The Fifth Descent of Lexi Montaigne

by R. S. Darling

  After parking, the attendant appeared and caught Lexi off guard. She smiled, gave him a fifty, the last of Lewis’s money. As the attendant gassed up the truck, Lexi checked her face in her pocket mirror. “God, what a fright.”

  With a dab of Cocoa Butter hand lotion and a rag from the glove compartment, she cleaned her face until it regained a healthy pallor.

  The attendant was staring at her. And staring. At last he cleared his throat. Lexi, startled, turned and noticed him with a look of confusion. He handed her twenty in change. “What’s this?”

  “It only needed thirty,” the attendant offered a forced smile.

  “No, but the beep,” Lexi turned the key to check the gauge. It was full. “The tank was empty.”

  The attendant laughed. “Not if it only took thirty to fill it.” He looked behind the Dakota. “There’s a car waiting. Could you—”

  Lexi pulled out of the station, thoughts frazzled. It was like trying to carve a statue out of Jell-o, everything just kept blurring back into one indistinct mass. “I’m just tired. Need to sleep.” She turned off the 15 and headed north a few miles until the neon green signs indicated her location as just south of the Nellis Small Arms Range.

  Parked at an abandoned gas station, single lonely pump old enough to recall the ’73 oil scare but not yet antique enough to merit a position in a rednecks front yard.

  The whooshing of cars on the slick Interstate a few miles south were the only sounds. Lexi pushed the divider cushion up to lay across the seats, the powerful scent of Lucky 6 soporific.

  Sleep though, was not gentle.

  She awoke three times to the report of gunshots, twice to nightmares of fire and once to the death moans of a father she never knew. At 4a.m. she gave up. Insomnia is not an easy beast to beat and she was too tired to fight it. Lexi’s stomach gurgled, sending her into scrounge mode. Lewis’s thick leather bag held a few energy bars, and she consumed these too quickly to taste; washed them down with warm water.

  She flipped on the radio to 91.3 KBSJ to hear the news, and, covered in only her white cotton t-shirt and jeans, both stained in dark dried blood, stepped outside. The air was fresh. A spider-web thin sheet of moisture lay glistening on the desert floor.

  As she stretched and gazed up, the radio described what she saw. “The white corona of Wormwood can be seen moving across the Nevada sky. NASA spokesman Nathan Ryerson claims it will remain visible now even during daylight. So look up Nevadan’s, it’s almost here. The shower tonight will be a sight for the ages.”

  For the first time while gazing at Wormwood, Lexi was struck by a powerful sense of familiarity. It was as if she knew this meteor.

  Chapter 34

  Early morning light morphed into the haze of a Nevada afternoon as Lexi rode the 215 to the turn at the Nellis Small Arms Range. She veered north at the exit, traced the western edge of the Range for a dozen sunny miles.

  The pitter patter of distant firing kept her on edge as the sounds conjured memories.

  When the sun reached its zenith Lexi passed a Groundwater Treatment Facility, the numerous gray tanks lining the site like giant salt shakers.

  After the Facility her ears pricked at the booming thunder of jets soaring overhead. She could feel the deep bass buzz of their engines in her chest. Eyes gazed through sunglasses to catch a passing glance at the aircraft surging through heat waves. It all seemed too mirage-like for her taste.

  And they were military, as she recognized by their sleek capsules, too small and aerodynamic to be commercial jets. “I’m close,” she murmured. Dark green trucks lined the edges of airfields, standing perhaps as vanguards of her future problems. Eventually everything faded off to the distant background, swallowed by the unending desert. “My God,” she whispered. “How alone you must have felt out here, Gramps.” She scratched under her breast where the cut had turned into a fresh scar, pink, not yet hard with age.

  She considered taking the 95, put space between her and the Nellis Air Force Base that seemed to comprise the whole of Nevada. But that would take her too far west, out of the path she was convinced Gramps had taken sixty years earlier. But how else could she reach Arfion? She’d have to risk it. There were mere hours left before the expected descent of Wormwood, and the world was still convinced that it would only be a meteor shower, not the impending disaster Vortex had warned of days ago.

  Suddenly Lexi’s focus retrained on the road ahead. She swerved, barely avoiding a collision with a passing Impala; the driver in the Chevy tooted her horn. The cab filled with the tart aroma of half-digested strawberries as she hyperventilated. “Lot 111,” she mumbled. “What did you say, Leslie . . . something about lingering effects?”

  Shadows crept across the road as she rubbed her temples and attempted to recall all she knew of Lot 111. “A drug long used by the Tower on agents to prevent . . . damn!” It was there on the tip of her tongue. She could practically taste the answer. She tried Beethoven—it made her nauseous. She tried jazz—it struck her ears like a q-tip gone too deep.

  A jet roared by overhead.

  She watched its shadow before ransacking the glove compartment. Dug out the Excedrin, downed two with warm water. Ten minutes later she forgot she had taken the pills and promptly swallowed two more as the blazing afternoon sun consumed the sky.

  Five miles later Lexi pulled the Dakota off to the shoulder, got out and puked.

  Bright yellow road lines raced into the distant horizon. Lexi massaged her scalp and fought another gag reflex. A fleeting idea emerged from this effort: it fled before she could harness it.

  Hours passed.

  Gripped almost entirely now by hunger and thirst and insomnia, Lexi took to self injuring. A fist to the leg while she drove. At times it seemed she’d been driving for ages. The dry air that tasted like plain popcorn confused her. She was certain it was October, and yet, New York Octobers were always so wet. Where were the winds that chilled to the bone? Where the daily frost that clung to the ground late into the afternoon and the invisible filter that cooled the harsh sun?

  Eventually, with the hot wind through the window beating on her face, she came to understand. New York was on the other side of the world. Will I ever see it again? Her thoughts turned back to Gramps; she longed to watch another Yankees World Series with him. But that would never happen. They would never again cheer Jeter when he hits one over the head of the opposing shortstop, or curse the entire franchise when they lose a single postseason game as though it was against the laws of nature.

  In the throes of this depression and under the lingering influence of Lot 111, she recalled a line from a poem she’d read in college, from a time when the world still made sense and the Tower was only a fantasy of Gramps’ overactive mind: This is the dead land. This is cactus land. Here the stone images are raised. Here they receive the supplication of a dead man’s hand, under the twinkle of a fading star.

  A siren screamed. Blinking lights lit up the mirrors. Lexi’s entire body twitched in mimicry of that atrocious sensation of falling that instantly wakes you from sleep. She eased the truck over and killed the engine. The truck behind her rolled to a stop as well. When the dust cloud cleared, she saw a man. His eyes were vivid, alive, the eyes of a man with a future.

  Lexi waited, coughed, lay back against the contours of the seat that knew her so well. The sirens shut up but the blinking red and blue lights continued to rotate atop the truck. What was it about red and blue? The man with the eyes stepped out, sauntered towards her.

  She clutched her head, cleared away the cobwebs and focused on the here and now as only a self-mutilator can, shoving aside all other thought. Half crazed pupils focused on the man in the mirror. “He’s not a cop,” she realized, observing his fatigues. She laughed at the insomniac implication of the term. The vehicle was a hummer, but not one of those fat urban hummers that small men with big checkbooks buy, but a real hummer, the kind only soldiers occupy—a bad-ass vehicle for real bad-ass men.

  The man
in the mirror grew even as Lexi watched with detached humor. “Focus,” she slapped her face. It felt good—a slap in the right direction. She did it again, but on the third try the man caught her mid-slap and she desisted.

  “Miss,” the man said in a voice as calm as the tide. “What are you doing here?” His trimmed head blocked out the sun.

  “We were just heading to—” she bit her tongue. “I was making my way north to the Wildlife Reserve. I love bighorn sheep.” Nice big fake smile.

  “Are you drunk?” the man bent down for a closer look, “or high?” His eyes roamed over the cab, pausing on the laptop and maps and leather bags like they were luscious thighs. “I think you should come with me.” He opened the door.

  Don’t go with him!

  Thoughts drove a thousand miles per, racing to find logic and reason. Psychically numb from thirst and fatigue, she permitted the man to help her out of the cab, feeling his strong hands around her arms, denoting just how thin she had become. The soldier was gentle, like a lioness with her cub. Lexi listened to his crooning voice, liked it and wished she could focus to understand what he was saying. It was probably something sweet and soldiery.

  He led her into the hummer. It struck her as spacious and, despite the bars on the windows, unassuming. She leaned back against the plush black cloth and watched as the soldier transferred her laptop and maps to the front seat of his hummer. She hoped he wouldn’t look in the bed. A part of her also wished that he would, for she was curious what might be back there. But the soldier only seemed interested in what was inside the Dakota.

  Apparently satisfied, he climbed in and turned the hummer around.

  “Are you ready to tell me what you’re doing on military property?” the tide-voice rushed over her in lolling waves.

  “Need to stop the Tower . . . in Arfion,” the words rolled out after that like a dam bursting. She couldn’t commiserate with the position she was putting him in, there was only the desire to share her pain. “Time is almost up . . . the Device. Wormwood. Have to help me stop . . .”

  You sound like a conspiracy theorist. He’s never going to believe you.

  The soldier drove on in silence. Lexi pictured the world gliding to its death, and decided this might not be such a terrible thing. What is life anyway when everyday is a struggle and dangers outweigh the pleasures of the moment?

  Why fight for a world that doesn’t care about you, doesn’t even know you exist?

  Maybe it was her new environment, or maybe it was simply being in the company of a fellow human being, but as Lexi admired the hummer and her new friend, memories returned in a tidal wave of revelations. They were taking her away from Arfion.

  “Stop!” she flinched at the volume of her voice. “You can’t take me. I have to stop him. I have to stop the Tower!” The soldier tried to interrupt but she cut him off. “No! The Device is almost complete. He’ll turn it on tomorrow. By then it’ll be too late. Wormwood is coming.”

  The hummer rolled to a stop and the soldier turned around. “What do you know about Arfion?” the tide that was his voice had an edge to it now, the deceptive first wave of ‘El Nino’.

  I have him.

  She fought nausea and fatigue to get it out. “I know there is a man there who has built a weapon you can hardly imagine and I need to stop him. I know how,” she hoped he had no skill in kinesics like she did. “Let me go, no one will know. Just unlock the doors. What’s your name?” She smiled at the sudden appearance of her old psychologist mien.

  The soldier was well trained; his face displayed neither confusion nor hesitation. “Brinks, Corporal Brian Brinks. And even if I believed you, I already called it in. The base is expecting me to bring in a suspicious civilian.” He turned to face the road again.

  She watched her chance slip away into the tawny folds of military order. “Just look at the laptop, you’ll see. I’m not making this up.”

  He turned the ignition.

  “Just look at this!” throwing Vortex’s flash drive at him. “It’s all real.”

  Corporal Brinks inspected the flash drive. Sunlight glinted off its clean plastic shell. He pocketed it.

  That was not very soldiery. Lexi smiled.

  But when she leaned back to relax, she caught a glimpse of Wormwood in the clear blue expanse overhead. The meteorite looked as big as the moon. It was coming. It was nearly here.

  Chapter 35

  1986

  The puke-green phone clanged against the end table, smashed to the floor and danced. The kitten, Plato 4, scooted away. Virgil stared at the phone as though at an incomprehensible object. He had been on the other end of such calls too many times to count. It was the worst part of his job. That was nothing to being on this side of the call.

  It was late in August, and the stagnant air pressed against his face with the force of a hammer blow. He was too old for this call, too exhausted. His mind fled to little Alexis. What was she now, six? Seven? He could see the next ten years playing out like pages of a play in his hands. It was his fault—he knew—that Alexis’ mother had left. If he hadn’t shown Michael the trove, Michael never would have begun investigating.

  And now little Alexis would be alone—just like he was. It was good that Kristyana was gone already. This would have killed her, the loss of their son.

  Virgil grabbed the keys from the oak desk and ran out the door, careful as always to lock it along with the deadbolt. He had to be careful now, they would be watching, curious to see how he would react. He must be on top of his game, like his time with Silas in the late forties.

  St. Jerome Hospital had become a familiar place of late. His arthritis. He trod the linoleum floors, gleaming black Nunn Bush shoes tapping against every other tile, too-bright lights casting mutated shadows. The unnatural cool air of the AC attacked him, giving him the sense that he was plunging into the deep end.

  “Hello Mr. Montaigne,” Nurse Hollis chirped from the desk, “wasn’t expecting you today. How are your hands, dear?”

  He leaned away from her to escape the swimmy scent of her perfume. Chanel No. 5, she always said, but he had traveled the world and imbibed the finest bouquets and knew it was a $2.99 Wal-Mart special. “I need to see Mr. Durden. Which room?”

  She hesitated. “One-eleven,” she said and he turned on his heels for the third floor, taking the stairs. Kristyana would have been proud.

  Even now at 77 he failed to understand the kingdom of his mind, the mysterious strength he possessed that allowed him to stem the tide of tears. He ascended the steps like Hillary mounting Everest—resulting in a similar level of fatigue. He checked the papers in his dossier, the papers he had forged long ago while in the throes of fear for his own life. These papers would give one a new identity, a name and a home in the landscape of Kansas, far from any evidence of the Tower and those cabbalistic trilby men.

  The third floor boasted cream-colored walls. As he crossed these familiar corridors, Virgil searched, as ever, for those ugly old hats and for the agents beneath them.

  Room 111 came and went, Virgil’s eyes darted inside when he passed to make sure no one else was there. He came round again, stopped at the wide oak door, looked in through the glass. In the bed lay a man Michael’s age, wires penetrating his orifices and flesh. The man was not moving.

  Virgil massaged his right hand with his left, then reciprocated. His knuckles still burned but at least the rubbing had banished the ache so when he pushed on the door they did not pain him. The chirping of various machines and instruments fought each other. His hand made a loud dry scraping sound as he drew it along the wall to his left, looking for a light switch. Finding it, he flicked it up. Light from four florescent bulbs threw his shadow against the closed door.

  “Harry?” Virgil stepped toward the sleeping man in the bed with a machine beside him recording the cadence of his heartbeat. The chill air disturbed Virgil’s throat and sinuses. He put his handkerchief against his nose. The other hand found Harry’s shoulder and shook the man
.

  “Harry, wake up.” He twisted around as the footsteps of a nurse going by outside excited old paranoia. He crossed the room and set a chair below the chrome handle of the door. Harry’s eyes fluttered at the sound of chair legs scraping against the floor. He opened them, slow and uncertain.

  “Who—” He stopped when he saw Virgil. “Mr. Montaigne?”

  Virgil shuffled back to Harry and took the hand with the catheter. “Tell me what happened. Tell me who did this. Was it the FBI, the CIA, were they wearing trilbies? Fedora’s?”

  Harry motioned for the pitcher of water on the stand. After sipping and spilling a few drops Harry cleared his throat; a most painful and melancholy sound.

  “It was . . .” he cleared his throat once more before continuing in a weak, raspy voice. “Timothy Colson. I walked into the scene and . . . Michael was—” Harry dropped his heavy lids and suppressed a cough. “Blood traced Michael’s body. I saw Timothy standing over him, There was no one else. Two shots in the spine, it was no accident. The only . . .” he hacked again.

  The air seemed hallow to Virgil in the cold room. He shivered once and squeezed Harry’s hand. “Go on, I need to know everything.”

  “The only accident was that Michael had called me there. He said on the phone that he’d uncovered the truth about the Colson’s.” Harry tried to sit up, shuttered, lay back down. In a whisper he continued, “He said the Bureau posted the Colson’s here because of you. When I saw Michael, Tim turned and hesitated. I don’t think they knew Michael was keeping me apprised. Tim shot me twice. Just like that. I was so cold.” Tears said he was done.

  Virgil closed his eyes, imagined he could see his breath linger. He pulled out the papers. “My lawyer Mr. Boetie drew these up, so they’re perfectly legitimate.” He waited for his words to sink in. “They’ll find out you survived, and when that happens . . . You have to go away where they will never find you. I’ll call Boetie, he knows someone who arranges this kind of thing. They’ll come tonight.”