Nemesis: Book Five (19 page)

"
H
ouston now
?"

"Yes, sir."

"And what of the troops that met him down there? What were they able to do?" Trone asked.

"They're all dead."

"The ice?"

"Ineffective," Knox said.

Trone laughed at that. Ineffective might have been a bit of an understatement. Just maybe. This wasn't the first time Trone had been briefed on Houston, just the first time by Knox, and he wanted Knox to say aloud that he failed. The troops that went down there died like ants doused in lighter fluid and then given a lit match. The alien ripped away the ice they shot from their guns as easily as tornadoes rip away houses.

He wanted to hear Knox say it, because Trone understood how he felt about Marks. Hate probably summed it up accurately. Evil was another word that could be thrown in Knox's thought process. Trone understood it all—Marks was unholy in the purest sense. Marks would do whatever he could to further his own aims, and Trone believed those aims to be insane—just as Knox did.

The difference between the two of them, Knox and himself? Trone was a politician, and you used whatever you could to move forward. You couldn't always command, sometimes you must use other methods, and never before had the world needed a politician in charge as much as it did now.

"We're still making inroads into the white cake's spread, right?"

"Yes, sir," Knox said.

Trone was tired of this bunker. He wanted to go up, to feel fresh air and see the sun. The rooms were large, but Trone still felt the thousands of pounds of dirt surrounding him. None of that stopped his phone from ringing though; and it hadn't stopped since Houston. Even now his secretary was fielding calls as he sat here talking to Knox.

He couldn't rise to the surface until the world was safe again. Many times in his life he felt glad that he never married—but perhaps no more than right now. Trone had no offspring, no significant other to worry about right now. Only himself and the nation, which was a nebulous mass, not someone he could point to.

"You recognize where we're at, right?" Trone could command whatever he wanted right now, but that wasn't the way to get this done. Knox had to be on board, because Knox was important. Not as important as Trone or Marks, but important none-the-less.

"You want to get him out?"

"Do you see any other choice? Assets from England, China, and France are on the way, but what are they going to be able to do? The creature is moving along the coastline now, destroying everything it touches. And there will be more. We know that simply from the number of pods created, and those already out in the open. What do we do when they start traveling too?"

He looked at Knox's face, trying to see if the man showed anything. He never did. Whatever went on in Knox's head, unless he wanted you to hear it, you didn't know. The man was honest, though—to a fault.

"Will is gone," Knox said.

"What?"

"The agent who worked for Marks; I let him go a few hours ago."

Trone leaned back in his chair and placed his feet up on the table in front of him. He left his arms on the chairs' rests. "Why?"

"I don't think he's infected and I think we need someone inside Grayson, especially if we're letting Marks loose."

"Inside Grayson? Isn't that the whole point, that we can't get anyone in there?"

Knox nodded, his face as revealing as a well at night. "He can try, and if anyone has the ability to do it, I think he does. I've looked into as much of his history as I can, and he's remarkable. Everywhere on Earth, if something touched down in the last twenty-five years, he's been there."

"And if he is infected?" Trone asked.

"Then we'd already be dead. He's been free for hours."

"And you think he's going to head down there, that he's not simply going to run off?"

Knox was quiet for a few seconds, not dropping his eyes from Trone's own. "No," he said finally. "I don't think he will. He's got grit in him, and I think he's a patriot."

A politician of thirty years was needed now. Knox should be court-martialed for what he just did, but Trone couldn't afford any such nonsense right now. Accept what was done and move on. Knox called Will a patriot, and Knox was one as well—so maybe his instincts were right. Either way, they had to move forward.

"Alright, you have your man in the field. Let's get mine."

* * *

K
nox stood
at the back of the room, away from Trone and Marks, which was what Trone wanted.

He only wanted himself and Marks to hear the conversation that came next.

He stood in front of the cage, the one to his left empty, the door still open. Marks sat at the back of his, his knees folded up toward his chest.

"Your plan not working?" Marks said, smiling.

"It's gone more poorly than I would have liked," Trone said, smiling too. "How about yours, is it working?"

"You're here, aren't you?"

Trone nodded, looked at the ground and paced slowly in front of the cage. "I am."

"Alone."

"Alone."

"So what are you bringing me, Mr. President?" Marks said.

"That depends on what you want."

"Full pardon, freedom, and complete control of the operation in Grayson."

"Complete control? So the rest of the world is cut off?" Trone asked, not looking up, not stopping his walk.

"I'll answer to you."

"And if you and I disagree?"

Marks laughed. "If we disagree, I think I've proven repeatedly that I'll be right."

"But if we do—your demand is that your way wins?"

"Yes. In regards to Grayson, I have complete control."

"You know, regardless of what happens, I can throw you back in this cage, right?" Trone said.

"Do you think I haven't considered that, Mr. President? Let's stop with the formalities. Everything that I wanted to happen has happened, and will continue to happen. Yes, you can always throw me back in here, but the truth is, you're not going to want to—because if you do, then that thing out there wins. I don't know what's happening right now, but I can tell from Knox that it isn't good. You need me out of this cage even more than I want to be out."

Trone stopped walking and looked toward Knox. The General stood with his hands crossed over his chest, his face the usual stone of emotion. Did Marks really see something from him, across the room like that? Or was it just talk.

He looked back down and continued walking; at this point, what did it matter.

"What's your plan, then? You know I'm not letting you go without hearing it."

"We're going to inject a disease into the white cake. Something similar to the poison you put on an ant hill. The disease will spread all the way back to ground zero, and it'll kill any offspring touching the cake."

Trone stopped then, turned and looked at Marks.

"What disease?"

"That's the tough part, no? I've been thinking about it for some time, and I believe that I've figured it out." Marks was smiling, and Trone read everything that smile meant to portray. Devilish cleverness. Danger. Fun. All of it rolled into a simple movement of this man's lips.

"Really drawing this out, huh?"

"You've made me wait a good bit, I thought I would return the favor. Knox was right about the cold—wherever these things are from, they need heat. That's the reason for the hole in Grayson. The sun isn't even enough for them, or maybe they evolved to not take it in through their skin; I don't know yet. The cold, though, they aren't adapted to it—"

"We just tried to use the cold on one of them—an active one, and not the Queen. It wiped everyone out in minutes, and then laid waste to Houston," Trone offered no deference to Marks' speech.

Marks waited a second before talking. "I imagined that would happen, but that's not what I'm talking about. If you go up against these things in battle, you're going to lose, no matter what you do. The disease, the cold, has to go in through the strands. That's the only way."

"And you think you can do it, inject this inside the white cake?"

"I'm kind of staking my life on it, aren't I?"

Trone turned around, his back to Marks, and looked at Knox.

Marks was a dangerous game, Trone understood that. Even so, no one else even hinted at what Marks just announced. All these brains, all these people, and no one dreamed of injecting it with a disease. Trone wanted the fame that would come with victory—the legacy, but this stretched much further, obviously. The fate of the world rested in Mark’s hands. Trone didn't see how he couldn't play the game. Knox thought playing it put the world at risk, which it did—but not playing?

There lay the question. Which was more dangerous? Trone thought not playing was more dangerous, because nothing else they did worked.

Marks planned the rules of the game, and plotted each of his moves, but none of that changed that it was the only game in town.

"General Knox," Trone called across the room.

"Yes, sir?"

"Release Kenneth Marks. He is receiving a full pardon and command of our armed forces."

W
hatever else happened in America
, apparently major corporations needed to keep advertising. Huge swaths of the country wiped out, yet Will could pull up the news on his phone, complete with pharmaceutical and reverse mortgage ads. Capitalism continued, even when government failed.

Will saw the war, saw the CNN sponsored maps about where the alien had 'landed'. Somehow the idiots in control of the major news networks were still trying to use clever gimmicks to sell their nonsense.

The creature was wiping out Texas, and heading further west, making a way for the strands to follow.

Foreign countries flew planes over, trying to bomb it—Will didn't know if that was authorized or not, but it didn't really matter, because the creature dealt with them the same as it dealt with anything else. A six foot five Godzilla, swatting planes like flies.

Will thought the only good piece of information was that it appeared to be staying in the West, moving through Texas, and likely heading to Mexico or California. Will was headed south. He didn't know what he planned on doing, but definitely knew he didn't want to run into that thing—that or Morena.

He looked out the windshield of the stolen Jeep, parked just beyond Morena’s world.

He had looked at nearly this exact same landscape days ago, only Knox had been in the driver's seat. Then he was forced into the white wilderness; now, he chose it.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he asked himself. "Just what in the fuck?"

Luck didn't begin to describe how he was still alive, let alone that his brain wasn't a bowl of soup; yet here he was, about to go back into an area that he couldn't control—couldn't even influence—at all. He saw the alien and from that understood any chance humanity might have had ended when she took physical form.

So why go any further south?

Why not leave?

"Because you're a goddamn idiot," he said, believing it fully, but still not putting the Jeep in reverse.

He wore a hazmat suit, everything but the head zipped up and on. He yanked it before leaving the bunker, though he hadn't seen anything like it before. He tried it out fifty miles back, and it seemed to work, even if the holes lining the thing should have defeated the purpose of a hazmat suit. The suit created a mist around it, shooting out water from the tiny holes lining the material, water so cold that it was almost particles of ice rather than liquid.

Hopefully the thing worked against the strands. If not, he would probably quit cursing at himself, he supposed.

Is Rigley in there?
The thought broke through his mind's focus on going forward.
Did she make it here? Is she helping it?

Everyone involved with this mess—all of their lives were ruined. The girl he saw at the door, Thera. Rigley. Himself. The two agents who worked with him in the beginning … two kids whose names he couldn't remember anymore. What a fucking mess this thing was. Everyone fucked except for Marks. He probably still sat in that cage wearing his sick smile, thinking that somehow he would morph into the alien.

She came here and started all of this, but it was Marks who truly began ruining lives. Marks who shaped what the current world looked like, despite what anyone else believed.

Except for the dead girl. That might be the only body not on his hands
. He hadn't killed her; the alien's hands were red from that.

"Don't act like she's the reason," he said aloud.

Except he always went back to her.

Marks on one side and her on the other. One he knew and one he only saw briefly. She summed up this whole thing to him, somehow, despite what he just said. The poster child for this whole fucked up situation. Innocent and caught in it, with no choice, and now dead.

I already have the suit on,
he thought.
Would be a bitch to take it off.

He opened the Jeep door and stepped out. He reached in for the helmet and slid it over his head, securing the locks, and listening to the filtered air start pouring in through the side panels. The old sound of being an astronaut—he hadn't heard it since Bolivia.

The Jeep still running and the door still open, Will began his walk into the white.