Coven

by David Barnett

  He drove quickly. Several passersby headed for a mixer on the Hill. Wade envied their obliviousness. You haven’t seen a dead guy walking around, have you? he felt tempted to ask. He parked at the sciences center. The building stood dark, and, to no surprise, locked. Wade’s lack of reluctance would’ve impressed any criminal. He shattered the front glass doors with his tire iron and stepped in.

  The chemistry wing was just around the corner. Slats of moonlight spread across the shiny labtops. With his flashlight, he found the door to the storage closet. It was unlocked and… “Shit!” he shouted…empty.

  Then a car door slammed outside.

  Wade stood stunned, like a figure in a freeze frame. Footsteps tracked across the parking lot. They sounded frightfully casual. Wade peeked out the blinds and saw Jervis’ Dodge Colt parked right beside the Vette.

  Shit shit shit! he thought. He leapt for the door but the footsteps could already be heard in the hall. He glanced around, frantic and quite stupid. Then he slipped into the storage closet and bolted the lock from inside.

  He held his breath. Jervis walked right into the lab and turned on the lights. He was whistling as he searched the room. Grimly Wade recognized the tune as Eno’s “Here He Comes.”

  “I can smell you, Wade,” announced the voice beyond the door. “I can smell your fear.”

  Wade swallowed his breath, wide eyed in the closet’s murk.

  “The closet? No, Wade, I’m sure you’re not stupid enough to hide in the most obvious place.”

  Yes I am, Wade thought.

  In a split, exploding instant, the closet door was shorn down the middle. Its halves blew out, and in their place stood Jervis, lowering the massive beam hewer.

  Wade cracked Jervis in the head with the tire iron. It made an awful sound, yet Jervis barely flinched. He took the tire iron and snapped it in half. “You know, Wade, I’m really getting tired of people hitting me in the head with things.”

  “Sorry,” Wade apologized. “How did you find me?”

  Jervis leaned the hewer against the wall and lit a Carlton. “Tom’s extromission key is on your front seat,” he explained. “The Supremate put a direction finder on it. It led me right to you.”

  Wade wilted. At least he didn’t have to worry about finding Jervis anymore. “I want to know about the bomb,” he demanded.

  “What do you care? By the time the bomb goes off, you’ll be halfway across the Milky Way.”

  “I’m not gonna be your goddamned holotype,” Wade informed him. “I’ll kill myself first.”

  “With what? Your flashlight?” Jervis grinned smoke. “You’re going back, and this time there’ll be no last minute escapes. I’ll be locking you into the hold personally.”

  Wade remembered the extromitter installed at Besser’s office, which was right here in this building. Jervis would have him in the labyrinth in minutes. I just can’t win, Wade considered.

  Jervis grabbed Wade by a handful of shirt and calmly dragged him out of the closet. Wade, the antithesis of calm, fought back for all he was worth—not much in this particular scenario. His heart felt huge with adrenaline, his limbs kicking like recoiling cannons, yet his most savage efforts amounted to squat when compared to the physical power of Jervis the Myrmidon, the true haunter of the dark.

  Wade churned wildly, and uselessly.

  Then he thought: The hewer.

  Jervis had left the hewer leaning against the wall. If Wade could get his hands on it…

  His arms surged forward, fingers stretching. His hands, not that he could believe it, touched the hewer’s handle. Get it! he thought. Get it! Venting all his strength at once, he surged again. His fingers closed around the handle. Then the hewer was coming away from the wall with him as Jervis dragged on.

  “You never give up, do you?” Now Jervis was glancing over his shoulder. A mesh of disapproval and amusement shone on his gray face. He gave Wade’s body a quick jerk—

  The hewer fell from his fingers to the floor.

  Wade twisted, still reaching out in vain. The hewer got smaller and smaller as he was dragged farther and farther out of the room, down the hall, toward Besser’s office and the inevitable extromitter, which would return him, once and for all, to the labyrinth.

  ««—»»

  At least the jerk had said he loved her. But what good was that if she never saw him again? He’d either be killed by the bomb or reclaimed by Jervis. Nor did her black eye or aching head help her to feel more obligatory. Son of a bitch, she thought.

  Lydia was walking north on Route 13. She was fifty miles from Exham, and no cars in sight. She thought about Wade and about the times they’d had sex. But getting off did not equate to love, especially in this day and age. No, orgasms did not equal love.

  But she knew she loved him anyway.

  The question was, did he really love her? He’d said so, but guys said shit like that all the time, didn’t they?

  She didn’t want to die. She’d already taken enough chances with her life in the last few days. She wanted to live.

  She kept walking north, away from the campus.

  What am I supposed to do?

  A mile ahead in darkness, headlights appeared. A car was coming.

  It was heading south.

  —

  CHAPTER 39

  Jervis pushed open Besser’s office door, heaved Wade into the corner. So close to recharge, the extromitter dot was actually glowing. Black, but glowing.

  Wade’s head wobbled. “Jerv, we’ve been friends for years!”

  “Years are split seconds where we’re going. Quit bellyaching and accept your destiny.”

  “Like you’ve accepted yours?”

  “Yeah,” Jervis said, and lit another Carlton.

  “Let me tell you something about your destiny. I know a lot more about it than you do.”

  “You don’t know shit, Wade.” Jervis grabbed Wade’s arm, and with his other hand, took the key about his neck. He approached he extromitter. “Say goodbye to the world, Wade.”

  But as Jervis inserted the key, Wade said, “The Supremate’s going to dump you.”

  Jervis halted. Had the comment kindled a repressed suspicion? His hand wavered. His dead eyes blinked.

  “Supremate’s going to make me immortal,” he asserted.

  “No, he’s not. He’s going to make you meat loaf. When he doesn’t need something anymore, he gets rid of it.”

  “The sisters are just toys,” Jervis justified. “They’re soulless. The Supremate can make them anytime he wants.”

  “That’s true. So why does he need you?”

  Another dead ember seemed to rekindle.

  “You’re treating this Supremate asshole like a god,” Wade went on. “He’s not a god!”

  “What is he, then?”

  “Just another power hungry shithead, no different from the people here. He’s like anyone in a position of power—politician, corporate lawyer, industry mogul—”

  “Meaning?” Jervis inquired.

  “He’s a fucking liar!”

  Jervis stared and blinked.

  Wade continued: “He’s a user, Jervis. Any idiot can see that. He promised you immortality in exchange for service only because he needed you to do his shit work. When the shit work’s over, he won’t need you anymore. What can you do in the labyrinth that the sisters can’t do better?”

  “I can think,” Jervis answered.

  Wade laughed. “Thinking is the last thing this fucker wants. How does any monarch maintain power? By suppressing individuality—by suppressing thinking.”

  Was Jervis stupid, or were Wade’s suggestions going somewhere?

  “There’s no room in the Supremate’s system for individuals,” Wade kept talking. “As far as the master plan is concerned, you’re just a jury rig in the big machine. The Supremate lied to all of you to get what he wanted. Besser told me they were going to dump you after recharge. He said you were expendable.”

  Jervis sunk further i
nto self rumination. Wade realized that two forces were at work here: the Supremate versus Wade—not exactly a match. If Wade was going to make a move, now was the time.

  “Think about it. Does the Supremate really need you?”

  Jervis’ thinning hair easily revealed the knob of his transceptionrod. It was a terminal of some sort, Wade guessed, an uplink to The Boss. Whatever it was, it must be pretty important, considering that Jervis was dead but still walking and talking. Wade had no choice but to give it a shot.

  He lurched forward. “What are you—” Jervis yelled, and Wade grabbed the black knob and pulled up with all his might.

  The transceptionrod didn’t come out, but it slid up an inch. Jervis shuddered like a man who’d just stuck a screwdriver into a fuse box. “Nooooooo!” his voice thundered, shattering the office windows and shaking the room. He let go of Wade’s wrist bringing both hands to the rod, feeling at it ineptly as if examining a sudden, deep wound.

  While Jervis convulsed, Wade ran.

  ««—»»

  God it hurt, oh God oh God. Pain blazed like white hot light. He thought of being skinned alive and dumped in salt, of bamboo shoots driven up the fingernails, a blowtorch flame to the testicles, an enema with lye. That’s the kind of pain that assailed him. Indeed, the whole of his brain felt like a molar’s soft pulp invaded by a dentist’s drill.

  He shuddered in place, eyes and face turned up. Footsteps tramped away and out. Wade. Goddamn Wade did this. He’d nearly jerked the transceptionrod completely out of his head.

  Jervis clod-hopped around in his lake of pain. He couldn’t see anything but white. His feet felt like cement loafers. He felt around Besser’s desk until his hands fell upon a stone paperweight of J. S. Bach. He grabbed it, raised it, and—

  CLACK!

  —banged the transceptionrod fully back into his head.

  The white hot pain blew away, his vision snapped back. He could feel his nerves reconnect. Jervis was whole again. He knew what would happen if the rod had been completely removed.

  The interruption had consumed only moments, but in those moments, Wade had escaped.

  Jervis ran so hard his feet cracked the tile floor. When he trampled down the stairs, the stairs collapsed behind him. Down the hall, the front doors beckoned. He sprinted for them.

  He assumed Wade had fled for the Vette. But then there was always that old saying about assumption. Something didn’t feel right. Halfway to the doors, Jervis stopped.

  He sniffed the air.

  Fear.

  Again, he could smell its tang, its giveaway fragrance.

  He turned and headed back to the lab.

  Why would Wade return there? Jervis noticed the cut down door to the storage closet but ignored it. Wade would have to be brainless to go back in there. What he didn’t notice, however, was that the beam hewer was no longer on the floor.

  “Say your prayers,” Jervis advised.

  Wade leapt from the closet. Jervis turned. There was a silver flash, a swoosh—

  Thump!

  Suddenly Jervis lay flat on his back. Fuddled, he looked up. Standing in front of him was Wade, holding the hewer.

  And standing beside Wade was…a pair of pants.

  Wait a minute, Jervis realized. Those are MY pants.

  Indeed, they were. And they were Jervis’ legs that filled them.

  “How do you like those cookies?” Wade spat.

  Then it came to him. Jervis had been cut in half at the waist. His lower body stood before him. His upper body lay on the floor.

  Wade threw his head back and laughed in triumph.

  Jervis frowned. Talk about minor inconveniences. “You still don’t understand, do you?”

  “I understand that you’re in two pieces,” Wade replied.

  Jervis hopped up on his hands. His legs remained standing. “All you’ve done,” he said, “is make two of me.”

  Wade shrieked. Jervis’ legs began to chase him around the lab. “You’ve gotta be shitting me!” Wade yelled.

  Jervis’ living torso lit yet another Carlton. He walked around the lab tables—walked, that is, on his hands, an ambulatory trunk. This wasn’t so bad; it gave him a different perspective, at least. Now he knew how it felt to be short.

  Wade was running mad circles around the tables. He’d been chased by pissed off girlfriends, irate fathers, and police—but never by…legs. This was not an easy situation to assess. He grappled at the window. Jervis’ legs kicked him in the ass. Jervis laughed, hobbling up before a trail of innards.

  “Two against one. I know it’s not fair, but that’s life.”

  “You prick!” Wade shouted, kicking at the legs. “I cut you in half and you’re still fucking with me!”

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

  Wade was opposed by both sides. Jervis’ legs kicked at him from the front, while Jervis’ upper body grappled with him from behind, tried to drag him down. The hewer lay yards away.

  Wade did what any man would do when being mauled by two halves of a resurrected corpse: He attacked the weaker twin. He tackled the legs. The legs kicked up. He crawled forward as Jervis’ torso held onto his belt, one hand slithering for his balls.

  Wade grabbed the hewer and rolled. Suddenly Jervis was wrapped up in his own legs. This confusion gave Wade time to rise.

  Jervis fumbled to untie himself. Finally his legs came untangled and stood back up.

  The hewer blazed down. The first strike cut the legs in half. Without the foundation of unity, the legs now hopped about independent of each other, useless.

  Jervis, the walking torso, looked up in horror. The hewer’s second strike took off Jervis’ right arm, the third his left.

  “Now I’ve made five of you,” Wade pointed out. “What are you gonna do now? Roll after me?”

  “Aw, shit, Wade. You’ve ruined everything,” Jervis complained, dismembered.

  “Let’s get down to business.” Wade dropped to one knee. “Where’s the bomb?”

  “Can’t tell you, man. That’s against the rules. At one minute after midnight, that bomb goes off, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “But the labyrinth leaves at midnight. One minute after?”

  “In that one minute, Wade, the labyrinth will be a million miles away.” Jervis turned his head toward the wall clock. He smiled. “Twenty five minutes.”

  “Tell me where it is!”

  “No can do, buddy. It’s a doozie, though—the same yield as a Pershing II warhead. Everything—the campus, the town, and every single person in it—will be vaporized. We’re talking about a ten mile radius of scorched earth.”

  Wade looked numb with despair.

  “The Supremate likes to leave his mark,” Jervis continued. “Just a little memento, like a promise in the wind.”

  “But thousands of people will die!” Wade shouted.

  “Yeah, but someday the Supremate will return, for the repopulation phase. When that happens, he’ll kill everybody.”

  Now Wade was on both knees, a beggar. “Jervis, please!”

  “We’ll just have to make do without a holotype. I’m sure they’ll be able to find something suitable in the holds, it’s no big deal. So face it, Wade. You’re screwed.”

  —

  CHAPTER 40

  In a bimagneticfieldeffectelectrostatic snap, the Supremate blinked. It blinked as might a tired old man. The blood of its hypervelotic heart and line hash veins ran cool and slow. So much power was flooding the reserves that there was little left for anything but the discreet switch systems. The Supremate needed nothing else at this point, however. It could sleep and dream as the labyrinth prepared itself for recharge and exitpulse.

  It felt good to be sleepy, a welcome lull in an endless fury of high speed computer transactions. All life in the labyrinth lay in hibernation now, save for a few sisters in the emergencysensorcove. The Supremate, in other words, was quite alone. In this strange magnetic solitude, it felt peace.

  Jerv
is was so far away, his transception signals could no longer be read—there was no power left, no blood. The Supremate guessed that Jervis had failed in securing the earth holotype. That was unfortunate, but it mattered little. The Supremate grew weary of this frivolous world. It looked forward to returning in some future eon and destroying it.

  The one called Besser had been trying to escape when the sensorposts winked out. This, too, was of no significance. If the Supremate’s pets in the grove didn’t get him, the bomb most certainly would.

  —THINGS COULD BE WORSE, the Supremate considered.

  It smiled then—in a sense, at any rate.

  Then it went back to sleep.

  ««—»»

  “I’m going to report you,” the girl complained. She was driving a silver Saab, obviously an Exham student on her way to the summer sessions. Lydia had flagged her car down on the Route. The girl did not take kindly to being commandeered by police.

  “Do whatever you want,” Lydia said.

  “This is outrageous,” the girl replied. She wore a shirt that read “If pro is the opposite of con, what’s the opposite of progress?” A frosted, purple Mohawk ridged her head.

  They’d been on the road a half hour now; a half hour more and they’d be there. Sid and Nancy stood awry on a sticker adhered to the dash. “I want your name and badge number,” the girl said.

  Lydia gave them to her. “You want my shoe size too?”

  “And you can bet my father won’t like this. He’ll sue you.”

  “Clam up and drive,” Lydia said. “Jesus.”

  The girl simmered. Her Mohawk looked like a scrub brush.

  When they finally arrived back on campus, the girl stopped just past the gates. “You wanted a ride to the campus,” she said, “and here’s the campus. I refuse to drive you another inch. This is where you get out.”