James Axler - Deathlands 43 - Dark Emblem

by Dark E

  Then came a shrill shriek, an inhuman sound that poured forth like water from a pitcher, poured forth in a sonic fury from Luis's entire being. The skin on his face was taut and cherry red as he shrieked again and again. He pulled free of Krysty's hands and fell on his side, the unearthly wailing still coming from his mouth until the sound was cut short and replaced by a bubbling of crimson. Dark, nearly black blood splattered on his shirt and face as he thrashed in the dirt.

  "What do we do?" Jorge asked.

  "Nothing we can do," Ryan replied.

  Dean stood next to his father, watching, an expression of sheer horror on his young face. He'd seen death before, but usually it came from an outside source, not from inside a man's own body.

  Luis bent his dying physique, his neck muscles taut as bands of stretched steel. His upper torso arched into a backward U-shape, the spine beneath contorted into a direction never intended by nature. The man's arms twisted and shook, his entire body writhing in a mass of agony before he flopped over on his back. His legs kicked a few times, feet bent out like the graceful arc of a dancer, then his heels drummed a last tempo of pain as he finally died.

  At that second, Krysty spotted new movement, like the fin of a shark breaking the surface of the ocean under the front of his sweat-soaked shirt. "There, lover," she shouted, pointing it out to Ryan.

  Ryan drew his panga and stepped close, reaching down and slitting open the tight cotton T-shirt. The cloth, damp with sweat and blood, tore easily as he pulled the blade of the panga up and across the fabric, revealing Luis's bare torso.

  There were wiggling movements under the dead man's skin, as if something was trying to frantically break out-an angled something, like a broken bone trying to rip free of the skin.

  Only there were no bones in the immediate area of the disturbance.

  "What the hell is that?" J.B. demanded in a tight voice, his knuckles white as he clutched his well-maintained Uzi, ready to send a barrage of 9 mm bullets into the mystery inside the corpse on the ground before him.

  "Don't know offhand," Ryan replied, stepping back and watching the queer undulating movements at a safe distance.

  "There's something inside him," Soto murmured, speaking the obvious.

  As if in reply, a single oversized mandible two inches long poked through the flesh of Luis's stomach, a shiny black eyetooth all wet and glistening in the dim light as day continued to fade into night.

  "Bug," Jak said, a hint of distant disgust in his flat voice. The albino had seen all kinds of insects during his youth in the fetid swamps of Louisiana, all kinds of squirming, crawling, creeping insects, and most of them large and nasty-biting bugs, sucking bugs, flying bugs-the kind where it took far more than a single well-placed stomp to end their scurrying across a kitchen floor.

  There was very little blood as the size of the wound increased in diameter. The cut was jagged, but straightforward, like the release of a zipper as it widened. Some clear stomach fluid and digestive juices spurted up at one point but quickly trickled down to nothingness.

  Both cruel black mandibles were free now, along with the insect's small head. Overblown fangs, sickle-shaped like inverted question marks extended from the front of the bug in an almost comical display of exaggeration. Above the quivering mandibles on the shiny black head was a mass of compound eyes. Festooned about the eyes were four horned antennae, quivering in the naked air.

  Approximately five inches long and streamlined, the creature continued to eat its way free, poking out the rest of the shiny black carapace and six legs, and coming to a stop on the lifeless form of Luis. Each member of the group had the uncomfortable sensation of being studied, the watchers being watched in return by the insect.

  "I know this insect," Soto breathed, his voice a mix of disgust and awe. "They are very rare and unusual. They eat more than your flesh, see, for since they burrow inward, they also have the access-and the hunger-to devour your soul. But no one I know has died from the beetle's kiss in many years."

  "Saw one like it once," Ryan replied, as he exchanged a knowing look with Krysty.

  In his mind's eye, Ryan summoned up memories of being forced to helplessly watch as Cort Strasser and his underling Kelber prepared to use a similar black beetle as an instrument of torture on a bound and helpless Krysty Wroth, and it wasn't until Ryan agreed to tell Strasser what he wanted to know that the insect had been removed from her bare buttock. Now he saw Krysty shudder, her eyes hypnotically fixed on the gleaming horror.

  Deciding there was nothing left worth eating inside Luis, the beetle scurried off the dead man's stomach and into the forest grass with surprising mobility and speed.

  Before a single word could be spoken, Jak had responded to the grotesque insect's movement by selecting and throwing one of his lethal leaf-bladed knives. The albino was a lightning-fast blur of motion as he aimed and hurled the knife downward, effectively sending the blade home into the beetle's glistening black shell and through the insect's softer underside.

  Red blood spurted out as if from an overripe piece of fruit, and the insect's twin mandibles clawed at the ah- like miniature ebony hands, reaching up and wiggling for the sky before becoming as still as the lifeless body of its victim.

  "Hate bugs," Jak said flatly as he stepped forward to retrieve the knife. He raised and lowered a boot heel and twisted his foot to crush the remains of the insect into the grassy soil of the forest floor. "Hate 'em."

  Maryland, Virginia, December 28, 2000

  Doc TANNER DIDN'T BOTHER to look up when the smooth metal alloy and Plexiglas door of his one- room holding facility slid sideways into the far wall. His attentions were on the thick hardcover book he was holding, one of more than two dozen family biographies he'd read recently about the famed Kennedy dynasty.

  A tragic fall of three, beginning with the president and ruler of Camelot, the one-and-only lusty Jack; then his second-in-command with his own eyes on the prize, the compassionate Bobby; and finally ending with the lesser of the trinity, poor, sad Teddy, who'd fallen prey to circumstance and timing and seen the dynasty crumble to dust on the cold banks of the Chappaquiddick.

  The floor of the small quarters was covered with stacks of books and magazines. Overhead a color television set was on, but Doc had the sound turned down, finding himself quickly bored with the images. A fantastic invention, he had to admit, but as for the choice and quality of what was being broadcast, a lot was left to be desired.

  Aware of another's presence in the crowded room, and also aware that whoever it was didn't intend on leaving, Doc decided to speak.

  "More questions?" he barked, still not gracing his visitor with a glance. "Perhaps I shall be allowed to clamber half naked upon your wondrous treadmill and run myself ragged for the amusement of your note-taking associates. Better still, perhaps we shall test my psychic abilities. Tell me, what do you see in your mind? A circle? A square? A picture of a cross? Your own rancid smiling face?"

  "No, none of that."

  Doc lifted a bony arm. "Or do you require yet another pint or three of my bodily fluids?"

  "Why take a pint when we have drained the entire store?" Welles replied silkily.

  The tone of Welles's voice sliced through Doc's concentration and he looked up from his volume on the trio of Kennedy brothers. The fat man's three chins were jiggling as Welles struggled to contain his laughter.

  "What, pray tell, does that mean?"

  "Tanner, you are, without a doubt, the biggest, most puckered asshole I've ever had the fortune to encounter. Stubborn, arrogant, prideful, and for all the wrong reasons. You get on my nerves like no one else, not even my first wife nor my sainted mother, damn her immortal soul may she rot in peace."

  "Am I to take comfort in your compliments?" Doc retorted.

  "I had the option of having you terminated, you know. A simple order. My decision. No one cares, really, about you anymore. You are no longer special. And while I know it makes me sound like the villain in a third-rate televi
sion melodrama, I have the extreme honor of telling you your usefulness to Operation Chronos and the Totality Concept has ceased."

  Doc drew himself up on the bed and set his jaw firmly. "So. The day has come. I have never feared death."

  "So you say. So you've said. Got some video interviews with you saying just that very phrase, same ramrod posture, same twitch in your jaw. I spent a sleepless night debating my next move, imagining the joy I'd take from watching your death throes- from a purely scientific view, of course. Then, I decided death was too good for you, Tanner. Much... too... good."

  Doc decided he didn't like the slant this conversation was taking.

  ' 'Make your boasts or do as you will, Welles. Or get out." Doc turned his attention away and opened his book to the page he'd been reading before. The words of the paragraph were meaningless now, and he read the same sentence over and over without retaining any of the content. His eyes were on the page, but his ears and his mind were on Welles.

  The administrator hadn't paid any heed to his patient's request to leave. He was just getting wound up as he continued to speak, his tone even and modulated. The only hint of his rising excitement was a darkening of his facial coloration.

  "You weren't a team player, oh, no, not the mighty Dr. Tanner, owner of two doctoral degrees. No, most men would bow to their betters, acknowledge their masters and beg for whatever crumbs of glory they might be content to pass along. No, not you, bleating about your sainted wife and bratty children. We gave you an out, would have allowed you to return and you spit in our faces, all smug in your limited command of backward faith and knowledge of right and wrong," Welles said.

  "You made your proposition for your masters, Welles," Doc said softly, turning in the cot and placing his feet on the cell floor, and then resting his hands on his knees. "As their faithful lapdog, I know you were disappointed when I refused your most...generous offer. A man of character would have known then I was not to be blackmailed or bought, and as such, should have been returned to my proper place in time. For time, you see, has checks and balances, and by plucking me away from my particular slot, you have upset the apple cart. My wife has endured a life without a husband, and my children have endured a life without a father."

  "Your children," Welles said with a snicker. "Life without Daddy."

  Doc gave his keeper a scathing look of contempt. "That is correct."

  Welles continued to chuckle. "Your children are dead, you pathetic fool."

  Tanner wasn't biting. "Dead now, of course, unless they were incredibly long-lived, and while the Tanners are a hearty bunch, I harbor no illusions of a hundred-and-ten-year-old Jolyon being wheeled through the door to say hello to his father."

  "No, no, not dead now-dead then," Welles said, his voice starting to rise in tone and volume. "They died within seconds after you were trawled! While you were in flux, held within the temporal contain- ment field, random fluctuations of wild energy escaped, Tanner, escaped crackling and gibbering and killing. Any living tissue it came in contact with resulted in violent cellular disruption."

  "You, sir, are a liar," Doc said, all pomposity gone from his voice as he struggled to maintain his composure.

  "And you, sir, are a trusting, mewling fool. We didn't lie to you. We told you your children were long dead and the Tanner bloodline had stopped with their demises. All true. What we neglected to inform you of were some of the details."

  Then, Doc was on him, his hands around Welles's portly throat. In his brain, which was colored now with a killing haze of red, Doc saw his oppressor's head pop off his neck like a cork from a bottle of champagne and a geyser of blood spurt into the air.

  Such a scene remained imaginary, however, locked inside Doc's mind, for one second after his lunge for Welles, his cell door slid back a second time and a knot of grim-faced security men came rushing into the room, peeling the whip-lean man off his much heavier foe.

  "You lie! You are playing mind games, punishing me for my noncompliance! I will not have it! Send me back!" Doc screamed, spittle flying in a spray from his lips.

  "Too late," Welles gasped as he tried to raise himself from where he'd sprawled across a mound of books and papers. "Too late!"

  "I-I accept your damnable agreement. Return me to my family!"

  "Too late for deals, too late. We no longer need you, Tanner. You have outlived your usefulness by, oh, say a hundred years!" And then Welles unleashed an almost feminine cackle of laughter.

  "I could help you! I could be of assistance," Doc wailed as he was carried out into the hallway.

  Welles made a show out of considering this. "Perhaps. That was our intention, but now we're not so sure it would be the correct action to take. Such an act might create a paradox, or it might not. Right now, my good man, I don't care. So, buck up and allow me to give you my Christmas present."

  Welles had chosen four of the burliest men he could find to accompany him to Doc Tanner's holding cell. His estimate was still off by two, since it ended up taking six of the security men to effectively pry their charge out of the room and into the waiting elevator, where Doc screamed, bit, stomped and yelled.

  Welles had debated the advice of sedating Tanner, but finally decided it would serve his purposes to have his test subject awake for the process.

  As for what his purposes might be...? Welles wasn't sure of that, either. He did know he wanted Tanner to suffer, and a chron-temp jump into the future seemed to be the perfect way of assuring the man's agony.

  Welles took the entire Doc Tanner affair quite personally. He'd been on the committee to select Tan- ner, drawn up the plan to trawl him forward, push him back, overseen the man's acclimation into Operation Chronos, and now, after the ungrateful bastard had rejected their offer, and on top of rejection had tried repeatedly to escape, Herman Welles was going to take immense pleasure in showing the skinny shit the door.

  In other words, he had no desire to see his most famous failure make his last journey unconscious.

  And then, they were out of the elevator, and moving at a fast jog down the corridor, Doc caterwauling the entire way. After entering the triple numerals into the entry keypad, Welles led the way into the massive chron-jump chamber control room itself, and past the consoles, past the monitors, past the banks of flashing lights, past the eyes of the watchers, all of them dressed in white lab coats. A few personnel turned away, distaste on their bespectacled faces, but most watched the scene unplay before their eyes with a mix of concern and horror.

  Except for a figure lurking at the edges of the outer control room that Doc didn't immediately recognize-a lean man, tall, yet solid and imposing, and with the same easy assurance and carriage as had been Doc's in better days. Long silver hair was combed back from his forehead, giving his narrow face a severe look. His eyes were unreadable, hidden by the shadows and by a pair of imposing silver eyebrows.

  The man appeared to be glacier cool as he stood apart from the others, alike in form only through the long white lab coat he wore. A raspberry-purple necktie was tied at his neck in a proper Windsor knot.

  All of them save this new figure knew Doc personally. Some had engaged him in debate, seeking the viewpoint of a living anachronism in their midst, and none took pleasure in seeing him screaming at the top of his lungs while being brutally manhandled.

  The only person enjoying the spectacle was Welles. In a display that would later bring him reprimands, the fat man was enjoying himself far too much. Even while serving as point man of the hour, he was eagerly awaiting the chance later to review his performance on the security tape being made on the redoubt's elaborate security system.

  The group was now within the anteroom that separated the mat-trans chamber from the central control area. The room was small, only ten feet by twenty, keeping the guards pressed close to the wiggling Doc. Welles stayed at the back, wishing he was taller in order to truly oversee the scene as it unfolded.

  The unadorned white bodysuit that had been assigned as his regular att
ire after the second escape attempt was ripped from Doc's struggling form, leaving him naked as a newborn. The fingernails of one of the security guards raked his arm, drawing blood as the suit was torn away. Doc felt his genitals shrivel up, trying to stay as close to his body as possible. Being nude just made the fate he was to suffer even more humiliating.

  There was no gentleness taken with the prisoner.

  After the removal of his suit, he was lifted high by the six security men and thrown bodily into the matter-transfer room, where he came crashing down painfully on his left shoulder. Doc landed on one of the steel floor disks, but also felt the jab of some object poking into his body.

  As he rolled over to his side, he found beneath his aching form two round spheroids, test objects used in previous jump experiments. Doc reached across the disk and picked up the perfectly metal balls from the tiled floor.

  "Didn't want to send you off without what you came in with," Welles called out from the open ar-maglass chamber door, then threw in a double armload of clothing-a black frock coat, a pair of tan britches, two thigh-high black boots and other pieces of the apparel Doc had been wearing when trawled two years earlier. Apparently the clothing had been kept in storage after being studied by researchers of the project.