Desert Angels (3 page)

“Yep,” I said. “Will pick some up, a six-pack at Lenny’s, then head back to the salt mines.”

I turned to leave.

“What is it you really do out there, Dr. Calisto?” Aunt Sheila said. “I know you’ve told me before it deals all with physics, but really … that is kind of vague.”

I watched Mathias through the window as he met up with three of the women in his cult near a dilapidated van. He referred to them as his wives of God. Including a girl that looked like she was barely thirteen years old.

I looked to Aunt Sheila, as I began to walk away.

“In the words of Father Mathias, I would like to think I’m doing God’s work, too.”

I walked out the door, unaware of course, that the next time I saw Father Mathias, he would be a mutated monster, scarred and homicidal in the extreme. And his entire cult population would likewise be contaminated and beyond rehabilitation. They would come to be known in my circle as Maddogs.

Mathias and the Maddogs would prove to be mortal enemies to the human community I would soon inherit by proxy of global annihilation.

WALTER

That night, as I expected, I transformed.

I was human again, as old as I had been when I died. The transformation was so extraordinary that for half an hour I simply reveled in human, tactile sensation. I felt as I did before I fell ill. I went to the kitchen and pulled out some chocolate that Jack had purchased in town that day and took a bite. I closed my eyes in ecstasy.

I opened them a moment later, realizing instantly that it was incumbent upon me to perform a critical duty.

I went to Jack’s quarters and found a pen and paper, and began to write. The note was as follows:

Jack, you do not know me, and I cannot explain to you who I am. But there is a storm coming your way, and your responsibilities will be great. Realize that in two days, the War to end all Wars will indeed transpire. Ninety percent of the planet will die, mainly from the radiation fallout, but also due to a cosmic shift in things that will alter the very fabric of known physical understanding. I do not wish to be so vague – I do not understand it myself – but from time to time, I will communicate to you thus, and try to be of assistance to you. Please do not ask what I am … but I will give you my name, which I believe is entirely appropriate. Your Guardian Angel.

I held the note in my hand for nearly five minutes, doing nothing but thinking about the apparent lunacy of what I had just written. For a moment, I just stared down at Jack, my one and only love. I so wanted to kiss him, but I was fearful he would awake and I would instantly be transformed into Walter, the pigeon. I repressed my instinct and instead placed my note on his desk and put a piece of chocolate under my name – Guardian Angel.

I had a whole night to enjoy being human so I exited the facility now known as Eden and looked out over the cool night. I had brought a blanket with me, as the desert in December is far from warm. But I did not care. I looked up at the sky, and saw a waning moon. It seemed to me that the cosmos were perfect, that all was in place, that there was only perfection in all things.

I knew, of course, that this was far from true.

I knew that violent and dreadful times lay ahead, and it would be my Jack who would have to bear the burden of those times to the extreme.

I stayed outside until dawn. I napped a bit and dreamed of days of love long past with Jack, my husband and soul mate. When I awoke, there were tears in my eyes.

I saw the sun rising over the eastern hills, and ran inside, realizing that Jack, per his habit, would awaken at the crack of dawn.

I rushed into his quarters and kissed him on the lips.

ONE – THE GUARDIAN ANGEL

Jack awakened with a start, Walter flapping nearby in mid-air. He had been dreaming again. Of Angela, of course. Those dreams of his wife were the only dreams he ever had. With some wry amusement he attributed this to sadly lacking imagination.

They had met when they were both in college. He was the young genius from MIT, whose theories in particle physics would one day transform the world, and she was the bright young scholar from Boston University, eager to heal mental illness wherever they found it.

She was the daughter of a steel magnate and could have fallen in love with any of the more than adequate suitors from equally wealthy origins, but Angela Wilkes had eyes only for the reclusive young scientist from MIT.

He was an ill-tempered lad, not one to suffer fools gladly, and did not appear overly interested in dating; in fact, Jack and Angela had met quite by accident when their two bikes collided on a narrow street that led to both MIT and Boston University.

Jack had fallen ass over teacups in his effort to avert a head-on collision with Angela, but she was still knocked off her own 10-speed by the force of impact, both cyclists turning a blind corner far too fast for their own good.

Neither of them were hurt, but Jack insisted on taking Angela to lunch for his carelessness. That lunch was the lynchpin to their relationship; his cool, cynical view of a world rightfully run by electromagnetism, gravity and positive and negative forces was a diametrical opposite to Angela’s dreamy scenario that the world was a mystical place of wonder and constant change.

He found her both beautiful and beguiling.

They were married one year later.

He was nabbed by NASA for its propulsion research team, and she opened her own private practice for psychiatry. They suffered a devastating loss to their prospective family when Angela miscarried in her seventh month of pregnancy. Shortly thereafter, she began to manifest very tangible and frightening episodes of psychic capability.

Angela’s father took a pragmatic approach to his daughter’s talent, having the specialists at Duke University, one of the foremost psychic research centers in the world, take on her case. That learned school of edification attested to the genuineness of Angela’s gifts and endeavored to find out how powerful her precognitive capabilities were.

Angela pulled back on continued research the day her vision came to her of the end of the world, which she shared with her father and Jack. Because her attendant psychometric skills were undeniable to her father, he took her vision to be one hundred percent bona fide and a snapshot of Mankind’s future by way of God.

Shortly thereafter, Angela was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer, or more specifically, an astrocytoma growth, and all research discontinued permanently into her unique gifts.

Through all of this, Jack was so immersed in heartbreak for his wife’s condition, little else intruded into his private family nightmare. Not so with Angela’s father, who contracted virtually every available architect at his disposal and top engineers and builders. The purpose for this was to create an Ark for human survival – an Ark that Jack would captain once doomsday hit.

Cut to the here and now, and Jack looked to Walter, flapping around him.

“Mornin’, Walter,” he said, watching Walter land on a nearby bookshelf.

He rose slowly, and as was his nature, wandered over to his desk where both a laptop and stand alone PC computer were stationed side by side.

Per routine, he would usually check his emails first, of which there were very few; he had become a virtual recluse to friends and former colleagues. His parents had passed away in a plane accident twenty years earlier and his brother had died a year ago from a heart attack at the age of thirty-eight. He had been one year younger than Jack, and Jack would forever be mystified by his brother’s premature passing, as his brother had lived a life of near dietary perfection, free of any unhealthy life-style choices … the likes of which Jack possessed in abundance, including the occasional cigarette. His brother did not drink; Jack, conversely, considered himself a moderate to heavy drinker, periodically telling himself that he would one day modify such behavior.

That day had yet to arrive.

Only one email this morning and it was from his father in law, Thurmond Wilkes.

How are you today, son?

That was it.

Jack could not help but smile. Thurmond was a man like himself – possessed of a remarkable thrift of language.

Jack responded in kind.

Pretty good. Waiting for Armageddon.

Bought some beer for the occasion.

How about you?

Jack then checked the CNN website, and the news was pretty much as dreadful as it had been for the past month. Iran had officially threatened to launch its three existing nuclear missiles at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The United States put its military assets on full alert in the Persian Gulf, and off the coasts of South Korea, as North Korea was threatening to launch missiles on Japan and South Korea, should any adversary to Iran retaliate on a nuclear level to Iran’s attack. Pakistan and India were snarling at one another as well, Pakistan taking Iran’s side, India taking no particular side but fiercely in opposition to any military action foreseeable by Pakistan.

The Russians were now officially threatening the United States, and vice versa. Canada likewise was rattling its limited nuclear capability, and Venezuela, who had acquired several nuclear weapons in the past few years, threatened to immolate most of South America should the United States become involved in the Middle Easter imbroglio.

Jack sat back in his chair, suddenly weary.

Christ, was crazy old Mathias right, not to mention my deceased wife? Was this shit going to get completely insane?

He turned and noticed a piece of paper, with handwriting on it. He began to read.

As he finished, he did not realize he was standing.

He looked up and around his quarters. In another moment, he opened a cabinet behind his desk, and pulled out an M-16 assault rifle, and a .9 millimeter Beretta automatic pistol.

He moved toward the entrance of his room, and looked into the hallway, in either direction. He realized he was breathing rapidly.

He also realized the obvious: There had been an intruder to the facility last night – someone who had the opportunity to have killed him if he so desired.

But how the hell did anyone get in here? Electrified fencing, motion sensors on all entrances and exits; video surveillance on all ports of entry as well. It wasn’t possible?

Could someone have come up through the underground water tank rooms? No, that wasn’t possible, either, the floors were steel and virtually welded into the bedrock of the mountain.

Jack spent the next two hours searching high and low, every room, sub-lab, bunk room, kitchen, water-room and generator-room, for any sign of a trespasser. He thoroughly searched the enormous bunker that had been constructed to house shelter for hundreds of refugees, when and if they were ever to arrive from out of the nuclear wasteland.

At the end of his search, and after he had determined there was no breach to the main or rear tunnels carved out of the mountain and which exited half a mile behind the main Dome superstructure, Jack determined that whomever had written the letter to him had obtained entry into his home by some other means than conventional entry.

He returned to his quarters, after stopping by one of the kitchens to pick up a Coors, and re-read the ambiguous letter from his new acquaintance – His Guardian Angel.

“What the hell am I dealing with?” Jack muttered to himself.

He sat back in his chair, as Walter flapped over to the desk, and began to cluck and coo and stare at him with those beady red eyes that reminded Jack (for no particular reason) of Dorothy’s ruby slippers in the Wizard of Oz.

“Looks like we have company, Walter,” Jack said, pouring some wheat grain from a bag onto the desk. Walter pecked at it greedily.

Jack skipped his exercise routine that day in favor of concentrated thought on who the hell had gotten inside his otherwise inviolate sanctuary. At the end of his point-by-point mental analysis of the conundrum, Jack came up empty.

The Guardian Angel was a ghost.

He did not really believe this but at the moment he had no other logical answers. Of some comfort, whomever had breached his private refuge had no immediate interest in harming him. For this relief much thanks, he thought idly.

But someone had gotten in.

Was the intruder still here, cleverly eluding his every search attempt?

Not possible.

No, it was possible. And probable.

But how?

God damn it, he hated mysteries.

Someone – or something – now had access to his home, and promised to pay him future visits, unannounced and uninvited.

And there was nothing he could immediately do about it.

* * *

Jack spent the remainder of December 22, into the wee hours of the morning, setting up additional video surveillance cameras in his sleeping quarters and the adjacent hallway. In this way, he reasoned, he would capture images of the alien intruder at some point in the near future.

Walter accompanied him everywhere, every moment of the day and night. So hell-bent on his mission in discovering the identity of his uninvited guest, Jack barely noticed the bird’s constant presence.

He set up the first camera in his room in a place that he was confident would never be detected, wired in the corner opposite his bunk bed, and able to survey the entire area through a wide screen.