by Jon Land
Outside the cave, he found the impressions of tire treads in the breaking of the dawn light. Three trucks, maybe four, carrying several dozen fighters. He followed the route along which the New Islamic Front fighters had reversed, swung around, and drove off with Vicky as their captive.
He knew she was still alive, could feel her heart beating as clearly as his own. And he knew where the fighters were taking her, without needing to follow the tracks any further. That was the direction in which Max set out in a dead run, his pace settling with an ease that defied the heat and thickness of the air.
Max ran into the light dawning around him, a new day beyond which Vicky was waiting for him.
SEVENTY-FOUR
Cape Horn
“If everything’s ready,” Dale Denton said to Ernst Stowell in the particle accelerator’s main control room, “why haven’t we started?”
“We are required to seek clearances from the local government and insurance company, whenever experiments of a new nature are conducted,” Stowell explained. “I’m waiting to hear back from both now.”
“Who owns this facility, Doctor?”
“Western Energy Technologies.”
“And who controls WET?”
“You do, of course.”
“That’s right, I do,” Denton said, stealing a glance at Orson Beekman who continued to yield the floor to Stowell, further infuriating Denton. “And I’m ordering you to start the process now. I don’t think you want to disappoint me, do you?” he continued, not needing to elaborate on that point further.
Stowell swallowed hard, his thin neck suddenly looking like a bird’s. He looked to Beekman for support, hoping he’d side with a fellow scientist against this layman’s crass approach to an undertaking so fraught with risk. But Beekman offered him nothing as well.
“Professor Beekman’s theories about testing the capabilities of your rock within the collider’s confines are well-founded,” he expounded calmly. “Indeed, particle accelerators use electrical fields to speed up and increase the energy of a beam of particles, which are steered and focused by those fields, generated by electromagnets, through a vacuum-sealed environment.
“That’s how we’re going to get an accurate measurement of the rock’s ability to amplify energy waves,” Stowell continued, not caring if Denton understood or not. “And by conducting the experiment within a vacuum-sealed chamber, we should theoretically be able to contain the rock’s drastically increased output, as it amplifies the energy it draws in from the supercollider.”
“How much longer is this mumbo jumbo going to continue?” Denton snapped, losing his patience.
“A disaster nearly resulted in Houston when you exposed the power of a mere lightbulb to the rock, Mr. Denton. Down here, inside a particle accelerator, the rock will be subjected to a power stretching close to the level of infinity by comparison.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Denton smirked. “And you’ve already warned me about all this. It didn’t change my mind then and it won’t now.”
“I hoped you’d come to your senses.”
“I have, Doctor: About powering the planet for the next millennium and beyond. To eliminating the need for fossil fuels, coal, nuclear power, and all that green energy bullshit. OPEC proved that monopolies work when it comes to energy, and I’m talking about the ultimate monopoly here, once we harness the power of this rock.”
Stowell checked the wall clock and let out a deep sigh. “Thirty minutes,” he said, finally relenting. “That’s how long the final prep will take.”
Denton gazed down at the segment of the tunnel visible through the observation glass. “Twenty-nine minutes, forty-five seconds now, Doctor, and the clock’s ticking.”
SEVENTY-FIVE
Syria
Max continued to run, following the path left by the tire tracks of the New Islamic Front’s vehicles, until he reached the area where he’d concealed the truck that had gotten him and Vicky to this point yesterday. He climbed behind the wheel of the old relic, as much as anything to get out of the blazing morning sunlight, only to find the fuel gauge registering near the FULL line. Had he somehow read it wrong the night before or …
Max left his thought there, focused instead on the clear direction in which the New Islamic Front fighters were headed:
Syria …
The original headquarters of the New Islamic Front, after they’d risen as an even more lethal, and far better financed, group than ISIS. A headquarters built as well in al-Raqqah, after absorbing the last vestiges of the dwindling Caliphate, its remnants cowering in their path.
Al-Qadir’s fighters had returned in modest measure to al-Raqqah with a multitude of civilians already loyal to their cause and willing to help the New Islamic Front hide in plain sight. By all indications, that was where the trucks were headed, and those indications included the sense that Vicky was still alive. Max couldn’t be more certain of that than if she were sitting alongside him in the truck now. Something from the vision he’d just experienced had left its mark inside him, an ability to see not so much into the future, as a deeper, broader view of the present.
The blood of the lamb, Max, the form inside his father had said, remember the blood of the lamb.
It would be the blood of others, though, that would be spilled soon.
Al-Raqqah
Mohammed al-Qadir’s two guards, culled from his best and most seasoned fighters, stood on either side of the woman’s chair. A third adjusted the tripod-mounted camera directly before her.
“You are going to die,” al-Qadir told her. “You’re going to die on live television for all the world to see. Millions of people bearing witness to your leaving this word ahead of the rest of the infidels who will be following you.”
The woman swallowed hard. “I’m not scared.”
“Then you’re stupid.”
“No, I’m not. I just know he’s coming.”
“Who?”
“You know who: the man who wiped out your entire force in the village of El Mady.”
“A single man? You expect me to believe that?”
“You want my head?” the woman challenged him, instead of answering. “You’ll have to take his first. Because he’s coming.”
Al-Qadir found himself grinning “Your head? Who said anything about taking your head?” he asked the woman, turning toward a chamber built into the back of the room, located several stories underground, and outfitted with a heavy door something was banging on from the inside even now.
He couldn’t wait for what was about to happen, thinking of nothing else until one of his commanders entered with concern, even fear, plastered over his features.
“We’ve spotted someone coming.”
“How many?”
“It appears to be a single man,” the commander said, as if not believing it himself.
Al-Qadir glanced back toward the woman from the WHO, before returning his attention to his commander. “Make sure all the men are in position. When this single man arrives, order them to shoot and keep shooting.”
Cape Horn
A faint hum.
That’s all Denton heard when the particle accelerator first fired up. Lights had already snapped on, illuminating the exterior of the tube that circled through the tons of shale and limestone layered deep beneath the island’s surface.
He could see the lights, see the tube, but the rock itself was tucked inside the multi-billion-dollar machine, resting on the floor where in normal circumstances someone might kick it aside and not know any better.
These were not normal circumstances, and Denton studied the LED readouts indicating the slow, gradual increase in power inside the tunnel. All the atoms and molecules soon to be sent smashing up against each other, generating massive electromagnetic waves. This time, whatever energy the rock sucked up would remain trapped by a chamber capable of generating dark matter for a fraction of a second and even simulating an actual black hole.
Perfect, Denton thought, feeling the
hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand up at attention, chills pulsing through him. His breath slowed, and then there didn’t seem to be as much air to suck in, making him feel a bit light-headed, like an oxygen-deprived scuba diver.
Something was happening.
Al-Raqqah
Max had abandoned the old truck a mile back, and continued on foot to the outskirts of al-Raqqah, the remains of the once thriving city reminding him today of the bombed-out shells in World War II photos. Buildings reduced to jagged clumps amid piles of crumbled refuse. No structure seemed entirely whole and the air looked perpetually stained by the dust rising with the wind from all the debris.
Max felt no excitement, no anxiety, no fear. Only certainty in what lay before him. He knew this was real, knew his boots were leaving real marks in the ground, not just figurative ones. And yet it felt more like one of the visions he’d been experiencing. As if his two worlds, his dual selves, had merged. As if life and death themselves had merged too, the distinctions blurred, impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.
In that moment, dark clouds rolled over a sky that had been crystal clear just moments before, day turning to virtual night as the heavens seemed to open, unleashing a violent rainstorm. Max felt it soak him, washing him clean of grime and muck, but not of the hatred and rage simmering inside him. He felt those too about to flood outward, just as the torrents were now dropping from the sky.
Cape Horn
Denton tried to focus on the LED readouts that measured the power being generated by the particle accelerator. Another screen showed a different readout and bar grid associated with the total power output, as calibrated in electromagnetic waves and having been amplified by the stone. The screen was flashing, that particular hard drive having crashed.
Meanwhile, he thought he detected the accelerator tube quaking, pulsing.
Wrong.
Because it was everything else in the complex that was quivering, as if the whole of Cape Horn was being struck by an earthquake. The hairs on his arms and neck were no longer standing on end, but he felt something in the pit of his stomach; an unsettled feeling akin to the jolt of an aircraft smacking down and racing across the tarmac until the brakes engaged.
Only no brakes engaged here. And the pulsing was increasing, some of the personnel grabbing for their water bottles before they spilled over. The air suddenly seemed drained of oxygen, more rapid heaves required to take enough in. Denton visualized millions and millions of hairline cracks appearing on the Earth’s surface; crisscrossing, spreading, and widening. The whole planet losing its structural integrity.
“All right,” he said to Ernst Stowell, keeping his voice calm. “I’ve seen enough, Doctor. Shut it down.”
What little color Stowell had drained from his face. “We can’t. I already tried,” he said, as an alarm began to screech. “I warned you! For God’s sake, I warned you!”
Al-Raqqah
Vicky heard another impact from inside the door leading into the chamber beyond, rattling it this time.
“You’ve got one of them in there,” she said to al-Qadir. “One of the infected that’s been transformed.”
“You’ll meet it soon enough,” he told her, “as the entire world watches. I’ll let it take your head, and anything else it wants. Let the world see it in action, introduce the upshot of Allah’s vision for the End of Days to those who have destroyed His vision for the way the world must be. Let them see you transform too after it’s done with you.”
The heavy door rattled again. What had once been a hand slapped the glass plate even with eye level. A face pressed up against it, appearing even less human than what Vicky recalled from Lebanon, looking like the skin had turned inside out. Narrow, almost feline eyes set more forward than they should’ve been over an elongated mouth with so many dagger-like teeth that the jaws hung open.
“The infidels will see what’s coming,” al-Qadir continued. “They will see what’s headed their way and know their time is coming too, that hell has opened to take them, and that you will be waiting when they get there.”
Al-Raqqah
Max kept walking, even when he spotted the first gunmen mounted atop the highest remaining rooftops. Others were poised behind street-level windows or positions of cover. Dozens of gunmen, hundreds maybe, all waiting for him, all packing a variety of weapons.
Max didn’t stop. Kept walking, impervious to the fire they would rain down, and secure in the notion that it paled by comparison with what he was about to unleash.
Because they were his to control, to exert his will over. Clay to mold in his grasp, subject to his whim. Weak-willed and spineless killers who preyed upon the weak and frightened about to face their reckoning.
Cape Horn
Men were talking, screaming, but they couldn’t hear each other, a few on the floor or leaning against a wall with their hands cupping their ears to shut out a sound Denton couldn’t hear, blood slipping through their fingers. He understood all too well the incredible force and power of a tornado, and right now he felt as if he, all of those in the control room, were being sucked up into the vortex of one beyond an EF5, beyond measure. He looked down, half expecting to see his feet rising into the air.
Denton reminded himself to breathe, but wasn’t sure if any of the air actually reached his lungs, wasn’t even sure he was alive anymore. Pinched himself, actually pinched himself, but felt nothing. Looked toward Stowell, who was still frantically trying to shut the collider down. The world all jumbled around him, Denton no longer able to keep his thoughts straight or be sure he was thinking anything at all.
Al-Raqqah
Al-Qadir felt something too, felt something in the pit of his stomach he could liken to the initial sensation of a high-altitude parachute drop back when he was still Cambridge. The sense of weightlessness and being tossed about at the whims of the wind. Helpless.
Then he realized it wasn’t a feeling at all, so much as a sound. More accurately, a sequence of sounds that peppered his ears with a constant ratcheting din like fireworks heard from a distance.
Gunfire!
Al-Qadir snatched a walkie-talkie from a nearby table and depressed the communicator button. “All sector commanders, report in.”
Nothing.
“Repeat, all sector commanders report in with your status.”
Still nothing. Just more of what sounded like random clicks and clacks from the streets above. Al-Qadir didn’t bother trying to hail his commanders a third time, because he knew; somehow he knew.
His great, fated enemy was here. Whoever, or whatever, had massacred his fighters amid a sandstorm in El Mady had arrived, true to the woman’s word.
Al-Qadir swung toward his personal bodyguards. “Arm yourselves!”
The men looked down at the assault rifles they were holding.
“With more!” al-Qadir elaborated, gesturing toward the table lined with weapons, and moving to grab some for himself. “As many as you can hold!”
Al-Raqqah
Max neared the central avenue that sliced through the city, one of the few passable roads left in the city. He could feel all the guns, so many, trained on him, ready to erupt in a torrent of fire.
Max stopped and froze, at which point the men should have opened fire.
They didn’t.
He should be dead.
He wasn’t.
The hatred and rage had peaked inside him, turning him hypersensitive to the world around him. He heard everything, saw everything. Felt the same surreal sense of transcendence familiar from his visions. His dual worlds, his dueling, twin consciousness having finally merged into one, filling him with not just a sense of what was to come, but a certainty in his capacity to create it.
Max looked up, peering through the sheets of rain at the gunmen above him. Then he tightened his right hand into a fist, feeling the blood leaking out from the mark on his palm, dribbling through his fingers to fall in steady drops to the puddles pooling at his feet
. He kept his gaze focused on the fighters above, their guns starting to move, aiming, steadying, ready to fire.
Not at him … but at each other, as the air crackled and the world moved in jump cuts through the curtains of rain being dumped from the sky.
The barrage of gunfire that followed was like nothing Max had ever experienced in combat before. As many as two hundred men hitting their triggers at the exact same moment. The echoes of the shots drowned out the screams, as the New Islamic Front fighters obliterated their own number. Those left standing turned their weapons on themselves, Max certain he glimpsed a fighter through a street-level window continuing to pull the trigger, firing into himself even after he was dead.
Others on the rooftops looking over him, had abandoned their weapons and were tearing each other apart with their bare hands. Knives flashed too, blood spraying in all directions. Still more fighters were hammering each other with their rifles as if they were clubs.
Max walked through what had effectively become a tunnel of carnage, a spray of blood catching him like mist as he steered toward a building at the end of the block.
Cape Horn
The particle accelerator itself was now shaking, Denton realized, threatening to tear itself apart at the points where hinges joined sections together, and releasing an energy equivalent to ten thousand atomic bombs.
Or worse.
The closed circuit monitors picturing the supercollider’s tunnel showed something glowing, as bright as the sun and forcing Denton to turn away. Then, suddenly, Stowell was at his side, grabbing hold of him, his eyes bulging.
“The readouts are upside down, everything reversed!” And, when Denton gave no response, “We’ve unleashed dark matter in there! Somehow we’ve unleashed dark matter and it’s colliding with the oppositely charged particles faster and faster. If we can’t stop it…”
Stowell was still talking, but Denton couldn’t hear him anymore.
Al-Raqqah
The man who’d once been one of al-Qadir’s most trusted confidants had been chained up inside the chamber before his final transformation was complete. Al-Qadir first feared the sickness the man had brought back with him from southern Lebanon. Then he’d rejoiced, realizing the man was still a soldier, albeit one serving in the army of God’s final war against the infidels who’d besmirched His name and His word for so long.