Her smile is deadly and final.
Her voice is focused like a laser beam.
“Hello,” she says.
• • •
“I can’t see you, Mister Coffin, but you can see me.”
Jenison’s voice crackles clearly through the tiny speakers, stabbing my heart without pity, like the cold, evil stare of the killer hovering above me, his gun fixed on the space between my eyes.
She’s got me.
Finally.
“I’m afraid I’ve had to record this message to you in advance. Technical reasons. I’m sorry I could not be there in person to see your final moments. I would have liked to. Rest assured, I will see those moments soon. You are about to go down in history.”
I want to tell her to go to hell, but she can’t hear me. She’s long gone by now, in a place where I’ll never find her. A place where cell signals and Wi-Fi bottom out in oblivion. Underground.
“I understand you’ve lost the use of your legs. Quite an unfortunate and ironic turn of luck for a man on the run, wouldn’t you say? But even when a man has no knees to fall on, he can still beg for his life. You should know that begging is useless now. And so is bartering. You no longer have anything in your possession that I want.”
Richard Sergio opens the bag and pulls out a shiny surgical instrument. It’s like nothing I’ve seen before. Like a redesigned hacksaw with sharp teeth, and lots of little barbs and extensions—something designed by a lunatic, meant for serious flesh damage.
“I have ordered this man to kill you. Very painfully. You’ve been a difficult man, and what happens in this room will be recorded as an example to the other members of my organization. Your death will live on for years, in fact. You have to keep the fear of God in your own people, Mister Coffin. Otherwise, there’s no chance for resurrection. Either figuratively or literally.”
Richard Sergio sets the instrument on the floor. Pulls out another one. And another. And another. Arranges his toys in a row. They gleam with piercing evil.
He keeps the gun on me the whole time with one hand.
“But I wanted you to know that I am also grateful to you, Mister Coffin. It may seem strange, but I feel I actually owe you one last insight before you die. This chess game we’ve been playing has very high stakes, and I respect the moves you have made. Believe me, I do. In another life, or perhaps with more time to convince you of the truths my organization stands for, I might have welcomed a man like you. It’s a shame, really. The new future requires creative thinkers. Devious and inventive minds. But it also requires the fear of God.”
The steel glints and blinds me. Richard Sergio strokes one of the scalpels. Pulls his finger back, streaked with blood. Holds it up for me to see. His sick smile, full of contempt and crazy resolve.
“That’s what makes the youth of this world so easy to recruit, Mister Coffin. People are willing to believe in a fresh perspective when they are facing a world filled with fear and panic . . . and the fresher the perspective, the more achievable it all seems. Our own leaders prove that every single day. They’ve been proving it for centuries, since this country was built on the bones of slaughtered natives and slaves. And the bogeymen of the world . . . they’re only there because we’ve allowed them to become demons. They are the cover stories and public explanations for why we destroy civilizations. If you had any respect for history, you would see that.”
She pauses. Then almost laughs.
Richard Sergio smiles at me. Rows of shiny steel death, laid at my feet. The gun, still aimed right between my eyes.
“It might surprise you to know that I am only one member of a larger contingent. A sort of think tank, if you will. We’ve structured something very complex with many layers, and you’ve only just scratched the surface. And as you’ve come to know, our foot soldiers are ruthless and dedicated.”
Jenison looks me right in the eye from miles away.
No doubt about it now. They’ve retreated to their fortress and they’ve hit the button. They figured out some way to do it without the disc drive. And I’m going to become the last martyred saint for Resurrection. Nailed to a cross, broadcast over a wire.
To scare the next generation of assholes.
“I want you to know that I truly believe in everything I’m telling you, Mister Coffin. We’re not a movie cliché or a conspiracy theory come to life. We’re not a group of government charlatans sitting in an office somewhere, plotting to dismantle the sleeping middle class by promising them a better world through welfare. We don’t need to do anything at all on that front—most people are dead already. They live in fear, brainwashed by TV commercials, their lives out of control. I do not pity them, nor do I pity the disenfranchised youth of the world, who are hardly aware that there was ever a past to inform the future. We are men and women of action, with respect for history. We have been for almost half a century now. We’ve recruited only those who feel as we do. We’ve told people the truth and they believed that truth. And the truth is this . . .”
Her eyes, staring right into me.
She is the devil and I am in her hell.
She is the unmaker of everything.
“You, Mister Coffin, are the defender of a lost world. You are fighting a losing battle. You are crawling in your own blood. You want to survive right now because that is your instinct. But you are not ready to accept that the world must be cleansed. You are not even ready to be sacrificed in the name of a greater good. I would call you an infidel, but that would make me sound like a common terrorist. And what we are doing isn’t about terror. It’s about resurrection.”
She almost laughs again, but this time it’s grim.
Like she knows the truth and it makes her sad.
“What you are, really, in the end, is an animal. Like all the other dogs I’ve seen. All the dead game in the world. Those who see as I do—the executive members of Resurrection—know that it’s just a matter of clearing away the bodies. Then the entire world will be reborn. And several hundred years from now, the children of our children’s children will see you die. They will know you were the last man who stood against us. They will be afraid of the world that existed then. The world you were terrified to let go of. And it will be good, Mister Coffin . . . because by then the world will be very different. There will be no war, no starvation, no selfish agendas created by men hungry for power and money. There will be only the image of you to remind our future children. Remind them never to go back to the way things were before.”
She smiles one last time.
“I thank you, Mister Coffin. Really, I do. From the bottom of my heart. And to prove my gratitude . . . I’m going to give you what you’ve been searching for. What we agreed upon when I first hired you. That’s only fair, after all, isn’t it?”
What?
What the hell is she . . .
Before the thought can solidify, she moves away from the screen and the angle expands to show the room she stands in. It’s a giant chamber, full of half-defined machinery that stretches back in shadowy layers, a never-ending maze that envelops rows and rows of . . . what are they?
Look like upright glass canisters.
Hundreds of them, filed away in the darkness, brought to me on shaky video. Each glass coffin is filled with some sort of thick green liquid. Floating in the fluid are human bodies. All of them are women. All of them naked and sleeping, breathing through tiny respirators attached to tubes, surrounded by their own oxygen bubbles.
It’s some sort of human storage facility.
The camera focuses on one of the tubes . . .
. . . and . . .
• • •
Toni.
I see her floating just on the other side of the glass, hovering like a naked angel in an underwater sea-storm of bubbles, her eyes closed in some sort of coma.
It’s you.
Just as clear and beautiful as you were on our wedding day. The lines and canyons of your body, crystal clear like in my dreams, my memories. I
smell the roses when I see her.
I smell her.
She is helpless.
“I know this must come as a shock to you, Mister Coffin. But you have my word that she is very much alive. She’s breathing a half-oxygen, half-fluid mixture called hydrogenated fluorocarbon emulsion. In a state of perfect hibernation.”
The camera goes in close, and I see that her nose is taking in the green liquid, while her mouth pushes out bubbles through the breathing apparatus.
This can’t be real.
It just can’t be happening.
“I’m afraid this is why we were never able to reunite you with your wife, Mister Coffin. I suppose it would have been much easier to make a trade with you for the disc drives . . . but, then again, now that we no longer require the drives, it’s become a moot point.”
The camera zooms back out and Jenison leans into the frame again.
She doesn’t smile.
“This is the way to immortality, Mister Coffin. Your wife was chosen to be reborn with us into the new age of man. She will live long after you are dead. And soon she will watch you die. I will make her watch. Like I will make all the others watch.”
Her face fills the screen now.
Her madness boring a hole in my heart.
Her eyes, blacker than anything.
“She will live, Mister Coffin. But you will not.”
And the image winks off.
20
00000-20
LIVING THROUGH
“I’m going to do a Superman on you. Know what that means?”
I know. But I don’t say a word.
“That means you lose everything, buddy. Meat on bones and nothing else. You’ll need a respirator to breathe, like Christopher Reeve. Superman. Remember what happened to him? Sure you do. I bet he was the first thing you thought of when you found out you couldn’t walk. It usually is, with most paralytics. Statistically, I mean. They did a survey on it a few years back. Isn’t that funny?”
I can’t think of anything funny about any of this.
“This will be worse,” he says. “That I can guarantee. I won’t kill you quickly. You’ll be in a lot of pain. You’ll want to die. But I won’t let you die.”
Where’s the fun in that?
David Hartman’s face, superimposed over his in a bizarre Jungian flash.
The terrible, knowing grin of every monster in the world.
Madness.
He opens the bag and pulls out another piece of equipment. It unsnaps into three long metal legs and he sets it up on the floor. A tiny nugget of Flip technology tops the tripod, blipping with a deep red light, on and off, signaling the start of high-def video.
“Showtime,” he says.
Then he reaches for his instruments. Selects one that looks like a clawed hammer first. Turns and smashes the iPad with it. Smiles his sickness again, holding up the clawed end of the hammer so I can see it.
“We cover our tracks, buddy. No one will ever know we were here.”
He sets down the hammer and picks up a tool that looks like a hacksaw mutated into a pair of scissors. Terrible and shiny. I roll onto my back, try to pull myself against the wall. My arms are straining to pull my upper body. The pain in my side is getting worse. I have to let him get in close. Try to take him out. I find my center, concentrating all my energy into my arms.
He puts the gun back in the bag.
Brings out a syringe.
“Don’t even think about fighting me. What’s in my left hand will kill your motor reflexes. What’s in my right will remove your foot, then some other things. We’ll get you back in your bed for that. We have at least a few hours together.”
No. I can’t let this happen.
The needle in his left hand hovers above my bare foot. I can’t reach far enough over to stop him. He knows better than to let me get my paws on him.
The needle goes in. His thumb rests on the plunger.
“Beg for your life. I want to hear it. Beg me not to do this.”
Go to hell, asshole.
He sees my face, the words almost leaving my mouth. Shakes his head.
“You will beg,” he says. “I’ll make you do it, buddy.”
He twists the needle in my toe.
“You won’t feel anything while I work, but you won’t be able to move, either. The pain will come slowly. You’ll warm up real nice. It’s going to get really messy, buddy.”
Whatever turns you on, asshole.
His face contorts when I think that, and I see the madman there now, clear as day, glaring in my eyes like a black-light beacon from hell. A crazy man with a head full of sadism and cruelty. I want to ask him what his real name is for some reason, but I know he doesn’t have one. He’s just another shadow in a dark room, sent to kill people like me.
All in the name of Superman.
He twists the needle again, sinking it lower into my flesh.
“I’m going to enjoy watching you break. The smart ones always are the best. The ones who think they can will away the pain. Think they can go to their special place and block it all out. But don’t you kid yourself, buddy . . .”
Deeper now.
Almost to the bone.
I can’t feel a thing.
“. . . things like this have to be lived through.”
He licks his lips.
Toni . . . I’m going to die. But you are with me. We are together in this final time.
I am ready to be nothing but meat on bones for you.
Do it now, you sick freak.
Something smashes through his forehead and keeps on going, shattering the window near my bed, like a low thrumming bumblebee. He falls over with his thumb still on the plunger, his muscles twitching across my dead legs. The surgical tool falls from his grip and clatters on the floor, spinning there.
Standing in the doorway to my room is a very beautiful woman.
It’s the girl who lied to me.
The almost-perfect version of Toni.
The girl who said she was my wife.
Smoke rises from the business end of her silenced pistol.
“Come on, Elroy,” she says. “Let’s get you the hell out of here.”
• • •
She rolls me out into the hallway and there’s two hard-looking guys wearing long overcoats waiting for us. One of them has a face like a sausage pizza, the other one is the olive-skinned cop from before—the one who said his name was Morales. They both have shotguns in their arms and pistols with silencers in shoulder holsters. The wall behind the nurses’ station is splashed in arterial red, and there’s a dead police officer on the floor near the elevator, his memories of the last few minutes floating in a pool that reflects the dim phosphorescence. They used those quiet handguns on their approach, so they could sneak up on Richard the Happy Intern. Damn clever of them.
“Who the hell are you guys?”
“Heather Stone,” the girl says. “Nice to meet you.”
She doesn’t offer her hand. She doesn’t smell like Toni anymore—but she still resembles her, just a little. Her face, like an imperfect copy of perfect art.
This is insane, surreal.
“We’re friendlies,” Morales says. “We gotta move fast. This place crawls.”
He’s not a cop. Some sort of mercenary, maybe a spook. Only guys with military training say things like this place crawls.
Heather Stone motions to Pizzaface, who takes over pushing my wheelchair, back down the hall, towards the elevator at the opposite end, away from the massacre. Morales covers us from behind. There’s no one else in the ward. No more blood on the walls. It’s just us. My head is light and swimming. Tingling all over my body. Soft needles jabbing the muscles in my upper thighs. I feel the floor rumbling under my feet as they motorvate me. Heather Stone leads point with her big pistol. I can see now that it’s a .357 Desert Eagle slide—the Mark XIX, military-grade monster. Those things cost more on the consumer market than a 60-inch flat-screen. She’s wearing a whit
e doctor’s coat over military black, the heavy gun weighed effortlessly in a practiced grip.
She is something very different from what I thought she was.
She’s one of these guys, always has been.
A spook.
Just as I think that, her gun does its low bark again. I don’t even see the cop as he steps out of the elevator. A blast of blood and the mark goes down fast. Heather Stone is a stone-cold statue when she does it. Hardly even breaks stride. We’re past the carnage and inside the elevator in nothing flat.
The car fills with electronic bells as we head down. Heather reloads her weapon, unscrews the silencer. Her boys check their shotguns. I can tell now that she’s in charge of these men. She has a Bluetooth clipped to her ear and starts speaking very calmly into it.
“I need an all clear in the main lobby. Give me a picture.”
Someone’s voice says important things I can’t hear. Heather pulls something that looks like an oversized iPhone out of her pocket and studies it. I can see graphics pay out, infrared, scrolls of data in the form of electronic silhouettes.
“Okay,” she says calmly to her men. “We’ve got five in the stairwell, on the way up. Two more in the car just behind us. Three left in the lobby, no civilians. Plug up.”
The two grunts stand in front of me, pulling out tiny little yellow beads and stuffing their ears with them. They do it very smoothly, professionally. One of them tosses a gas mask in my lap and tells me to hold my breath and my ears. Morales is screwing a shiny steel attachment onto the end of his shotgun.
The elevator car clunks to a stop just as Morales hits the switch that keeps the doors closed. Heather aims her monster gun and pulls the trigger. She’s staring at the screen in her hand, which shows her the targets standing on the other side of six-inch steel.
Boom.
The muzzleflashes are two feet long.
She’s switched to a much higher grade of ammunition since that last clip went in her gun. The three shots are like thick laser beams, punching neat little holes in the door, knocking down two of the men in the lobby on her infrared screen. The sound almost makes me deaf, even with my fingers in my ears. She hits the switch that opens the door as Pizzaface fires the tear-gas grenade, spewing a long thin contrail of hissing white smoke that bounces off a marble wall and begins to fill the room.
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