Project Antichrist

by Pavel Kravchenko

  Doc was falling over my bent body. Two halves of his shotgun clattered against the wood floor on either side of me. He scrambled immediately to his feet and, grabbing Iris under her arms shouted in my ear, “Out! Out now! Her legs!”

  I obeyed dumbly, and we pulled Iris through the first hole the creature had made into the moist outside world. As we began to crawl over the wet lawn, I caught doc’s gaze looking into the house behind me and knew that the first “dog,” done with Lloyd, was returning. Doc’s eyes fell on mine then, resigned, and his lips moved silently, forming the words, “Don’t look back.”

  They closed and it was the end. I tried to prepare, to invoke some dignity, to reconcile, but all I could think was, “Mama! Mama! Oh no, no, no!”

  Suddenly another dark shape, this one unmistakably human, materialized in front of me in the street. The man drew a gun and, holding it with both hands, started shooting into the house over my head. Another wail was unleashed seemingly inches from my ears, and I grabbed my head with both hands, dropping Iris, struggling and, again, unable to scream. The creature jumped over me, and the man was flying over two rows of parked cars. He slammed into the brick wall of a house across the street, fell inside the low fence and was quiet. Without slowing down to celebrate, nor bothering to confirm the man’s demise, the creature, limbs, or tentacles, rising around it like petals of a giant black flower, turned and floated towards me.

  But it never made it. Something, a ball, or a sheet of blue and white flame, fell on it from above, driving it to the ground and searing the darkness in half. A surprised guttural sound similar to one I’d heard less than a minute earlier in the house was cut off, as the creature’s body, if one could call it that, exploded.

  At that point my tired brain finally decided to shut down for maintenance. With a deep sigh, I collapsed on top of Iris. The last thing I remembered was the heat of her belly against my icy ear.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Brome woke up with a start and the feeling of cold fingers on his throat. Through the slits between his eyelids he saw a shape above him. He tried to twist and grab the choking hand with his left, sending his right at the same time inside the coat for the gun. Immediately, a flash of pain in his back blinded him and he groaned, realizing that fighting was out of the question. Daddy was going to die without catching the bad guy, a thought came.

  “Whoa. Easy, Brome. Take it easy now,” a concerned voice spoke somewhere not too far. Louder, it added, “Hey, where’s that gurney?”

  Brome heard movement and opened his eyes wider. Above, in the blur of tears, there was a crown of a brown-leafed tree, and above that purple, dripping sky. A face, wide and with high and sharp cheekbones, hovered between the sky and him.

  “Got limb movement. Your back is not broken,” the face said comfortingly and grinned. “What happened to you, anyway? Parachute didn’t open?”

  That could have been it, for all Brome knew right then.

  “One, Two, Three!” He was lifted onto a gurney. It began to roll soundlessly, probably across a lawn. Raising his head, Brome attempted to get his bearings. A street, crammed with FBI trucks. Men in dark FBI jackets moving about. On porches and sidewalks, several civilians in pastel pajamas sticking out of hastily put on coats and jackets. A house across the street with a gaping hole instead of one corner. Holy shit! a thought, and more of the desperate struggle to move, as memory began to return.

  “Easy, man. Easy.” A strong hand pushed him back down, holding the shoulder in place carefully but firmly. “I said the back is not broken, but ribs probably are. You have to lie still.”

  Holy shit!

  “Hey, how about giving us a little more time next time?” Brighton’s voice, and then Brighton himself, looming over. “What’s his status? Go on, take him to the ambulance and wait for me there.”

  “A bump on his head, I’m guessing a cracked rib or several, bruises. He might be bleeding internally. You should get him to the hospital ASAP.”

  The gurney rolled on. Soon Brome was deposited in the back of the ambulance truck, which looked more like a lab from the in side. A man in a white robe came up to him with a tube-vacuum-like contraption.

  “Can you lie still?” the smart-ass in the lab coat inquired and pushed some buttons. He began to move the PI, as though it was a treasure hunter’s cheap metal detector, in small circles above Brome’s body.

  Lulled by its humming, Brome closed his eyes and tried to recall the events. He’d skipped the office and drove directly to the address of the doctor’s residence. He parked about a block away so as not to make too much noise and was going to wait for backup, but then he heard gunfire. He remembered running towards the house. There were people squatting on the front lawn: a white-haired man, a guy in a pilot jacket, likely Whales himself, and a girl. And then… in the hole… he saw something standing just inside the house… something… black and… shifting and inhuman. Holy shit. What in God’s name was that thing? He recalled a feeling of complete and utter panic washing over him. Then he was shooting. Shooting straight at it. The whole clip. It was impossible to miss. It had to be dead, whatever it was, but he could not remember what happened next. Actually, he could. Next there were cold fingers on his throat and pain stabbing him in the back like a hot knife.

  He must have blacked out for a moment, because suddenly he was aware of the truck’s movement. He opened his eyes, squinting in the light. Brighton was directly above him.

  “Where’s Whales?” Brome asked.

  “You saw Whales?”

  “The girl and the old man, also.”

  “They must have fled after you got knocked out. I had the cops set up a four-block perimeter, but they were probably too late. Do you remember anything else?”

  “Don’t remember getting knocked out.”

  “Look, what we know is that you were in a fire fight, and you got slammed with something. Probably a car.”

  “A car?”

  “Seems most likely, looking at you. Either one of Whales’s bunch or just someone random, passing by and losing control because of all the shooting. The neighbors said they heard a car driving away soon after the shooting ended. Anyway, the good news is you’ll be OK. Doc here says you have three broken ribs, but nothing life-threatening. And you got the bad guy.”

  “What? I thought you said Whales got away.”

  “I’m talking about Freud.”

  “You got Freud? Where is he? What does he say?”

  “He’s in the other truck. And he doesn’t say much since you put three bullets in his chest. With that gun still in his hand, though, we don’t need a written confession.”

  “All right, agents. You can chit chat later,” the lab coat said. “Time to sleep.”

  The white ceiling shook, spun up, and was gone.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I woke up with a start, feeling like I had just been slapped in the face. First thing I saw was Dr. Young’s maroon turtleneck. Then I saw his hand, rising.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked him, trying to sound sharp and angry. It came out as more of a whimper.

  “It’s morning, Mr. Whales.”

  It all came back to me at once.

  “Oh my God! What the! Doc! What the hell were! Lloyd? Where’s that fucking Lloyd?” Shouting all this, I jumped up — I had been resting in a fetal position on an undersized brown love-seat — with such speed that I almost lost my balance and had to grab hold of the nearby bookcase for support. Something wet was on my cheeks. I got even louder when there was no immediate answer. “Dr. Young! Talk to me! I said talk to me, you cultist piece of shit!”

  “Enough, Mr. Whales,” he said sternly, staring at me through narrowed eyes. I quickly checked my immediate surroundings, looking for a moderately heavy, preferably pointed object. We were in a white windowless room (some kind of office again, I thought) with a brown-painted rubber-wood desk, completely bare, in the middle, a matching chair behind it, a folded thingamajig for sleeping behind th
at, the worn at the arms love-seat I’d slept on to the right and the bookcase directly behind me. Not a single piece of jagged metal. Looking over my shoulder, I surveyed the book shelves. There was only one sufficiently thick book there, but I left it alone. It was the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. An old Barnes and Noble edition. Leather, or at least “leatheroid” jacket.

  “Yes, enough is right!” I shouted with a detectable note of disappointment in my voice. Turning back to the old man, I contemplated a lunge for his throat.

  Suddenly, I spotted Iris behind him, on a chair against the wall, knees tucked under her chin. She winced, hands on her ears, not looking at me. That cooled me down. I shut up and dropped back on the loveseat.

  “What happened, Doc? Tell me it was the weed,” I begged, covering my eyes with my hands. As soon as I did, an image of that black thing appeared in my mind. With a loud slap my hands landed on my knees, grabbing them until the knuckles turned white.

  “We were attacked. By dogs.”

  “Dogs!?” I shouted again, not able to control myself. “I know what a dog looks like! Those weren’t any motherfucking dogs, OK?”

  “No, of course not. They are just called ‘dogs’ because their method of search is similar to that of a canine. You see, they follow one’s trail. Not the smell, like normal dogs do, but another kind of trail—”

  “Look. I don’t need a lecture. Just tell me what those things were.”

  “Aliens,” Iris said. I grunted. Dr. Young glanced over at her and gave a ridiculously serious but slight nod, turning back to me.

  “Perhaps it would be easier for you to think of them as angels, Mr. Whales.”

  “No, Father Young. It wouldn’t be easier for me to think of them as angels. Angels are white, with wings, harps and glowing zeros floating above their heads. What I saw in that house was about as far from an angel as it gets.”

  “They can change appearance,” he replied. “The form you saw has been picked as suitable for the task at hand. It is a lot easier to destroy a victim frightened out of his wits.”

  I had been, still was frightened out of my wits. I knew, because my wits should have convinced me the event I had witnessed was a hallucination, caused by either the lack of medicine or some kind of a devilish drug Dr. Young had mixed in with the cannabis we smoked. Or it could have been even simpler and funnier. A very elaborate and successful Halloween prank, with guns shooting blanks and a couple of out-of-job basketball players in high-tech monster suits. The whole present conversation about “angel-dogs” should have seemed utterly absurd.

  But my wits deserted me. Lloyd’s method of scaring me into a revelation apparently prevailed after all. I have seen the creature. I had no doubt about that. I heard its blood-freezing cry. I heard the shots. I somehow knew they had come to destroy me. And for all the dismissive gestures and face-making, I believed Dr. Young when he said they were not terrestrial. Which scared me even more.

  Yet, there remained one comforting fact in all of this, I suddenly realized. Whatever they were, they had failed. I was still alive.

  “Those… things. Were they immune to bullets?”

  “Not any more than you and I are immune to mosquitoes.”

  “How did we get out, Doc?”

  “Well, we drove, but prior to that, I am not sure, Mr. Whales. I stopped one of them, if temporarily; the fate of the other one puzzled me all this time. Since you were facing it when it was in the street, I was hoping you were going to enlighten me about that.”

  “Something killed it. There was a flash of white light…” I tried to remember more, but couldn’t. Instead, I remembered Lloyd and the hole he and the creature had made in the wall of the house. “Where’s Lloyd? I think I want my gun back now.”

  As soon as the question left my lips I regretted asking it, because I knew Dr. Young was going to answer it in the same voice he’d just told me angels were out to kill me. I was right.

  “I am afraid that was the end of the road for Mr. Freud. He is not with us any longer.”

  I leaned back in the loveseat and looked at Iris. Her eyes told me she’d learned about Lloyd while I was unconscious.

  I was surprised to find my own eyes swelling with tears.

  What I knew about Lloyd could fit on a fortune cookie, and it wouldn’t have prophesized anything favorable. Hell, the guy was a murderer. But now I was alive, and he had died protecting me. One of those things had destroyed him instead of me.

  And why? I still hadn’t a clue.

  I wiped my eyes roughly with a sleeve of my sweater.

  “Your report of the creature’s demise, however, is very comforting indeed,” Dr. Young continued, as though he was at a podium and just turned a page. “It seems you have other friends, Mr. Whales.”

  You might survive yet, Mr. Whales. He didn’t say that, but I heard it nonetheless. And, despite the “comforting report,” facing the death of Lloyd, who had been trained and armed, I wasn’t at all crazy about my chances.

  “Doc,” I said as calmly as I could. “I’ve seen the angels. I think it’s time you told me why they are trying to kill me.”

  His eyes bore into mine, considering. Finally, he nodded. Iris got up from her chair and came to sit next to me on the loveseat.

  “You’re right, Mr. Whales. You have seen the angels. You have taken the pills and you have stopped taking the pills. You are beginning to understand. You, I think, already know what I am going to say. But I am not certain if any of this makes you ready. I can tell you from personal experience that knowing what the answer will be and being ready for it are two very different things.”

  “I don’t want to die not knowing the reason, Doc. I’m ready.”

  “The problem is,” he continued as though he did not hear me, “that if you aren’t prepared, the knowledge, or let’s call it ‘information,’ will not be digested. If your brain rejects it once, it will be very hard to convince it afterwards.”

  He sighed.

  “However, with a narrow escape that we had, I am afraid there’s no other choice but to take that risk. I will try to be brief and basic.”

  “As you know,” he began, immediately pausing to give me a doubtful glance. “As you probably know, Mr. Whales, history books teach us that organized religion originated from elemental worship. The first Man was helpless, clueless and fearful, so he began to worship different aspects of nature in order to appease them. It is a compelling and plausible theory. It does well to explain the evolution of elements into God-figures that govern them, the God-figures that were inevitably either animalistic, humanoid or mix of both, because the primitives could not imagine anything beyond what they saw. These beliefs, then, evolved further, most deities became more and more humanoid, and the animals they were previously ‘combined’ with them became ‘associated’ as in either the ability of a certain God to take on a form of a certain animal, or simply an animal being a symbol of that God for whatever forgotten reason. Presently, animal worship is mostly out of fashion, with the predominant religions all focusing on either purely humanoid (but infinitely more divine) Gods or their even more humanoid prophets. Thus, since religion was created by Man, its evolution will be complete when Man, becoming less and less fearful, clueless and helpless, becomes God.”

  “This theory, although it is, as I said, very plausible, is not without flaws. Here are some of them: it is impossible to prove empirically the fact of elemental worship; there’s some speculation in regards to the earliest known religious works — Vedas — actually portraying the divinity of Man already then through symbolism of elemental Gods; finally, in this day and age, when all factors are seemingly in place for Man to evolve, he remains, although few will admit it, fearful and clueless, and instead of achieving divinity he’s returning to the worship of the inanimate, be it technology, money or something else.”

  “Then we have the great collection of elaborate mythos, commonly known as archaic religious works, but treated as fairy tales presently witho
ut a second thought of that fact’s implications. Ancient mythology, which by the way bears significant similarities in cultures as widespread geographically as this planet allows, portrays Gods as conspicuously material. These Gods looked like men, they ate, slept, had children, sometimes even with humans. Moreover, they fought between themselves, they envied, they lusted and were greedy; in short, they did a lot of things that modern religions reserve purely for human race. Which is why these myths are considered silly folklore now. Now the predominant religions are based on the pure divinity and concealment of God and complete inherent sinfulness of the human being. That, if you were paying attention, also goes against the abovementioned theory of religious evolution.”

  “We will be moving to the fun part shortly, Mr. Whales.

  “The strong majority of the world’s population follows these predominant religions, despite the popularity of the evolution theory, despite the mythology, despite the fact that most of the awe-inspiring miracles we read about in scriptures would seem mundane to us now. I am sure you would agree if I said it would not be too hard to construct a moving pillar of smoke, or that the nuclear explosions that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah would look bordering on boring on a TV screen. The funny thing is, the same majority — at least numerically — also believes in the existence of aliens, but very few draw any connection between the two. There’s a group of people, I call them ‘Charioteers’, who do. They have been trying to popularize their theories for the last sixty years or so, but they never got beyond cult status.”

  “So this is what you’re saying, then?” I asked.

  “Right. I believe that what we commonly refer to as God is a Being, or rather Beings, from another world who have usurped the place of the real God.”

  “Demiurge.” Iris said that. “Gnosticism.”

  “Close. Most Gnostic sects claim Demiurge have created the material world to oppose the spiritual world of the real God. Personally, I interpret that differently. Yes, these beings are very powerful, awe-inspiring even, but not enough so to create the Solar system, Earth, or even to cause a world-wide flood. I think the material world Gnostic teachings are referring to is not the planet or the galaxy. Rather, it is what we call ‘civilization.’ I do believe, however, the story of Adam and Eve to be at least partially true. Even if they did not create the physical aspect of humanity, as Gnostics also claim, then at least they modified the species, although to what extent, I do not know. Now, is that hard to swallow so far?