor more distant.

  “And my momma always liked me more than she liked him. That’s why he did it. He sent me onto the street. And think of this—who let Puppers off his leash?”

  “You let go, Petey, you did,” Charlie said. His mind whirled. Could his brother really be here? He wasn’t Gnostic, so did he exist here or was this a manifestation of Charlie’s hallucinations? “It doesn’t matter who let go. It wasn’t your fault. I know it wasn’t your fault.”

  “I loved him! I loved him.” A new voice.

  Charlie whirled, trying to peer into the ink and confirm the source of the call that rose above his brother’s. It had sounded like Angelica. Angelica, to whom he’d lectured on Gnosticism; to whom Charlie was a mentor and more. She could be here, in the deeps … if she were dead. The thought pained him more than Petey’s voice; since Charlie’s rejection by Jo and taking up the cloth, Angelica had been the single friend he had made and kept in his confidence, the only one who knew everything. The only woman he’d allowed himself to love in decades.

  “Chuck said I let go, but should I have been holding him? Everybody knows how Puppers could pull, right? I wasn’t old enough to be holding on. So Puppers, he yelled. And of course I went! I felt my skull cave in.”

  Petey’s voice lowered until it was indecipherable and finally he quieted.

  “I wouldn’t have told. Not anyone,” Angelica exclaimed. “Oh, God, why’d they have to do this?”

  “Angelica?” Charlie called, out of breath now. “Do what? What did they do?” He remembered Christine being upset when she discovered Angelica knew.

  “Stole him from my breast! Cruel son, leaving to a crueler God.”

  “Mother,” Charlie whispered and now felt the tears, sliding upon his cheeks. How could she be here?

  “There was more I wanted to do,” Angelica cried. “In the back of the head. So low. Is this my punishment for love? Is it?”

  “Loved me,” Charlie said. But could he ever know for certain? Was Angelica’s love, love, or merely the same spiritual bond Charlie’d mistaken for love in Jo?

  “My killer son! My killing son! I don’t care who knows!”

  Angelica moaned and between sobs, said: “Take my veil, take my cross. I … loved … him.”

  “You hear that, Chuck?” Petey hollered. “The shards entered my brain, but I wasn’t dead yet. I heard you come and say … you said … nothing. I never had a chance at life. Not even to fuck it up like you did.”

  “You hear me, Charlie? I loved you. That’s my sin.”

  “It’s no sin, Angelica. It’s not!” The sound of wood cracked together and reverberated. A wheel squeaked as it turned. Charlie had never been able to show love back. Not wholly, not when Angelica’s feelings might be tainted due to their bonding. Not with what he knew of himself. And Charlie couldn’t handle such rejection again if Angelica discovered that truth, that Charlie had used their bond for his selfish desires. Much less learned the darker truth still.

  “You threw up,” Petey continued. “All over me, and I wasn’t even dead yet.”

  “I’m sorry, Petey. I am but …” Charlie held his face. “But it wasn’t my fault. I was a child.”

  “I died after that, stinking of brains and half-digested tuna sandwich. My sin was following you.”

  “Stole my son,” Charlie’s mother said. “My sin was trusting you.”

  “No, Mother,” Charlie replied and it came out as a snarl. “Your sin was not accepting your role in Pete’s death.”

  Then there was light.

  The squeaking, which continued, faster now, was from the labored turning of rusted pulleys as ropes ran over them. Two hooded figures slowly gathered the rope, and the blade of the guillotine reached its height.

  Beneath the blade, Charlie recognized the auburn tresses of Angelica. Stuck in the hole of the lunette, her brown hair hanging.

  In the stocks of the second guillotine, Petey lay on his front and struggled to look at his brother, lifting his caved head to stare at him. His hands were free above the copper and wood barrier and moved in the way that Charlie remembered as he spoke.

  The two executioners quit hauling on the rope and turned to Charlie, as if giving him the last word. Their gloved hands rested on a handle.

  “No one is guilty here,” Charlie said, but he searched for his mother. “Only me!”

  The executioners nodded in unison and pulled the release.

  The blade seemed to hang an instant. And Charlie did, too, understanding he could only save one, dream or not, real or not, he had to make a choice. He dove forward.

  Charlie reached the guillotine as the knife fell. He lunged between the thick pillars of wood to catch the slide of the edge across his bony wrists. But the blade whipped past his hands without pause and lopped through the neck. The head dropped into the wicker basket.

  His only reward was the shock in his mother’s eyes as she drew off her hood.

  “No!” Charlie cried. And with the stubs of his wrists, he tried to pull Angelica’s head out, but was only able to turn her face upright.

  Pity? it mouthed.

  So sharp and quick was the blade that the pain had not registered immediately but now Charlie yowled into the darkness.

  “You chose her! Her!” His mother screeched and drew back the top of the lunette, the blade already lifted to the top crossbar.

  A rough hand gripped the nape of Charlie’s neck, and he twisted to see his father, grim and unrepentant as he forced Charlie back on to the bed of the bascule, which swung toward the ground so that Charlie stared up at the blade and the lunette locked down over his throat. His Adam’s apple kissed against it when he swallowed.

  “Killers should burn,” his father said. “But this’ll do.”

  As his father’s Alzheimer’s had progressed, he had at times forgotten Charlie’s sins. Their visits had alternated between forgetfulness, and the raw shock of seeing the killer in his son for the first time.

  Charlie flailed his handless wrists. Blood greasing the wood, he pried the wood upward. He twisted his neck and looked down at Angelica.

  “Not pity,” Charlie said. And Angelica smiled back up at him. It wasn’t a mocking expression, rather complacent and glad. Charlie stopped thrashing.

  “I loved you, too,” he croaked, saying without hesitation, without thought, without guilt or fear. And as the sound of the blade whispered down, warmth filled Charlie, and he knew the love and acceptance that he’d always strove for was at last his.

  “Elaios,” he whispered to Angelica.

  Over the roar of blood in Charlie’s ears, he heard Hillar laughing.

  And was gone.

  Chapter 26

  I wasn’t willing to kill anyone else. Justice was long overdue.

  I waited on Charlie’s cot until the general left, enduring his final headshake and scoff as he hobbled out of Purgatory and headed for his quarters. I heard the distant click of the door. Charlie’s features were sunken; even I couldn’t believe he was coming back. My phone buzzed with what at first I suspected was another of Morph’s comments from the grave.

  But the text read: I have something you want to see.

  It was from Leica Takers. How can people be so wrong? I was the one with something she wanted, although I sup
pose that was in the message’s metadata.

  I deleted the text and left Charlie’s bedside.

  Scattered across the general’s desk were a couple dozen prescription drug bottles. I searched them, rattling each, separating the full from the nearly empty.

  The bottle of Coumadin was over half-filled and I read the label. May cause hemorrhage, uncontrolled bleeding, and death. Perfect. I didn’t care how good the staff was downstairs, nothing would save me this time. The anticoagulant took time to take effect, but I could manage a few hours of waiting. Coumadin was a blood thinner commonly used as rat poison, but that didn’t dissuade me either. It was fitting. I popped the cap off and dry-swallowed a handful.

  The general also had enough benzos to knock out an all-night rave and I thumbed off their caps, dumping the contents into one hand. I’d soon be in a narcotic coma with my wrists opened and no way to stop the bleeding.

  My palm was halfway to my mouth when Attila walked in. I hesitated and a couple of the pills ran through my fingers on to the floor.

  “Christine?”

  Making a split decision, I shoveled the pills between my lips, but had trouble swallowing. I’d used up my saliva for the rat poison. I stood staring at him, trying to swallow as he crossed the room. Attila clutched my jaw in a strong grip. His fingers forced my head down, making it nearly impossible to swallow the pills.

  “No, Christine!” Anger laced his tone. “Spit them out!”

  He pushed fingers into my cheeks and along my teeth. With my jaw forced open, he shook my head, and I had an image of doing this to my Shepherd, Julian, when he’d swallowed a long shoelace. Pills tumbled out onto the floor in a mix of drool. I elbowed Attila in the stomach and he grunted. When he still wouldn’t let go I stamped my heel into his instep and he cried out, flying backwards to hit the one-way mirror.

  I swiped my sleeve across my mouth.

  “What are you thinking?” he accused.

  I just stared at him as he massaged his ribs.

  “Remember what Morph said?” he demanded. “Dying for a reason is a good reason to keep living.”

  “Those are the general’s words. He also likes life sucks and then you die,” I replied. “And what reason do I have to keep living, anyway?”