The news he watched on the digital wall in his room showed off the daily circus of hell, as he liked to call it. Even though world hunger had been solved and they had nearly cured cancer, people still wanted to hurt and kill one another. Not only over gorgeous supermodels like Kamaria, and not only over issues of religion and politics, but because of drug deals and gang violence and white males becoming unhinged with females. Every single week.
So much for the drug and gun and gender policies that are enforced.
The report that made him sit up and turn up the volume came out of Chicago.
“Half a dozen offices in Incen Tower in Chicago were vandalized overnight as someone broke in to deliver handwritten notes that all said the same thing. There were more than one thousand of these notes, each in the same handwriting, which authorities are trying to identify.”
The news shared only a little portion of the note, choosing to be careful not to offend viewers with something as brazen as a Bible verse. Dowland was curious, however, so he asked to hear the whole note, which had, of course, been shared by many on the network. One woman who received the note at her desk read the whole thing in a video:
Wake up. Do you find desires inside you that nothing in this world can satisfy? The most probable explanation, as C. S. Lewis wrote, is that you are made for another world.
There is a heaven, friend. But there is a caveat.
Jesus. Not the historical figure that’s put in the same category as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa. No.
Jesus, the Son of God, who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”
There is a hell too, fellow traveler.
The ones who control this world, who control YOU, know this. They serve the god of this world.
“Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.”
It is time to know who is controlling you. It is time to open your eyes.
It is time for the world to understand the message of Christ, which a few have decided to forever silence.
Sincerely,
Reckoner
Dowland was surprised not by the rhetoric of the message but by the way the notes were delivered.
More than a thousand notes, each with the same handwriting…
Surely these were artificially generated. No way one person could have written that many. What would the point of that have been?
Before he could utter Mel Bohmer’s name, the incoming message arrived, signaled by the slight pinching alert around his forearm.
“Open,” he called out, revealing Mel sitting right in front of him, still by the pool, still under an umbrella in the sun. “I was about to call.”
“Glad you’re awake to see it,” the old man said with a mocking grin. “Is that a new fashion piece on your ear?”
“It’s a story not worth mentioning. Any idea how the Reckoner got into Incen Tower?”
“I was going to ask you, Mr. Dowland, since this is exactly what you’re being paid for.”
“There’s a reason he hasn’t been found. Yet.”
“I just got off a rather dreadful conference call. They used to be so awful, being on a phone with four others, interrupting each other and talking over people and then having awkward silences. They were brutal. Technology has made it so that you feel as if you’re in the same space as others, like the way we’re talking now. This conversation was brutal for a whole other reason. These people do not have conference calls. That’s how—frustrated is the word I’ll use, which is so tame compared to the reality—but that’s how frustrated they were to have to be talking about this nuisance. Again.”
“I understand,” Dowland said.
“Do you?”
“Yes. Sir.”
Mel chuckled. “Just look at that fire inside you,” he said. “I miss it, you know. Sometimes I do. It’s what made me. It’s the thing that makes people like you and me. But the difference is you still need to contain it sometimes. The men and women I had a nice impromptu meeting with this morning wouldn’t like that fire. Someone would put it out immediately. Just because they can.”
“I don’t like being questioned about my job,” Dowland said.
“Then do it.”
Before he could reply, Mel was gone. Dowland cursed and headed for the shower, filling his cup along the way.
4.
The black condor stood on a cement statue, from head to tail more than five feet long. It had an ugly face spotted with yellow, and a sloping, ivory-colored beak that resembled a dagger. The beast didn’t move but watched him as he passed by, as if it was guarding the entrance to the jungle inside the large building.
The humidity and temperature and overhanging trees made it feel like the Amazon, but in fact this was the tenth through fifteenth stories in the National Zoo of the Americas, which had finally been finished five years ago. Dowland had never been inside since he didn’t have children and didn’t really have the time or the desire to check out a hundred different types of animals from all over the world. The zoo was open for guests 24-7, 365 days a year. Being built inside a skyscraper, the first of its kind, the state-of-the-art zoo allowed control over the environment and permitted people to visit anytime they wanted. It had been very costly, of course, but not too expensive for Jackson Heyford, the man behind this monstrosity.
A small path had been cut through the trees, winding around bushes and underneath branches that held singing and sitting winged birds. He didn’t stop to study them, but he could spot a variety of unusual species. One had bright red feathers and a sleek golden crest and was sitting next to a large metallic-blue macaw. Another bird wandered out of the small pond, its wide rainbow beak looking two sizes too big on an otherwise stumpy body. Dozens of other birds flew overhead and past him. A hummingbird seemed to like him and stayed nearby.
Dowland followed the trail to the back of the echoing chamber, toward a hallway marked Exit. The door he was looking for was tucked away in the semidark of a hall resembling a cave and housing owls. He ignored the Do Not Enter: Staff Only sign and opened the door.
“Show overview,” he said, wanting to see one more time the image that Sergei had sent him. The photo of the woman appeared again. Thirty-three years old. Pale skin afraid of the sun, and hair that went months without getting cut. It made sense that she worked at the zoo, hiding away from society, surrounded by birds as her coworkers. What didn’t make sense about Regina Daigle was how she could have gotten involved with the group behind the recent national disturbances.
A place like this is as good as any to be out of the public eye.
The office smelled like burned coffee and was littered with bird feathers. Several cages contained more exotic birds that spoke and called out and chirped and wailed. A number of screens were open on the wall, showing half a dozen spots in the space known simply as Birdland. Dowland scanned the visuals, knowing he had easily been seen walking into the building.
There she is.
Dressed in a khaki uniform of a button-down shirt, pants, and a cap, Regina hurried over another path in the building. It was impossible not to notice the anxiety on her face.
Dowland turned around and sprinted out of the office, then retraced his steps, nearly stepping on a peacock and striking a bird in flight with his forehead. He raced up a small hill, then down, as he scanned the area to figure out where she was heading. Stopping for a moment, sucking in air, he listened. A soft, mumbling voice spoke nearby, and he rushed toward it.
Regina was twenty-five yards from the entrance when she looked back and saw him. Panic covered her face, and she began to race to the doorway.
&nb
sp; “Stop!” he called, taking out his handgun and aiming it at her.
She didn’t stop, so he raised the Beretta and fired off a round. The very loud shot pulsed through the space and sent what seemed like a thousand birds bursting into the domed ceiling.
The woman froze, looking back at him, her arms and hands pointed at him as if she were trying to shove him away.
“Don’t move,” Dowland said. “I don’t want to waste another bullet in here.”
He didn’t have to ask for her name, nor did he have to follow any ridiculous protocol the way police and FBI agents had to. Instead, he simply walked over to her, his gun still aimed at her, his focus on the surrounding area to make sure nobody else was there.
“You need to come with me,” he told her. “We need a private place to talk.”
As she was about to say something, the doors opened, and a family of five with young kids burst into Birdland. Dowland put down the gun right away, expecting Regina to stay put and smile and act as if they were having a nice chat about birds. Instead, she took off again, actually knocking into him as she ran in the opposite direction of the family. They didn’t pay her any attention, their focus being on all the flying animals above them. Dowland shook his head and sighed and then started to follow the woman.
The very stupid woman.
Why do they always have to run?
He paused for a minute, then walked back to the parents who had just walked in. “You guys might want to go look at the monkeys or the dolphins,” he said, holding out his Beretta in plain sight.
Without saying another word and with looks of terror on their faces, the couple promptly grabbed their kids by the arms and led them out.
5.
There was no other way to exit this room, so he didn’t have to worry about Regina escaping. But before he could walk back into the office to see if she was hiding there, a group of birds swooped down and began to attack him.
At first it was just a few small birds. Colorful birds about six inches long, pretty except for the large eyes and the pointed black beaks. They came in a swarm, perhaps half a dozen, and they launched themselves at him. The beaks struck him and punctured the skin on his neck and forehead and arms. At first Dowland thought they were a nuisance, but then he realized they were indeed attacking him. He tried to shoo them away with his arms and then attempted to swat or bat them away with the Beretta. He was successful a few times, but more birds began to come. All different types in all different colors, all of them dropping down and slamming against his arms and legs and head.
A white medium-sized bird about ten inches long seemed the angriest. It had black tips on its wings and tail and a tiny yellow tip on its bill. Dowland saw the yellow tip since the bird was trying to peck the skin off his cheek. He cursed as he flailed and cowered and tried to shoo it away.
The number of birds kept increasing. One of them pecked and tore some of the bandage on his ear.
These aren’t regular birds. You couldn’t train all these birds to attack like this.
They had to be artificial. But their lifelike beauty was incredible.
Then he remembered who had built this place. Jackson Heyford could create these.
Dowland ran to one side of the building, noticing the colored-glass window with the round glow of the sun behind it. After his first two shots merely cracked the glass, he touched the button on his Beretta next to the safety. Then he shot one more carefully aimed round, this one coming from the second barrel underneath the primary one. The caliber was the same as the other .40-caliber bullets he was using, but this one packed the power of a rocket launcher. It was very expensive and illegal, and he carried only one in the Beretta’s magazine. Sure enough, the explosive punctured the glass, opening up a hole the size of a picnic table and revealing the blue sky beyond it.
Suddenly all the birds seemed to notice the gaping hole in the room and swarmed to it, flying out as if they were sucked by a cosmic vacuum cleaner. Dowland watched them dispersing into the heavens, finally free.
He heard Regina’s footsteps before he saw her. When she appeared before him, she seemed oblivious to Dowland as she gaped at the escaping birds.
“No!” she cried out, tears coming to her eyes. “What did you do?”
“What did I do?” he said as he winced and looked at all the bloody marks on his arms. “I’m not the one sending a pack of birds to attack people.”
“Do you know how much those are worth?”
“Do you know how much I care? Those are artificial, right?”
She didn’t answer but continued looking at the cracked glass as if the birds might come back.
“We need to get out of here right now,” Dowland said to her.
Regina still seemed more concerned about the birds leaving than the gun he was holding.
“The change of environment…,” she began to say. “They got confused and didn’t know what to do. The whole change of temperature and the sky above them caused them to act like real birds.”
“Doesn’t the public think they’re real birds?”
She looked at him with a defiant stare. “What do you want?”
He pointed the gun at her forehead. “I want you to come with me. Right now.”
6.
The woman seemed less anxious about sharing information than she had been about initially talking to Dowland. He had escorted her out of the building, and they had walked several blocks to a fast-food restaurant, where they sat in a booth to talk. He showed her the images of the Reckoner that he had been given, and then he asked about her connections with him.
“I’ve never had contact with this person you call Reckoner. I haven’t done anything except provide shelter for someone who knows him.”
Dowland pointed to one of the pictures where Regina could barely be recognized. “This is you, right?”
“Yes.”
He pointed to the guy in the suit. “So who’s this?”
“That’s Keith Burne. A longtime family friend. He came to visit last year.”
He thought she was lying but then enlarged the grainy image. She could be right. This could be Burne.
“So these other pictures. Is this Burne too?”
“I can’t tell. Maybe.”
“Is Burne the one going by these aliases?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. All I know is he contacted me and asked for help. A place to stay. I was a childhood friend of his wife. His ex-wife.”
“Are you still friends?”
“No. We lost touch years ago. But I remained in contact with Keith and his daughter.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Dowland asked.
“A few months ago. He contacted me and needed a place to stay. I have a spare bedroom. He was around for about a week or so.”
“Any contact since then?”
She shook her head, and for some reason Dowland believed her.
“You’re also part of a group that meets twice a week, correct?”
Her eyes gave her away easily, yet Regina didn’t seem to have a reason to stay quiet. “Yes. But how do you know these things?”
“That’s not your concern,” he said, looking at the frayed cap she still wore.
“Surveillance on a private citizen is illegal.”
“So is propagating hate.”
She shook her head. “ ‘Propagating hate.’ That’s what you call a group meeting for worship?”
“I didn’t come up with the definition, miss. The lawmakers did.”
“Carrying concealed weapons is against the law too. Or did you forget that one?”
“I didn’t conceal it from you,” he told her, opening his jacket and showing it tucked to his side in a holster. “It’s easier to carry this way. Plus, I have the authority to carry it.”
“I a
ssumed as much. Keith warned me about men like you.”
“There are women like me too. Don’t forget those.”
Regina looked around the restaurant full of families and people taking their lunch break. Nobody paid them any attention.
“I can easily have you arrested,” Dowland said.
“ ‘The Devil is about to throw you in jail for a time of testing.’ That’s a passage from Revelation. Are you the devil this verse is talking about?”
“Lady…I’ve been the devil for quite a few people.”
He knew that she had told him everything she could and that she didn’t worry about being thrown into jail. She probably thinks she’ll get some big reward in the afterlife if she gets jail time.
“You’re going to be watched very carefully, Regina. You’re a simple phone call away from your life being utterly destroyed. Not by going to jail but by being put into a personal prison. Losing your job and your friends and any part of your life that you love. So if you’re contacted by Keith Burne or anybody associated with him, you need to call this person to get hold of me.”
Instead of a digital card, Dowland gave her a sheet of paper with a name and a network ID number. As her long, bony fingers took the sheet, he was surprised to see they weren’t shaking. “If I were you, I might be a little more scared about the current situation you’re in,” he told her.
She smiled. “I can say the same about you.”
7.
Of course his name is Zander. And of course she’s dating him.
American Omens Page 13