The lost castle wyrd boo.., p.21
The Lost Castle (Wyrd Book 3), page 21
Frank is holding a business class ticket. With the barest of smiles, she takes his ticket and repeats the seat number, handing it back to him. He feels one slender index finger caress his palm. And it still feels like live electricity loose on his skin.
He barely acknowledges her and heads toward his seat just a few rows behind the curtain that will soon separate the two classes.
The massive plane pushes back from the gate twenty minutes later, and Frank is only pretending to listen to the inflight music program. In actuality he’s hearing everything Jordana’s lapel mic is picking up.
“Can I offer you a champagne before takeoff, Mr. Ravenhill?”
“Doctor, and oh I shouldn’t... but, why not?” A creepy chuckle.
Frank notices the girl, the woman, in the short trench coat, long legs and high heels, take a seat just behind the curtain. She’s Eurasian. A wide-brimmed hat. A silk short mini dress revealing dangerous curves and an athletic body. Long straight dark hair casts itself along one shoulder. It’s when she sits down, flicks open a large magazine she’s not reading because she’s too busy looking into first class, that Frank spots the tiny Black Hand on the inside of her palm. Hiding between thumb and forefinger. She only barely nods at the massive gorilla with the broken nose that squeezes, barely, along the aisle past Frank and off to the seats further back in the massive jetliner.
When Frank gets his first scotch, he pulls out a fountain pen that’s also a scalpel and filled with deadly poison in a tiny reservoir that emits from the tip when the top of the pen is pushed upon hard enough. Hard enough to jab into someone’s neck. Besides all that, he can write with it too.
Using a quick code, Frank jots a note for Jordana who checks the cabin every twenty minutes, always casually gazing past Frank, waiting for a sign.
He nods and she feigns taking a drink order and picking up plastic cups filled with the watery remains of others. Frank barely shifts the napkin to the side of the tray without even acknowledging her.
Danger. 2.
8A.
? to the Rear. Big Guy. Broken Nose.
Jordana reads the note in the flight attendants’ service area and immediately sends it into the tiny trash container.
She knows the Black Hand is onboard. The meeting isn’t in Thailand. The meeting’s here. Now. On this flight.
She adjusts her pillbox flight attendant’s hat, checking her piled hair and the two pearl-studded, poison hairpins adorning it. She straightens her outfit and nods pleasantly to another flight attendant who enters the galley.
The woman begins to chat about something as she bends down. Her smock slips, causing the neck of her dress to gape open on one side. On her shoulder is a tiny, badly done Black Hand.
Chapter Forty
As the massive truck was being backed into position, Steele came back over the net at Braddock.
“Paladin, you are compromising mission integrity. Rejoin the convoy immediately if you want to survive. Now.”
“Negative, Warlord. We are not leaving these people. Either we take them with us, or help them get clear of the area. We will not continue the mission until we assist.”
Silence.
Braddock watched the other Humvees come to a halt farther down the length of the darkened mall.
On the other side of the MRAP, the dead, just a few at first, began to beat at the side of the giant vehicle blocking the smashed entrance. The mall survivors pushed makeshift debris around the edges of the gaps. Beyond the dead, uncountable more dead were filling the wide and once vacant parking lot where shoppers had come in droves to find every bargain imaginable.
Steele came walking out of the shadows further down the mall. He was carrying the big Mossberg tactical shotgun, and Braddock remembered how he’d used it on the last guy who’d disobeyed one of Steele’s orders.
Draw now and go for it, urged some voice deep within Braddock. Right here. Right now. Best chance you’ll ever get. Maybe the only one. Maybe the last one.
“Sky’s startin’ to get dark again,” warned Brees. “Just like it did back at the El Cajon Pass before the...” Braddock looked up at the overhead atrium and saw that the natural light was once again roiling with dark masses just as it had before they’d hidden in the warehouse. Just before the trap.
Dark blurs seemed to dart from cloudburst to cloudburst.
The Ancient Hunter.
And..
The Sisters.
And...
Whatever it takes.
Braddock turned toward Steele in one swift motion, ready to draw and fire.
Except the big man already had his shotgun leveled at Braddock’s midsection.
Boom, thought Braddock. I’m dead.
“Get back in your MRAP,” ordered Steele without any tone in his voice other than the dead flat delivery he always used. “We need every available asset to reach the objective, Captain. Taking civilians will only decrease our odds of survival.”
Braddock reached... for his canteen.
Unscrewed it.
Drank.
Waiting for the blast that would end all of this. Whatever “this” was.
When it didn’t happen, he screwed the cap back on and looked straight at Steele.
“Imagine what the odds will be all by yourself.”
Not an ounce of movement. Not a tic. Not a tell. Not even a facial muscle clenching in some kind of determined yet restrained rage.
Braddock continued.
“We need to secure these people, Steele. That’s what we do. What we did. Once. We’re humans. You don’t want that... fine. Take whoever will go with you and try to make it through that toll road on your own. My guess... you’ll need every gun blazing. And right now... you’ve got one less.”
Silence.
Braddock waited.
Everybody watched.
“Our odds are...” began Steele like some child who wouldn’t have the facts interfering with his narrative.
“I know that,” interrupted Braddock, low and deadly. “But this is the way it has to be. You want me? You take them.” Braddock indicated the survivors milling about in the shadows.
Steele watched him. Braddock could feel the full weight of the massive computer Steele called a brain. As though thought was merely crunching data behind the mirrored sunglasses. The giant in front of him... who wasn’t really a man. He was a monster, like a shark, watching him, and adding things up. Scanning him. Smelling for blood in the water.
What is he? wondered Braddock. What is he really?
Some massive dark shadow blurred across the wan light coming through the skylights of the mall high above. Then it was gone.
“We can either defend this mall...”
“They’re here,” interrupted Steele, looking skyward. Braddock was sure the giant man was somehow tracking the shadowy blurs in the darkness of what should have been a blazing endless noonday sky. “Load the civilians into the vehicles. We’ve got to move. Now.”
Steele was off and heading back toward the lead Humvee.
Braddock turned to the woman with the gun.
The forest of fists was rising as more and more zekes pushed at the far side of the MRAP. Pounding against the side of the vehicle as though they knew if they kept that up, they could smash everything. Even the world.
“Get your people into any vehicle they can squeeze into. We’re getting out of here. Now!”
“Out... of... here...” she mumbled slowly. Then mouthed the words again without sound.
“Do you realize what you’ve done!” she shrieked suddenly. “You’ve killed us all!” she screamed. “We were safe here. All we had to do was be quiet and they’d leave us alone. Now...” her eyes were wild and rolling, weeks’ worth of tension surfacing into a hysterical rant. Her mouth contorted between a cry and a sneer. Braddock could see she had once been a beautiful woman. As little as two weeks ago. Before all this. The type that had a personal trainer and drove a brand new BMW to her executive job.
Braddock slapped her.
“Get...” he was low and close. In her face. “into the vehicles. Now! Stay here... you’re dead.”
Within two minutes the people, some screaming, some crying, were being loaded into the convoy vehicles. Crawling in where they could. Jamming in among the weapons, explosives, and mercenaries.
Braddock did one last check of the convoy and gave the hand signal to move out. Hearing her words again and again.
“You’ve killed us all.”
Probably, he thought.
The convoy started off, slowly threading the darkness of the mall. Headlights played out against sudden scenes of normalcy amidst the shadowy blue gloom of the inner recesses deep within the mall.
Braddock told Gautreaux to wait, giving the convoy time to get father down into the mall.
“Brees, you keep up the fire until we get out of here. Use it all if you have to. Keep ‘em off the convoy.”
“Copy that, Cap.”
The woman, the children, and some others who’d squeezed in with them stared in horror and amazement. Silently knowing this was where the journey got weird. Where one departed the barricaded known for the dangerous and exposed unknown.
The monster military vehicle pulled itself away from the makeshift barrier as debris and zekes spilled inward. Mindless. Starving. Murderous.
The minigun opened up, spilling hot brass shells everywhere, raking the crowd of undead pushing inward from the shadowy daylight beyond the ragged tear in the cemetery of commerce that was once a mall. Stumbling forward only to be cut to pieces along the arcade of silent shops that would never sell again. Marketing posters and smiling cutouts watched all the carnage and insanity without comment. Cell phones and pretzels were still for sale. Beautiful models urged the survivors and zekes to enjoy these things. Or so the advertisements would promise until it all burned, or faded into meaninglessness.
“Keep it slow, Gautreaux,” warned Braddock. “Gotta keep them off the main body until the convoy clears the mall.”
Zekes came in ragged waves, following and falling, chasing and being disintegrated beneath Brees’ automated blur of leaded mayhem.
In the side mirror, Braddock could see surging zekes being pulverized by the lead-storm of the gun. And still, they came on, never minding. As though it were the ultimate offensive line and its depth was unknowable. Relentless. Tireless.
The big MRAP turned on to the main concourse of the mall, crushing kiosks and sending scattered goods in every direction. Zekes were now overtaking the MRAP, runners running, their hoary faces masks of desperate anger. Their jaws worked tirelessly as though they were already at table. These were the new kind. The kind that had only recently appeared. The fast movers.
Were they evolving, wondered Braddock, studying their faces beyond the thick safety glass of the passenger window.
Ahead, one of the Humvees was swarmed. Zekes were crawling in through every smashed window. The gunner was gone. Braddock scanned the shadowy mall. A wide concourse like a dry riverbed was filling with more zekes from other entrances. Coming out from every direction within the mall as though the barricades were gone now.
Or removed?
The gunners from each Humvee were shooting wildly, laying waste to scores of the dead in every direction as hundreds more took their place like raving addicts of some new terrible drug that just had to be obeyed.
This is where you die, Darling.
“Warlord to...”
Zekes were slamming into the MRAP like falling sacks of wet cement. Thumping, beating, and below it all, a whisper-rasp growing like an avalanche of white noise coming down the mountain for everyone in the world.
How much of the world is left, Darling?
“All units!” called Steele over the net, his voice loud and strident but still eerily calm. “Button up and follow the lead vehicle. We’re leaving this facility now.”
Gunners withdrew into their hatches as the dead continued to swarm the vehicles, and suddenly Humvees were speeding off, dragging corpses under their wheels.
A shadow darted out of the gloom above and smashed into a Humvee farther up. Then it flew off into the recess of the vaulted ceiling. It was carrying one of the flailing mercs. When the MRAP passed the vehicle, its doors were torn off the hinges and zekes were swarming the interior. Blood and the bright lights of gunfire up close and personal were everywhere for a moment. Then it was just a mass of moving gray corpses like some dumpster rat pile.
“Fun, eh, Cap-i-tan?” prompted Gautreaux as he ran over a fast mover weaving in front of the vehicle’s high beams. A child in the back of the MRAP was wailing. Braddock shook his head. The guy was right. Keep it light.
“Y’know, Cap-i-tan...” Gautreaux turned down a walkway that led toward another exit, through a food court, following the speeding Humvees ahead, smashing into mall furniture and sending kiosks flying. “That was the right thing to do. Leaving people behind... That’s bad business, eh?”
Braddock said nothing.
Ahead they could see full sunlight beyond the food court as Humvees smashed through more tables and sent chairs flying.
In time the dead fell behind as they approached one of the smashed entrances to the mall. Behind him in the rearview mirror Braddock could see blurry shadows moving and darting in the heights of the gloomy mall like sudden angry hornets enraged and furious.
Chapter Forty-One
Beyond the door was a factory.
At least to Holiday’s eyes that’s what it looked like. Some kind of high-tech automated car assembly plant. Except that everything was an antiseptic white. Or gleaming steel.
Nothing moved. Everything was motionless but on the verge of somehow springing into precision mechanical life. Holiday wove through low benches that were like operating tables where spindly hydraulic-assisted arms hovered above like the legs of mechanical spiders.
He passed racks of surgical instruments and mechanical tools. Engraved on every surface were small bar codes or long strings of hexagonal ones and zeroes.
In the distance he could see one operating station come to life. Banks of monitors suddenly flicked on with dull, barely audible, electronic thumps. Like a high-end stereo coming to life once the power had been switched on. A pulse. Then from out of nowhere, drones began to ferry various components from different parts of the lab to the operating table.
The hovering arms began to twitch and move, adjusting components, then suddenly firing hot lasers, or going in for furious bright kisses of spot welding. In seconds it became a frenetic dance of metal arms and components punctuated by high speed drills or sudden shrill bursts of precision grinding.
Holiday moved forward, one stunned step at a time.
A mechanical skeleton was beginning to take shape on the table.
Hydraulic legs. Pneumatic piston arms. Complex multi-jointed metal hands.
The hovering surgery and assembly arms worked quickly to fasten everything together.
Holiday was now rooted to the spot, watching the skeleton as the monitors above showed what could only be various testing diagnostics that seemed to come and go every few seconds. There were no words. Just more ones and zeros falling down across the screen in an almost random order that seemed on the verge of incomprehensibility.
And then Holiday’s face appeared on one monitor near the gleam-smiling titanium cranium that had just been attached and spot welded onto the spinal hydraulic assembly of the machine taking shape on the table.
It was an image capture.
Another one appeared. It was Holiday and Jesus standing at the entrance to the simulation. Holiday’s body was graphed by an electronic pulse of laser light and then what had to be measurements, but expressed in the same computer-speak of ones and zeroes, appeared across his body.
Another monitor started with a wide shot and then irised in on his arm.
The words skin match appeared on the monitor.
Another monitor showed Holiday again. Except this time he was in the video game. It was a recording from earlier. Holiday watched himself holding the automatic shotgun. He could see random sudden quick pulses of laser light scattering away from the barrel. But nothing else. No trenches of Verdun. No blood and mud and death. Just a dark charcoal gray mist surrounding everything.
Category Operation Mode: Infiltrator appeared on a screen.
And then beneath that, a small message began to flash.
Unit Incomplete: Awaiting Skin Harvest/Reclamation and Neural Imaging Download
A small monitor showed the pit where Holiday had fallen. It switched views from looking up the shaft to looking down the shaft. Then, it finally settled on a surgical table at the bottom of the shaft. Surgical arms waited motionlessly, their blades and scissors gleaming in the pale blue light.
Waiting for a corpse that would fall into their embrace. Waiting for Holiday at the end of his fall.
Unit Incomplete: Awaiting Skin Harvest/Reclamation and Neural Imaging Download
Chapter Forty-Two
“Keep calm,” someone once told Frank. “And have a plan to kill everyone.”
That someone was a mysterious Spaniard named Reyes who taught everyone in the order how to kill. He’d heard something like that from someone else. Some other killer. Now Frank would have to kill just as he’d been taught.
The Gorilla.
The Eurasian.
The Stewardess.
And Ravenhill. But Frank wasn’t counting Ravenhill. Ravenhill was already dead. He just didn’t know it yet.
The 747 banked over the clouds, turning to catch some high altitude flight corridor, the sun brightly shining through the tiny square windows in the main cabin. The sunlight reminded him of Marie. Their day at the beach. All the good things in his life.
What am I doing here? thought Frank. And if we both get killed? Jordana and myself. What? What happens to our little girl then?
