Kingdom of the Seven

by Jon Land

  But Earvin Early was confident about his abilities to work quickly and quietly. The trailer was just up ahead, and its contents belonged to him.

  Karen Raymond had begun her tale tentatively while the big Indian drove, waiting for a disbelieving scowl to appear on Blaine McCracken’s face. Instead, though, his eyes encouraged her to keep going, clearly astonished by her words but accepting them.

  “So first they go all out to kill you,” he concluded before she had quite finished, “and then they decide you’ve got something they want.”

  Karen nodded. “Because they couldn’t get Lot 35 any other way. None of the computers they pilfered contained all of the information they needed. Collating what they stole would have taken months. I made sure of that.”

  “Then, even though Van Dyne had their own vaccine, they suddenly needed yours.”

  “I told you, because theirs didn’t work. Something went wrong; in the testing stage, by all indications,” she said, explaining Freddy Levinger’s discovery that all data had ceased as of Sunday.

  “Tell me more about this test group.”

  “Heterogeneous in virtually all respects. One hundred eighty in number, an unusually low number for this kind of test. They were all placed in a single town; also unusual, if not unheard-of.”

  “Not a good idea from a secrecy and security standpoint either,” Blaine noted.

  “The town’s isolated nature in the Arizona desert allowed Van Dyne to pull that part off,” Karen explained.

  McCracken felt a chill pass through him. Johnny Wareagle stole a glance back his way.

  “Arizona desert?”

  “Yes, a town called—”

  “Beaver Falls,” Blaine completed for her.

  Karen’s mouth dropped. “How did you know? How could you know?”

  “I think it’s time you heard my story, Doctor.”

  Papa Jack came down the trailer’s steps awkwardly, sawed-off shotgun held in a single hand.

  “What the fuck,” he muttered to himself in a voice that sounded like he spoke between chomps on gravel. Both hands now gripped the sawed-off.

  A huge shape spun out before him, charging. Papa Jack emptied both barrels. The force of the twin blasts knocked him backward and nearly toppled him. He was sure he had scored a hit and was looking for the body when something grabbed him from the side. He felt fingers wrap tight around his face and squeeze mightily at his temples. Papa Jack gasped, struggled back. He tried to scream, and the breath he drew for the effort brought an awful smell of rot and death that nearly made him gag.

  The stench got heavier still, and then Papa Jack felt nothing.

  Earvin Early released the old man’s crushed skull and discarded his limp frame before moving for the door to the trailer. His work was almost at its end now. The two boys would be inside. They belonged to him. He had never Freed a child before and wondered how it would feel. They would thank him if they knew everything of the world; if they understood. They didn’t, of course, but that didn’t matter.

  “A simple child

  That lightly draws its breath

  And feels its life in every limb,

  What should it know of death?”

  Early finished quoting Wordsworth softly to himself and reached up for the doorknob. It gave easily. He pushed the door inward, ready to spring after it.

  And the dogs lunged upon him. A rank stream of brown fur and flashing teeth pushed him hard off the steps and snapped for his flesh.

  “Judgment Day,” McCracken started, after a brief pause.

  “What about it?”

  “That’s what drew the Indian and me into this. We’re following the trail of someone we believe is committed to making it happen.”

  “But you knew about Beaver Falls. That trail led you to Van Dyne.”

  “Because they’re both connected somehow to what Frye’s got planned.”

  “Harlan Frye?”

  “Apparently you’ve heard of him.”

  “I don’t know anyone who hasn’t. Like him or not, he’s always in the news, and he’s a terrifying bastard to everyone except the extreme religious right.”

  “I think you’re starting to see my point.”

  Karen shivered, the car suddenly seeming very cold. “But where could Van Dyne possibly fit into his plans?”

  “My guess, Dr. Raymond, is the answer to that has got plenty to do with their AIDS vaccine. Discovery’s been conveniently sealed up tight by government types who figure they’ve got a pretty big stake in the outcome.”

  “But they don’t know something went wrong with the test group.”

  “And neither Frye nor Van Dyne is about to tell them.”

  “Then that’s all we have to do!”

  Blaine shook his head. “Forget it, Doctor. You can bet we were already the enemy in Washington’s mind even before we trashed Van Dyne’s complex tonight. The bad guys will have everything turned all inside out. Believe me, I’ve been here before.”

  “And Washington won’t help us until we turn them right again.”

  Blaine nodded. “Call it the government’s rules of engagement, or at least certain parts of the government you probably never could have imagined existed until tonight.”

  “Parts you must be quite familiar with.”

  “All too familiar.”

  “Then you’re saying we’re on our own.”

  “Don’t forget the Indian, Doctor. Between us, we make a pretty good team, and with you on our side, we might just get lucky and come up with something that changes Washington’s mind.”

  “Like what?”

  “Can’t tell you that. Can tell you where we might find it.”

  “Beaver Falls,” Karen realized.

  “There you go.”

  Early made it to the woods, despite the excruciating pain from the bites and wounds inflicted by the dogs. He’d killed or crippled them all, but not before they’d taken their toll. His left arm hung bloody and limp where the shoulder had been mangled. His right forearm, used for defense, was marked with bite gouges that oozed thick blood. He’d killed two dogs that wouldn’t let go and then had to pry their jaws open to free what they’d left of his flesh. When he wiped the pools of blood away, he could see the teeth patterns briefly before the blood covered the marks again. His legs were torn and sliced, his face ripped up horribly, especially on the right. The eye on that side was already half-closed, and a wide, pulsing gash stretched across his neck, little more than a hair’s distance from his jugular.

  This kind of pain was a new sensation to Earvin Early; he had seldom felt it in his new life since being rescued by the Reverend Harlan Frye. But he welcomed it for giving him something to take from this night to remind him of his failure.

  “Nothing begins and nothing ends

  That is not paid with moan;

  For we are born in other’s pain,

  And perish in our own.”

  Early mumbled the words through the blood frothing from his mouth. His upper lip had been split in two and hung grotesquely over his lower one. Early coughed more blood out, but he didn’t intend to perish as Francis Thompson suggested in the last line of her poem. He intended to grow stronger, to will his body to heal itself so he might venture out once more.

  After the woman.

  After her children.

  After anyone who stood in his way.

  “Something’s wrong,” Karen said, as soon as Johnny pulled into the gas station and eased the car toward the three bikers parked in the far left corner.

  She flung her door open and lunged out of the car before it had come to a complete halt, scurrying across the dark pavement for the grim-faced biker in the center. Blaine followed patiently, making sure that the three bikers who were part of the gang protecting Karen Raymond’s sons could see his hands.

  “What is it?” Karen asked T.J. Fields, dreading the answer. “What happened?”

  “They got Papa Jack,” came his reply. A scowl formed of both sorrow a
nd rage stretched across his face.

  “Oh God …”

  “Six others, too. Six!”

  “What about my kids?” Karen demanded, feeling like a hand of cold steel had closed over her heart. “What about my kids?”

  T.J.’s eyes were watery. “Papa Jack got them out. Said he had a feeling early in the night. Had a few of the others split with your boys in tow, just in case. Lucky thing. Otherwise, he’d have gotten ’em.”

  “He?” Karen repeated, shocked.

  “Was one man that did it,” T.J. told her, not seeming to believe it himself.

  “He wasn’t fucking human,” a Skull with a long red beard on T.J.’s right said. “Shaves is still alive, not by much, but he’s holding on. Said it was some kind of fucking monster that did it, a giant.”

  “But old Papa Jack, he left a surprise for the fucking bastard,” T.J. picked up, his face trapped between a fond smile and a frown. “Giant opens the door to the trailer he thinks the kids are in, out come the dogs … .”

  “Others followed the biood far as they could,” started Red Beard. “All the way to the road. Looked like somebody picked the giant up there.”

  T.J. Fields seemed to regard McCracken standing ten feet from them for the first time, sneering. “Where’d you find him?”

  “He found me. Saved my life, actually.”

  T.J. looked Blaine over, sizing him up. The sneer didn’t go away.

  “Yeah, well, let’s get you back to your kids.”

  “No.”

  “Huh?”

  “I said no,” Karen told him, forcing the words up through the heaviness in her throat. “It’s better for them if I stay away. It’s better if you don’t even tell me where they are.” She tried to compose herself, failed, and continued through trembling lips. “I’ve got to stop Van Dyne, T.J. It’s the only way to save my kids.”

  “Van Dyne what got Papa Jack killed?”

  “What they’re involved in, yes, but there’s—”

  “Then you’re forgettin’ something, ain’t you? I’m in for a big piece of this now.” The look in his eyes was death. “They shouldn’t’ve killed Papa Jack, babe. Bad idea on their part. Was Papa Jack who brought me into the Skulls, looked after me since I was still havin’ wet dreams. That gives me a score to settle.”

  “You can’t help me, T.J., not against Van Dyne.”

  T.J. cast a cold glance McCracken’s way. “And he can?”

  She nodded slowly. “Yes, I think so.”

  “What if I go over there and kick his ass?”

  “I saw him work tonight, T.J.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Two of you are a lot alike.”

  T.J. seemed to like that.

  “And you got one thing in common, anyway: You both saved my life.”

  He pointed toward himself. “Twice, by my count, you go back a few years.”

  “And now my kid’s lives are in your hands. That says it all, T.J. That’s everything.”

  “Not quite.” T.J. glanced at McCracken briefly and then fixed his stare back on Karen. “Got myself a debt to Papa Jack, babe, me and all the others who wear the colors. When the time comes, I just want my shot to pay it off.”

  Two highway patrol squad cars were already outside Tucson General Hospital with their dome lights slicing through the last of the night when Captain Ted Wilkerson screeched to a halt. He charged right through the entrance past a patrolman on watch who stiffened as Wilkerson approached.

  “Premises been searched yet, son?”

  “Sergeant Harkness is supervising a second sweep now, sir.”

  “Second?”

  “The first sweep turned up, er …”

  “Shit,” the captain said under his breath, and brushed past him.

  Bart Harkness was standing in the middle of the hospital lobby near the reception desk, listening to the report of two hospital security guards who had just come up from the basement. He stopped nodding when he saw Wilkerson approaching.

  “You better have an explanation for this, Bart, and it better be good.”

  “I’m taking responsibility, Captain,” Harkness said staunchly, leading the way toward the elevator. “The fault’s all mine.”

  “What the fuck good’s that do us now? I don’t give a shit who’s responsible. I don’t give a shit how it happened. I just want him found. Christ, in his condition …”

  They stepped into the elevator and headed toward the third floor.

  “Doctors figure now he may have been duping us. Knew everything that was going on around him and just pretended not to.”

  “What the fuck for?”

  “They … don’t know.”

  “What about you?”

  “I think Wayne had his reasons. That’s all.”

  The doors slid open and the men started down the corridor together.

  “How’d it happen, Bart?”

  “I went to get some coffee. I was out of the room six, maybe seven minutes. When I got back …”

  They reached the room and Harkness stopped talking. Captain Wilkerson could read the sights better than he could explain them. The rumpled bed was empty, the covers thrown back almost reaching the floor. The door to the small closet was open and the patrolman’s uniform that had been hanging there was missing. A hospital gown lay in a shapeless pile on the floor.

  “Well, fuck me,” muttered the captain.

  Wayne Denbo was gone again.

  PART FOUR

  RETURN TO BEAVER FALLS

  THE KINGDOM:

  THURSDAY; 11:00 A.M.

  CHAPTER 26

  Harlan Frye held the test tube in both hands, barely able to restrain his smile. Tears of joy filled his eyes.

  “This is it, Doctor? You’re telling me you’ve done it?”

  The frail-looking, bespectacled man standing before him in the front of the kingdom’s sprawling main laboratory nodded. “Once we had the subjects here, it was a relatively simple process. Merely a matter of isolating the proper cells in their blood chemistry and then extracting those cells for harvesting.” He paused. “Of course, the manner of delivery you specified required a rather powerful concentration that could be diluted beneath the ability to achieve expected parameters.”

  “A problem?” Frye anticipated.

  “Just a complication. We needed to find a catalyst the concentrated formula could bond to and thus spread in the geometric pattern needed to achieve your desired results. The logistics involved made the choice of one quite easy.”

  Frye held the test tube almost tenderly. “You’re telling me you’re finished? That this is all you need?”

  “No, sir. We still need ten times that amount to achieve the concentration required. Another forty-eight hours should be sufficient to produce it. And beyond that, well …”

  “Go on, Doctor.”

  “It’s rather complicated, sir. Your mandated timetable required us to take certain liberties with the formula that render it too easily susceptible to neutralization by a number of natural elements, light and heat for example.”

  “Surmountable?”

  “Simply a matter of delaying release until they are no longer a factor. I think we have everything worked out.”

  Frye could have cried with joy. This news was almost enough to make him forget the disaster that had occurred at Van Dyne the night before. His enemies, joined up now, were drawing closer in their search for the specifics of his master plan. He wondered what would have happened if not for the turn of events in Beaver Falls. First thought to be a disaster, he now realized it was a godsend—literally—because had it not occurred, McCracken would have been able to stop him. Now, thanks to the contingency developed in this very lab, no one could stop him.

  “Excellent!” The Reverend beamed. “Truly excellent. God has let us perform His work for Him, and we have proven ourselves worthy at every turn. Our task is so great, so humbling. And here, nearing the finish, our challenges have multiplied to the point they’ve bec
ome nearly overwhelming. But we have not failed or lost ourselves in the scope of those challenges. We have met them, turned them aside.”

  The Lord’s final stamp of approval, that’s what this represented, he thought. God helping him the last bit of the way. Judgment Day would have its own spot on the calendar now, just seventy-two hours from now.

  On Sunday. The Lord’s day, his day. Only one problem remained, one spoiler to his reverie.

  “What of your progress with Lot 35, Doctor?” he raised.

  The man in the white coat before him shrugged. “Collating the material has proven as difficult as I had feared. Without a firm formula from Dr. Raymond—”

  “Assume that will be the case.”

  “Six months.”

  Harlan Frye nodded resignedly, aware of the ramifications. “So much has gone our way, more than we could reasonably hope. We cannot expect everything, and perhaps less will actually become more. We must accept His will in this matter, His guidance. Major Vandal,” he said, turning slightly, “you will summon the others to me. Tomorrow, at the latest.”

  “Of course, sir,” Osborne Vandal replied, feeling the taint of his Vietnam experience at last begin to wash off in the face of this certain victory. Osborne Vandal was one of only thirteen survivors, and the sole officer, from the prison camp in which he was interned. There were originally perhaps seven times that many prisoners. In accordance with procedure, and totally without merit, the major was investigated for possible collaboration with the enemy. No charges were ever leveled, but the damage had been done. Vandal was guilty because the antiwar furor said he was. Advancement beyond his present rank became impossible. Any decent command or post was out of the question. Osborne Vandal was disgraced for no reason whatsoever.

  For ten years he shuttled from job to job and base to base; never wanted, barely bothering to unpack sometimes. But then one day the Reverend Harlan Frye heard his sad tale and sought him out, stared at Vandal’s ruined right arm when the major reached his left out to shake. Looking back at that moment, Vandal would remember that stare more than anything, the stare and the strange smile that crossed Harlan Frye’s face as he grasped the limp arm gently.