by Ethan Cross
Demon could see a faint light at the bottom of the shaft. He gestured toward the hole and said, “Freedom awaits, boys. I hope none of you are claustrophobic.”
*
Maggie watched helplessly as Ackerman stormed over to Winston and jerked the big man up by the front of his prison-issued shirt. She pushed herself up onto her feet. Powell tried to stop her, but now wasn’t the time to recover, now was the time to push through the pain and destroy yourself, if need be, to get the job done.
She hobbled over in time to hear Winston say, “I overheard Lash tell one of the other guys that they would be exiting Foxbury at 7:00 a.m sharp. The big clock up there says that it’s 7:06 a.m. You don’t even know how they’re getting out. And even if you did, you could never run all the way down there, get past the crew holed up in the chow hall, and catch up to them. The odds on that would be next to nothing.”
Ackerman said, “First of all, never tell me the odds. Second, why would you want to help us?”
Winston looked over at Jerry Dunn, who had been sedated and was currently passed out on the floor with his eyes and face in bandages. The big ULF enforcer said, “I don’t want to have my soul sucked out through my eyeballs like CO Dunn over there. So I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get on your good side.”
Ackerman released Winston, looked over at Maggie, and grinned this self-righteous, know-it-all smile, as if he were trying to say how useful it was for him to be a scary wacko.
Maggie kept her disgust in check and said, “It’s for the best that they’re gone. The most important thing now is to establish contact with the outside and retake the prison. Then we can get the whole united law enforcement community to hunt down Lash.”
“We’re not far from the border.”
“We’re several hours away. Our best shot at catching them now is to do the two things I just mentioned. It’s not easy for me to admit it, but I need your help.”
Ackerman looked at her a moment with those piercing, gray, cold, analytical eyes. She expected him to protest and make her feel small and threaten to shoot her again.
He said, “Okay, little sister, I’ll back your play.”
Maggie was dumbfounded a moment, but she said, “Good. Where do you think we should start? There’s some kind of jamming in place. We could find that.”
Ackerman shook his head. “I would focus on the computer system. In order to regain control, you’ll need to convince Ms. Spinelli to quit playing for the other team.”
“What does that mean?”
“Haven’t you wondered how all of her coworkers were killed, but she survived?”
“You think Demon threatened her? Told her to work against us?”
“No, probably just ordered her not to help us.”
She said, “Then why even leave her alive?”
“For the fun of it. For the pure joy of owning someone else’s existence.”
“So he threatened her?”
Ackerman shrugged. “Probably her and everyone she ever loved.”
“Let me guess. That’s what you would have done.”
“Precisely.”
“So she was told by the man who had just murdered all her friends that he would kill everyone she ever loved if she helped anyone restore control.”
“Theoretically.”
“It’s going to be tough to convince her to go against Demon.”
“Indubitably.”
Maggie said, “Why are you talking like that?”
“I got bored with the conversation, so I started replying in all adverbs. Apologies. What are my orders, ma’am?”
With a couple of frustrated muscle spasms, Maggie kept herself from strangling him. Instead, she said, “I’m going to talk to Spinelli. You just stand right there and don’t kill or maim anything until I get back.”
She limped toward the back of the CCE and the hatch leading to the server room. She had to go convince someone that monsters and demons weren’t real, even though she knew they were.
*
Demon was the last down the ladder. As soon as his feet touched the soft surface of the mine’s floor, he realized another reason he hated fieldwork. He preferred surroundings that he knew and understood. Places where he knew what was real and what was a hallucination. He had forgotten how exhausting it was constantly trying to figure out if a scorpion was real or imagined in a place where they actually had scorpions.
The tunnel smelled of dirt and mold and diesel fuel. It was one of the mine’s originals, not something drilled out by the Chileans. Lash and his three lackeys—Demon hadn’t bothered to learn their names—stood nearby, shivering from the drop in temperature.
Demon pointed down the ten-by-ten tunnel and said, “Move toward the light.”
The group started forward, heading in the direction of the faint light glowing in a tunnel somewhere ahead.
Bony hands reached out of the walls at Demon, but he ignored them.
After what he guessed was a couple hundred meters, they found the source of the glowing light and, with it, their exfiltration point.
The light was battery powered and mounted into the ceiling of what was once a four-way intersection of two tunnels. Now, the tunnel ahead of them sloped down into water, essentially changing the intersection into a T junction.
The sets of scuba gear hanging from the tunnel wall would rectify that. In typical Judas fashion, each wetsuit, mask, flippers, and tank combination was labeled with the associated person’s name.
Although his handiwork was present, Judas himself was nowhere to be found.
But Demon saw another light burning down one of the non-flooded shafts. He said, “Get your wet suits and all your gear on, but do not turn on or breathe anything from your tanks until I get back.”
Lash still seemed a bit angry from their earlier exchange. The ULF leader simply gave a grudging nod and started getting ready. His followers did what followers did best.
Demon set off down the northern branch of the T junction. The shaft was different from the one they had started in. It was wider with old railway tracks in its center.
He traveled for what felt like a few hundred meters before he reached the light, but this one was only a breadcrumb leading him toward another faint glow down a shaft heading off to the east.
There was a television mounted on the wall. The weather was on. The weatherman had the head of a brown bear. The bear weatherman said, “Chance of showers in the afternoon, but you won’t be around to see that. You’ll definitely be dead by then, you pathetic fool.”
Demon ignored the television. He looked back in the direction he had come, toward Lash and a huge payday and then a return to his life’s work. He had noticed an extra set of scuba gear. He could forget about facing down Judas and leave now.
But Demon didn’t stop moving forward down the eastern tunnel, toward Judas. He would never stop. He was merely tired and letting his mind wander. He would never let Judas go and, to settle any internal discussion, the dark man stepped from the shadows and headed toward the beckoning light.
Demon followed and eventually came to a large open space or, at least, it was large compared to the tight confines of the mine shafts. The tracks ended in the middle of the room and joined a spinning contraption he guessed was designed to load and unload carts and easily turn them around in the proper direction.
The room wasn’t the size of a cathedral, but it was cathedral shaped, and it seemed set apart from the rest of the mine. A sanctuary of sorts.
The old mechanism for rotating the carts had been retrofitted by Judas. Now, the hand crank had been replaced by a whirring motor that was perpetually turning the entire plate and would continue to do so until its fuel source depleted or he walked over and smashed it to bits. Some of the Legion liked that idea—they hooted and howled, but he resisted the urge toward destruction.
In the center of the constantly rotating turnstile sat a small, black table with a large computer monitor resting on its surface. The screen’s ba
ckground was black. The lettering was a flowery script, like it was an invitation to a ball. The message read, “Please take your seat, and the show will begin … ”
It was at that moment that Demon fully decided on showing Judas no mercy and committed himself to the idea of his apprentice’s death. Judas always did have a flair for the dramatic, but this little game had gone far enough.
He was The Demon. He refused to be relegated to a player of any kind in some underling’s nervous breakdown.
Plus, Judas knew he didn’t like it when things spun. It aggravated his schizophrenia.
He considered kicking over the chair and smashing the monitor to bits. The Legion urged him on. But the dark man stood behind the chair, waiting for him to sit.
As soon as his weight hit the chair’s surface, the computer screen came to life and showed the smiling face of his apprentice, a man who had been going by the name of Bradley Reese. Demon couldn’t even remember the man’s birth name. He only knew him as The Judas.
*
Maggie found Spinelli staring at a computer terminal and crying. The terminal was mounted to the side of one of three enormous towers of whirring hard drives and processor fans. The floors of the server room were stainless steel. The towers were water cooled and lit with blue LED lights. The whole room made Maggie feel like she was stepping into Tron.
Spinelli didn’t notice her approach.
Maggie asked, “How’s it going?”
Spinelli jumped and wiped her eyes and said, “What? Excellent. It’s going great. I just need to write a recursive algorithm that will—”
“Why are you stalling?”
“I’m not. I don’t know what you mean.”
“They died and you lived. How is that?”
“I hid.”
“You’re hiding consisted of talking to yourself. Demon found you. What did he do to you?”
“Nothing. I mean I don’t know. What you’re saying isn’t true. I’m working as fast as I can.”
“You’re the only person who can restore control of this facility without violence and bloodshed.”
Spinelli teared up a little, but she said, “No pressure. Can I get back to work now?”
Maggie stepped up to Spinelli’s terminal. It folded down from the tower at standing height but looked adjustable. The whirring and clicking of computer components grew louder. She smelled melting plastic and rushing water. She said, “Go ahead. I’m just going to tell you a story while you work.”
“That sounds distracting.”
“I think it will help.”
Spinelli looked around as if she didn’t know what else to do, and then she stepped up to the laptop-style terminal and recommenced her typing.
Maggie said, “I never tell this story to anyone, but I told part of it to Agent William’s son, so I guess the floodgates are open now. And you know what, I think maybe I should tell this story more often. It’s about a boy and a girl. A little brother and an older sister. And the girl is told to babysit her little brother, but she’s really not old enough, but hey, Mom was just inside, folding clothes and watching her programs. Anyway, all those details aren’t important for you. What is important is that a monster crept up from the shadows, took the little brother, and told her to be quiet about it with a simple gesture. The point of the story for you is that this little girl followed his instructions and has regretted it for the rest of her life. I’ve often wondered why he didn’t just kill me. Why risk me running inside or screaming? Believe me, I had the lung capacity. But he didn’t do that because now he owns me. And it’s not a good feeling, is it?”
Spinelli started nodding her head and that turned to weeping. Maggie hugged her for a few seconds and then asked, “What did he tell you?”
“He told me that he would let me live if I followed his instructions.”
“What instructions? What did he have you do?”
“That’s just it. He didn’t want me to do anything. At least, not before 7:30 a.m.”
“What happens at 7:30 a.m.?”
“Nothing that I know of. I just assumed it was because that would give him enough time to escape.”
“Back up. So he told you not to do anything to help get the system back under proper control until after 7:30 a.m.?”
“Pretty much.”
Maggie thought about that specific time. Maybe it was just a precaution of a half-hour buffer for their escape, as Spinelli had assumed, but then why not 8:00 a.m. or 10:00 a.m. Why only a half hour?
“We can’t wait until 7:30 a.m., Lisa.”
“I have to. The things he told me … ” Spinelli started to cry again. “He knew my grandmother’s name. He knew where she lived. How could he know that?”
Maggie thought for a moment, choosing her words carefully, and said, “Your brother. This group probably blackmailed and made that same threat to your brother. Maybe that’s really why he sold out. Maybe they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. If that were the case, it would explain how Demon knew your grandmother’s name and address. They have a file on your brother and you.”
Spinelli blinked several times in quick succession. “A group of psychos for hire having a file on me doesn’t exactly make me feel better. I think I would have rather believed he was psychic.”
“Sorry. I just meant that we call them monsters, but they’re really just men. Broken, disturbed, and frightening men, but flesh and blood. They don’t have any supernatural powers or hold over us.”
“I don’t know about Demon. He’s—”
“Just a man. And we can protect you from him,” Maggie said. “But let me play out that original story a little farther. So that girl grows up and starts trying to find the man who stole her brother. The papers have called him The Taker. Every year on the anniversary of the abduction, the families of each of his victims receive a package from him containing a piece of clothing or jewelry or small piece cut from a shoelace. Something from the clothes they were wearing at the moment of the taking. Some of the families received hair. But anyway, the girl works with all the families. A lot of families. A lot of victims. And she convinces all of them to send what they receive on the anniversary to her.”
“Why did you do that? I mean, why did she do that?”
“Because I wanted to analyze every clue. Because I was going to catch the Taker.”
Spinelli said, “Why are you speaking in the past tense? It sounds like you’ve given up.”
“Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever catch him. I used to really believe that I would, but now I’m not so sure. I’ll get a new package in the mail next week.”
“I’m sorry about your brother.”
“Next week’s package isn’t something of my brother’s. It’s actually from the family of a little girl. Her name was Elizabeth.”
“How often do you get things like that?”
“Too often. I have the dates all marked on my calendar. The point is, Lisa, that he owns me. Even after all these years. No matter how many monsters I catch. He owns me. I did what he said. I followed orders. But I didn’t survive because of it. I lost my life that day because I surrendered to my fear. I’m still losing. I’m not free, and I won’t be free until he’s in a cage or in the ground. And it will be no different for you. I wish I could take this experience back for you, but I can’t. It’s done. As long as he’s out there, he’ll have power over you. The sooner we get this security system running, the better chance you have of stopping him and regaining your freedom. You don’t want to end up like me.”
Spinelli pulled out a handkerchief, wiped away the tears, and blew her nose. Then the young woman stuffed it back into her pocket. The whole experience nearly made Maggie vomit. First of all, she didn’t know that people still carried handkerchiefs. And second, the germs. The nose, the face, the pocket. Now, when she looked at Spinelli, she would forever see one of the Garbage Pail Kids, which, for Maggie, was akin to her darkest nightmares.
Spinelli said, “You’re right. Thank you
.”
Then Spinelli reached out for a hug. Maggie tried to ask if they could just fist bump, but she wasn’t quick enough. Garbage Pail Lisa wrapped her in a warm embrace and said, “I have some work to do.”
Maggie smiled back and said, “Let me know if you need anything.” But really all she could think about was a bottle of Germ-X she had spotted up in the control room.
She left Spinelli to her work and climbed the ladder up to the CCE. As she came through the hatchway, she was surprised to see Ackerman sitting cross-legged right beside the hatch’s exit.
She jumped and then said, “What are you doing?”
As she climbed the rest of the way into the control room, Ackerman stood up and said, “Eavesdropping.”
“Please note that normal people think that eavesdropping is weird and creepy.”
“Normal people rely on eavesdropping for the really juicy gossip. I was doing it because I’m watching out for you.”
“Don’t.”
She started to walk away, but he said, “I want to help you find the Taker.”
“I don’t want or need your help.”
“I think you actually believe the first one of those. But the second. You know better. Let me help you. When we get back, show me the case files, and the items he’s sent to the victims. Everything you have.”
After several seconds, Maggie said, “Okay.”
Ackerman said, “But I have one stipulation.”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course you do.”
“When we find him, and we will find him, I will not kill him for you. No matter what happens, his fate will be in your hands.”
She would never have admitted it, but Maggie felt more alive and awake after hearing those words than she had felt in months.
His fate will be in your hands.
She said, “That sounds good to me.”
*
The world was spinning, Judas was smiling, and the dark man was waiting and watching. Demon used every bit of self-control he possessed to keep himself from smashing the computer screen to pieces.
Judas said, “I regret to inform you, old friend, that I will not be in attendance today. I won’t be joining you ever again actually because, by the time you watch this video, I’ll be dead.”