Nemesis: Box Set: Books 1 - 3

by David Beers

  “MOTHERFUCKER!”

  He launched the shirt across the room, where it landed against the wall softly, unable to hold Will’s rage for long.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled the phone out.

  Rigley.

  Will put the phone to his ear, knowing that his chance of escape just ended. That this call…this would be his end.

  * * *

  “Where are you?” Rigley asked.

  “Where the fuck am I? Where the fuck are you? You took the goddamn car, Rigley. You left us sitting out there.”

  Rigley heard his anger roaring through the phone. He was right. She had taken the SUV, left him and Andrew out there in the woods for whatever was to happen. None of it mattered to her in the slightest, not leaving him or his anger.

  “You need to come to me,” she said.

  “Oh, I do, huh? And where would that be.”

  “I’m just outside of Grayson. A place called Loganville.”

  Will laughed. “I’m gone Rigley. I’m packing my shit right now and I’m leaving the country.”

  Rigley figured that’s what he would be doing. That’s why she finally ended up calling. She didn’t care what happened to Will at this point, there were far too many other things to worry about. However, when Marks showed up down here, she didn’t want him asking where Will was only for her to tell him she didn’t know. A lot was about to happen, a lot of bad, and that was one added thing she didn’t need.

  “There’s nowhere to go.” She listened as he moved on the other side of the phone. He had been still at first, but now it sounded like he was packing again, continuing efforts that were less than futile.

  “Who knows?”

  “His name is Kenneth Marks.”

  “And he’s your boss?”

  “You met him once. In Bolivia. He was the one that introduced us.”

  She let the silence fall over the line as Will tried to remember.

  “It doesn’t matter, Will. He knows now.”

  “So what?” Will said, moving again.

  “There’s nowhere to run. There’s nowhere to go. If he wants us dead, then we’re already dead.” She listened as he stopped.

  “I don’t understand what is wrong with all of you people. Don’t you get it? We’ve been dead. We’ve been dead since that thing landed out there. Anyone involved in this is going to burn. I’m not going to stick around and wait for them to put me up on a stake to do their burning. You can come too, though, it’s probably not my brightest suggestion ever, but I’m leaving, Rigley.”

  Now Rigley laughed. It escaped her throat without her knowing it was coming, unbidden and surprising, a bit like a snakebite. Once out though, she didn’t try to hold it back. She let the laugh grow until she fell back on the bed. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes as she stared up at the ceiling.

  “You don’t get it. Not me,” she said finally, the laugh not fully subsided.

  “And what’s that, Rigley? What don’t I get?”

  “He knows now. He knows everything. We’re dead, but not before he’s done with us. We failed, Will. We fucked up bad, and he’s going to punish us for it before he kills us. Come to where I am and wait with me. If you run, it’s going to be worse. A lot worse.”

  * * *

  The phone slid back into his pocket, as silent as a coffin into a grave.

  Will looked at the suitcase now fully packed.

  He heard the knock on the door, knowing it was Andrew.

  Rigley sounded insane. She sounded like whatever had been straining inside her for the past week finally snapped. That laugh…she actually cried because she was laughing so hard.

  Kenneth Marks. Will didn’t know the name and he barely remembered the man that had introduced them in Bolivia. A boogeyman is the way Rigley made him sound. Punish?

  Will blinked, still staring at the suitcase.

  Another knock on the door.

  Did you really think you were going to get out of here? After everything you’ve done, did you think you would truly be able to just step out when you were ready?

  What had he done?

  Don’t play dumb now. Not this many years in. How much blood is on your hands? You can’t clean off that much, Will. You could bathe from now until Kingdom Come and you’ll still find it dripping from your fingertips.

  The words came with a righteousness that the Bible itself couldn’t possess. Was it guilt? Was it duty? What were those words implying?

  That’s easy, Will. That there are sins to pay for, and you’re not going to be able to run down there to that car, hop in, and drive to South America where you can spend the rest of your life on a beach. There may be penance in heaven or hell, but there might not be either, and that means what we do here must be atoned for here. You know that. You’ve always known that.

  The knock on the door again.

  “Will?” Andrew called from outside.

  He heard Rigley’s voice: it’s going to be worse.

  Fine. Fucking fine. He’d go to Rigley and see what this Kenneth Marks wanted with him.

  Will turned to the door and opened it, Andrew standing there with his bag in hand.

  “Rigley called. Get your computer. We’re going to her.”

  “What?” Andrew said.

  “It’s not over yet.”

  81

  Present Day

  The plane burned beautifully.

  Kenneth Marks looked at it from his place on the railing. The room below him had stilled as everyone watched the plane first tilt slightly downward, and then within seconds spiral out of control, falling to tragic doom. Kenneth Marks heard a few people gasp below, but he didn’t look down, didn’t take his eyes from the screen. The satellite showed the whole thing, and it sparked a single question in him.

  Why?

  He didn’t say it aloud. Anyone looking at him wouldn’t have known that he was thinking anything at all.

  The plane’s mission had been going as planned; he heard the pilot ask for permission to engage, heard permission granted, saw the small downward turn, and then everything changed. No more transmissions from the pilot, no more controlled movements in the plane, just certain death.

  It didn’t make sense, because Kenneth Marks saw nothing on the large screen that could account for what happened. Nothing attacked the plane. No reason for it to fall, yet it had.

  He didn’t feel angry, or really even disturbed by it. He liked the way the plane burned, the orange wrapping around the twisted metal so elegantly. He just wanted to know what happened, though he wouldn’t ask anyone over any phone line. It was time for him to get down there, to see Rigley, see General Knox, to really assess what was happening.

  Kenneth Marks reached into his pocket and tapped a button on his phone. He pulled his hand back out and put it on the railing, where he remained like a Sphinx for a minute and a half. He heard the steps approaching but kept watching the fire burn. Burn, burn, burn. It would go on until there was nothing left for it to grasp onto, and in that way, it was similar to humans.

  “Yes, Mr. Marks?”

  “Is the plane ready, Jenna?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Will you be accompanying me down to Georgia?” he said.

  “I don’t see why I wouldn’t,” she said.

  He knew he chose well when he hired this one. Perhaps his best hire ever. He would hate to lose her but knew that if she came, the chances of her not returning to work one morning rose greatly. Still, it might be interesting, watching Jenna in Grayson. She was used to a place like this, a place like DC. She was used to things being sanitized and seeing her surrounded by filth might be fun.

  “Okay then. You’re ready to leave?”

  “My bag is in my office.”

  “Great. Fifteen minutes, then?”

  “The President called ten minutes ago,” Jenna said.

  Kenneth Marks nodded, barely perceptible. Jenna walked away.

  He sighed once he heard her footsteps fa
ll far enough away. He was not a fan of this President. He would, in all honesty, like to have some fun with him, but the time hadn’t presented itself—and Kenneth Marks didn’t know if it ever would. He had hoped he could keep this silent, but knew things were growing too big for that; the news was fluttering out of Grayson like black doves.

  Kenneth Marks turned around and walked back into his office, closing the glass door behind him. The quicker he got this over with the quicker he could move south.

  He sat down at his desk and looked out the window for a few minutes. He had nothing really to think about; he only wanted to make the President wait a bit longer.

  There was some fun in that.

  * * *

  Kenneth Marks wasn’t bothered by this man being the President. He had met other Presidents before and imagined he would meet one or two more before he was done on this planet. Kenneth Marks didn’t care about power being wielded over him, which all Presidents did—or at least thought they did. That was fine, because for the most part he was indispensable and at least someone in these administrations knew it. This President, though, was different.

  This President didn’t get it.

  It’s not that he didn’t want to get it, or that he acted like he didn’t get it—he just talked like the power rested with himself. Both of those things happened before and it was fine, because in the end, Kenneth Marks did what he wanted.

  This President was different because he actively believed that Kenneth Marks was just another cog in the machine. Something that could be replaced if he didn’t grease up correctly.

  And really, that was fine too. Kenneth Marks didn’t care. The President would find out soon enough, if he acted on these beliefs, how wrong he was.

  The piece Kenneth Marks really disliked was how that belief translated into the way the President spoke. That was it. The whole thing when he got right down to it. The man spoke to him like Kenneth Marks was some kind of child, and Kenneth Marks couldn’t stand it.

  He picked up the phone on his desk.

  “Put him through,” he said. He waited on the click from the line and then said, “Yes, Mr. President?”

  “What the fuck is going on in Georgia?” the man said.

  Kenneth Marks closed his eyes. He leaned back in his chair, holding the phone to his head with one hand and putting his feet up on his desk, his body turning to stone.

  “We have a visitor,” Kenneth Marks said.

  “Did you plan on telling me about it?” President Hayley said.

  “No, sir. I didn’t.”

  “I didn’t fucking think so. I found out because a news crew saw the goddamn crash but aren’t allowed into the area. I got a goddamn call from my Chief of Staff instead of you. So since you decided to run a goddamn black op down there, you have about fifteen seconds to tell me what is going on.”

  Kenneth Marks saw the man’s heart racing in his mind’s eye. The ventricles opening and closing faster than usual, his blood pressure rising as his anger grew. He saw it all as clearly as if he was a blood cell traveling through Fisher’s veins. It ended there though, because the hope in his head wouldn’t happen. The hope that Fisher’s heart would seize up like an engine running too hot, for too long, without oil. That the blood wouldn’t flow any longer, cutting his brain off from the necessary oxygen, which ended with Fisher falling face first on his desk, his phone sprawling onto the floor, and a large purple vein sticking out of his head as his eyes bulged like a dead fish’s.

  “Marks? Are you fucking listening to me?” the President said.

  He didn’t sigh, though he wanted to. “Yes, sir. Of course. We have a stage five containment. We currently do not know why the plane went down, but will know shortly, and I’ll make sure to get that information to you immediately. I’m heading down there momentarily to oversee the entire operation. Unfortunately, with something this large, it is going to be difficult to contain the information flow. However, my team is currently working on a plan to control the narrative—”

  “I don’t give a goddamn—” Hayley interrupted, but Kenneth Marks quit listening. Of course his brain continued taking in the information and filing it away for later use, but he couldn’t handle actually listening to another second of this idiocy. If Kenneth Marks stepped away from this thing for one day, just walked away and came back the next evening, the entire country would be in upheaval. Fisher had no idea what a stage five containment entailed, but more, he was messing with Kenneth Mark’s fun. This whole conversation held him up from the fun that awaited when he got down there to Rigley Plasken.

  At last he heard a respite from the President’s diatribe.

  His mind relayed everything that he missed in the past few minutes and it really came down to nothing, which is what Kenneth Marks thought it would be about.

  “I’ll handle it,” he said and then hung up the phone.

  He left the office with his briefcase in hand, closing the door and turning the lights off behind him.

  Jenna met him in the hallway, and they headed to the waiting plane.

  82

  Present Day

  “Hello?”

  Rigley understood fear. It wasn’t what movies showed. It wasn’t running around and screaming; it wasn’t something jumping out of the dark when you least expected. Fear was something that rested very, very deep inside you. Perhaps so deep that it existed in something that wasn’t quite you, in something before you—something that predated everything but the beginning of the universe. Maybe, even, that thing lived inside you and grew fear the way a greenhouse grows plants.

  The fear crept out slowly, growing over hours and hours, unlike the huge growth spurt that horror movies showed. That wasn’t fear, not real terror. Rigley knew that now. Real terror slowly seeped into your flesh, your bones, your marrow. There was no running from it. No escape. You sat with it and you knew that it told you the truth. That what came next, that what was just over the horizon, would break you in way that you never thought possible when you were a child.

  That was fear.

  And that’s what she had felt for the past few hours as she waited for Kenneth Marks, PhD, to call her back. The call was coming. He was coming, and she believed that with the same ferocity an evangelical Christian believed in Christ’s second coming.

  And then it arrived. Not with the harkening of angels or lights screaming down from the sky, but with a tiny ringtone that signaled all was lost.

  “Hi, Rigley, it’s Kenneth. How are things going down there?”

  A chill moved down the back of her neck, causing her to squirm where she stood. “Will is on his way. I'm here.”

  “And that would be?”

  “A Motel Six off the highway heading to Atlanta.”

  “Good. Good,” he said as if she had told him how much cumin she put in a pot of chili. “I’m on my way down there now, so we should be able to have a reunion of sorts. How are things on the ground, any idea?”

  “No,” she said, telling the truth. She fled like an antelope barely escaping the mouth of a crocodile and hadn’t looked back. Not until she got to this hotel and told Will to come.

  “Ah, that’s okay. We’ll figure it out together when I get there. Did you hear about the plane going down?”

  Rigley looked at herself in the mirror; her left hand started shaking as the word plane passed from the phone to her ear.

  “I take your silence as no. Well, we sent a plane over the wooded area, the one I believe you were in. It targeted the blackened spot, but was brought down in just a few seconds. Really peculiar.”

  “What are you going to do?” She didn’t know what else to say, the fear in her bones rising up to her mouth, asking the only thing it really wanted to know. What was this man, this cheery voiced man who seemed unbothered by an alien force having arrived on this planet, going to do with Rigley?

  “Oh, I haven’t decided yet. I usually let the situation dictate these things. I do think you’re going to have a pretty big role to play
though. I wouldn’t want to take over your operation, not completely.”

  And the fear released. Completely and at once. All of it rising up out of her bones and flooding her veins. She froze, unable to say another word into the phone.

  “Rigley, are you there?” he asked, sounding like he might have been trying to find out if an ice-cream shop had strawberry shortcake as a flavor.

  “…Uh-huh…” she finally forced out.

  “Good. You sound like something might be in your throat. Maybe get some water? Anyways, I’m going to get off the phone. I’ll be there in a couple of hours. Talk soon.”

  She heard the call disconnect and Rigley’s phone dropped from her hand to the floor. She didn’t look down at it, but stared into the mirror, finding her reflection looking back at her. Her eyes looked black from the distance she stood at. Black coals that said what her voice couldn’t.

  Time was up.

  83

  Bolivia

  “You’re not serious,” Will said.

  “There’s no other choice. There’s nothing else that we can do.”

  “Yeah there fucking is. You can wait. The city is done. The whole thing is flattened. All indications are that the Sherman is gone. Completely. So we wait, we observe, but we don’t goddamn kill them.”

  Rigley shook her head, looking down at the ground in front of her.

  The firebombing finished ten hours ago. The city smoldered out in the distance, the heat so great she could feel it from her small office when she stepped out onto the terrace. All the men that worked on this, all of them but she and Will, were in the large room encircled by the one way mirror and digitally locking doors.