The Demon Plagues

by David VanDyke

  Raphaela placed her hand on the whitesparkle skin of the craft and its door appeared.

  Skull stepped inside holding her close to him in the pitch-black interior. He put his face next to hers. “Look, with your technology in here I’m sure there are a dozen sneaky things you can do to try to regain control of the situation, but all of those are risky. I am stronger and faster and tougher than any human being you have ever dealt with, and anything you do will result in painful violence. So let’s cooperate for a while, shall we? Turn on some lights.”

  “Lights, low” she spoke, and there was light, dim, ephemeral, but sufficient. His HUD began processing what it saw, identifying very little.

  “Gentlemen, it’s been an honor. Open the hangar doors, then go rendezvous with Huff. I hope he held up his end. All right, shut the door.”

  Holden and Lumpkins watched as the iris closed, then one pulled the rolling ladder away while the other ran to open the hangar door. A moment later they raced across the base in their stolen truck, the better to shuffle in with the official vehicles racing hither and yon. Behind them they heard, then saw the spacecraft roar into the night sky. A few minutes later they pulled up in front of the house. “Huff, you in there?” Holden called over his radio. “We’re outside.”

  “Yeah, baby, come on in.”

  They swaggered in the door to find the tableau as expected, the rump Fortress Team in complete control of the situation. Huff laughed. “Hey, now we got five. Any word on Miller’s section?”

  “It sounded like they went down fighting, from what I could hear,” Holden replied, tapping his helmet by his ear.

  “Yeah, that’s what I got too. Crazies. Okay, Mister Chairman and all you little chairmen, you heard the sound, you saw the sign. The boss is away with the alien, gonna fly now, and all we gotta do is come to some kinda understanding, a’ight?”

  Daniel Markis nodded, eyes locked with Huff’s. “Okay, an understanding. I understand one of you just, what, kidnapped Raphaela and hijacked her ship? And now you want to go to Australia? Why?”

  “Oh, you just gonna have to wonder about all that,” Huff replied. “Now here’s the deal. I’m sure somebody gonna be showing up to check on you pretty soon. So in a minute you’re gonna pick up that phone and have a long-range transport airplane fueled up and ready to go on the runway. Make sure it’s got food and water and at least nine parachute rigs, easy ones that anyone can use, nothing fancy. Then we drive over and take off. I’ll tell you where we’re going when we get in the air. All right, go ahead, pick up the phone.” Huff waved his assault rifle in the general direction of the children, who cringed.

  Daniel picked up the telephone, careful, and dialed flight operations. A few minutes later and it was all arranged, surprising but not unusual for the Chairman. They saw flashing lights pull up in front of the house, and Lumpkins pulled a blind slat open with his fingers. “Three SUVs.”

  Daniel said, “That would be my transportation. Our transportation.”

  “Three vehicles?”

  “Probably has my PSD in it. You mind if I talk to them? Might avoid some…misunderstanding.”

  Lumpkins called, “Two people comin’ up the walkway.”

  Markis stood. “Let me meet them at the door. You got the kids under the gun, nothing will happen.”

  Huff nodded.

  A moment of conversation, then another moment, an argument that Markis won, as he always did, sheer force of personality. Karl and the rest of the PSD backed up to the curb across the street, leaving the vehicles sitting and running, empty, waiting.

  “All right. Five of us, five kiddies, let’s get it on.” He seized the nearest, almost-eight Elizabeth, and the others did the same, gun muzzles pressed to necks. “Come with us, everyone, into the vehicles. I think we’ll take them all. Grownups drive.”

  They drove through the surreal streets of the Carletonville complex, their flashers and the Chairman’s face passing them by checkpoints and staring emergency personnel. The military jet transport sat alone on the tarmac, engines running and ramp lowered. “Drive straight in.” They complied.

  The loadmaster made as if to object until he saw the driver of the first vehicle, then backed up fast as the armed nano-commandos stepped from the SUVs. Huff pushed Elizabeth onto Lumpkins’ arms and grabbed Daniel Markis by his collar, yelling over the idling jets. “Everything better be copacetic on this plane, because your kids are my collateral. Here, take this,” he handed Markis an envelope. “Read it when we’re gone. Now you daddies and mommies back these trucks off the plane and we’ll be taking off. If you hold up your end, all the kiddies come home safe and sound. If not, it’s on your head. Can you dig it?”

  Markis yelled over the jet noise, “You can’t be serious! These are our children! Leave them here, I give you my word you’ll fly away, no problem!”

  Huff stuck his face in Daniel’s. “I said, Can – You – Dig – It?” He laughed uproariously. “Edens, come out to play-ayy…” He shoved Daniel stumbling back toward the nearest vehicle.

  Larry lunged forward. Five assault rifles came up to point at his chest and he stopped. Eyes hot with helpless fury, Markis grabbed Larry’s arm and pulled. He motioned Elise and Shawna back, signaling them to drive the SUVs off the plane. He had to scream at Larry, shoving him bodily away from his children, the Nanos grinning with their power and their invincibility and their guns and their hostages until he complied, streaming tears of rage.

  As the airplane roared down the runway with his son and daughter Larry punched the side of the truck three times, bellowing hoarsely. Shawna threw her arms around him, holding on to his bleeding fist.

  Daniel stared at the plane until it dwindled in the distance, then opened the envelope, looking inside for something to make sense out of the situation. He read the message inside in the light of the vehicle headlamps, then crumpled it.

  Elise took it gently out of Daniel’s hand and read:

  To DJ or whoever reads this: Sorry to change the rules again, but it’s what I’m best at. Huff won’t hurt your children. He’s not a psycho, he’s just a self-interested son of a bitch and not as crazy as he puts on. I told him if he harms one hair on their heads Spooky will kill them slowly. Nguyen’s a name to conjure with in the special ops community and probably the only one they’ll respect. I’m betting my life everything will work out fine. If not: sorry about that.

  Raph and I are taking a little trip. With your usual short-term thinking you forgot about that Meme scout ship that launched the Demon Plagues. Do you really think germs are all they got? Were you really going to just let a working alien spaceship sit in a South African hangar instead of fighting for Earth’s survival? I bet you were. You weren’t even exploiting the ship for its technology. Looks like I’m going to have to save your sorry self-righteous ass again. It’s getting tiresome, so I think this will be the last time. Goodbye, DJ.

  -Skull

  P.S. Hate me if you must but don’t hate what I’ve done. It’s all for your better world.

  -48-

  Christine Forman read the handwritten note one more time, the one that had come in an envelope with no stamp, just ‘MPS’ for Military Postal System and no postmark, which meant it had been dropped directly into the base post office, to be sorted and delivered to her in the mail.

  Christine,

  John Thomas Tyler is a Psycho. He sent Fortress Team One to kidnap the alien and kill DJ Markis. I’ll do my best to find a way out.

  He has suborned the Secret Service and the President with addictive nanites. He must be stopped. The Eden Plague might cure it. As far as I know, General Tyler is clean. It’s all in your hands. Good luck.

  –Skull.

  P.S. You look good in a bathrobe. Sorry I couldn’t stay.

  She laughed, rueful, head shaking and wondering how much to believe. Skull had complete faith in his own opinion, something Christine did not. She had confidence in neither his assessment, nor in her own. Only fools think faith bring
s the clarity of black and white; in reality, it’s always fifty shades of grey. Is he manipulating me?

  She decided it didn’t really matter. While her time with the Underground Railroad had hammered discretion into her, a secrecy different from that of the ministry, she hated every bit of it, hated the duplicity forced upon her by evil men and evil circumstance and the Spirit of Evil behind it all.

  Only one thing to do now, and that was turn it over to a higher power. She laughed to herself. Besides God, I mean. She picked up her bugged phone, then put it down. Even an innocuous message might tip someone, the ones watching – JT or the Secret Service or whomever he had in his pocket – so she decided to just take a stroll.

  Fifteen minutes later she waved her keycard in front of the reader and nodded to the guard as she entered the main administrative building that housed the General’s office. Dressed in official Navy physical training gear, she looked a bit out of place but not so much as to invite comment. On the weekend uniform standards were relaxed, especially for those working long hours. She recalled an old joke about hardworking military officers – How can you tell that the Commander is on vacation? He comes in to work in civilian clothes.

  She rapped on General Tyler’s open door, watching him as he signed a paper then closed a folder. Some things still had to be done in hardcopy; she thought she saw the telltale form of a fitness report, those sacred determiners of promotion or passover.

  “General. Care to take a walk with me?”

  He looked her up and down as if in slight disapproval of her PT uniform. “Do Edens even have to work out?” he asked as he stood.

  She took the question as acquiescence, with tremendous relief. Had he not followed her lead she wondered what she would have done. “Of course, if they want to pass a PT test.” She put brightness into her voice, and he looked sharply at her as she allowed a tiny pleading look to cross her face.

  He nodded and rose.

  Outside he set a brisk walking pace, crossing though courtyards and between buildings, a deliberate attempt to foil anyone listening through a directional microphone or simply following. It emboldened her to think that he took elementary precautions even on his own base where he should reign absolute. It showed her that he understood there were other players in the game.

  Tyler gave Christine an inquisitive look. In response, she handed him the note. He read it, then handed it back mutely, shifting his eyes to the fore, lifting his feet up to cross curbs and low planters by instinct as they walked. After a moment he said, “I guess this is the break point. I’ve been hoping, maybe fooling myself, but it’s obvious I’ve let the situation run on too long.”

  “Your son?” Christine asked in sympathy, hearing the pain in his voice.

  “Among others. But he’s the lynchpin. I needed to find out what his scheme was. But what can you do, being an Eden and, pardon me, a particularly righteous one at that?”

  “What can I do? What do you need me to do? I brought this to you hoping you had power and a plan. Everyone I know says you are a good man. I’ll do anything that I can, short of murdering someone.”

  Tyler snorted. “This Eden thing…I used to think it makes us into sheep. I want to believe it can make us into sheepdogs, still able to use our teeth.”

  “What does it matter if you’re not an Eden?”

  “Because I’ll be one soon. I see the writing on the wall. I’m just not ready to have my fangs pulled.” He laughed without humor, turning left onto an access road that wended its way away from the compound into the arid space between the buildings and the fence line. The wind whipped desert dust across their path.

  She followed at his side. “I don’t know that you have to worry so much, General. In my experience, the Eden Plague doesn’t limit you as much as it enhances your own self-defined limits. Otherwise we wouldn’t have Psychos.”

  “Like JT, you mean? I was wondering when you would get to that.”

  She sighed. “There’s no other explanation. That’s what Skull’s note says. He contracted the Eden Plague, it defines him as a Psycho, now he can’t use the nanites like he wants to, until the lab comes up with something that’s compatible. Then when they do, you give it away to Markis. That must have sent him through the roof. But what’s his next move?”

  “Get rid of me, somehow. Sideline or kill me. I’m the only thing standing between him and control of the Tiny Fortress program. If he had that, he could direct development of any kind of nano he wanted. He’s trying for complete control through McKenna, if these addictive nanites Skull talks about are real. I wonder –”

  Tyler abruptly pitched forward, a spray of blood washing across Christine as he fell heavily against her. Her mind registered the report of the shot as she dropped him to the sand and threw herself beside him. His eyes turned to her, pleading, burning, and she reacted the only way she could, seizing his flaccid arm and biting it viciously. She slopped saliva into the wound, praying and willing the Plague to take hold, praying and willing Tyler’s wound to be survivable, dear God save him for he’s our best hope.

  Several more shots peppered the sand nearby but with all good fortune they had gone to ground in a slight hollow, the kind that saves footsoldiers and bedevils snipers, and her hopes and prayers lifted skyward to encompass the base’s reaction forces. They had to have heard, or had reported to them, the loud reports of shots fired by a high-powered rifle. We only have to survive for a few minutes and they will come.

  She heard the crackle of radio voices, realizing that Tyler had a ‘brick’ along, a heavy clunky walkie with surprising range and power, a symbol of command in this modern age as much as the .45 on his hip. She reached for the device, yelling for help into its face, launching her words into the ether.

  Later, in the ambulance as she held the General’s hand and attendants pumped fluids and solutions into his veins and she saw that he would survive, her supplications turned to thanksgivings. She stayed with him to explain to the MP major what had happened, enough to widen his eyes and anger him at this violation of his domain and his commander, and told that she had been forced to make him an Eden. She reminded him that this changed nothing about his chain of command. “The General is still the General.”

  The man raised his chin and accepted her words, especially as she bolstered his duty with his respect for her commissioned rank, a stability helpful in dealing with shattered subordinates. He marched off resolutely, glad of orders, righteous fire in his eyes.

  Forman left Tyler there in the hospital bed, surrounded by his loyal men, or so she hoped, praying for the man’s son and his suborned henchmen to remain a few more minutes in the shadows. She ran at a sprinter’s pace the few hundred yards to her apartment and to her ace in the hole.

  Six hours later Tyler was back on his feet, issuing long-delayed orders to Fortress Team Two in Cheyenne Mountain.

  -49-

  Relieved to be once more in uniform, Gunnery Sergeant Repeth crept forward toward the side door of the New White House, not so white really but a mixture of white accents and sandy Southwest tans looking like blurs of grey in the fading light. The muzzle of her suppressed PW10 sniffed forward, her every sense fox-sensitive.

  Already she had gently gunned down three Secret Service agents, the coughing of her weapon sounding like a desert bird or perhaps an echo from a mistuned motor engine, something passed by as ambient noise. The Needleshock combination she was using included an additional soporific; she hoped she would have at least two hours before any of them woke up.

  The knob turned but the door did not budge, as expected. Nothing for it, really, this was the moment she had anticipated but delayed as long as possible. Readying a pair of Needleshock grenades, filled with tiny unitary capacitor module shrapnel, she took a deep breath and then reared back, slamming her booted foot mule-style into the door.

  It popped open with just one bang, a better result than she had hoped. She pushed through it as it came back at her on its hinges and she ran, crouching,
pinless grenades in one hand, PW10 tight to her shoulder in the other.

  The first figure she saw went down in a coughing burst of ‘Shock, sprawling in the middle of an anteroom with three more exits. She slid forward along the wall and tossed the explosives through the two open doors and kicked the third with her booted foot.

  It resisted stubbornly, three blows, then finally splintered on the fourth. She fell deliberately to the ground and rolled to the side as high-powered pistol rounds zipped and popped through the opening, followed by the chattering of heavier bullets from an assault rifle. A ricochet stung her calf but she ignored it.

  Scrambling to the door-frame she slid the muzzle of the PW10 around the corner and thumbed it to full automatic, sending a long spray of needles ricocheting around the President’s office. She followed this in a roll, dropping a magazine and reloading as she moved. Two pistol-wielding Secret Service agents lay sprawled in states of embarrassment, bloodied but destined for Edenhood. The door across the room slammed shut.

  Cursing under her breath, she threw a shoulder painfully against the barrier, feeling its solidity and lack of give. Safe room, she thought, an armored refuge of last resort. I have to hope it is proof against comms transmissions as well, that the last Secret Service agent remains incommunicado inside with the President. Time to cut my losses and run.

  She heard alarms beginning as the Executive compound woke up, and she estimated she had three minutes before the whole of the reaction force would come down on her like an avalanche of bricks. Reaching into a cargo pocket, she pulled out a hard case with rounded edges and placed it on McKenna’s desk. Who looks at all the pen cases, cigar cases, and mementos on someone’s desk? She had to hope the President would notice it, as others might not, and read the note. She had to hope he would use what was inside to free himself from the addictive nanites. And she had to hope the syringe of Eden Plague, made from her own blood, would even work. That’s a lot of hopes. Better than being a White House slave.