“Wha . . . what . . .” No more eloquent words came.
“Don’t hurt us!” the voice repeated, and it was a child’s voice, a child’s voice and, Dekka saw, a child’s face, a child’s head.
All four heads belonged to young people, the youngest maybe ten, the oldest perhaps sixteen, three yelling soundlessly beneath bell jars, the fourth crying, “I want to go home, I want to go home, don’t hurt us, I want to go home!”
“What are you? Who are you?”
“I’m Lashawn Wilkins,” the near head responded, voice tearful and terrified.
“What are you doing here?” Dekka demanded, but before she could get an answer a second drone came whizzing through the hole she’d made in the outer glass. It zoomed in, hesitated as its controller searched for the target, and then leveled its machine gun right at Dekka’s head.
The drone spoke with the mechanically distorted voice of Tom Peaks. “Dekka, stand down, I don’t want to hurt you.”
“What in God’s name are you doing here?” Dekka cried.
“Surviving,” the drone with Peaks’s voice said. “These four will form the vanguard of a cyborg force capable of taking on people like . . .”
“Like me,” Dekka supplied.
“Simple choice, Dekka: You serve your country, or you are an enemy. Join us, or die.”
Why was he explaining? Then Dekka saw his problem: the drone couldn’t fire at her without hitting some of the decapitated heads. Yes, she thought, but it could still maneuver to get a different angle.
He’s stalling!
There was a shwoop from a steel door opening quickly at the far end of the room, a door large enough to drive a car through. And indeed, through the door came a vehicle unlike anything Dekka had ever seen. It had rubber tank treads rather than wheels and lay wide and low to the ground, rising no more than three feet. A blank steel box with treads, but even as it pelted toward her the front panel dimpled and a cannon barrel protruded.
And yet it, too, did not fire. It might not need to, for from one side of the robot vehicle now grew an articulated mechanical arm, and at the end of that arm was a whirling blade, like a table saw.
Someone’s been watching robot wars on YouTube.
Dekka dropped to her knees, aimed her hands, and shredded the drone, which came apart as if it were made of confetti.
The tracked vehicle zoomed to its left, trying to come around the table. Dekka crawled and then jumped up and dodged left, keeping the four heads between her and the tank.
Now a voice came booming through the public address system: Tom Peaks sounding like Jehovah in a bad mood. “Carl! Kill her and I will free you!”
There was a shwoop sound once again, but smaller, nearer, and from the corner of her eye Dekka saw that one of the massive glass cell doors was sliding open.
From that cell emerged a nightmare creature. It had four legs, legs as thick as tree trunks. Its torso was vaguely human, as if the four legs had been grafted onto a white, hairless body that bulged with coiled muscle. The thing had two arms, each maybe eight feet long, so long they would trail on the ground if the creature dropped them. The arms ended in claws that glittered with the dangerous hardness of titanium.
The head was twice normal human size, slung forward on an elongated neck that seemed barely able to carry the weight. The creature’s face . . . ah, that’s what stopped Dekka from instantly shredding it, for the face was undeniably human—twisted by a mouth bulging with dagger teeth, and with small eyes that blazed red, but that were still unmistakably human.
“Take her, Carl! Now!” Peaks shouted from everywhere at once.
The monster with the prosaic name of Carl rushed with supernatural speed. In half the blink of an eye it was on her, its massive arms coiled around her waist, pinning her arms to her side, and though this strange body of hers was strong, it was like a child in the grip of the creature.
Its huge head, its glittering, mesmerizing mouth, was inches from her face. And it spoke.
“Kill me,” it rasped.
“I-I-can’t breathe,” she managed.
“I will help you, but you must promise to end this. End me!”
“But I—”
“Swear! Swear by whatever is holy to you!”
Dekka’s head was swimming, her vision reddened, and she felt vast strength in the monster’s arms, strength great enough to crush her right here, right now, to end her life in a second’s time.
“I swear,” she managed through a strangled throat.
The creature released its grip. “Tear those glass doors apart, free those prisoners, and follow me!”
Dekka looked back at the glass walls forming cages. The nearest glass was starred, as if it had been battered from the inside. She couldn’t see well through the glass—it was too thick—but she made out one person clearly enough, a very tall white boy.
Dekka made a pushing motion with her hands. “Stand back! Stand back!” The tall white kid backed away and she hoped the others she could not see had done the same. Then she howled and the thousands of pounds of hardened glass disintegrated into a bee swarm of fragments. Glass shards fell and piled up.
“This way!” Carl yelled, and bounded toward the door the tank had come through, the tank that had now circumnavigated the table of heads and was sighting its weapon on Dekka.
The monster shoved her ahead, and the tank opened a deafening cannon fire, 20 mm shells exploding, but all striking the back of the creature named Carl. Smoke rose from behind him, shrapnel cascaded and clattered everywhere, and Carl’s body shook with the impact.
Dekka ran for the door, into a tunnel carved into the rock with only the floor paved smooth for the tank.
“Keep going,” Carl cried. “It comes up through Tower Two. Go to the top, there’s an emergency escape pod there!”
“Show me!”
Carl gripped her arm with one irresistibly powerful claw, the titanium nails stopping just short of cutting her flesh. “My name is Carl Pullings. I’m from El Segundo. Find my mother, tell her . . . not this. Tell her . . . tell her Carl loves her.”
“Come with me!”
The massive head shook slowly. “You don’t understand: they see me. The dark ones, the eyeless watchers, they’re in my head. They hurt me! They hurt me! It’s pain!” Carl screamed the last word. “Kill me! Kill me now or I swear I’ll kill you!”
He released her arm and pushed her away. He was blocking the door, cannon fire apparently having no effect as the tank emptied its magazine in futility.
“I’ll find your folks,” Dekka said. She squeezed his arm. “Thank you.”
Dekka raised her hands, opened her mouth, and Carl flew apart into pieces of gore. Dekka fled, fled in panic and an agony of the spirit, racing down the dimly lit tunnel with tears blurring her vision.
Side tunnels opened to left and right, but she kept straight ahead, her mind shattered by what she had seen, what she had done. Straight and straight and there, yes, the position was probably about right. A circular staircase rose, but it was too narrow, the steps too shallow for the creature she now was.
They see me! They’re in my head!
And Dekka, too, saw them, sensed them, felt their amused gaze, felt the brutal minds that seemed to reach into hers with tendrils like black smoke.
“Back to normal, back to normal,” Dekka ordered herself, and looked down to see her hands resuming their usual shape. Human once more and free of the watchers, she propelled herself up the stairs, two steps at a time, stumbling, hauling herself up, running, gasping, reaching a door that was blessedly unlocked, and through onto an open platform. She was atop one of the towers in the vast cavern. All around her, robotically controlled machine guns were trained on the main floor below, and something that looked way too much like a massive ray gun. No guards.
And there, on the edge of the platform, hanging over the side, rested three pods the size of subway cars. They were helpfully stenciled Escape Vehicle 2-1 through 2-3, and beside
the front hatch was a big red button shaped like a mushroom. She slammed her hand down on the button, and the nearest hatch opened. She spilled inside, gaping at what might as well be a passenger jet, with five rows of seats, four to a row. She had entered from the side and rushed to the front, pushed her way into an unoccupied cockpit with front-facing window and three more buttons, labeled from left to right one, two, and three.
She hit them in sequence—one, two, three—and a canned voice said, “Please clear the doorways. Please clear the doorways.”
Then, with a soft shush, the doors closed.
The mechanical voice helpfully warned, “Please buckle in and prepare for launch.”
Launch?
With unsettling speed the escape pod tilted back, bringing the cockpit to face skyward, or at least toward the stalactite-festooned ceiling of the cave.
“Launch in three seconds, two, one . . .”
Dekka fought gravity and exhaustion and hauled herself into the sole seat in the cockpit just in time to be slammed down by a sudden acceleration. The vehicle shot straight up, straight toward the ceiling, straight toward what must at the very least be several feet of rock, but at the last second the rock ceiling shimmered and disappeared.
A hologram!
The escape pod flew up, up though the hologram, up through a short tunnel, burst through a glass dome like Willy Wonka’s elevator, and flew on another hundred feet straight up, up into blue sky, up toward towering cumulus clouds, and then came the roar and shudder of rocket engines catching fire. The pod leveled with stomach-twisting speed and soared on stubby wings, zooming over the facility, arcing toward a wide, flat space of cleared ground at the edge of the fence.
At the edge of, but still inside, the fence. Looking down, Dekka saw SUVs racing to the preprogrammed landing spot, and ahead armed men spilled from a small guardhouse, automatic weapons at the ready.
She was sure the skin of the escape pod was not bulletproof and they would blow her to straight to hell before the slowing escape pod could land at its preprogrammed target.
Time to change.
Dekka shredded the windshield of the pod, cleared it away, and then tore up the ground between her and the guards, showering them with a hailstorm of dirt and debris.
The escape pod landed gently, its only gentle move so far, and Dekka was out, leaping with the sure-footed agility of a cat. The fence was ahead and beyond it the woods, but she was not fast enough or strong enough to run for long, certainly not fast enough to outrun the fit guards, let alone the SUVs racing to cut her off.
And then she saw it at the edge of the parking lot: the dirty vinyl cover. She ran toward it like a burning woman running for water. She snatched off the cover and in a single fluid bound was astride her motorcycle.
“Chase this, assholes,” Dekka said.
She kicked the engine to life, popped the gear, and rocketed ahead, swerving dangerously—this body balanced differently from her own—and went straight for the nearest section of fence. Gunfire erupted behind her, and she crouched low, flat across her gas tank, twisting the throttle all the way open.
She raised a hand and howled, and the double row of barbed-wire-topped chain-link became a shower of penny nails.
Into the woods, between tall pine trees, tires bouncing over roots and ruts, fishtailing as she turned. She hit a glancing blow at a tree but kept her balance, and there was tarmac ahead: the road!
Up onto the road she motored, loving the welcome smoothness, and the motorcycle passed seventy, eighty, ninety miles an hour, trees whipping past on both sides.
The SUVs wouldn’t catch her. The SUV had not been built that could keep pace with her Kawasaki. But in her rearview mirror she spotted two drones closing the distance.
B-r-r-r-r-r-t!
Bullets pinged off the tarmac and ricocheted into the trees.
Faster!
At a hundred miles an hour the drones were no longer gaining. At 110 they fell back, machine guns sputtering futilely as she outdistanced them. Dekka racked her memory: How long was this road, where did it come out? If she reached populated areas, would Peaks still attack?
A hundred and twenty and Dekka was pressed low and flat on her gas tank, morphed paws gripping the handlebars, wanting to revert to her more easily balanced body but knowing that if she skidded out at this speed it would certainly kill her human form.
A new sound, like the bike, but in a different pitch. She risked a glance. Nothing. Risked a second glance, and spotted a helicopter gunship, dark, dangerously sleek, and bristling with missile pods.
There would be people in that helicopter, a pilot at least, maybe more, just government employees, not people deserving to die, but was there an alternative? Her bike was fast, but the gunship would have at least fifty miles an hour on her.
Then, appearing ahead, the gate and the guardhouse!
The helicopter fired; Dekka heard it, heard the explosive thrust of a rocket motor, hit the brakes while downshifting, and fought to control the bike as the missile overshot and exploded the ground before her. The bike rolled through a storm of smoke and debris, and Dekka was skidding on her side, the bike sliding away from her, skidding and then tumbling, and finally coming to a stop in a cloud of dust and pine needles.
She rose, her body screaming with pain, raised her hands, no time for regrets, no time for second thoughts, saw the helicopter coming in slow to blow the smoke away with its rotor wash and get a clear shot.
She had a glimpse of the pilot, a woman from what Dekka could see of the face below the helmet.
And then as Dekka wearily readied to destroy the helicopter, something white and shockingly quick tore from the woods. It leaped fifty feet, used a tall sapling as a sort of parkour launchpad, and flew through the air, claws—for it had claws—outstretched. The creature smashed into the side of the helicopter and seemed to lose its mind, ripping, tearing, bashing, as the helicopter went into a spin and the pilot leaped to what would surely be her death.
And then the helicopter, the creature, and anyone else aboard the doomed aircraft crashed to earth like a duck in hunting season.
Dekka hobbled to her bike, lifted it far more easily than she could ever have managed with her own body, prayed, kicked the starter, finished the prayer with a heartfelt Amen to the engineers at Kawasaki, and zoomed toward the gate, which she shredded and blasted through, off the facility grounds and through the trees, and then kept going at speed until she reached a town.
She stopped in the parking lot of an In-N-Out, panting for breath as she resumed her normal form.
She was shaking. Her whole body, like she had fever chills.
For what felt like an eternity, Dekka sat there on her bike, sat with the engine still throbbing, as she tried to put together the pieces of what she’d just seen.
Living heads. A boy named Lashawn Wilkins from who knew where. A monster named Carl Pullings from El Segundo. A vast underground chamber of horrors with God only knew what other atrocities.
And murder. Hers, of Carl. Hers, of the guards with the blanks. And others.
One thing was clear: Tom Peaks had not waited for his ASO Mother Rock to be recovered before preparing the Ranch and its chambers of horrors. The secret underground at the Ranch must have taken years to build.
In fact, four years, she guessed. DARPA had been preparing since the FAYZ. DARPA hadn’t been waiting around; they’d been conducting ruthless, horrific experiments that testified to great fear, and great ambition.
Peaks was a criminal, a madman. A madman serving a government that had lost all remnants of decency. A government that had simply torn up the Constitution and used fear to justify horrors that belonged in the darkest pages of history.
Dekka knew she needed to get off the grid. She needed to avoid her home, her friends, anything Peaks and company might be able to track easily.
Where should she go?
Where should she point her bike?
But of course deep down Dekka already knew
where. She had made a promise to the man she killed. So, south. South to find Carl’s mother.
What do I tell her? How do I lie to her?
Then she spotted the unusually tall blond boy wearing nothing but a pair of stretched and baggy underwear. He saw her, too, and with a laconic grin stuck out his thumb.
“Who the hell are you?” Dekka demanded.
“I’m the guy who took out that helicopter. And I’d really like to get the hell out of here.”
“The pilot?” Dekka asked.
The white boy shrugged. “Last I saw, she was limping away.”
Dekka closed her eyes in relief. “Look, I’ll take you a few miles, after that you’re on your own.”
“Fair enough,” said Armo.
He swung a long leg over the bike and settled on the seat behind her, more than doubling the passenger weight on the bike. He put his arms around her waist.
“Careful,” Dekka snarled. “I’m not into guys, and I’m not in a great mood for bullshit.”
“Thanks for telling me,” Armo said. “Because sex was totally what I was thinking of right now.”
“You got a name?”
“I go by Armo.”
“Dekka.”
“Where we going, Dekka?”
“Home,” she said.
Dekka turned her bike south, south along the Pacific Coast Highway, which would eventually take her to Carl’s mother in El Segundo.
But first it would take her to Perdido Beach.
PART TWO: HERO, VILLAIN, MONSTER
Interstice
Tweets from @JustinDeVeereArt
I am person from Golden Gate and LaGuardia. Terribly sorry for loss of life. I am unable to control creature called #Knightmare. 1/2
Given alien substance by government. Not my fault! #Knightmare is result. Trying to gain control of it. Pray for me. Justin DeVeere. 2/2
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My name is Justin DeVeere. I am an artist. I was given a substance originally from the Perdido Beach Anomaly by people with the US government. They lied to me and used me. The result is the monster Knightmare. I have no control over Knightmare, he is a creature who is easily angered and very, very dangerous.
Monster Page 19