by Lee Doty
“Listen!” Bai continued, “You must do this. I’m sorry, I should have…”
The channel closed.
***
The command trailer was silent except for the muted hiss of static from the speakers, and the slight sound of wind as it moved around the sheet metal of the enclosure. On the floor, two men and one woman lay. Cleric Jen was still at her workstation, slumped back over her chair, blood pooled on the floor below her from the gunshot wound in her head. Cleric Liu lay behind her, shot twice in the chest, then once in the back as he tried to flee, though there had been nowhere for him to go in the locked trailer.
The final body lay on the other side of the four-person bank of workstations, near the command console. Bai’s eyes were open, but shot through with broken blood vessels and staring in different directions. Blood flowed from the nose and the ear closest to the floor.
Soon after the signal that had set off the small charge in Bai’s head, the orders had come to the agents that were escorting the mobile command post. They were to move out of the area as quickly as possible, then return their cargo to the regional base in an unassuming office park on the outskirts of Toledo.
The two agents checked the heavy locks that had secured the outer door of the trailer since before this mission had begun, then returned to the cab.
“You ever wonder what we’re carrying around?” the driver asked as he put the truck into gear.
“No.” the passenger responded, “And neither should you.”
“Too true.” The driver said, navigating the truck out of its parking lane and toward the on ramp.
Within five minutes of their initial orders, the semi and its heavily armed escort vehicles were back on I-90 and headed east toward Toledo.
***
The prisoner laughed as Ash tried to raise Bai on the radio. The sound was a humorless gurgling rasp. “He’s not going to answer you.”
Ash shot him a direct look, but said nothing.
“He’s dead.” Xian chuckled, “I’m only sorry I couldn’t have done it myself.”
The laugh came again, “Are you sad now? No, now you will never be able to meet and become friends… there will be no hugging for you at Christmas time, there is no Santa Cla…”
He moved. Lightning quick and with no tensing or telegraphing beforehand. He rolled to his left, drawing a concealed pistol from somewhere as he did it.
Chrome was fast, but his pistol had just moved down to shoot Xian in the gut to silence him again, so two of his shots hit Xian in the gut, then leg as he moved. The third shot skipped across the hotel lobby floor, shattering one of the front doors.
Xian’s return shot was aimed at the gap beneath Chrome’s helmet and it went straight and true, but Chrome had ducked his chin so the slug glanced off the right side of the helmet, deflecting down and through his throat, into his chest. As Chrome stumbled, Xian continued his roll, two shots bounced off Trunc’s helmet, causing the Close to dodge before returning fire. Xian came to his feet, moving his gun toward Crow as he stood, covering the fallen Close from Root.
Two thuds of suppressed fire, and Xian’s head disassembled and his step sideways terminated in an artless flop.
“Clear!” Ash shouted, smoking pistol still trained on the fallen body.
Trunc emptied his thirty round magazine into Xian’s fallen body in a single long belch of fire. “Clear.” He agreed. Ash gave him a look. Trunc shrugged and reloaded.
***
“The mission is over.” Crow said to Root’s Close, who lay on the floor below him, wounded arms held defensively to his chest.
“But there was no goal tone.” The Close said uncertainly. He’d heard none of the conversation that had occurred on Delta’s team channel.
“What’s your name, son?” Crow asked.
“Mod.” The man said, “What’s going on?”
“Well,” Crow said with a smile, “I’ve got some good news, some bad news, and some weird news.”
“Is the good news that we have a long journey back to the womb?” Mod asked brightly.
“How many missions have you been on, Mod?”
“This is my fourth. What’s the bad news… no, wait,” Mod said as if he were a toddler playing an exciting new game, “I’ll take the weird news.”
“How long have you been out of recovery?”
“Eighteen months. I’ve been active for six.”
“The weird news is you’re about two years old.”
“Right.” Mod said dubiously, “And the good news is that you’re crazy.”
“No, Mod.” Crow said with a smile, “The good news is that you don’t ever have to go back to the Womb. The good news is that the Hollow is a lie.”
Mod’s scowl deepened, he looked at Crow like a child being offered candy by a stranger in a van with no windows. “This is the real world, son.” Crow said, moving forward to check Mod’s wounds. “I’m going to put my gun away and get a medkit on those wounds. I don’t have to shoot you, do I?”
“We get to stay here?” Mod asked in a small, uncertain voice that broke Crow’s heart, and not just because he’d shot the poor boy a few minutes ago.
Crow nodded, pulling the medkit off of Fleet’s stolen chest rig.
“Forever?” Mod looked like the promised trip to the dentist had ended at the gates to Disneyland, but he couldn’t bring himself to accept it for fear that it would all be a lie.
“Forever. Now, this is going to hurt.” Crow said, allowing Mod to forget that there was bad news for now, “Try not to clench when I put this on your arm.”
Epilogue: The Lunchroom
OSI Headquarters, January 2021
Crow and Ash sat across from each other at the four person table in the Sunspot Industries cafeteria in rural Virginia. There was now no hint that this very room had received a mortar strike during Crow’s assault on the compound fourteen months ago. They said nothing for a while as they ate, then the first words were about the food, like always. Eventually that subject dried out as their stomachs filled and they turned to less trivial subjects.
“Mangoes.” Crow replied.
“I can’t believe it’s better than a fresh peach.” Ash said around a mouthful of macaroni.
“Well, I… okay, peaches are better.”
They ate again in silence for a moment, then Ash asked, “And how are the recruits doing in school?”
Crow smiled around the mashed potatoes, “Doing great. They’re resilient. Mod drew a picture for you.”
“You are kidding.” Ash giggled.
“It’s really quite good.” Crow responded, “I’ll show you later.”
“How long before Smith starts pressuring us to put them in the field?”
“She hasn’t done it yet.” Crow shook his head, “I’m not sure she is going to ask.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Crow furrowed his brow, “Aside from us and Shadow, there are two and a half Falcon teams training here. Don’t you mean, ‘why not? You can’t expect her to not try to use us at some point.”
“She’s not going to do it.” Ash said flatly.
“Why not?”
“Why not?” Ash teased, “Don’t you mean ‘okay?’”
Crow lowered his eyelids and gave her his look of forced patience.
“It’s not her way.” Ash said finally, “She’s going to wait for them to get healthy, to find their own balance.” Ash tapped her own temple with a fingertip. “Then, she’s going to wait to see if that’s what they want.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because it’s what she did with me.” Ash said, then added, “And with you, if I remember correctly.”
Crow nodded. “I love working here.”
“You don’t miss the church?” Ash took a sip of grape juice, which was her favorite drink, though if she wasn’t careful it would give her a purple mustache. She savored it, then swallowed it slowly.
“I prefer the company here.” He said, giving her
a direct look.
“Yeah,” Ash said, blushing, “but don’t you miss the whole holy thing… you know, the prayers and the books and stuff?”
“I pray.” He shrugged, “I read books.”
“Crow, you know what I mean. Don’t you miss doing your priestly job, the job ironically similar to the one the Clerics always said they were doing for us?”
“Lies and truth are both constructed of similar words.” Crow said cryptically.
“Okay, Confucius, but you’ve got to admit that your job description now is a lot closer to your time as the Forbidden City’s slave.”
“I’m still doing God’s work.” He said flatly.
Ash wrinkled her face, “Crow, the most charitable description of your current job is soldier, maybe policeman.”
“Exactly.” Crow said.
They spent an intense moment locked in a conflict of glances and expressions meant to make the other one feel like an idiot for agreeing on the facts but coming to opposite conclusions. Ash usually won such contests, but today she could not touch the serenity in Crow’s eyes.
“I don’t get it.” She said finally.
Crow shrugged, “A man with a talent for healing does God’s work as a surgeon.”
Ash stared at him, skepticism on display.
“A man with a talent for violence does God’s work as a soldier on the side of freedom and mercy, or as a policeman enforcing just laws. In either case, that man places himself between evil and the innocent. In both cases he does the work God has entrusted man to do in this fallen world.”
“When did you grow up?” Ash said, clearly surprised. “You’re only a year older than me.”
“When you’re five, you’ll understand such adult stuff, young lady.” Crow responded with faux condescension.
“Besides,” Crow said with a direct look, “This,” he gestured, indicating the two of them at the table, “Was the first thing that was ever holy to me… the only thing that felt right in the Hollow.” The tone was light, but there was no hint of guile or irony in his eyes.
Ash choked on the grape juice, coughed, then tried to recover, “Wow, you nearly choked me to death with the cheese there.”
“You’ll live, you delicate little princess.”
“Princess, eh?” Ash picked up her fork, “I have several points I’d like to make about that!”
***
Doctors Hawkins and Nelson sat with Dr. Smith in her office on the third floor of the Virginia campus. On the large screen on Smith’s wall, they watched Crow and Ash laughing in the cafeteria. They’d began to wrestle for control of a fork, giggling like the children they were.
“Balance.” She said simply, “You can’t build worthwhile soldiers out of anything but strong, balanced people.”
“Explain Dirk here, then.” Nelson said, glancing at Hawkins.
Hawkins shook his head, “He’s going to kiss her.”
“They were made sexless.” Dr. Nelson said again, this was not a new argument, “The equipment is there, but the biology is locked down tight... they’re eunuchs.”
“They’re like four years old, man! Give it time!” Hawkins gave Nelson the kind of look the jocks always gave him in high school when he was president of the chess club. “Why is it that you can believe that a bunch of female dinosaurs can escape from a theme park and breed because ‘life finds a way’, but you can’t believe that a boy,” Hawkins pointed to the screen, “is going to kiss a girl?” He pointed again.
Nelson scowled, “I don’t ‘believe’ in Jurassic Park.”
Hawkins rolled his eyes, “Twenty bucks says he’s going to kiss her.”
Nelson shook his head, “Are you really going to bet against science?”
“Are you really going to bet against love?” Hawkins smiled broadly.
Nelson pursed his lips, “Will you give me two-to-one odds?”
Hawkins smiled and nodded, “I thought so.”
“Just wait till they’re teenagers.” Smith cut in, smiling. “Raising these kids is going to be interesting.”
“See? Smith’s on my side…” Hawkins said with a sidelong glance at Nelson.
“I don’t believe it!” Nelson said, staring at the screen like he meant it.
***
Crow grabbed the end of the fork, twisting. Ash let go, but just as Crow opened his mouth to gloat, inverted fork in hand, Ash dropped her fingers, circling around his hand and grabbed the flesh between his thumb and wrist from the outside, twisting sharply forward and outward. The fork spun out of Crow’s hand and clattered on the floor.
“Touché.” Crow said, wincing, then let his hand go limp and twisted into Ash’s pressure on his thumb. Ash didn’t make any counter move, so he ended with his hand on hers, thumb still in her grip, with his fingers resting across the back of her hand.
The world stopped and they stared at each other with the odd promise hanging between them. It was the same naïve promise that hung, uncomprehended, between them in the Hallow, that they had felt so intensely across the small zebra-striped walkway of the whispercraft as it lifted off from the forests of Brazil that last time—the last real thing they felt before the lying sleep of the Hollow.
“What is…” Ash started, but Crow reached out with his right hand, brushing the hair off of her cheek and over her left ear. She swallowed, throat seeming to close at the electricity that danced through her at his gentle, hesitant touch.
“I don’t know.” He said, sliding his hand from hers and down her arm until he held her elbow and her hand came to a rest on his chest over his racing heart. He gave her a small flicker of a smile, “But this is not close enough yet.”
Ash dropped her eyes, stepping forward until her hands slid under his arms and he folded himself around her. She laid her head on his shoulder and he tensed as her lips came to a rest on his neck. Then the fire: warm and awkward and prickly-hot, it rose like the shimmering heat of summer around them, setting them apart from the world.
He leaned his head in, resting his cheek on the side of her head. “What do we do now?” He whispered.
“Don’t let go.” Ash breathed, lips brushing across his neck as she spoke.
“Never.” He said.
A kiss’s promise
The dream of love unending
Is patiently held
Dedication
For the best person I know, my wife, Amber.
Special thanks to Alex Trevisanut, budding author and the very first editor for this book. I have her to thank for countless small corrections, as well as a major idea that made this book much more satisfying to read.
Thanks also to those who read this book and forward their corrections and suggestions to me. If your commentary results in a change, this next space is reserved for you:
Alex Trevisanut
Amber Doty
Bob and Carolyn Doty
Eric Pezzulo
Please forward all corrections, comments and suggestions to [email protected].
A less special, yet still very earnest, thanks to the Spotify muses who kept me company and massaged my mind through seemingly endless hours of writing and rewriting: Thank you, Koan, Pogo, and the Spoitify radio that led me to them.
If you’d like to listen to the Spotify channel I listen to while I write, you can find it here:
https://open.spotify.com/user/1241188413/playlist/1WMvtHubPT2WZiG9ow5nta
Or here (URI):
spotify:user:1241188413:playlist:1WMvtHubPT2WZiG9ow5nta
Free Sample: Out of the Black
Lee Doty’s first novel, Out of the Black is available now in paperback, on kindle and in audiobook format from Audible.com.
Out of Time
The impact spread slowly across his back, straining his tightly set muscles and driving the air from his lungs in a long, slow groan. Then, the sound of success— the sound of the end— like a large boot in deep, wet snow, the crunch of parting glass
broke out all around him and he kicked out hard one last time. The window crumbled away around him and he flew backwards, away from the death in the hallway and into the night air high above Chicago's deserted streets.
Then his world was a tumbling storm of rain, glass and the wind of increasing velocity. The gathering roar of the air around him promised that this would end badly eighty-two floors down. He'd made his choices, fought hard, and would now die on his own terms. Small consolation, considering that he was only about a second and a half into the fall and he'd already had enough time to count to infinity twice and take a nap. It would be a few more seconds before he stopped accelerating, then a few more before the final splat. He wished in passing he'd brought a good book. He was all for the idea of having time to meditate and ponder the eternities or whatever people were supposed to do in their final moments, but he'd only need the time a bullet took from barrel to brain for that kind of thing.
He watched the light from the building's windows bend and refract through the rain and the shards of the broken window tumbling around him and tried to Zen out for a bit. It was really a beautiful scene, now that he took the time to look. From time to time, the glass would tick off his clothes or skin, pressing then fading like tentative teeth in the chill of the embracing rain. He was going out in style.