“No,” Stanforth said again, beside him. “At least not today,” he added and laughed, patting the technician on the back. “Move aside, Doctor,” he suggested, and Feinberg quickly did as he was told. Colonel Stanforth stood directly in front of the dripping form. “We need you to find someone,” he said, handing over a blanket. “Your brothers.”
The specimen growled in understanding.
“Find them and then kill them,” Stanforth explained.
“Castillo, too,” Erdman added.
Stanforth turned and fixed the embryologist with an icy stare of endless contempt, then looked back. “Anyone,” Stanforth agreed, “who gets in your way.”
Grinned. Head tilted back in anticipated pleasures.
“First,” Stanforth said, “some clothes and intel. There’s a chopper leaving in thirty minutes. Better follow me.”
Eight letters for fucked.
FEINBERG. Some guy named CASTILLO.
EVERYONE.
“Feinberg!”
He looked up to where Stanforth had his hand on the back of the swathed creature, leading it and Erdman from the room. “Yes, sir?”
“We’ll need the other two, as well,” Stanforth said.
GHOSTS
JUNE 13, MONDAY—LA VERKIN, UTAH
The room was dark and smelled like dirt and mold and spiders. Jeff lay curled on the concrete floor. Everything hurt. The cool and damp floor against his face the only feeling that wasn’t burning, piercing.
They sat with him, the other boys from someone else’s life.
The ghosts born in his head, lurking by a hairsbreadth outside his real world for years.
James and Matt and Ernest. (Now the souls gathered . . .)
Curtis, Tony, and both Stevens. (From every side they came . . .)
I’m sorry, he’d told them.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
They’d told him his apologies were unnecessary.
They called him brother. Whispered to him for hours.
His attempt to escape had been short-lived, failed.
I deserve to die.
Konerak, the youngest in the gathering, stroked Jeff’s hair in the darkness.
Be brave, he said.
There was a hole drilled into the back of Konerak’s head. Jeff could see it even in the dark. Long ago, someone had injected hydrochloric acid into the frontal lobes of his brain while he was still alive. Someone had wanted to make Konerak a “zombie.”
Be brave, he said. Castillo is going to find you.
Jeff closed his eyes.
He heard the door open.
Konerak and the others were gone. Returned to the underworld . . .
(My heart longed, after this, to see the dead again.)
“Who you talking to?” a familiar voice asked.
It wasn’t Castillo.
KRISTIN
JUNE 13, MONDAY—LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
Kristin was as beautiful as the day he’d first met her. She shined. Almost two years apart couldn’t change that, Castillo thought. Not a hundred. Had it already been two years since he’d returned broken from Iran? Two years since she’d helped put him together again?
“Thanks for coming,” he said, sitting in the opposite side of the booth while his eyes scanned the rest of the small café. “I know I . . . It means a lot.”
“Cut the bullshit,” she replied. “You knew I’d be here. You look terrible.”
Castillo laughed, but his expression and body proved she was right. “Thanks, babe.”
“I’m sorry.” She found a genuine smile. She’d grown out her hair, darkened it. Her eyes, even with the smile, filled with both pity and anguish. “You know what I meant.”
“This thing is almost over, I think.”
“Thank God.” She grabbed his hands together. He let her, and she squeezed them tightly in her own, the touch proving so very familiar. “We can figure this thing out together. You and me. Whatever it is. Please.”
“It’s . . .”
“Can’t you simply walk away?” she asked. “Just this once?”
“I don’t think so. Thanks.” He took the water the waitress set down, then waited for her to leave again. “It’s . . . it’s gone too far.”
“ ‘In this hole lives the Wicked King.’ ”
“What’s that?”
“A quote.”
“Lady Gaga or Gandhi?”
“Neither, smart-ass. It’s Berkowitz. The Son of Sam.”
“So close.”
“He wrote it all over his apartment wall when he was killing people.”
“Very Hallmark. Your point?”
“Sounds like you’ve climbed down into some dark places the past few weeks. Like before. The kind of pits that are sometimes tough to get out of alone.”
“And you can only walk in Mordor so long before that evil dust gets in your boots. Is that it?”
“Something like that. I don’t know where you’re at anymore. No one does.”
“Oh, let me guess. Our old pal Stanforth visited you.”
“Fuck Stanforth, this isn’t about him. They traced your phone calls, yes. They know you called me, and I’ve been ordered to give a full report to someone in the Pentagon. But this isn’t about any of that. Or national security. Or about the goddamn job. Yours, or mine. It’s gone beyond that now and you know it, too.”
“Yes.”
“Why so personal this time? And don’t tell me it isn’t.”
Castillo took a long drink of water. Set the glass down again. “There’s this kid . . .”
“Try again. There’s always some ‘kid.’ ” Kristin shook her head, took both his hands again. “Every village in the world, there’s some kid. Some Shaya. There’s something else.”
“This isn’t about him. And you don’t know anything about that.”
“Because you won’t talk about it. I know he died. And I know you hold yourself accountable.”
“ ‘Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?’ ”
“Perfect. Hide behind Blake.”
“You started the quote bullshit. How ’bout Genesis?”
“Gabriel or Collins?”
“Funny,” he said. “Bible. Mark of Cain.”
He felt her hands relax. Release. “What about it?”
“Something in Jacobson’s office. But the quote wasn’t quite right. I looked it up in the Bible last night. Do you know why God marked him?”
“Who’s Jacobson?” Her face tightened, deciding whether or not to follow him down whatever path he’d chosen. “Because Cain was a killer,” she said.
“Yes. But why?”
“Jesus, Castillo, it’s a made-up story. What’s the—” She sighed with exasperation. “So others would forever know his sin. He was marked as a murderer.”
“Nope,” Castillo said, and smiled, and her reaction showed him it wasn’t a pleasant expression. “I always thought that too, but I read it again,” he said. “God marked Cain so that the others would never punish him. Never kill him. It was a warning to others to let Cain live. Said whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance would be taken on him sevenfold. He wanted Cain to live.”
“Right. To punish himself later. And?”
“No, not to punish. Never to punish. How could he? All of us,” he said, wrapping his fingers around the water glass again. “We’re all Cain. Always have been.”
“We’re all Abel too, Shawn.”
“We were positioned in Towraghondi, a little village twenty clicks outside Shirabad. The Taliban set up shop there recently, and our assignment was to wait for an important commander to arrive and take him out. We’d taken position in one of the local homes, with a farmer named Sajadi. Shaya was his son, twelve years old. Cool kid. Funny, liked Metallica and PayDays. Could draw like he worked for Marvel. We’d spent two months waiting, waiting in their home, and then we completed the assignment. Couple days later, we got tip of a weapons stash one village over and moved in for a
closer look. Ambush. Total ratfuck, but we got out. Got back to Towraghondi, I knew. I just . . . The whole fucking village was out, staring at us. Looking at me. They’d . . . the Taliban figured out where we’d been staying. The tip was bait. The farmer, Sajadi. Whole family dead. Tortured. His two daughters—”
“Shawn.”
“Shaya’d been nailed to the wall. A brick wall with these metal spikes. They’d stripped him. Cut away his nose, his genitals. They’d taken—”
Kristin shrank away from the table. Away from him.
“Listen to me.” He leaned forward to follow her, his words a hiss. “An American genetics company is cloning humans from the DNA of various serial killers.”
Kristin eyed him more steadily, trying to work back to him. “Go on.” Her voice still shook.
“The kids I’m chasing are clones built by the United States government. Kids who were systematically cultivated to become killers. You just quoted the Son of Sam. I’m chasing the younger version. Literally. His name is David. He’s fifteen.”
She looked away, collected herself.
Castillo leaned even closer to speak in a whisper. “When I was rescued in Iran, it was one of these same science projects that saved me. One of their ‘distilled’ killers. Something special. Stanforth, the Army, has been using these things for years. And this company’s committed everything from murder to torturing children in order to make these weapons. And worse. In the name of science. In the name of national defense. In the name of cash.”
“And?” Kristin suddenly looked back.
“And?” He sat back, smiling at her candor. Amazed he could smile at anything.
It was Kristin’s turn to lean forward. Puzzled and challenging. “And when has that ever bothered you before? You, of all people, understand that this”—she indicated the diner and everyone, everything, in it—“has a price. It’s always been a double-edged sword, Shawn. When did you latch onto the puerile absolutes that the military is always dangerous, government is always corrupt, capitalism is always merciless?”
“Not always. Maybe not even usually. But sometimes. And this time.”
He placed a flash drive onto the table.
“What’s this?” she said.
“Everything I know. All of it. If I vanish, which is likely, you get this to Ox or CNN or whoever you can.”
She laid her hand over the flash drive. “Just walk away.”
“Can’t.”
“Shawn.”
He looked up and she smiled at him, her blue eyes filled with such sadness. “This time,” he said, “this kid, this boy. Jeffrey.” His voice cracked a pitch at the end and he looked away in shame. He felt his hands squeezed again. “Not again. Not this time.”
“God, I love you,” she said.
“They made this kid,” he continued. “They did, we did, I did. The clone of Jeffrey Dahmer.”
“Jeff from the files?”
“Actually, that’s another Jeff Dahmer clone. You’ll get used to it. But, it doesn’t matter which. They’re both an actual by-product of everything I’ve devoted my life to protecting.”
“You can’t possibly think—”
“But I do. And if I’m willing to die for those ideals on some Pakistani hilltop, I’m sure as hell going to take full responsibility for them here, too.” He glared at her, not seeing her eyes anymore but those of another: A boy. Lost, wounded, terrified. Abandoned. “I made this kid, Kristin. Like God made Cain. And I . . .”
“Hey.”
“What?”
“I would have gone with you,” she whispered.
“I know.” His hands moved over hers. “But I hadn’t really come home yet.”
“And now?”
He shrugged, realizing even as he did, that he’d given a credible imitation of Jeff Jacobson’s favorite response.
“Closer,” he said.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
V
Wild Type n.
(1) The natural base genetic form of any living organism as distinguished from a mutant form (an organism with any genetic mutation).
Note: Within the population of any organism, there is no such thing as a “wild type” as there are always mutations of some kind. The term is still useful for geneticists because it allows a simple definition of a theoretical standard or control organism.
Then Ulysses stripped himself of his rags,
and leaped upon the large threshold,
holding his bow and the quiver full of arrows:
and he poured out the swift arrows there before his feet;
and addressed his rivals: “Your final game is over,
but now I will see whether I can hit another mark . . .”
THE ODYSSEY
THE WICKED KING
JUNE 14, TUESDAY—LA VERKIN, UTAH
Ted saw it coming: All that death.
Or, rather, he felt it. He’d experienced the exact same sensation in that house in Orchard City. Like there was something crawling inside of him, something alive with many legs, many legs with many teeny claws. Growing more and longer legs each day, each hour.
The “Dark Man.”
The same dude who’d carved up that Johnny kid and a bunch of other kids too, without missing a step. It was the feeling that guy brought with him that struck Ted the most: Part dread and part relief. And part, well, HOME. The tickly sensation that everyone in the house was soon going to die had hung on him for a couple days, and he’d progressively gotten used to it. He’d even started to enjoy it. And it had gotten stronger as the night settled again on them all. Ted had to smile at that. Even monsters are a little more afraid in the dark.
They’d been in the house, another one of the rentals they’d broken into, for almost three days. Too long, he thought. Probably best to go. Kill the little faggot and get moving again. But Jeff wasn’t done with the Jacobson kid yet. Not by a long shot, from the sound of things. Shit. Ted shook his head. Those two had been going at it all day. And Al, fucking Al, was out of it. That guy was done, fried. A mumbling retard who didn’t make sense anymore. Maybe he’d been feeling the Dark Man’s approach. Maybe crazy Al also knew what was coming.
Ted thought, He’s upstairs with Al even now. I can about picture him cutting, cutting. Hacking around the spine and pulling out that muscle. Almost as if it was me doing the tasty knife work. . . . He clung to the new feeling. It almost replaced the other that racked his whole body. The ever-growing sensation that he was stuffed, full. Like he needed to drop the world’s greatest deuce but couldn’t. Even his fucking fingers were swollen like little fat-kid sausages. And all that scratchy black shit on his skin.
He was in the basement again, watching the two Jeffs, when the door above pushed open and Al came down the steps. Only it wasn’t really Al anymore.
This Al, the new one, was limp and floppy like a giant dick. All folded up on himself, sort of collapsed in the middle in a couple of unnatural places. And he didn’t walk down the stairs as much as he seemed to float over them while leaving a dark trail of vivid red blood on the carpet beneath his feet.
Even Jeff had turned and stopped to watch. He was wearing some kind of blue wizard’s hat with giant mouse ears on the sides. Other than that hat, he and the Jacobson kid were both totally naked again.
Al moved down the last few steps and into the light, and then Ted’s recent minute-ago prophecies all came to pass. The Dark Man stood right behind the kid, holding Al up with one arm. The other arm carried a long blade. The man slid down the last few steps easily, like another shadow moving into the one-bulbed room. Ted could barely make out the skeletal body, the misshapen head.
As the two moved closer, Ted could see where one of the man’s black arms was jammed up into Al’s back. Behind the shoulder blades and up behind the kid’s head. Ted half expected Al to start yapping, the man’s fingers moving the dripping jaws from the inside like some kind of puppet. At the bottom step, Al’s body—or, rather, the half-gutted shell
of Al’s body—pitched forward as if he’d been trying to fly.
More blood speckled the wall as Al arched and then crashed face-first onto the floor with a wet, heavy sound. His upper back lay open, hollowed, the peg from the top of his spinal column and some tendons lodged in the bloody cavity. Bulbous, pearl-colored lumps glistened in fields of black along the top of Al’s shoulders and the lower back.
Al’s killer stepped over the boy and moved toward Ted.
Ted was ready and lifted up his shirt. His own black lumps ran from his neck down to his groin. Several had sprouted long black hairs. “Look, man,” he almost laughed. One on Ted’s side had split open to reveal a pair of teeth and what looked like what might become a tongue. “Look at this shit. Yeah? You see that?” Closer still, Ted decided it was not something human. “Look, dude! I’m like you. You should see the shit I’ve done these past few—”
The blade slashed out.
Ted fell back, fire scorching across his chest and neck.
He collapsed to the floor, the dark thing looming over him. Bulging rat eyes stared down into Ted’s, a mouth opening to release what Ted could only think of as a hiss. Breath hot with the stink of fresh decay.
The man-thing stepped away. Moved across the room toward the two Jeffs. Ted fumbled on the floor, brought his hands to the drenched gouge in his chest. So sticky and warm, the blood running freely over his fingers.
Jeff Williford had grabbed his knife from the table—the one he’d used on Jacobson’s kid—and Ted watched dreamily as Williford moved toward the Dark Man.
Then that stupid wizard’s hat and mouse ears were falling to the floor. Jeff Williford’s head still inside. His naked body remained standing for one beautiful moment, gushing from its neck like a blood-filled fountain. Then it, too, fell to the floor beside the mouse ears.
The Dark Man advanced toward the other Jeff, the one in the chair.
Ted propped himself up to watch as best he could and wondered some if that damned Jacobson kid had seen it coming, too.
• • •
Jeffrey Jacobson felt the thing standing behind him.
Breath hot and wet against his scrunched, bare shoulder blades. The warmth off its body. Several jagged nails moving slowly under his chin.
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