by W D County
The doors opened and the zombies entered with flashlights and handguns. The wall-mounted emergency lights switched on, casting unmoving beams chopped into harsh shadows by the tables and chairs. In contrast, the flashlights of the three gray explorers swept back and forth like searchlights across a prison yard.
I whispered, “We have to get to the security office. Through the galley.”
She looked brave and beautiful with her profile caught in pale reflected light. The intensity of her face portrayed a sense of strength and purpose that felt reassuring. Like backup for a dangerous mission. I suppose that’s what she is. It isn’t fair what I have to do.
The galley door opened and a zombie pushed through. Shit. The back door no longer provided a clean getaway. Things could get ugly. They always did when I brought a knife to a gun fight. I grasped Zita’s hand and duck-walked to a table closer to the galley. We avoided search lights and moved again to the next table.
The zombie guarding the galley door stood no more than eight feet away. He held a light in his left hand, a semi-automatic handgun in his right. I tightened my grip on the kitchen knife.
Her hand touched my shoulder and I nearly jumped. The muscles of my arms and legs were tightly coiled steel springs. I cast a mean look at her.
She whispered, “Don’t kill him.”
I stared at her in utter disbelief. “There’s no other way.”
“Find one. It’s essential, absolutely essential, that no one be killed.”
I glared but eased the knife into my leg sheath, unable to disregard the conviction in her voice. Sometimes this woman knew things.
I crept forward like a lion stalking a gazelle, then attacked the man from the side. I grabbed the gun with one hand and stepped behind the man to clamp my other hand over his mouth. A push to the man’s knees brought him down. The gun didn’t fire and the man didn’t shout, but the flashlight jerked wildly. My hand stung.
Zita rushed forward, grabbed the man’s wrist, and applied pressure to the radial and median nerves. The flashlight dropped into her hand. She turned to face the room and swept the beam on a slow, low arc around the room. Neither of the other explorers came to investigate.
I dragged the man into the galley and locked him inside the walk-in cooler. The door to the mess hall opened and I tensed.
“It’s me,” Zita whispered. She came close and scanned me with the flashlight. “Your hand is bleeding.”
I looked down. “Blocked the hammer with the webbing between the thumb and index finger. Ripped the skin a bit. Nothing serious.” We moved to the pantry and then to the door that opened to the main corridor. I peeked outside. “All clear. Move fast.”
We dashed to the security office. It took two seconds to punch in the code, two or three more to duck inside and shut the door behind us.
The security office drew power from a separate circuit; the lights here worked and the surveillance monitors were online, although they showed only shadows and exit signs powered by battery backup.
I sat at the main console and stared at the three sets of covered push buttons. The first set could unleash poison and hellfire inside the vault. The now empty vault.
The second set would eradicate life the same way for anything inside the observation room. The now empty observation room. How the hell did Choirboy escape from both the vault and the observation room without setting off alarms?
The third plastic lid covered a single button. The manual activation of the failsafe protocol would destroy every living thing inside the base. I flipped open the cover.
“Miles.” Zita’s eyes were wide. So wide that her irises were islands surrounded by a sea of white. “Listen to me. Listen very carefully.”
My finger hovered over the button. She stared at the one-inch gap between life and death.
“Neither poison, nor fire, nor anything else you can unleash from this room can harm Barry. You would kill everyone except the person you want. Do you understand?”
“The color has spread too much.” My hand trembled. “I have to stop it. There’s no other way.” She was probably right about the poison, but fire would incinerate everything. It had to.
“There is.” She seemed reluctant to say more. Her gaze rose from my hand to my face.
Was she still an ally? Or did the taint get into her head like it had for everyone else? “Zita, Barry has to die and the taint with him. If there’s another way, spit it out.”
She grimaced and bit her lip. “Okay. The taint doesn’t cover his entire body. A bullet in the right place will kill him. The taint won’t see it coming if it’s from you.”
“And I can’t see where it’s going. Barry’s body is entirely gray to me.”
“That’s where I come in. You need me.”
Was she offering to be my spotter? I considered the possibility. It seemed mighty risky.
She seemed to read my mind, and a glimmer of confidence returned to her face. “Hey, I saved your ass, remember?”
“Is that what you call it?” I withdrew my hand but kept the cover of the failsafe button open. “Okay. I assume you have a plan. Let’s hear it.”
Chapter 51
Zita worried about sharing her rudimentary plan with Miles, because it was still evolving and more importantly because it ran counter to the soldier’s inclinations. His misgivings regarding the extent to which she relied on intuition added fragility to their newly formed bond of trust. If she stressed that bond by insisting that no one be killed, he’d likely reject the plan out of hand.
She hadn’t totally solved the puzzle of the taint, but knew that it (and hence her plan) must take into account everyone’s beliefs and expectations, especially Barry’s. The intricate interplay of motivations reminded her of a grandfather clock—the meshing of individual gears, the constant pull of weights, the inexorable swing of the pendulum, the anticipation of chimes. Barry was the pendulum that kept things in motion. He had to be stilled. Not killed.
That would be a sticking point in getting Miles to cooperate.
She pointed to the monitor that showed the conference room. The darkened room showed only hints of movement. The microphone picked up murmurs of conversation. “The team is gathering in the conference room for the broadcast. That’s where we’ll make our move.”
“Which is?” Miles managed to sound both curious and patronizing.
Don’t lie... and don’t lose his trust. She took a breath. “Barry wants the world to see him become immortal. Oddly enough, most of the team want him dead. They can’t kill Barry because the taint protects him from harm. That is, from everyone except you. But you can’t see his weak points, the parts of his body where the taint hasn’t covered. I can. We’ll work together.”
Miles rubbed his chin. “You want to be my spotter, telling me where to aim.”
“Sort of,” she agreed, wondering how far she could bend the truth. “The others might pretend to fight you, putting on a show of protecting Barry, but they want you to kill him.”
“Why? What’s in it for them?”
“They each have a motive for wanting him out of the way. The point is that no one is going to seriously oppose you.”
“I doubt that.” The furrowed brow and thinned lips conveyed the gravity of his thoughts. “We can’t take the chance of something going wrong. I’ll trigger the failsafe protocol. It’ll release a knockout gas to put everyone to sleep, then incinerate the entire base.”
“Killing us, too.”
He cocked his head toward a door on the side of the room. “We’ll be safe inside the office. Its walls are insulated and there are gas masks in the armory. The rest of the base... well, except for the concrete and steel, everything will be ashes. When it cools, Hauser will send a rescue party.”
“Hauser can’t be trusted. The taint corrupts people. Or rather, it motivates people to corrupt themselves.”
“Choirboy will be dead. The world will be safe. That’s all that matters.”
“Right goal, wrong s
trategy. The taint protects Barry. You might kill everyone else, but Barry will remain alive and in control.”
He shook his head. “The base will burn at over fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Even if he doesn’t pass out, he’ll burn to a crisp, and the taint with him.”
“Are you sure? Really sure? Do you understand the taint better than I do?”
He gave an exasperated sigh. “Then what the fuck can we do?”
“We go in together, like I said.”
“Absolutely not. You need to stay here. Nathan wants to kill you.”
“I can take care of myself.”
Miles smiled ruefully. “Under most circumstances I’d agree. But not this one. Slick has telepathic control over those zombies and telekinesis to boot. I’ve had firsthand experience with that shit.”
Me too. She shuddered at the memory. “I’m coming. You can’t see the taint. I can.” She recalled the swirl of colors and shapes. She could almost hear it.
“Which is why you’ll stay here watching the monitor for the conference room and using your cell phone to tell me where to shoot.” He crossed his arms.
She swallowed self-consciously, touched that he put her safety above his own. “Too many things can go wrong, Miles. The camera might not give the required angle of view. The lights might not be bright enough. The phones could stop working. You’re invisible to the taint, but it gets glimpses of me, and it will know we’re working together.”
“Won’t you going in make that problem worse?”
“It gives me—us—more options. More leeway to improvise.”
He seemed to mull it over. “So,” he said, “we rush inside, take out Choirboy, and end this fiasco. Game over. We win.” He looked at her as if expecting confirmation.
She searched for a convincing way to say You’re wrong. But Miles had to convince himself of that. “Suppose we do exactly that. Let’s anticipate what could go wrong.”
Miles nodded and pursed his lips. “What if he’s dressed? His head’s already fully tainted. We need to get his clothes off to give me a clear chest shot.”
“I’m pretty sure he’ll be naked. He needs the taint to reach a hundred percent.” A disturbing thought popped into her head. Like a countdown.
“The freak’s an exhibitionist.”
She pictured herself parading down the hall naked the night before last in her hypnotic fugue. Inwardly grimacing, she said, “He wants people to see the taint.” Awareness, said a voice in her head. She mentally shrugged it off. “Its patterns infiltrate our minds.”
“Never thought I’d say this, but lucky I’m color-blind.” He gave a wan smile. “I’ll kill power to the conference room. That will stop the cameras and prevent the taint from growing.”
“Good idea, although we better plan on Sonja having backup power. At the very least they’ll have flashlights and candles. And afterward they’ll use the surveillance tapes for a delayed broadcast.”
“What’s so damn important about the broadcast? If Choirboy is dead, it’s game over.”
“The taint”—Awareness, repeated the silent voice—“doesn’t experience its environment the way we do. It detects patterns, initially by searching for reflections of itself. It interprets the patterns it finds and to the extent possible acts to complement those patterns.” She knew from the blank look that Miles didn’t understand, so she simplified. “The taint... let’s call it the Awareness...”
“Whoa. Awareness?”
“I think that’s what the taint calls itself.”
His eyes narrowed, but she didn’t have time assuage his suspicions. “Anyway, the Awareness can read minds of people who have seen it, and it does its best to grant the desires they have.”
“Like a genie in a lamp?” Miles said derisively.
She nodded. “Wishes are dangerous. The explorers believed they were in danger and wanted to be as far away as possible from the tesseract, so the Awareness sent them to a place so distant, so utterly alien, that their minds weren’t able to cope. If they had simply wished for protection, as Barry did, their fate would have been different.”
His eyebrows rose and he leaned forward with a questioning gaze. “Then we can wish for their minds to be restored?”
She hated to dash his hope. “The Awareness didn’t take a snapshot of their minds. It can’t recreate what it doesn’t know, and it won’t go into the past to obtain information—it’s a very forward-looking entity.” How do I know that?
“It brought back John,” Miles insisted.
“Not really. It fetched a living John from a parallel Earth.”
His eyes took on a haunted expression as he squirmed in his seat. “Are there parallel taints?”
“Probably not. I think its native habitat is the void between universes, between dimensions, not necessarily bound by physical laws. In a sense, it’s nearly omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. Pretty close to Barry’s definition of God.”
“What does Choirboy want? How far south can this mess go?”
“Miles, can you call Barry by his name? Underneath that mantle of color, he’s still human.” She sighed at his scowl. “Barry means well. He believes he’ll be resurrected as a divine being whose purpose is to impose worldwide Christian fundamentalism on all of humanity.”
She hoped he grasped the seriousness. That isn’t the only threat, said the inner voice. She maintained an outward look of intensity while inwardly wondering who the fuck was in her head. Barry? But why would he advertise his intentions? Was he so naïve as to think she would support his religious coup?
Miles frowned. “Choirboy... Barry... can’t really come back from the dead. Right?”
“We can’t take the risk. That’s why you can’t kill him. We just need to stop him.”
His face swelled into utter incredulity. “You have got to be shitting me.”
“Trust me.”
“Right.” He flipped switches to kill both main and backup power to the conference room, then grabbed a .45 from the armory. He checked the magazine, chambered a round, and slipped the gun into his holster. “Let’s go.”
The corridor was empty. They crept toward the conference room.
“Wait here,” she said outside the door. “I need something.” Her footfalls echoed off the walls as she dashed to her room and grabbed the modified colorimeter from her dresser. As she turned to leave, something on the bed caught her attention. Shere Khan, her stuffed tiger, no longer wore an eye patch. Its smile gleamed beneath two shiny black button eyes.
She paused to pat his head. The alien thoughts came from the Awareness. But why? Because it grants desires. She wanted to solve the puzzle of what was happening, so it gave her a missing piece of that puzzle. Its actions revealed the real problem and the solution. The pattern of events suddenly clicked into place.
She rushed back to Miles, who stood at the conference room door, gun raised. “There’s a third option!” she said, bubbling with excitement. He ignored her, threw open the door, and burst into the room. Her elation plummeted. Immunity to the Awareness made Miles a wild card. Immunity to her made him a threat.
Chapter 52
I ran into the unlit room with gun drawn, round in the chamber, cocked and safety off. My eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom. Choirboy stood at the far side of the room on a low stage that used to be the top of the oval conference table. A glow suffused his naked body. Shadows shrouded the rest of the room in a gray veil and a sense of dark anticipation.
No one stood between me and the enemy. Everyone had lined up on the flanks. Revenant, Mopes, Brainiac, and Kingpin on the left, with the boss nearest to Choirboy. On the right, Psionic Slick stood with his three henchmen, each armed with a 1911 Colt .45, just like mine.
Zita nearly walked past me with one arm extended to feel her way. “Miles?”
I took her hand. “Here.”
“I understand things now. I know what—”
“Quiet.” I didn’t like the way Slick stared at Zita. He looked
as hungry and predatory as a cat watching a bird. I leveled my gun at his chest. “Nathan, don’t so much as twitch.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
With a mind of its own, my gun swung in a lateral arc until it pointed at Zita’s head.
“Nathan,” Choirboy said. “Behave yourself. Miles is here because I wish him to be here. Do not interfere with his mission. As for your grudge against Ms. Ferrari, forgo any action until after the broadcast.”
“It’ll be too late then,” Slick grumbled.
“Too late for any and every thing,” Zita said. Her eyes must have adjusted enough to see my gun, but she didn’t seem bothered. I swung it toward Choirboy.
She continued, “Barry, this won’t turn out the way you plan. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the taint. It isn’t God and doesn’t grant miracles.”
“Blasphemy!” he roared. “We will hear no more of it.”
“Let me explain... Oh damn!” She sighed with annoyance and said, “They can’t hear me, Miles. Barry’s warping reality. It’s how the taint works.”
Sure enough, the team members looked puzzled, watching her lips or turning an ear her way. All except Revenant.
“I can hear you,” he said.
Zita spun toward him. “How?”
Before he could answer, Choirboy said, “Gordon, please proceed.”
At last, show time. With a steady two-handed grasp on the Colt, I took aim on the naked threat. “Zita. Where?”
Kingpin said, “Sonja, you may proceed.”
Brainiac flipped a switch on a jury-rigged mishmash of batteries and cables. Lights blazed all around, illuminating the room and leaving me temporarily blind.
“It’s beautiful,” Revenant said. There was no mistaking the reverence in his voice, and I realized this was the first time he’d actually seen the taint.
Squinting until my eyes were mere slits, I located the flood lamps perched on two stanchions. Four shots took them out, the noise deafening as the gun bucked in my hands. The abrupt return to darkness came with the acrid tang of gunpowder. Four rounds left in the magazine, but I’d only need one to take out Choirboy.