Bleak History

by John Shirley

  She'd seen him too, talking to something invisible, and floating in the air.

  They backed away and turned their backs, his father circling an arm around his mother, drawing her protectively with him; his mother softly protesting, the two of them hurrying back to the house. Away from their son.

  Gabriel heard crickets, and the horses snorting. He turned to look out across the corral again. He saw bits of mown alfalfa blowing across the dirt of the corral, and star-lit clouds parading overhead, and no other motion, nothing else. Mike the Talking Light was gone; the slow-motion sea of energy— the field of the Hidden—was gone.

  No. The Hidden itself was still there. When he did as he'd been taught, stretched out his sensations, he sensed the Hidden...but now it was muffled. Seen through several pairs of sunglasses. Felt through a damp, sweaty sheet. A few degrees separated.

  Never again would he see it quite so nakedly. And rarely would he sense the presence of Mike Light.

  But he knew...the light that spoke was still there, removed to some metaphysical distance, but not'' gone forever. And it was possible to disclose the Hidden, to delve into it and manipulate it...and someday he would do it again.

  What else was left to him?

  ***

  YEARS AGO, THAT WAS, Bleak thought, as the train ground to a halt at the station he wanted. But it felt like seconds ago. It ached that much. Glorious and painful, both.

  Now, just a few hours after seeing a demon chew through someone's brains at a bar on the Hudson, Bleak was rushing out of the PATH train, hurrying across the platform toward the street-exit stairs, gazing at subway ad posters but not seeing them. Seeing only his father's horrified face, that night long ago.

  He never quite got over the look on his father's face. Or what happened soon after. His father, refusing to discuss what he'd seen—muttering about diabolic influences, warnings from the Reverend Rowell at the Lutheran church—making the arrangements to send him away to military school. Telling Mom, “The boy's always been into the military, let him get a good close look at it and see if it's for him.”

  And Gabriel hadn't been entirely sorry to go, though he hadn't been ready to leave home so soon. He'd known why his dad had sent him there, really. Because his father was afraid of his own son.

  Something had seemed to block his attempts at contact with Light Mike, after that night. He was not able to ask the question, to get the answer that had been snatched away from him when his father had interrupted his first real exploration of the Hidden.

  What did you say about my brother, Sean ? I don't understand. Tell me about my brother!

  Coming out of the PATH train station, Bleak winced at the morning light, looking for a cab. Hard to find at this hour. Glancing at the sky, half expecting the feds' chopper to be up there. But the CCA helicopter was gone.

  He wondered if he'd meet her again. Agent Sarikosca. Something about her...

  ***

  THEY WERE ALL TIRED, dead tired, gathered around the car, Loraine and Zweig and Arnie and the other agents, on the helicopter pad, outside CCA headquarters in Long Island.

  It was about seven thirty the same morning. They hadn't slept—always feeling close to their quarry. Never quite catching up till that moment, hovering over the broken-down old dock. Then they'd lost him again.

  The chopper was cooling off behind them, its rotors lazily turning. Loraine Sarikosca and Dorrick in the chopper had found Bleak again—and others, it appeared—then lost him almost as quickly.

  “I'm not sure what we can do legally, once we've got them,” Dorrick was saying.

  “Theoretically we don't need evidence for an arrest,” she said, “long as we've got the Homeland Security stripe.” There were things Dorrick didn't get, yet. “But even CCA likes to know they've got the right guy. I saw what I saw, but—in our line of work sometimes people start to imagine things so administration's never sure till there's film and a lot of witnesses. And it's not like we can get the police to do a Code Three on him. We'd have to explain why we want him.”

  “We could tell them he's a terrorist,” Zweig said, thumping the hood of the car with the flat of his hand.

  “We're trying not to use that one,” Arnie pointed out. “Confuses the antiterrorist guys. Crosses 'em up and they get mad.”

  “Pretty impressive, that thing he did at the end,” Dorrick muttered. “Back there in the alley. Walking on air. Can't do that with any ordnance we get issued. I kept looking for a wire.” He shook his head.

  “There wasn't any wire.” Loraine remembered that mother and child out in Nevada...going straight up, in that blinding plume. Witnessing that was part of her CCA training, and she'd thought, then, I'm in over my head. But the paranormal had always fascinated her. She couldn't walk away.

  “You could've been killed, taking him on alone, Loraine,” Arnie said, with more feeling than he probably intended to show. He was leaning against the car near her; took off his sunglasses, tapped them on his knee. She stood awkwardly by the car's open door.

  Loraine was aware that Arnie was sweet on her. Nice-looking guy with one of those close-cut beards, sculpted four-o'clock shadow, big shoulders, big hands, quick smile. But she didn't have time for his crush—CCA was still defining itself, and she was still finding her footing in it.

  “If you're sure of the ID, what do we have on him, Dorrick?” she asked. “God, I need some coffee. Let's get in the damn car.” She got in the backseat.

  She'd been notified about Bleak only an hour before she'd met him. She'd been told that a CCA study subject had been located—they'd lost track of him in recent years—and she was to use one of the new detectors to track him, try to bring him in. Not much time to study his file.

  “Most of what we got is right here.” Dorrick, getting in the driver's seat of the car, tapped the little computer display on the dashboard. Zweig climbed in beside him.

  Loraine leaned forward, looking between the two men at the small screen tilted out from the display under the dashboard. The screen was scrolling military data. Lots of it. She saw recommended for a MoH, Silver Star.... She made an impatient gesture. “I want to see early history. We know he was a war hero.”

  “The hell he was,” Zweig said. “He was using this damn power, gave him an edge.” “Doesn't protect you from bullets,” Loraine observed.

  Dorrick scrolled to early history. “Says he grew up on a ranch in eastern Oregon. Horses...goats.” “Goats?” Arnie laughed, rubbing his eyes. “A goat ranch?”

  “They raised alfalfa, had a small dairy, and he bred some kind of fancy goats, along with horses. The boy liked rock music and animals. He was in the goddamn FFA, can you believe that? Teenager, they sent him to a military boarding school. Two years of college, dropped out to enlist, Army Rangers. Made sarge. Left that and now he's a bounty hunter.”

  “Hmph,” Loraine said, yawning. Stretching as well as she could in the confines of the car. She just wanted to get back to her condo in Brooklyn Heights, check on her cats, get some rest. “No documentation of his power early on, but apparently someone was monitoring the power and... expecting it. He could be going back home if he's tight with his parents...friends back there.”

  “Says Bleak is mostly a loner,” Dorrick said, reading ahead. “Makes 'friends' with bartenders. Had girlfriends, only one that was long-term, she split. Played rhythm guitar with some rock band a “ while back, not an expert musician. Some kind of bad incident at a minor concert, exploding equipment, a fire, no one hurt but there was a small-claims lawsuit from the club—and the band split up. Bleak had a brother...who vanished when he was a kid. When he was a toddler, according to this.”

  “Vanished?”

  “What it says. There's nothing more about that...says material was redacted from the file.” “Really.” What had they censored? Loraine wondered about some of the prototype-CCA programs—she'd heard some stories about their blackest black ops. “He knows about the device,” Zweig pointed out.

  Loraine shr
ugged. “They'd have found out soon enough anyway. The thing to do is to make more of them—we only have one that really works—and increase the range so that we can find them wherever they are. Dr. Helman says it can be done. We just need the budget.”

  “Who decides CCA's budget these days?” Dorrick asked. “I asked when I came on, but everybody shrugged me off.”

  Loraine rubbed at her tired eyes. “Couple of generals at the Pentagon got the purse strings— Erlich and Swanson. They're kind of dubious about the whole thing. We need better detectors.”

  She wondered if “find them wherever they are” was what she really wanted to do about ShadowComm types. After that fatal containment incident in Arkansas, her loyalty to CCA started to waver.

  Loraine suspected the agency knew she wasn't completely committed to the job. General Forsythe, who ran the CCA, knew her record at the DIA—knew why she'd quit. Knew she wasn't always knee-jerk about being a team player.

  She wasn't sure why she'd let them talk her into coming into the CCA. She'd always had a fascination with the occult. But was that enough? She wondered why they'd given her an assignment, authority over a crew, with so little relevant background.

  Forsythe had put her to work in the field-even when he didn't seem to trust her. And for reasons she didn't fully understand, she didn't trust General Forsythe.

  “That's it for me today,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “Am I getting a ride or do I take a cab all the damn way to Brooklyn Heights?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Gulcher was getting tired. But there were the cops to deal with before he could rest. Jock was already sacked out in a dressing room, in the tunnels under the casinos; snoring on a cot down the hall from the place they'd stacked the bodies. Six bodies, the ones who'd died in the melee.

  Gulcher had always heard there were tunnels under big casinos, used for all kinds of behind-the-scenes business and preparation, but he'd never seen them before. In the case of Lucky Lou's Atlantic City Casino, they were tacky but clean, well-lit underground corridors, the linoleum peeling in some places. The tunnels connected dressing rooms to stages, counting rooms to cashier booths, administration to security.

  Gulcher had found an administrator down here, a middle-aged guy with a nice suit. Guy who was now dead. And the suit fit Gulcher pretty good. He wore the sunglasses—they never looked out of place in a casino—and a big smile as he met the cops talking to his security people. There was a plainclothes detective and a uniformed police lieutenant with the three Atlantic City PD cops. One of the cops had a take-out coffee in his hand; the lady cop was chewing gum. The third one kept touching a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket, like he couldn't wait to get out and have a smoke. Somehow these casual details were reassuring to Gulcher as he shook hands with the lieutenant. The guy introduced himself. Made sure Gulcher heard the rank. Gulcher told him his own name was Presley. It was a name he'd always liked.

  “Hey, thanks for coming over, Lieutenant,” Gulcher said. Saying it loud to be heard over the whistle and yammer and clatter of the slot machines. People were playing again as if there hadn't been a pile of bodies here just about forty minutes ago. And the players he'd taken control of, short those who'd died, were back at it too. Not remembering anything.

  “Yeah, we had a rough time with some tweakers,” said Stedley, the casino's head of security. Bulky but slick guy in a tailored suit, immaculate grooming, whitened teeth. He flashed a sharklike smile. “But we took care of 'em long time before your people come. One of our guys got a gash in his scalp—you can see the blood from it.”

  Gulcher looked at Stedley in muted wonder. Stedley was so thoroughly Gulcher's man now. Never remembered any other arrangement. To Stedley it was as if he'd always worked for Gulcher. The whisperer, what it could do! It was just fucking mind-blowing. It was mind-facing, really.

  The lieutenant, a middle-aged black man with salt-and-pepper hair and a little mustache, was staring at Gulcher, chewing his lower lip. Maybe starting to recognize him from the APB out on him. But the suit, the situation, and the sunglasses made him unsure. And Gulcher knew he could make him forget about it in a heartbeat.

  “We'd have come sooner,” the lady cop said, “but, uh...” She looked maybe Puerto Rican to Gulcher; small and plump but not bad looking for a cop. “But there was an explosion, a gas main went up, a quarter mile to the west—maybe you saw it on the news already. Lot of panic over there.”

  Gulcher figured that explosion was the whisperer's doing too.

  Or maybe he should say it was Moloch's doing. Wasn't it all Moloch? Somehow, Gulcher didn't like to think about Moloch Baal. Who and what that was.

  “Sure, I understand,” Gulcher said. “You guys hadda deal with the explosion, but we had everything here under control. Yeah, it was just some tweakers on crack, or maybe meth. They jumped a couple of my guys. There was a shot fired too, but nobody hurt, and that guy got away. Just ran out. We'll send over some surveillance tape for ya. I sent the guys home, who got jumped. They're bruised up some—didn't need any hospital help. The crackheads, we taught 'em a little lesson, sent 'em on their way. I don't think they'll be back.”

  The cops chuckled. Except for the lieutenant, him being a real straight arrow. Opening his mouth maybe to ask Gulcher to take off those sunglasses.

  Gulcher was already muttering a couple of names. And there was a squirming in the air around the lieutenant's face.

  The lieutenant's eyes glazed over. He yawned. Seemed to frown, as if he was trying to remember something. Then he shrugged. His voice real dull, he said, “Yeah, okay, fellas, well, next time we'll s° want to talk to your witnesses. But I guess it's copa-cetic as is right now. You send over that video, okay?”

  “Sure, Lieutenant, no problem.”

  The cops were already filing out. Gulcher watched them go, thinking, I took over his mind and made him all sleepy and he just let it go.

  This was almost too good to be true. Just a little too good.

  ***

  THIRTY-SIX HOURS LATER: 7 p.m. in New York City, the Lower East Side. Still light out. Still hot and muggy.

  Gabriel Bleak was sitting at a table in a plywood booth covered with off-white acoustic fabric, using a computer with a dicey Internet connection, having paid the shop on East Fourteenth for an hour's time. The acoustic fabric was frayed at the corners, exposing the plywood. The guy sitting in the little booth next to him was playing an online first-person shooter, and he kept muttering to himself, cursing his adversaries under his breath. “Die...die.... Come on and...oh, man, that's bullshit. That's...I'll find your ass when I re-spawn...change ordnance...change to rocket launcher, you want to play like that.... Noobie, using your noob-tube on me, suck this! Suck rockets! Yeah!”

  Which made it a little hard for Bleak to concentrate on his e-mail. Mostly just spam. A thank-you note from Lost Boys Bail Bonds. And another client, Get Right Out Bail Bonds, had put him on its e-mail list. It appeared, according to their list spam, that now they also cashed checks. Probably give you a check for catching a skip, then offer to cash it for you in the office and use the check-cashing fees to take back part of what they'd paid you.

  Bleak wiped sweat from his forehead. Why couldn't this place get air-conditioning?

  He wished he'd persuaded Cronin to use e-mail. They'd talked about it but Cronin said the Internet was “bad for a man who wants to think long thoughts.” He missed Cronin, and he missed Muddy. He worried that the dog was pining for him. There—an e-mail inquiry from Second Chance Bail Bonds. Got a skip for you. Please come to office ASAP. Vince.

  Wait. He'd never worked with Second Chance. Who was Vince and how'd he get his e-mail? From the other bail outfits? Surprising, they didn't usually share skip tracers. And the guy acted as if Bleak were supposed to know who he was.

  He'd check it out anyway. Not good to get paranoid and he needed the work.

  It occurred to Bleak, suddenly, that the CCA could be monitoring his e-mail. So maybe it was good he wasn't
communicating with Cronin that way. Time he got out of this place.

  He did a disk clean, a few other quick moves to blot out his browsing history, and shut the computer down, suddenly feeling as if he might be arrested, here, at any moment.

  Bleak got up, hurried out, blinking in the light spearing from the sun low between the buildings. He shaded his eyes, looked around. Didn't see that agent—rolling her name luxuriantly through his mind: Loraine Sarikosca. Was surprised to feel a twinge of disappointment that she wasn't there. Which made no sense at all.

  He hurried down East Fourteenth to Avenue A, then downtown, looking for a certain bar where he could get a beer in a cool room and think. A bar with a back way out, where he knew he wouldn't have to bust a hole in a wall if he had to escape.

  Maybe we 're all going about this wrong. The ShadowComm—and me too. Maybe we should get lawyers. Challenge CCA right out in the courts. Come out of the closet more.

  But he decided that thinking was left over from the days before the terrorist attack on Miami— before President Breslin had invoked National Security Presidential Directive 51, giving his administration special powers in the event of “catastrophic emergency” powers that verged on martial law. The president controlled the courts, now. More than ever. There was still resistance in Congress and on the state level to arrests of just anyone the government designated dangerous... and that resistance, for as long as it lasted, was probably all that kept CCA from pushing law enforcement to put out a general APB on Gabriel Bleak.

  It was almost dark when he got to Telly's Tell 'Em Anything. Cool and pleasantly gloomy inside. Only one drinker there, an old man arguing with Telly about politics. Tending bar himself, Telly was a stout Greek with muttonchops and curly gray hair and a red nose; a double shot of ouzo always in one hand, even when he was using the other to pour for a customer. He nodded to Bleak and nodded questioningly at the only draft-beer pull; Bleak gave a thumbs-up and went into the back for a quick pee. The old-fashioned men's room had a metal trough to piss in.