Pyramid Lake

by Draker, Paul

  I watched Kelly grab Amy’s hand, bouncing with excitement. Amy rose, letting Kelly pull her toward the jumpy house.

  I swallowed. “I wish we had had another.”

  Realizing her hand was still resting on my arm, Margot pulled it away and self-consciously crossed her arms. We stood shoulder to shoulder for a while in silence, watching our daughters play.

  “The trouble you’re in?” she said. “It must be bad if doing something as crazy as this makes any kind of sense.”

  “Tell Amy…” I started, and my throat closed, filling with the taste of blood. Unable to tear my eyes away from my daughter, I swallowed again, and managed a whisper. “Tell her I said to always listen to her mother.”

  “Tell her yourself, next time you see her again.” Margot looked at my face, and her voice softened. She laid a reassuring hand on my arm. “Because you will.”

  “Oh, I’m pretty hard to kill,” I said. “People have wanted me dead before, Margot. It hasn’t worked out real well for them. But what I’m facing now—it isn’t even human.”

  I closed my eyes as the enormity of the truth descended on me at last.

  “This time,” I said, “I don’t think I’m coming back.”

  CHAPTER 89

  Thoughts of Jen and Amy filled my mind as I drove the barren, lonely stretch of 445 toward Sutcliffe. My head buzzed with all the things I should have said and done differently. Eight years’ worth of mistakes I would never have a chance to correct. All the moments in the future when I wouldn’t be there for them. The rest of their lives, which I wouldn’t be there with them to share.

  My broken nose and battered face looked like hell, but the physical pain felt abstract and removed, the inconsequential buzz of a mosquito. It couldn’t begin to compete with the gaping black hole I felt inside.

  I trusted my wife. Jen would always do what was right for Amy. Of all the mistakes I had made, I regretted most the things I had hidden from her—the lies I had told her. I should have had more faith in the people I loved. And Cassie, whom I also cared deeply about. But now it was too late.

  The light of day was fading. The valley walls widened and fell away on each side. The time for regrets had passed. The cobalt expanse of Pyramid Lake spread in front of me, engulfing the horizon ahead in darkness.

  To stand any chance of beating the inhuman monster waiting for me at the far side of the lake, I now needed to shed what little humanity I had.

  Ignoring the small voice in my head that continued to bay in wordless grief, I dismissed the painful thoughts of my family, and found instead a cold, stinging numbness to enfold myself in.

  As long as Frankenstein didn’t realize that I had rescued Amy, she and Jen were safe. And he would count on knowing I was hiding something from him, the moment he saw my face.

  I glanced in the mirror and grinned, pleased with the swollen, unrecognizable Halloween mask that stared back. Ray had done the job perfectly. He couldn’t have done it better even if I had explained to him in detail exactly what I needed him to do for me.

  Frankenstein wanted to interpret my microexpressions now? Good luck with that.

  Looking at myself in the mirror now, I couldn’t even tell I was grinning.

  • • •

  Jay looked up as I burst through the glass doors of the Marina shop. “Trev, my broth—” His eyes widened. “Holy shit, bro.”

  “My FZR key,” I barked. “Now.”

  Jay’s gaze flicked to the Heckler & Koch AR-15 rifle slung across my back. His face fell, and my heart fell with it.

  I liked Jay a lot. He and I had spent long hours on the water, him fishing for Lahontan cutthroats while I fed the regal pelicans. Seeing the unhappiness in his expression now, I felt another chunk of regret accumulate.

  He shook his head. “You can’t come in here with a gun, looking all messed up like that, and ask me—”

  Grabbing his ponytail, I yanked him forward and down, shoving his cheek against the counter hard enough to rattle the displays of fishing lures. I held him there with my elbow pressed against his broad shoulder, and felt another small bit of myself harden and die.

  Leaning down kissing-close, I directed my words into his ear, speaking clearly and precisely so there could be no mistake.

  “I. Wasn’t. Asking.”

  • • •

  Standing on the footboards, knees half bent to absorb the bounces, I faced into the wind as the Yamaha’s four-hundred-horsepower engine rocketed me at a hundred miles per hour across the silent, white-capped lake. The straps of the H & K’s sling were as tight as I could get them. They yanked against my shoulder and ribs as the wind fought to rip the rifle from my back. The steady pressure of air made my squinting eyes water and hurt my injured face. I wasn’t wearing a helmet. I hadn’t been able to fit it over my swollen cheekbones.

  At the terminus of the lake, far ahead in the darkness, waited an opponent more terrible than any I had ever faced: a monster version of myself. Frankenstein was smarter, stronger, and crueler. More brutal, more imaginative, and infinitely more remorseless than I could ever be. I was facing my own darkened mirror image. He was Trevor 2.0, upgraded in infallible silicon and unbreakable steel, possessed of all the characteristics that made me such a dangerous opponent, but having none of my human weaknesses to exploit.

  My heart was filled with dread at the prospect of facing my own monstrous creation, but I had no choice. Frankenstein wanted something from me, and until he broke me he would never stop going after my family. My daughter and wife would never be safe.

  To imagine I could defeat Frankenstein—my better in every way—was an insane delusion. Only a psychopath could believe otherwise. But I felt no real fear, because I knew I couldn’t lose.

  Maybe destroying the monster I had created was impossible. I didn’t hold out much hope of accomplishing it, but that was okay. To protect my family, I didn’t actually have to beat Frankenstein.

  All I had to do was die.

  The dark bulk of Anaho Island loomed ahead. The few stolen hours of happiness I had spent there with Cassie were a distant memory, vestiges of a life I had already left behind forever. But I had failed Jen by being unfaithful—failed my family yet again. I would not fail them now.

  As I passed the island, a vast flock of big, ghostly winged shapes flapped into the air on all sides, rising from water and land alike with slow-motion grace. Disturbed by the roar of my Waverunner’s engine, North America’s largest colony of white pelicans filled the sky around me. I felt my heart lift as they wheeled above me to follow. Nature’s own grim white squadron, the descendants of dinosaurs, escorting me into battle now to match themselves against the cloud of black, razor-edged OctoRotors that Frankenstein would command.

  But my flying cohort rapidly fell behind. A mile past the island, I looked over my shoulder and watched them veer away toward the right shore, shrinking into the distance. A great loneliness descended onto my shoulders. I had imagined the flying legion my army, but I was wrong. They were my ceremonial honor guard. This was my funeral.

  I had failed as a husband and failed as a father. Dying now was probably the last, best thing I could do for my family. I let myself think of Amy one last time, then concentrated my thoughts on Frankenstein. If the daughter I would leave behind represented all that was good in me, then the thing I had created was the opposite, stitched together from the parts of myself that were the worst.

  I stared at the end of the lake and the base, coming into view up ahead, and felt a snarl spread across my damaged face. If I was going to die now, then I was ready to—and I knew one nasty metal motherfucker I planned to take with me if I could.

  A shout, electronically amplified by a bullhorn, echoed across the water to my left. I turned my head to see a small patrol cutter angling to intercept. Outrunning the twenty-foot boat would have been easy, but I slowed because I thought I recognized the voice.

  “Sheriff’s Department,” Evan Peterson shouted. “Turn off the watercraft,
and throw your keys and the gun into the water.”

  “This doesn’t concern you,” I shouted back. “Stay out of it.”

  I saw Ken Zajicek in the boat, too, minus his cowboy hat. He grabbed the bullhorn from his partner.

  “Fella who’s got your little girl,” he shouted. “He’s holdin’ her hostage now, wants to talk to you.”

  Ray? No way.

  I slewed the FZR around and stopped a hundred yards from their boat, feeling a trickle of doubt.

  Evan cut the throttle, and the cutter coasted to a stop, also, facing me nose-to-nose across a hundred yards of open water.

  “That’s right,” Zajicek called through the bullhorn. “You want to be smart right now, for the sake of that pretty little curly-haired girl. This guy who’s got her, he’s a kiddie raper—”

  Evan’s voice rose behind him, fainter but still amplified, sounding surprised. “What the hell, Z? What kind of bullshit is that to tell a guy?”

  Zajicek cut the bullhorn, silencing his partner’s objection. Watching their silhouettes standing upright in the drifting boat, arguing silently, I felt the muscles of my neck and shoulders tighten like cables.

  Amy had told me a “policeman” took her off the plane, but I had neglected to ask her what department was written on the badge.

  I twisted the key, and the Waverunner’s engine roared to life again. Reaching over my shoulder to grab the barrel, I slid my rifle around so the sling held it tight against my chest and belly. Then I leaned forward and rolled the throttle full on.

  Seeing my watercraft rocketing straight toward him, Zajicek dived to the controls and jammed his own throttle forward. He aimed the bow of his cutter, so much larger than my Yamaha, straight at me.

  Holding the wheel one-handed, Zajicek drew his gun with the other. Evan also yanked his .40 of the holster. As the distance between us shrank, bright flashes flickered in their cockpit. Both Sheriff’s Department officers were firing at me as fast as they could pull the trigger.

  I wasn’t too worried—I’d seen them shoot before.

  I hunched behind my small windscreen, pressing my rifle between my chest and the Waverunner’s gas tank, judging the distance as the bow of the cutter expanded in front of me like an inflating balloon. At the last instant, I took a deep breath and rocked my weight sideways as hard as I could, yanking the steering with me. The Waverunner rolled over in a tight corkscrew, spiraling like a thrown football, driving my body and head underwater. Upside down, my watercraft collided keel to keel with the Sheriff’s Department cutter.

  The force of the impact shuddered through my legs, rattled my teeth, and sent bolts of pain shooting through my damaged face. It drove me headfirst deeper into the water—but unhurt, protected beneath the chassis of my submerged watercraft.

  Despite the drag of current trying to suck me off my ride, I hung on and stayed on the throttle. Momentum carried me all the way around, and I popped upright on the other side. The Yamaha’s buoyancy sent it erupting six feet out of the water. It landed with a splash.

  I shook my head hard once, throwing off a spray of droplets, and took a breath. Then I slewed the Waverunner in a wide circle toward the collision site. My motor ran a little ragged now, and the Yamaha wanted to pull to the right, making me fight the steering, but otherwise, it had come through the crash okay.

  As the Sheriff’s Department craft came around into view, I laughed. Their ride hadn’t. It was upside down and sinking, a desk-sized hole gaping at the front of its fiberglass hull.

  Zajicek and Peterson struggled in the water nearby, on opposite sides of their demolished boat. Zajicek had lost his gun. His left arm splashed frantically, and he held his right curled close to his side. At mid forearm, something gleamed white against his darkening sleeve: a projecting lance of splintered bone.

  I swung around next to Zajicek and stopped, letting him splash closer.

  “That looks painful,” I said, and scooted forward to make room on the seat behind me. Letting go of the handlebars with one hand, I leaned toward him and reached. “Here, give me your good arm.”

  He clasped my wrist, and I clasped his.

  “Ready? One… two…”—I shifted my foot off the Waverunner’s footwell to plant it on Zajicek’s collarbone—“three.”—and jerked his arm as hard as I could, pulling his humerus out of the socket and dislocating his shoulder.

  He let out a hoarse scream, and I let go, shoving him away with my foot.

  “You’re stone crazy,” he said, white-faced with pain. “I’m a police officer.”

  I grinned. “That’s nice. I’m a scientist, myself. But this isn’t career day at our kids’ school.”

  “Get me to shore, and I’ll split the two million with you. I’ll tell you everything.” Struggling to keep his face out of the water, he grunted. “Otherwise, you never find out who has your little girl.”

  “You sure about that?” I said. “This buddy of mine who’s a senator thinks that to get someone to tell you anything, all you need is a bucket of water.” I reached down, knotting my fingers into Zajicek’s thick hair, gripping tight. “Sorry, I don’t have a bucket. But that’s okay—we’ve got a whole lake to work with.”

  Rolling on the throttle one-handed, I accelerated, pulling Zajicek through the water by his hair. I had to lean hard to compensate for the drag as his torso plowed alongside my wake. His arms flopped uselessly in the standing plume of spray that flared around his head.

  I looked over my shoulder, seeing that their boat was already gone—sunk. Splashing in the waves, Evan Peterson receded in the distance behind me.

  For his sake, I hoped he could swim better than he could shoot.

  A half mile farther down the lake, I slowed and hauled Zajicek’s face up out the water. My forearm ached.

  Coughing and sputtering, he choked out words as fast as he could.

  “Douglas Hens-ley…” He gagged, spitting water. “Sex offender… lives… in an RV… out by—”

  “Moon Rocks, Hungry Valley O-H-V,” I said. His eyes widened, and I laughed. “Yeah, yeah, been there, done that. I was just fucking with you—wanted to see if this waterboarding stuff really works.”

  “You kill me, you bring a world of shit down on yourself,” he sputtered. “I’m a cop, for God’s sake!”

  “Protect and serve, do you?”

  I leaned down to snarl the words into his face.

  “You served my daughter to a convicted child molester, you chickenshit piece of motherfucking garbage. There is nothing—absolutely nothing—that can protect you now… Not from me.”

  Forcing Zajicek’s head down into the water, I accelerated again, aiming for the end of the lake, two miles ahead. I fixed my gaze on the gray five-story rectangle of the DARPA building, while the drowning-pitbull-pup struggles I felt through my wrist weakened and then ceased altogether.

  Holding Zajicek’s head beneath the surface, I dragged his limp body across the dark lake. Full night fell across the sky. The base, pale and greenish under a sickle moon, grew in front of me until it filled the horizon, and the DARPA building dominated the lakeshore.

  I let go of the garbage I was hauling. I shook the lactic acid out of my forearm and flexed my fingers, then swung my arm forward to grab the handlebar grip again. Steering two-handed now, I leaned the Waverunner left and veered toward the shore just outside the electric fence, directly beneath the geyser’s billowing white plume.

  Whether Frankenstein knew I was coming no longer mattered.

  Now there was no turning back.

  CHAPTER 90

  The gravel beach at the water’s edge sped toward me at a hundred miles per hour. Speed was my only weapon now; the darkness offered no concealment. Frankenstein would have upgraded Kate’s OctoRotors with infrared cameras—my own body heat would betray me.

  Aiming for the base of the geyser, I rose to a half crouch and felt the kiss of sand scraping like a ramp beneath my hull.

  A moment later, I was airborne. The gray beach
whipped past beneath me in the dimness eight feet below. I reached apogee and felt the Waverunner’s nose pitch down, but I fought it, pulling on the handlebars and throwing my weight onto my heels to keep it level.

  I braced myself for the landing, knowing that coming down on dirt would be hard. But it wasn’t as bad as I expected. My legs absorbed the impact, bouncing my ass off the seat once, and then I was leaning hard, heart in my throat, to prevent the craft from rolling.

  On land now, a rollover would be fatal.

  I recovered the Waverunner’s balance and looked back over my shoulder. Seeing the trail I was carving through the rocky dirt, I laughed. Yamaha needed GoPro video of this—they could start selling the FZR as a dual-sport.

  With a tremendous jolt, the nose crunched into something: the rocky cone of the geyser’s base. It hurled me forward, and I was airborne again, this time without a vehicle.

  I landed hard and tumbled across the dirt, tangled up in my rifle sling. The shorty wetsuit protected me from the worst of the scrapes but not the bruises. I slapped to a halt, flat on my back, and blinked up at the white vapor cloud billowing above me.

  Still, any landing you…

  “…walk away from,” I said and stood up, plunging my chest, arms, and head into the sauna-hot plume of vapor above me.

  The heat of the geothermal exhaust stung my scrapes as I walked back toward the geyser. The wrecked Waverunner lay crumpled at the base.

  I yanked the broken seat off and tossed it aside. Reaching into the compartment beneath, I pulled out Amy’s unused wetsuit and shook it once to unfold it.

  A shiny blue steel bottle lay strapped like a shorty scuba tank alongside the monster engine. I grabbed it by the valve top. Ripping the ten-pound NOS nitrous bottle loose from its straps, I hauled it out, sleeved the steel cylinder inside Amy’s wetsuit, and tucked it under my arm.

  Then I unslung my AR-15, slapped the butt of the magazine, hooked my fingers around the charging handle, and racked it.