7th son, p.19
7th Son, page 19
An atheist’s death, is that what awaits me? Where is the justice in that? I know who would have the answers. A priest.
Thomas chuckled again. He was losing his mind, probably.
The phone on the line rang again and again. Finally, a recording took the call. Thomas wasn’t surprised by that, either.
“Hello. You’ve reached the home of Karl and Jaclyn Smith,” the machine said. “We’re not home right now, so leave a message and the time you called, and we’ll get back with you as soon as we can. Thanks, and God bless.”
That’s rich.
Beeeeeep.
“It’s me,” he found himself saying. His hand slid across the table and grasped his rosary. These were his worry beads now. “I’ve come to back to my birthplace. I know everything. I know that the people who I remember calling mother and father are still alive. And I know that you two guided my life, under orders from this place. And only now do I suspect that I’m calling a special number, the exclusive ‘Aunt and Uncle’ line—a phone line created and answered only to maintain a ruse. You’re probably already tucked away in a bunker, safe from the hell spawn this project created.”
The tape rolled on, listening. Thomas held up the rosary and watched the crucifix sway back and forth in his hand.
“I don’t know what’s going to drive me mad first: the fact that I am what I am . . . or that my life had been all but plotted before I was even ‘born.’ Just how many of the decisions I’ve made over the years are mine? How many times did you slip a philosophy or religious book into my hands, to show your ‘support’ of the interest I had fleetingly taken? And was that interest sparked by my will or by yours? It was so long ago. Those things you don’t really remember, do you? ‘When you’re too young to count, it’s tough to keep score.’ Isn’t that what you once said, Karl? Huh. I wonder what your real name is.”
Thomas let the rosary slip through his fingers. It bothered him to hold it. It bothered him to not hold it.
Through the window, Thomas spotted the marine, who was stepping into the Common Room from his quarters. His face was flushed; perhaps Michael had been crying.
“I’m staying here, you know,” Thomas said into the phone. “I must. Must search for the truth, for understanding and answers—just as I always have. And maybe I can find something that’ll bring some spiritual peace to these six, these brothers of mine. That’s ironic and hypocritical, I know that. Don’t you think I know that? But this is what I know, it’s what I’ve lived. I can’t let it go completely. Not yet.”
No, not yet, he thought. There’s plenty to look into. Why did they pull Dad out of the Ops room this morning? What was he saying? What are these people hiding from us? Where did they get the money for this place? And what about—
He picked up the rosary again.
“I don’t know if you’ll ever get this message. And I don’t know if you’ll ever see me again. But I wanted you to know that I forgive you, Jaclyn. I forgive you, Karl. And I wanted you to know that I’ll pray that God has mercy on you. I don’t know how much weight a soulless man’s prayers have in the eyes of the Lord. Probably none. But I’ve been thinking about you two, and what role you’ve played in all this. I imagine you’ll need all the forgiveness and prayers you can get.
“Besides,” Father Thomas added, smiling bitterly, “I’m a priest. I’m doing what I was bred to do.”
He placed the receiver back on the cradle and gazed at Christ’s face glimmering from the rosary.
Isn’t It Obvious, Fleshling? You Have No Soul.
It was cold in here. So cold.
One Day. One day is all it takes. One day to take a man’s life and toss it upside down, back and forth, bash it against the rocks like a suitcase in those Samsonite commercials. Today was that One Day, John was the suitcase. General Hill, Dr. Kleinman, and their merry band of gun-toters and gene-splicers were the eight-hundred-pound gorillas.
John felt banged up and broken, both physically and mentally. He’d talked with the marine and Jack throughout last night and was suffering from a serious case of the nods because of it. There was good news, John supposed: yesterday’s cuts and bruises on his hand and face were mending well, and the muscles in his left arm, which had been twisted with playground-bully perfection by one of the government spooks, only throbbed from far away. The body was putting itself back together.
But the mind. Ah. That was a different matter altogether.
Suddenly a record deal and tour seem like lame-ass life goals, John thought. Now it’s piecing together a puzzle that was my mystery life . . . and finding Mom again, if she’s still alive. God, could she still be alive?
John shook his head. Enough. He pulled the rubber band from his ponytail and let the hair hang down over his shoulders and face. He rubbed his temples and scratched his fingernails through his hair, feeling its weight between his fingers.
Keep the questions at bay, bub. File them away for later, for when you get there. Focus on the call to Sarah. Sarah of the amazing Saturday sex. Sarah, fair woman whom I left waiting for menthol cigarettes and staring down a grumpy, hungry cat. Lucy, I got some ’splaining to do.
John knew she wouldn’t be at the gallery; last summer, Sarah had somehow finagled her way out of working Sundays. She wouldn’t be at his place—at least, John didn’t think she would. The only creature who could take full-time living in that grimy breadbox was Cat . . . and he was one surly fucker. Ring her cell phone. And remember that someone else is listening to your conversation.
He dialed. Sarah picked up on the third ring.
“Don’t be mad.”
“Holy shit,” Sarah said. “Where in the hell did you go yesterday? And you’d better not go all ‘I needed a walkabout’ on me, or I’m hanging up right now.”
John laughed. He couldn’t help it. Sarah, God bless you. I think I’m in love with you, girl. Not that I can tell you that just yet.
“Nothing like that,” he replied. “I promise.”
“Do you know how many people I’ve called, John? Do you know how many of our friends have been looking for you?”
My, my. She rounded up a posse. You might be in love with me, too. And you’re probably just as scared to say it as I am.
“Call off the search, darlin’. I’m okay. I’m rattled, but okay. It’s been an interesting day and a half.”
“People don’t just vanish.”
John’s eyes flitted as he searched for the right words—and through his room’s window, he spotted Father Thomas slipping out of his quarters and into the Common Room. Most of the others were out there now.
“I ran into some old friends.” He noticed Jack and then Dr. Mike, standing on opposite sides of the circular room. They weren’t aware of it, but both were scratching their heads with the same hand (the right) on the same place (just above the right ear). Mimes have nothing on these guys. “We go way back, me and these dudes,” John said, staring. “These are serious Old Guard folk. From before the fall of the Berlin Wall and all that.”
“Very funny,” Sarah snapped—which snapped John out of his stare. “So you’re on your way to get cat food, you bump into old buddies on the way, and you don’t even call to say ‘Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out’ much less ‘Buy your own goddamn cigarettes’? And what’s this old-buddy business? You didn’t grow up in Miami. You’re from Indiana.”
Crap. You never were a good liar, Johnny-boy.
He hesitated.
Go on. Dig that hole a little deeper.
“Well, that’s the part that’ll blow your mind.”
“I’ll bet. Save it. I thought we had something really good going on here, John. Open and communicative, if you get my hint. So, you want to tell me what’s really happening? You know, you’re lucky I picked up in the first place. The caller ID on my phone’s displaying some funky number.”
They’re scrambling the line, probably. Making it untraceable.
“What’s really happening,” John said, mystified. “I’m not in town, Sarah. Nowhere close. And I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“This has nothing to do with you, with us. We’re good, Sarah. We’re better than good—or at least we were. It’s just that something from my past kind of popped out of nowhere yesterday, and I’ve been playing catch-up ever since. This is the first chance I’ve had to call you, swear to God.”
“Right. So this is when you tell me you’re married.”
“God, no!”
“You’re wanted.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re two-timing me.”
“Sarah! No, no. It’s nothing like that! It’s something, uh”—Someone’s listening in, Johnny-boy. Remember that—“something I never knew about my past made itself, ah, manifest. No one could’ve seen this coming, least of all me.”
“Fuck me running. You’re gay.”
“Sarah, enough!” John cried. “It has something to do with my parents, okay? Something important.”
There was a click on the line. Then silence.
She’s hung up on me.
But she hadn’t. She’d just been taken aback, apparently. “Your parents? But they’re dead.”
“Right.”
Another click. That’s not her phone. That’s something else.
“What’s going on, John?”
“I can’t tell you right now,” he said hastily. “In fact, I think I should get off the phone.”
“But why? Why?”
“I can’t tell you why. And I can’t tell you when I can call you again. But I’m all right, Sarah. I just got to do this thing and then I’ll come home with a whole goddamn carton of Newports, I promise.”
“I’m scared, John. Why can’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“It’s the rules,” he replied simply. “I’ve got it bad for you, Sarah. I don’t want this to hurt us any more than it has. I’m yours, Sarah. Remember that. I’m yours . . . and I’ll be yours when I come home, if you’ll have me.”
She was silent for a moment, then said, “I’ll keep you for now. But don’t be too long.”
“Thank you.”
John closed his eyes. There wasn’t anything else to say—and there was a whole new world’s worth to say. Sometimes One Day does that to people.
“Just one more thing,” John said.
“Anything.”
“Could you, ah, adopt Cat for the time being? You know, feed him, pet him, and call him George? Just for a little while.”
Sarah laughed. “You’ve become quite the high-maintenance beau in the past twenty-four hours. It doesn’t become you.”
“Sorry. I just don’t want the critter going hungry.”
“You’ll be back to take him?”
“I promise.”
“Then it’s a deal.”
John smiled. He loved her. He sure did.
“You take care,” he said.
“Take some of that advice yourself.”
John thought of the group that was coming together outside in the Common Room. Things were going to get a lot more complicated in a few hours. People were going to get hurt. He could feel it.
“I will,” he said, and hung up.
“I will.”
NINETEEN
The Bucky Lastard shuddered as it tore through sky and cloud, lurching in the turbulence, jostling and unnerving the fifteen inhabitants of its steel belly. The V-22-X Osprey pilot was under orders to redline it the whole trip from Virginia to California, and to forget the flight—and its passengers—as soon as it was completed.
Pilot Les Orchard had voiced no objections when he’d received this proclamation an hour ago, standing before Brigadier General Orlando Hill on the off-the-map airstrip twelve miles west of the 7th Son complex. On the tarmac, Hill had invoked Code Phantom secrecy, and the pilot had flown enough off-the-books flights to know the rules. Ask no questions, and fly hard.
The men inside the highly modified V-22-X’s passenger/cargo bay did not know Les Orchard, but they knew he was redlining it. The aircraft—equipped with experimental VTOL jet engines—heaved and trembled under these conditions, rattling unsecured equipment crates off their pallets and across the payload floor. The men would get up, stagger and sway their way to the boxes to secure them. They gripped the walls as they scrambled back to their seats.
Few of them spoke; it was difficult to hear over the roar of the Bucky Lastard’s triple-timing-it engines. There wasn’t much to say, actually. Before they’d left an hour ago, Michael had briefed the eleven 7th Son guards recruited for the mission—more than half of the facility’s security staff. They appeared to be competent men, trustworthy. Word of this little soirée could never leave the fold. The men understood that. The men also understood quadruple combat pay, which General Hill had promised them.
The mission was dangerous, more cavalier than any official mission would be, and bordered on suicide. Armed with only scraps of information about the building—and absolutely no recon data or human intelligence—they were to invade Folie à Deux after nightfall. The recruits had asked questions, of course. Was the target inside the building? Michael told them that they didn’t know. What resistance could they expect inside? They didn’t know. The unanswered (and unasked) questions hung in the air during that briefing. Why were they conducting the mission at all, considering the catalog of risks?
Because this target must be eliminated, Hill had told them. He’s rabid. Lost his mind. Has access to technology that’ll tear this planet apart, if people find out about it. You’re going to make sure they don’t.
But you don’t go into the doghouse when the dog’s got rabies, one of the soldiers had said.
Tonight you do, Hill had replied. That comment had frightened them the most.
So, other than the roar of the V-22-X’s engines and the constant unnerving rattle of metal on metal, the personnel bay of the Bucky Lastard was quiet. Michael, John, Dr. Mike, and Robert Durbin sat among the 7th Son soldiers, strapped into their stiff-backed seats.
John, who’d never enjoyed flying, clutched his knees. Dr. Mike clenched his eyes shut. Only Durbin and Michael seemed unaffected by the conditions. John had glanced at the marine’s face during the worst of the turbulence and saw that Michael’s chiseled jaw never moved, the expression in his eyes never wavered. The man was a silent storm of focus and discipline.
The soldier sitting across from John screamed a “Hey!” John barely heard it over the rattling metal around him. He looked up and saw one of the men who’d thrown him into that that grinning white cargo van yesterday morning. John wanted to ignore the man . . . then he remembered what Hill had said in the Ops room: Don’t hold a grudge.
“Yeah?” John cried over the din.
“You’re the one from Miami, aren’t you?” the soldier hollered. The tag on his BDUs read JELEN.
A few of the other soldiers looked over in interest.
“That’s right.”
“You really drop out of college to become a musician?” Jelen asked. Above the din, the kid’s voice was high and loud, a squeaky door hinge. “We read your file before we picked you up. Said you were a dropout.”
“You didn’t ‘pick me up,’ ” John yelled back. “You kidnapped me.”
“So are you that guy or not?”
Now Dr. Mike and Michael were looking at John. The plane cleaved its way through another cloud, heaving them in their seats. John wanted to puke.
“I am,” he said finally.
“Kind of a waste if you ask me,” the soldier said. “You got a big thing like 7th Son under your skin, and you spend your time with, what, open-mic nights? I bet you even got a demo tape.”
A few of the soldiers whooped. John wasn’t sure why. Jelen seemed proud to have brought up the subject.
“This may not make sense to you,” John said, “but I didn’t want to take orders for the rest of my life. Didn’t want to salute to anyone, didn’t want to work in a cube farm, or whatever. I just wanted to be, well, me. I hit the road, didn’t look back.”
“Makes sense to me,” Michael the marine said. A few of the soldiers sitting near him glanced over. “Gotta find yourself if you want to fight the good fight.”
“Oh, honestly,” Dr. Mike piped up. “Dollars to doughnuts, you’re living paycheck to paycheck, John. Probably not even. What’s marching to the beat of your own drum got you, other than calluses?”
John looked up from the floor into Dr. Mike’s smiling eyes. “I’d rather drink my crappy light beer and strum my chords and live my very ‘live and let live’ life than be a cynical cocksucker like you. My checks might bounce, but at least I can sleep at night.”
Even more of the men “hoo-ahhed” at that.
“Touché,” Dr. Mike said, and saluted.
The Bucky Lastard flew westward, ever onward.
Dr. Mike, Michael, and John had left the 7th Son compound an hour ago, and despite having known them for just over a day, Father Thomas missed them. Their absence ate at his mind, as did the silence they had left behind.
Not until they were gone did Thomas realize just what a guiding force Michael and Dr. Mike had been, here in their little clique. Michael drew plans, cut through the group’s stammering confusion, and pushed people from being talkers to doers. Dr. Mike was selfish and standoffish, but blessed with an ability to glean meaning from the puzzle John Alpha had created. Those two were the closest thing to leaders this motley crew had. And now they were heading off into the literal sunset to be the cavalry.
And John? Honestly, Thomas didn’t know what to make of him. A sliver of the priest was suspicious of the ponytailed musician. John was charismatic in an unapologetically unpolished way; Thomas’s parish at St. Barnabas back in Stanton had more than its share of such folk. The man was sincere enough. But heading to West Hollywood like some righteous knight . . .
No, that wasn’t it. Like a rogue.
If there were rules in this world—and despite Father Thomas’s personal crisis, he still believed that—John didn’t seem to be the kind of man who liked following them. There were leaders of others, such as Thomas. There were followers. Then there were the few who led themselves, others (and followers) be damned. Masterless, that was John.
