Fatherland (Prequel to Primal Shift) (3 page)

“
W
ho are you?” Thomson
demanded.

The laughter grew
louder.

“Who are you God
damnit!”

The laughter stopped
suddenly. “Poor silly human. Of all of man’s creations, the existence of God
has been your greatest achievement.”

“Who am I talking to?”

“I am known by many
names and I have taken many shapes. At this time, I am known as Donald.”

“Why are you here?”

“I am a catalyst.”

“A catalyst? For what?”

“For change. What else?
Creation cannot occur without destruction. That is the only universal truth we
know of. From supernova to the changing of your seasons, the scale may vary,
but the truth is unwavering.”

Thomson’s eyes widened.
“You’re a harbinger. A grim reaper.”

“We have been known in
your mythology as such.”

“And now you’ve come
back as Donald to murder more innocent people, haven’t you? Don’t you think
we’ve already been through enough already?”

“We till the soil to
prepare for new crops. Death is only one of many consequences.”

“So what’s on the menu this
time? Natural disasters? Ethnic cleansing? Nuclear Holocaust?”

“A tiny spark of evil
exists within each of you. We do nothing more than nurture what is already there.
The fate of billions has already been decided. There is nothing you can do.”

Tears streamed down
Thomson’s face. He hadn’t been a believer before, but seeing now with his own
eyes for the first time...

A knock at the door.
“Mr. Thomson, are you nearly done?” It was Mrs. Kesler. Thomson turned back to
Donald’s prone form and spoke to the boy in a hushed voice.

“Now you listen to me
asshole. You’re talking about killing my family and everyone I’ve ever loved.
Hell, you might even be talking about stamping out the entire human race. I
can’t let that happen.”

Thomson heard the door
knob starting to turn.

“I’m afraid the course
has already been set,” the boy said in a deep gravely voice. “There’s nothing
you can do.”

“Yeah, try me mother
fucker!” Thomson shouted as he stood and wrapped his thick fingers around the
boy’s tiny neck. Behind him, he could just make out the sound of Mrs. Kesler
screaming.

“What on earth are you
doing? Oh my God, get away from him. You monster, get away.”

There was a cracking
sound as Mrs. Kesler brought Thomson’s laptop down on the top of his head.
Thomson’s eyesight began to waver. Donald’s eyes were bulging out of their
sockets and the boy’s face looked like a red balloon, a second away from
busting. Just a little longer. That’s all he needed.

Another crack and this
time Mrs. Kesler shattered the laptop over Thomson’s head, bits of plastic
casing and circuit boards components raining down all around them. That’s when Thomson’s
world went black.

H
e awoke in the hospital.
His hands were cuffed to the metal bed rail and his head hurt like a
sonofabitch. Brooks was dozing off in a chair next to him. At the door was a
policeman with his back to them, guarding the entrance.

“What the hell happened
after I left?”

It took Thomson a
minute to regain his senses. “That boy, he wasn’t human.” Thomson leaned in as
far as his cuffs would allow and he was whispering now. “He was the devil.”

The change in Brooks’
expression was immediate. “But Brody, he was just a kid.”

“He was not just a kid,
Brooks, open your eyes for once, would you. You weren’t there at the end. You
don’t know what he was planning.”

Brooks shook his head.

Thomson felt the
bandages wrapped around the crack in his skull. “That old lady got me good,
didn’t she?” He was smiling, but Brooks didn’t reciprocate.

“Do you even remember?”

“Remember what?”

“You strangled the
boy.”

“He’s dead?”  The look
on Thomson’s face was far from horror. He was happy and it showed. A strange
sense of peace came over him.

“Do you remember strangling
Mrs. Kesler?”

“What?”

“You killed both of
them Thomson. They found you in the driveway, sitting cross-legged.”

“I what?” Brooks’ words
weren’t making any sense. “It was only the boy I...”

Brooks was shaking his
head.

The cops were gonna
throw the book at him. Thomson could see that clearly now, but somehow the
thought of saving the human race from extermination was a price he’d been willing
to pay.

Beside Thomson’s bed
was a hand mirror. He wanted to see the extent of the damage Mrs. Kesler had inflicted
on him before he had... before he had made her stop.

Thomson reached for the
mirror, felt the cuffs dig into his wrists. He used his fingers to inch the
handle into his grasp. The bandages were the first things he saw, wrapped
around the top of his head like a turban. Then the dried blood at the top of
his skull and knew that was where his laptop must have cracked his head open.
But it was the mark on his cheek that caught his eye. A long patch of
discolored skin, pink and smooth it looked like a burn mark. The same one he
had seen on Donald’s face. The room started to spin and suddenly Thomson became
aware of something dark writhing inside his guts. He wasn’t alone anymore. He
had thought by strangling the boy that he could beat the grim reaper, but he
had been wrong, terribly wrong. That thing had been right all along. There was
no way to stop it and now, when the world died, Thomson knew that he would be
the one who pulled the trigger.