Project Antichrist

by Pavel Kravchenko

  “They’ll find you buried in the sand somewhere one of these days,” he spat back. “Come on, then. If you’re so anxious to help your pig friend, then let’s go get the fucker he brought. I am sure as fuck not hauling him out alone.”

  He went inside. Lietbarsky, triumphantly, followed.

  “Who the hell is he?” Lietbarsky asked the other ex-cop, as Pare made his way towards the white couch and an unconscious, taped-up, heavy-set guy in a wrinkled black suit.

  “Shit if I know. Tried to escape the place on the train. Stole something, supposedly.”

  “What’d he steal?”

  “That case over there.”

  “What’s in the case?”

  “Hey!” Pare called. “Discuss it over a Boston Cream later. I’m not here to listen to your gossip.”

  He reached the body now and was about to pass it, so that he could come around from the shoulders, but suddenly halted. The impending revenge on the ratting ex-cop evaporated from his mind. He knew the guy on the couch! Not the name, but he knew his face from the racks. An ex-cop, too. A guard. And both of the train guys were now behind them. He glanced over sideways out of his visor. He should have left Lietbarsky with the “Doc” outside.

  At the same time Lietbarsky came up beside him. He would recognize a fellow pig for sure.

  “Get up,” Lietbarsky said and kicked the guy’s foot.

  The bastard is not without brains, Pare thought, sweating. Lietbarsky meanwhile, tossed the PM on his back and bent over the prone guard, turning his face away from the intruders and working his right hand towards the sidearm on his hip. “Get up and walk. No one wants to carry you.”

  Cops might not be known for their bravery, but it seemed Lietbarsky was pissed. The scum dared to play him on the sacred ex-pig comradeship. It occurred to Pare that he was about to do some kind of a spin move out of a police drama. He wouldn’t mourn, and the Polack was between him and the pair of strangers, but the distance was too small. There was no place for maneuvering. No cover. Fuck, he thought. The brokenhearted pig is going to get us both killed.

  “All right, let’s get the fucker up,” he said meanwhile, glancing casually to his left. There was another door within reach. If he could get it open, get out on the platform… “Hold up. Let me open this bitch up. No point dragging him all through the train.” Lietbarsky nodded, and Pare raised his hand to open the door.

  “Another move from either of you, you’re both dead,” a voice said. Silently, Pare turned his head towards the two guns that were now pointing at him.

  Lietbarsky, back still turned, started straightening casually, chuckling, “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Shit, he’s going to do it, Pare thought desperately. You can’t! his mind screamed. You can’t, they got us made!

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “Don’t do it!” I screamed at the guard who kept turning. Paul had him. The gun in my wooden hands was trained at the shoulder area of the one by the door. I screamed again, but he did it anyway. Changing pace suddenly, he whirled around and dropped to one knee. I saw his gun rising, heard Paul shout and the thunder of a submachine gun being discharged.

  From his spot on the floor the guard was thrown four yards back to crash helmet first inside the cabin. I felt heat on my neck, like when a careless make-up girl touches you with a curler. A dizzying thought came: I’m hit! The gun in my hand acquired the mass of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. It occurred to me suddenly that I’d forgotten about the other guard and I almost shot at his white suit out of horror. But I didn’t. The suit was still there, a voice in my head reminded me. He hadn’t moved.

  “Don’t move!” Paul screamed at the same time. And immediately followed with, “On the floor! Face down! Drop your weapon!”

  To me it sounded vaguely familiar. Somehow the guard deciphered it and went down. Paul rushed forward. Kicking the two guns away, he spun around to face me. The third gun — the one in his hands — trembled.

  “What now?” he yelled. “What do I do with him?”

  I realized two things then. First, that my wound was not serious. And second, that Paul expected me to tell him to kill the disarmed guard. He had just killed his first human being. Now he waited for me to tell him to kill another one.

  Gingerly, I walked up to them.

  “Take off your suit,” I told the guard. To Paul I said, “Get the tape.”

  “All right,” Paul said and nodded. “All right,” and nodded again. Finally, as though he was Tin Man working against a magnetic field, he went to get the tape.

  Rising to his knees, the guard took off his helmet and unzipped the jacket. He did it sullenly, without looking at me. Just like the Waukegan guard he was bald and wide.

  “Pants too?” he asked the air in front of him.

  “Yes, hurry up.”

  Paul returned with the tape. His helmet was also off. His blond hair was stuck to his forehead. Below it, his face was red. The guard stood up and stepped out of his pants.

  We taped him up like the other one, and put him on the couch across the aisle. Before placing a piece of tape over his lips, I asked him about the door. He said nothing on the subject. I reminded him we were going through a lot of trouble not to shoot him, and the least he could do in return is be helpful. He disagreed. I let the matter drop. I wasn’t really going to shoot him, and I saw no other way to persuade him. I thought his badge would probably open the door.

  As I was changing into the white suit, the Waukegan guard opened his eyes. He began to make noise and struggle to sit up.

  “Shut up,” Paul told him, giving his shin a gentle kick. “Or you’ll be sleeping again.” The guard gave us, especially me, a hateful look, but calmed down.

  Soon we were ready. I slung the submachine gun across my back.

  “We’ll send them back towards Waukegan,” I said.

  “Yeah, it should give us a good twenty minutes,” Paul agreed. The red was gone from his face now. Completely. He eyed the cabin.

  “You stay here and hold the doors open,” I told him. “I’ll do the controls.”

  He nodded and peered intently outside the door at the empty station. I went to the cabin, where the corpse of the guard lay on its side. What gave it away was the blood. Or the obvious absence thereof. The presumably dead guard, at whom I, at first, attempted to slant only a fleeting glance, revealed none of it. Which led me to squat beside him to get a closer look. There were four bullet marks on his jacket, but none of the bullets had penetrated it. Carefully, I lifted his helmet and poked his neck in several places before finally locating what I searched for. Gentle, rhythmical, almost tickling pushing against the skin of my fingers. He had a pulse! For a moment I was terrified. Having discovered the guard alive, I expected him to suddenly come to and grab me. When he did not, I turned to Paul, who had been watching apprehensively.

  “He’s alive. Unconscious, but alive. The thing is bulletproof.”

  Without waiting for an answer, I rose to my feet and pressed the OFF button. I pushed the manual drive lever forward. I thought to push it all the way up, but reconsidered, leaving it at about a third.

  “All right.”

  “Ready,” Paul replied.

  I pressed ON and, as the train began to move, jogged to the door and out onto the platform. Paul stepped out behind me and the doors slid shut. The shuttle train slid into the tunnel and was gone.

  We were alone in the dark station. Unlike in Waukegan, there was no lounge here, just the platform, the guardroom and the door. The door did not react to the guard’s ID card at all. There was no power. The train system must have been powered by a different backup generator. The building above us was still dark.

  We positioned ourselves by the door and waited, hoping the rest of the guards were not going to return before electricity. Having to wait gave me the opportunity to remove the disguise. Dr. Wright’s face would not really work with the guard’s suit. And it itched. I tossed everything on the tracks. It fe
lt good to have my own face back, though I hid it immediately under the helmet.

  “Thanks, man,” Paul said after a bit of silence. Then, after another bit, added, “Wait a minute. This guy, Sono, went in somehow. With no power, right?”

  He was right. I went up to the door, pressed against it, pressed some more, and suddenly it gave and slid an inch to the right.

  We pushed it open together and entered the empty, darkened hallway beyond.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Stealing a chopper wouldn’t be hard. Special Agent Brome, although technically on vacation, still had complete access within the FBI headquarters. Or close enough to complete. His access included roof; he was sure of that.

  The hard part was being alone.

  He was to fly out at nine o’clock sharp, and for eighty minutes between then and his departure from Whales’s house in the suburbs Brome battled an army that would not relent. Doubts.

  It started with the decision about the infiltration to be carried out by two untrained civilians. He had agreed to it initially, because all signs pointed to the fact that getting in the facility would be easier than getting out of it. He had agreed, yet as he drove back downtown, Brome couldn’t help thinking that he should have stopped them. God knows chances would be slim if he was there. Without him “slim” began to sound like desperately optimistic odds.

  None of them could fly a helicopter, he reminded himself. And immediately had an idea of confiding in Rush, one of the FBI pilots he’d gotten chummy with because of his background. Rush is a decent guy, he thought. He’ll understand. I’ll call him and have him do the evac. Meanwhile, I’ll turn around and catch up with Whales and his friend before they get themselves killed.

  It sounded so reasonable in his head, he almost dialed the number. However, there was no active communication link between Whales and him. The alien had said it was too risky. If he turned around now he could end up late. Would likely end up late. And Rush would end up in serious trouble regardless of the outcome.

  Which led Brome to his own troubles. What they were about to do — and this in the event of success — would render his vacation permanent. In the event of success Special Agent Brome would probably end up on the wanted list. What would he do? What would he tell Grace? That he threw away his career and hers and Annie’s future because aliens were after a talk show host whose show he always hated? That’s a ticket to a padded room right there. He shook his head and drove on.

  A billboard hanging from the highway’s ceiling caught his eye. To the left of the face of an obviously beleaguered, middle-aged white man, in big, soothing, green letters was printed:

  TIRED OF THINKING? LET US DO THE WORK FOR YOU!

  It flew past and disappeared before his mind registered the advertised company’s name.

  Somehow it helped.

  His doubts shrunk. The plan was weak, but it was the best one possible considering the available resources. As to his own motivations… It was the right thing to do. Simple as that. Grace will understand, he told himself. If she doesn’t, Annie will. He knew it. And in that knowledge he took comfort.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The lights came back about a minute after we left the station. We were in a long curving hallway, painted — of course — white. We moved at a trot, partly because time was short, and partly because a couple of trotting guards would probably look less conspicuous than two who strolled leisurely along, several minutes after a bomb had almost destroyed the building.

  We passed doors and narrow crossing hallways, which sometimes opened into much larger spaces. It felt like we were in service corridors of a huge mall, barely finished and not yet populated. But Freedom Corp. wasn’t about to open a mall under its Long Grove facility. What was the place for, then?

  For now we ignored the elevators. According to Bogdan’s map — whose scale I had really misjudged — both the dormitories and the infirmary were on the same level as the shuttle station. Since the map did not have a locale called “Dungeon” or “Prison,” we had hoped one of those places would be where they usually held hostages. The labs, on the level below, was the third possibility, but I refused to consider it until I checked the first two. Getting inside the labs would be a whole different story.

  Traffic was scarce. Aside from the occasional jogging snow-whites in teams of three and four who paid us no heed, we encountered no staff. No civilians of any kind; no damages from the explosion. No clues, either. And I needed those, because the size of the facility threw me off completely. I had no idea where we or anything else was. The map in my head was useless.

  We followed the hallway as straight as we could through intersections, but the damn thing always curved to the right, and soon I began to suspect that we were going to end up back at the train stop. Paul had by then voiced his doubts once or twice. To those I preferred not to respond on account of saving my breath.

  Just when I really started to despair and hyperventilate, the hallway abruptly ended in a bend. As we slowed to a walk and came around it, trying hard not to expose our exhaustion, we were greeted by a pair of glass doors and the most unurgent guard we’d seen all day. Droopy-cheeked and helmetless, he was seated at a crescent-shaped white desk and, as we approached, was trying to break the record for the largest bubble blown out of a chewing gum. He seemed pretty close to doing it, but then suddenly the green ball popped and fell limp over his chin. If it caused disappointment, he hid it well.

  “Let me guess,” he yawned, staring up at the ceiling. “Diarrhea.”

  We found one of them! I thought excitedly. The gum slithered like a lizard back into his mouth. I saw a golden triangle insignia stamped on the white in the middle of his chest.

  “Sir, no, sir!” I blurted out. “We are reinforcements. To provide additional prisoner security, sir.”

  “Ain’t no prisoners here, you dumbfuck.”

  “Is this the infirmary, sir?”

  “What? Not only you’re dumb, you also blind? Of course it’s the infirmary.”

  “Sir Sono directed us here, sir. He said the prisoners—”

  “That’s cos your Sono is a dumbfuck too. Now get outta my sight.”

  When we didn’t immediately comply, the guard finally graced us with his gaze. He contemplated us for a moment, then shook his head.

  “Try the dorms.”

  “Sir, thank you, sir.”

  “Take off your damn helmets before you pass out,” he added before we left. “See, I don’t want to be bothered. If they bring you back here when you pop a vein from running all day in those things, I will be bothered. Where’d you serve?”

  “Army, sir. One hundred—”

  “Ah, forget it, then. Run on, rook,” he interrupted and leaned back again.

  So we did. Only slower. To get to the dormitory we needed to take a branching hallway on the right, I recalled from the map, but we must have passed a dozen of them on the way up and I had no idea which one would lead us to our destination. I considered taking every single branch until we found the correct one, hoping that none of them could be as long as the main. Even if they weren’t, that would take time. Iris didn’t have time.

  There was a whistle like a bomb in a movie, and a voice thundered inside our helmets. Radio was back.

  “Attention all security personnel,” it demanded. “We have a code Black. I repeat, code Black. Those not specifically reassigned by their direct commanders are to return to their posts immediately. Your squad leaders will brief you.”

  The radio went dead again. Nothing had visibly changed — the guards still moved about like before — but I knew soon it would not be the case. Soon the hallways would be empty. There was no way to search every side corridor without getting noticed. We had minutes, maybe seconds to find the right one.

  “Think it would arouse suspicion if we asked for directions?” Paul asked in between breaths.

  I figured it was a rhetorical question. Other than that, I didn’t have an clue about much of anyth
ing. We passed by the first corridor branching off to the right without stopping. Another one opened shortly, and we almost bumped into a squad of guards filing out of it. There were murmurs, but otherwise no reaction from them. No bright ideas either, aside from, “That could have been it.”

  If ever there was a good time for some telepathic guidance, I thought, it was now. Instead, as we were about to pass by the third corridor, a familiar sound reached me. I only realized I was hearing it once we were past the opening in the wall and the sound abruptly cut off. I halted so abruptly that Paul ran by me and had to double back about thirty feet. As I turned around and went back to where the side hallway began, I saw the squad we had passed trotting in our direction.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Paul hissed when he caught up to me.

  “This is it,” I told him and ran into the side passage, which at once began to curve to the left. I didn’t know if the sound I heard would qualify as telepathic guidance. After all, it was a sound. But it was a sound Paul couldn’t hear for some reason.

  “How the hell do you figure that?” he demanded as he followed me.

  “I hear him,” I replied, adding before he could ask the obvious question.

  “I hear Dr. Young chanting.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  When he detected the lone Seeker on the hill to the left he knew immediately who the Seeker was and that he, the Messenger, might not deliver another one. His instincts practically screamed at him to drop the disguise on the spot. Before the Seeker could move into position. Because then none of the tricks would work. Not even fighting would work. He had seen from the Guard’s formation that they intended to capture him. They would not allow him to be killed in battle.

  True, there would be five dead humans if he revealed himself that close to the compound, but they were humans, no matter how important. He was important. If he was captured today it would all be a waste. His sacrifices would go to waste. And not just his. There was no telling how many rebel Sobak would fall. Maybe all of them.