by Terry James
"Why is your car pointed north, sir? This is a southbound lane."
"I know it's the southbound side," Jacob said, irritated by the trooper's suspicious tone.
"Then why is your car headed north?" The man moved nearer and looked more closely at Jacob.
"Because I couldn't get by the wreck. I turned around so I could go find help," he lied.
"They're finished, Sarge," a trooper who walked back from near the wreckage informed the officer questioning Jacob. The sergeant nodded acknowledgment.
"May I see your UNIVUSCARD?"
Jacob handed him the card, and the man looked at the photograph, then eyed Jacob warily. "You been drinking, or taking some other substance, Mr. Zen?"
"No, I haven't."
"Why is your car so beat up in the rear? Those dents look fresh."
"It happened some time earlier... last night. Somebody hit it while it was parked at a friend's house."
A helicopter thumped overhead and the sergeant looked up, as did Jacob, seeing the chopper's brightly lit belly hovering almost directly above them. The trooper removed a walkie-talkie from his belt and pulled the antenna to full extension.
"Looks like a seven-sixty three, sir. You want a zebra on the zero? Over!"
The communicator squawked in response. "Negative. Over and out!"
Jacob watched the bird whirl away, its red and green position lights rapidly shrinking, then vanishing into the blackness.
The man handed him the UNIVUSCARD. "We've blocked off 355 at the end of the walls. You'll be able to get on the access road there."
Jacob started to call to the officer, who had walked away toward the wreckage and begun talking with two other troopers. He thought better of it. Something rooted deeply in his subconscious reasoning troubled him, and made him know the best thing to do at that moment was to get Karen away from there. He didn't know what lay at the bottom of his worry, but the apprehension-- maybe even fear--weighed heavily on his thoughts while he turned to have a last look at the holocaust scattered across State 355, and at the three uniformed men silhouetted against the flames. At the charred frame of the machine that had nearly killed them.
The full impact of the past minutes hit him, and he began to shake. The dark outline within the blazing mass was clearly that of a heavy tow truck, its semi-molten skeleton twisting in the flames like black, groping fingers reaching from the bowels of hell.
Karen sat groggily beside him while they crossed the Potomac on the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge, the drug given her by the emergency room doctor 30 minutes earlier doing little to ease the throbbing in her head.
"We'll stay at Stone Oaks for a couple of days. There's always a doctor on call for Uncle Conrad since he's been helping the President. The doctor said you need watching for 24 hours or so." Jacob kept to himself his thoughts about the small army of Secret Service and military guards at the old mansion; her safety would be ensured there.
"We've got to call Dr. Marchek!" Karen sat up with the sudden realization that the old man might be in danger. She grimaced and laid her head back gingerly against the headrest.
"He's all right, Kay. I called him while you were on the table getting patched up. He said to tell you not to worry about him."
The lie was best for her at the moment. He would, in fact, call Marchek when there was time.
Her pretty face reflected lights from approaching traffic, and he saw his words had calmed her. Despite feeling more relaxed himself since the early morning rush began along George Washington Memorial Parkway, Jacob nonetheless kept a nervous watch in the rear-view mirror for the lights he could never see again, but which he would not likely forget, headlights now part of an incinerated heap being trucked to some distant refuse dump. Those who died in the tow truck, though, had friends, and Stone Oaks would provide haven for Karen while he found out who those friends were.
At the same hour, Jacob and Karen could not know that Hugo Marchek stood looking out his huge study window into the stillness of the early morning at what would in spring be a garden of flowers bursting with color. Now, the grounds lay dark and gray and lifeless, with only a faint, misty illumination to prove they were more than nothingness. He looked but saw little, his mind on the ancient, musty volumes piled atop the scarred table at the center of the room.
An antique lamp with a single 40-watt bulb barely dented the darkness of the study while the old man began thumbing studiously through the books, squinting at the tiny print. He occasionally had to use a magnifying glass, drawing it near, then pushing it away from his face to make readable the words on the yellowed pages.
A small fire, now in its final stages, flickered within the smoke-blackened fireplace, its embers growing darker and collapsing in their degeneration to ashes.
Marchek slowly raised his head, sensing the presence nearby of someone or something in the old home. His eyes closed in a deeper squint, the age wrinkles becoming valleys in the sparse light, when he tried to pierce the darkness of the hallway.
"Saryeva! Is that you?" he called, then stood from the table, craning his neck to hear noises he thought might be coming from the kitchen, the area through which his sister must pass in order to enter. He glanced at his pocket watch. It was most likely not Saryeva; she would not be traveling about, alone, at this hour. Besides, she was spending the weekend with her sister, Katherine, at Silver Spring. Marchek's watch read 5:08. No, it was not Saryeva he heard.
Negotiating the distance from the study to the kitchen was easy for him. His vision, growing worse by degrees over the past few years, forced him to incorporate feel as part of getting around in areas not completely free of obstacles, and though the totally dark hallway made two turns, he moved swiftly and surely, stopping only after he reached the door to the kitchen to flip one of the several light switches on the hallway wall.
Something exploded in front of him, causing his heart to leap. The floor and cabinet, the air around him, swirled with an opaque whiteness. He strained to see through the cloud.
"Isaac!"
He smiled downward at the big tomcat, who stared up whitely from the floor, his yellow coat covered with flour.
"So, old friend, I am getting senile. I did not remember to put you out for your evening's carousing."
He lifted the feline from the floor, holding it at arm's length to brush the powder from its fur. "I guess I subconsciously want you not to disgrace your good biblical name. Lord knows what goes on out there with you and your friends." He held the cat close to him, scratching it behind its badly scarred ears and examining a recently acquired wound. "And to make matters worse, you missed the mouse, yes?" He walked from the kitchen stroking the animal, stopping to switch off the lights before walking down the hallway. "We will put you out in the garden. How will that be?"
Now he could move without following the oak runner along the wall with his fingertips. The lamp in the study, despite its limited output, gave enough light for him to stay centered in the walkway. The cat purred easily against him, moving its head to take maximum advantage of his human friend's massaging fingers. Suddenly the animal stiffened, causing Marchek to lose his grip on the cat. It emitted a low growl, then a nerve-racking scream! It dug its claws into Marchek's arms and abdomen, then into the side of his face, the animal lunging upward onto his shoulder. It ripped viciously into his back, when it let its bottom half reverse toward the floor to break its fall. The old man shrieked, grabbing his lacerated face.
His glasses had been knocked to the floor by the animal's violent action, and he searched the dark hallway for them in sweeping movements of his hands. Finally finding them, he put them on his nose, then stood, dazed, nearly staggering from the experience. The cat was gentle; it had never reacted in this manner before.
He touched his face and felt the warm, slick wetness of his blood, smelling its cupreous odor. The feeling returned; he was not alone in the house. Something cold, unspeakably sinister...something he had long known to exist but had never experienced t
hrough his natural senses until now. Chills spread across his body, tightening the skin on the back of his neck and his scalp while he made his way along one wall of the hallway.
"Dear God, give me grace," he whispered just before stepping into the opening to the study. The light from the lamp flickered, then went out. He stood stiffly in the arched entranceway, his eyes drawn to the fireplace embers that suddenly rekindled to flame, which grew until it seemed he was looking into hell itself!
A warm calm flooded his mind and body. All fear was gone. He could face the intruding force with courage and dignity.
"So," he said in a strong voice, his eyes darting from behind the thick glasses to see into the shadows around him. "You have at last been allowed to come to me!" He moved to the center of the study, then turned slowly to see his nemesis.
"Take my life. But it is I who shall live again to judge you!" He shouted the words with hatred. "The sentence will be everlasting death--yet eternal pain. Death without its peace! Do with me what you will. I shall, through Jesus Christ, prevail!"
McLean looked good to him in the mistiness of dawn, when he nursed the badly missing Volvo through a shopping district and past the sprawling, immaculately groomed estates, finally coming to the one belonging to Conrad Wilson. Jacob was home, and like the times he had come before, from camp or college or dates, it was expansively welcoming, the massive oaks and hickories holding out their now almost leafless, black arms, beckoning him through the gate and into a home warmed as much by the man he loved like a father as by the hearth always ablaze this time of year with fire especially prepared for the homecoming.
"Hello, Mr. Zen," the man in the dark suit said with a tight smile.
"George." Jacob nodded and handed the Secret Service agent his and Karen's UNIVUSCARDs.
"Thank you, sir. You have some trouble?" the agent asked, seeing the girl's bandaged head and the car's damaged rear portion. "Just a rear-ender. We're okay," Jacob said.
The agent walked back into the guardhouse after returning the cards. Karen marveled at the elaborate television equipment, the many monitors on the guardhouse walls and the television cameras sitting at different points along the top of the thick concrete and stone fence rimmed with wrought-iron spikes. "I heard the President once say in a press conference that Conrad Wilson was a national resource, but I thought he was joking. Just look at this!"
"It's been like this since he began taking on jobs for the Administration. He doesn't want it this way, but they insist."
The heavy sculptured iron gate swung open and Jacob urged the chugging car onto the brick drive and toward the old mansion 100 yards in the distance.
Chapter 5
Karen rested her cheek against the side of his chest and used a tissue to dry her tears. Jacob held her close and looked past her, out the dark window of the funeral limo, seeing the small white mausoleum in which Hugo Marchek's body had 20 minutes earlier been entombed. Now, only the minister and a few family members stood near the crypt while a caretaker locked its iron-barred door-gate. Light rain fell from heavily overcast skies and ran in many rivulets down the window. Karen's body suddenly shook and she began to cry bitterly.
Jacob's forehead vibrated with the shrill call: INterface Watchers putting all Sector Coordinators on notice that there were duties to perform. It was the gentler prodding by the masters, calling him not from the forbidden overdosed state, but from the authorized time of rest. Two opposite emotions kneaded his dulled senses while he struggled to fully know his present circumstance. He was pleased he did not have to relive Karen's agony over losing the old man she loved even more than she realized. This was a loss which he, too, felt with great pain. But, at the same time, he ached with the realization that he was not with her.
No time for regret, for remembrance; there was time only to do that demanded of him. He could afford no further slip-ups if he was to survive to kill some of the enslavers and himself. Feeling the belt of plastic explosives brought him fully back to reality. He pulled the hip-length jacket over the belt and smoothed the material before removing the blanket and standing from the hard sofa.
Electronic impulses again vibrated his skull, and he saw the INRU Scanner's lens rotate, following his limping movement to the console chair, his knees bruised and aching from his fall. What did they want of John I. Garver this time? It pleased him to be able to think clearly enough to separate himself from the assumed identity--something he had found hard to do for many months, thanks to Trachetrol II. Could it be that this call was a pardon for the earlier sin of having not instantly answered his master's beckoning? Not likely; INterface was, if anything, unforgiving. Watcher Control most likely figured to use him until the time of his erasure from the system, simply because it was not expedient to send another Sector Coordinator to do the required surgery on behalf of INterface.
When he pressed the appropriate key, the screen, which had displayed the pyramid symbol, changed to a map of Sector 550, each of its 66 geographical portions graphically represented, separated by black lines drawn on a field of brilliant yellow. The computer voice informed him:
"John I. Garver -- six, six, six, IN, three, one, eight, eight, eight, two, seven, one.
Identification will not be effected. Video Scanner perceives -- IN are you. Prepare to receive visual.
Subject: Enemies to be excised from INterface Response Unity. Respond."
Excision! How he did hate them! How he wished to have all the perverted, abscessing monsters within range of the explosive! Should he defy them? Refuse to do it? Sickness burned in the pit of his stomach, in his soul—if such an entity existed.
How many must be excised this time? Cut off from all food, medical help, and clothing by a mere flick of a finger, erasing them from INterface Response Unity. Cut from the computer's memory—the children, no older than three or so, born after the great disappearance, the dissipation that took all the other children.
"Respond!" the voice demanded, interrupting the tortured thoughts of what complying with the order would mean to the poor creatures at his mercy—people already crazed with worry and hunger and disease. He had no choice; he had to respond as commanded. They would come and do the job themselves, otherwise, and his chance to carry out his plan against the murderers would be lost.
He looked at the digital clock above the Scanner's lens "13:21." He pushed the key on his console.
"Response noted," said the synthesized voice.
He computed silently. It was 7:21— 2 hours, 39 minutes until the confrontation at Facility 500.
Much of the nerve-twisting guilt feeling left him; hatred for those forcing him to commit the atrocity consumed it. Justification for his action would come when he sacrificed himself at Facility 500 to avenge what he must now do.
"Identifier Numbers belonging to enemies within your Sector are being file-interrogation programmed."
"Acknowledge feed."
Jacob pushed a key on the console board and gave the verbal response called for. "Feed perceived."
"Filemark -- Now!" the computer said.
The screen filled with hundreds of Identifier Numbers belonging to enemies, who would shortly be deprived of access to the INterface computer network.
"Filemark noted," Jacob said.
"Sector 55D infection coming visual -- Now!"
The Response Unit's screen again displayed the black-outlined, yellow map. Hundreds of red points of light flashed, showing Jacob and Controller Central the precise location of every person to be cut from INterface Response Unity. Each subject had the biosensor implanted beneath the skin of the forehead or on the back of the right hand, the sensor programmed with data that included his or her Identifier Number and a Universal Product Code, which, when scanned by a Product Decoder, gave access to commercial computers throughout INterface for transacting day-to-day business. The need to carry easily stolen or lost cards was thus eliminated. Jacob's action would instantaneously destroy the Universal Product Code portion of the Allegiant im
planted within each person selected for excision. The Identifier Number would not be affected, but would remain activated, enabling the state to keep track of the excised subject until his or her death.
"Execute!" the computer voice commanded.
He pressed a red button above the Interact keys and saw on the monitor the results.
"Excision completed," he reported, seeing the flashing red lights change to steadily glowing green ones. Hundreds of them, each representing a human being who was no longer 77V.
"Lock toggle guard before end of Interact," the voice warned with dispassion equal to its previous order.
He pulled the red metal guard to a covering position over the Excision Button to prevent accidentally eliminating commercial computer access for loyal citizens.
The clock above the Scanner Eye displayed 19:35 hours, which was only 25 minutes until, possibly, his own elimination. He was more fortunate than those he had seconds ago victimized.
One shattering instant would send him and as many as he could take with him at Facility 500 into eternity. What about eternity? Would it be an improvement? He did not know why he considered such things at this moment, but the words written in the book ran swiftly through his mind:
"...And that no man might buy or sell except he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name..."
Why remember the words so clearly? He had not memorized them. Was it some preternatural phenomenon? The eschatologist calling to him from the grave? No. Marchek would say he was not in the grave. His essence was some other place—Heaven? Was Marchek reaching out to him from Heaven? Marchek's spirit nudging Jacob toward some deity-directed conclusion?
"Watch after Karen... sweet, lovely Karen," the voice urged, as if it spoke within the echo chamber that was his skull. The voice... Marchek's... The mental image... Karen's beautiful face. He had finally lost his reason.
He stood from the console chair, sweat streaming profusely from his face and body. He did not notice the perspiration, feeling instead the terrible cold of his isolation.