Pandemonium (14 page)

The helicopter filled almost the entire parking lot, the blades of its twin rotors nearly brushing the tree limbs. It looked like a Huey, one of those huge transports the army used, but it was newer and sleeker than that. A Huey redesigned by Audi.
Lew came up behind me. We were ten feet from the edge of the parking lot, back in the trees. “What the fuck is going on?” he said. “What’s she doing here?” Meaning O’Connell. The priest had pulled on her silver jacket and was jogging for the porch of the main house, where Louise stood with a long coat pulled around her. The old woman looked pissed.
The only marking visible on the helicopter was a logo painted onto the side door and the nose: a gold H in a gold circle.
“We’re being invaded by Hilton?” Lew said.
“Maybe they’re buying out the motel.”
The rotors gradually slowed. Louise stepped down from the porch and stalked toward the helicopter, past the plywood cutout of the Shug. O’Connell called to her and then reluctantly followed.
The side hatch slid open and five bulky, helmeted men jumped to the ground and fanned out. Lew and I instinctively crouched. The men wore some kind of blue-black camouflage, and they were heavily encumbered with packs, belts, and bandoliers. Jutting from the back of each helmet was a thick black cable that ran down the man’s back to connect to the pack at his waist, giving the men the appearance of ponytailed warriors from a Chinese martial arts flick.
In their hands they carried bulbous things that looked like Star Trek phasers. None of them seemed to have seen me or Lew, but they were scanning the trees.
Lew grabbed my shoulder. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he said into my ear.
“No, wait,” I said.
Two more men appeared in the open hatch of the helicopter. The first man was square-shaped, waist as wide as his broad shoulders, belt cinched tight under his gut, making his legs look skinny. He was completely bald. He wore a silky flight jacket over the same camo gear as the other men, but he was helmetless. There was something on his face, though—a kind of metal mesh, as if he’d made a form-fitting mask of chicken wire.
The man next to him was much shorter. He was dressed in street clothes—dark chinos and a gray, fuzzy sweater—but his head was covered by the same black helmet as the camo goons. His face was scrunched in concern, and he kept glancing up at the bigger man.
“The
H
doesn’t stand for Hilton,” I said under my breath.
Louise shouted something, and several of the men shouted back—commando shit like “Get down! Freeze!”—aiming their little science fiction weapons at her and O’Connell.
I stood up and Lew grabbed my arm. “What the fuck are you doing?” he said.
“They’re here for me!” I said.
I stepped forward, and some of the men swiveled to face me, barking orders to halt. I lifted my hands in the air and stepped onto the gravel of the parking lot. The foot soldiers surrounded me. I resisted the urge to glance backward at Lew, hoping they wouldn’t notice him, but no—they yelled for him to come out with me.
From the helicopter doorway the smaller man waved excitedly. I waggled a hand, but only slightly—I didn’t want to give these guys an excuse to shoot.
The man with the chicken-wire face hopped down and strode toward me with an assured smile, like a pastor welcoming a sinner back to church. He was fifty, maybe sixty years old, the stubble on his scalp gray. A few feet from him I realized that the metal on his face was no mask; copper wire was stitched into his skin, threaded over and under. The skin was raw and peeling.
He held out a hand, and the skin there was embroidered too—a mesh glove.
“Delacorte Pierce,” he said in a booming, theatrical voice. “I am Commander Stoltz of the Human League.”
He stood there, hand out and smile steady, waiting for me to shake. The goons—I could only think of them as goons—seemed to aim their phasers a little more forcefully, if that was possible. They were all white men, faces wide and puffy beneath their black helmets. Some of the bulk that I’d attributed to body armor turned out to be beer gut and man boobs: most of these guys were seriously over-weight.
I gripped Commander Stoltz’s hand. The commander didn’t wince, exactly, but his smile faltered for a moment. The ridged skin of his palms felt like scar tissue, and was alarmingly hot, like a waffle iron warming up.
The short man in the sweater looked up at me, beaming. “Hi, Del!”
I sighed. “Let me guess: Caller ID.”
He shook his head, smiling. “You called collect. But the calling number shows up on my bill. I got it on the web.”
I’m an idiot. I never should have called from a landline. “I thought we had an agreement, Bertram.”
“You’re going to thank me later,” he said.
I didn’t think so. I nodded toward the goon to my right, at the thing in his hand that looked like a plastic bar of soap. “What are those supposed to be?”
“Show him,” Commander Stoltz said.
No boom or pop: just a delicate
zip!
and my vision went white. I hit the gravel on my side, my limbs useless. The pain, when it caught up to me a second later, was mathematically pure. And it didn’t stop. A thin wire connected my chest to the mouth of the goon’s gun, and the pain flowed for an absurdly long time.
The goon must have released the trigger at some point, but it was several seconds before thoughts could tumble into the void where the pain had been. My body felt like a pile of cooked, boneless meat. One of the camouflaged men did complicated things to my wrists, and commented on all the bandages on my hands. The other man fastened one of those helmets onto my head. I couldn’t marshal the neuromuscular resources for even a feeble thrash.
Bertram leaned down into my line of sight. “I’m really sorry about this, Del. I really am.”
Fuck you!
I shouted.
You just fucking Tasered me!
Converted through my nonworking vocal cords, this came out;
“Faaagaaah!”
Somewhere above me in the unseen land of the vertical, much shouting. Lew, O’Connell, the goons, even Louise—all of them yelling. God, they wouldn’t Taser an old woman, would they? The shock would kill her.
“Take these people inside,” the commander ordered.
“You’re making a terrible mistake,” O’Connell said. Those hard Irish
r
’s.
“There’s no mistake,” Stoltz said. “You have no idea how dangerous this man is. But don’t worry, we have no intention of harming him. Bertram, go with your colleagues and explain the situation to these people.”
I should have been scared, or angry, but all I could think was :
Colleagues. Co-leagues. Heh.
“Shouldn’t I stay out here with Del?” Bertram said. “I could help—”
“That’s an order,” Stoltz said.
The man behind me pulled my torso into a sitting position. My helmeted head lolled forward like a bowling ball.
Two goons herded the group to the main house. Lew glanced back as they reached the top of the steps, and hesitated. The gunman behind him gestured with his Taser, and Lew reluctantly went inside.
The commander patted me on the shoulder. “Let’s walk and talk.”

“At first I didn’t believe Bertram’s story,” Commander Stoltz said. “He has a history of mental troubles, as you know.”
I was too afraid of being Tasered again to point out that this was coming from a human hot plate who got his operating instructions from a pulp science fiction novel. We were walking slowly down the gravel road toward my cabin, one Human Leaguer a few feet ahead of us and two behind, their flashlights bouncing along the ground with us, skidding up into the trees. It had taken a few minutes to get my land legs back. My hands were cinched behind me in some kind of plastic cuffs, and they’d also fastened one of those packs onto my back. It was heavier than it had looked on the fat boys; the thing must be all battery.
“The independent evidence, however, was irrefutable. And considering your recent troubles in Chicago, it seemed as if indeed you were losing control for good. You must understand that we had to act quickly.”
“Oh, sure, of course,” I said, keeping the sarcasm out of my voice. I tried to subtly flex my hands, but the cuffs, whatever they were made of, had no give. I needed to stay calm, think my way out of this, but all I wanted to do was run screaming into the trees.
“The helmet you’re wearing operates on the same principles as my own personal integrity system,” he continued. “The constantly shifting electromagnetic field creates a kind of Faraday cage that interferes with the psionic frequencies of the
GedankenKinder.
Not only does it—”
“The who?”
“The Thought Children. A parallel race, descended from Neanderthals, with psychic abilities far beyond our own. The source of the so-called demons.”
What the fuck? Neanderthals?
We’d passed Lew’s cabin and my own. The yellow light shining through the trees ahead of us came from the safety light above the washhouse door.
“I thought you guys were all about the slans,” I said. “Bertram said—”
“Bertram’s only been a member of the league for a year. He’s not been fully authorized, and his personal integrity system is not up to the required level.” The commander touched me on the shoulder, trying to impart the seriousness of the matter. “We’re at war with telepaths, Del—intelligence can’t be trusted to an unsecured medium.”
“But you’re telling
me,
” I said.
“This is on a need-to-know basis—and I very much want you to understand some things, my friend. Bertram’s already told you that Van Vogt”—he pronounced the name
Van Vote—
“used the word ‘slan’ as a code for what popular culture has mislabeled ‘demons.’ That much is obvious, even to the casual reader. What Bertram has not been trusted with are the many other coded meanings embedded in the text. For example…”
There was no way of stopping the commander now.
“…consider the tendriled and tendrilless slans in the book. Van Vogt made the tendrils external, which is excellent melodrama, but does that mean we should be on the alert for people with actual snakelike appendages growing out of their heads?” He laughed dismissively. Oh yeah, how silly. “Only now do we understand that ‘tendrils’ represent the physical structures present in the brains of the
GedankenKinder,
deformations that human neuroscientists have only recently confirmed. And think about the emphasis in the book on electronic thought broadcasters and receivers, and all the uses of numerical combinations and codes. Once I understood how Van Vogt had sowed the book with clues to the psionic blocking frequencies, it was only a matter of time until I could build our own versions of the Porgrave devices. That helmet you’re wearing—while it’s not quite up to the level of the three-sixty system I use—is more than adequate to block their telepathic scans. And as for ‘possession,’ mental transference in
either
direction, what Van Vogt called ‘hypnotic control,’ is completely impossible.”
My God, I thought. It’s always the same. One day this guy’s the assistant manager at Home Depot, the next he’s a prophet with a direct line on eternal truth. It didn’t matter if it was John 3:16 or the Kabala or No Money Down Real Estate audio tapes. It all came down to the Book, the Mission, and the absolute fucking Certainty.
I tilted my helmeted head toward him. “And you’ve tested these things,” I said skeptically.
“My system has never been penetrated,” he said, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “Not once in the ten years since I discovered the frequencies. It’s our greatest weapon against them, Del.” We went past the washhouse, all the lights behind us now. I’d walked this way earlier, but nothing seemed familiar in the dark. The road ended somewhere ahead of us—it couldn’t be more than fifty yards—at a cabin that had looked vacant to me this afternoon. At least, its eye-stabber door decoration hadn’t had a fish on it. Beyond the cabin was a short pier, and beyond that was nothing but water and forest and a footpath snaking through the trees, roughly skirting the lake. “The field generator accomplishes with technology what you’ve managed to do on your own, by accident. But it’s not perfect. Which brings us to our problem.”
“There’s no problem,” I said earnestly. I didn’t know what this walk in the woods was about, but I did
not
like being tied up and jerked through the forest like a squealer in a mob film. “The demon’s totally under control.”
“Del, Del.” He chuckled condescendingly. “We know your control’s slipping. Bertram told us all about it. Isn’t that how you two ended up meeting each other in the first place?” He was pleased with this point. “No, your system isn’t working at all.”
“You want to put me in a cage, is that it? Or you want to wire me up like you. That’s the solution Bertram was talking about.”
He shook his head, but I couldn’t make out his expression. It was dark, and the helmet had slid down, obscuring my vision. He gripped the back of my arm and tugged me forward.
“I wish it were that easy. Or rather, that simple. Installing a three-sixty system is no trivial matter. It’s painful—I can attest to that—and the chance of infection is very high. But once you’re fully wired, there’s no better defense on the planet. However…”
I didn’t like the sound of “however.”
“As good as the three-sixty system is, it’s not secure enough for your needs. Now, most of us, we’re only trying to keep the slans out, whenever they might turn their attention to us. And if they succeeded in psychically seizing me, I’m only one man, a citizen no more important than any member of the league.” He’d delivered the speech before. No doubt the Man of the People thing went over real big with the troops. “But with you, Del, the beast is already inside the cage. Say that we fitted you with the three-sixty system—what if the power supply fails? What if you cut yourself and break the field? These are dangers I constantly live with, but with you, the stakes are much higher. Can we risk letting the beast out? Can we allow the Hellion to ruin the lives of untold children?”
Oh shit.
Bertram was a nut job, but he was my friend, and all this time I’d been banking on the fact that he wouldn’t go along with something that would do me real harm. But the commander knew that too. So they’d lied to Bertram. And they’d made sure he wasn’t along on our little walk in the woods.
I stopped in the road, head down, fighting a wave of nausea. The men behind us pointed their flashlights at our feet. “You said—you said you weren’t going to—”
“You can’t let fear rule this moment,” the commander said. “I know what you’re going through. I was possessed twice when I was not much older than yourself, and I spent years dealing with the sense of helplessness, the loss of control. You have an opportunity here, an opportunity to change the world. If the
GedankenKinder
dies in its cage, we’ve removed one of the overlords that rule this planet. We’ve taken a huge step toward freeing mankind.”
“But I can help,” I said. “I can teach you what I do. It’s a skill Dr. Aaron taught me, it’s like a mental firewall—”
The commander was shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Del. We can’t risk it. There’s no other way.”
He was right. There was no other way. I’d known it when I picked up the gun in the cabin. The only difference between me and the commander was that he could pull the trigger.
One of the lights illuminating our feet suddenly flicked away. From behind us I heard the snap of a tree branch, and the sound of something heavy crashing through the brush.
I stood up, looked behind us. One of the men behind us was gone. The other man swept the beam of his flashlight across the trees at the edge of the road. “Jared, you okay?” he said.
The Human Leaguer in front of us cast around until his beam picked up his colleague behind us. He stared into the light, blinking. “Sir, I think Jared fell down.”
“Oh for goodness’ sake,” the commander said, disgusted. “Mr. Torrence!” he called. “Back in position! Mr. Torrence!”
There was no answer. The man behind us raked his light over the trees.
Something dark crashed through the bushes farther back. Both flashlight beams swung toward it.
A man in a black helmet stumbled into the road. “Sorry, sir!” he said. “There was a ditch alongside the road I didn’t see, and then I—”
“Never mind,” the commander said. “Just get your light on and catch up.”
The commander fastened a hand on my neck. All the flashlight beams were focused away from me, and I’d glanced toward the trees to my left, judging the odds of losing them with my hands tied behind me…but somehow he’d seen the movement and anticipated my plan. “Courage, Del,” the commander said. “You can do this.”
“There’s something I should tell you,” I said. “It’s not safe to be out at this time of night.”
The second flashlight came on, then went off. The commander looked back, and I followed his gaze. There was only one man in the road. Jared Torrence had disappeared again.
“Where in the world did he go now?” the commander said. And louder: “Mr. Harp, please help Mr. Torrence—”
Something hit the dirt near my feet and I jumped back. It was black and shiny, with a frayed tail. One of the helmets, its cable snapped.
The commander stared at it for a second, then nudged the helmet with his boot. It rolled over, lopsided. Mr. Torrence’s head was still inside it.
“Oh, Jared,” the commander said sadly.
I ran. The leading soldier jerked his light toward me, raised the hand that held the Taser. I ducked and barreled into him. My shoulder struck him in the gut, and we both went down. I twisted as I hit the ground, and my elbow jolted painfully. I kept rolling, got my knees under me, lurched to my feet again. The guard was on his back, his flashlight several feet away on the ground, pointing away from me, illuminating a wedge of road and forest. Somewhere behind us one of the other soldiers—Mr. Harp?—screamed.
I ran again, bent over and wobbling. The last cabin was in front of me, a slab of pitch black against the slightly lighter sky. I dodged right, remembering that the path started just behind the cabin. I threw myself forward, spinning to avoid trees that materialized out of the dark, inches from my face.
Something crashed through the bushes next to me. I stifled my own scream and leaped away from it. My right foot came down on something slick—log, moss-covered rock?—and I went down again, off balance. I came down backward. The battery pack hit first, wedging into my spine, and then my head whipped back and struck a rock with a sound like a hammer going through ice. The impact stunned me, but I wasn’t dead. The helmet had saved my life.
A shape appeared above me. Arms grabbed my shirt, hauled me to a sitting position.
“Are you doing this, Del?” the commander hissed. “Are you doing this?”
You’re making a terrible mistake,
O’Connell had told Stoltz.
I tried to shake my head, but my neck muscles wouldn’t respond. “Passover,” I said.
“What?”
“Blood over the door.”
The commander pulled me erect, and dragged me onto the wooden pier. The soldier I’d slammed into ran toward us out of the woods. He hadn’t picked up his flashlight, but the Taser was in his hand, swinging wildly.
“Shoot it!” the commander told the man.
The soldier leaped onto the pier, stopped. “Shoot what?”
The commander pointed toward the shore. “Anything!” The soldier obediently turned and dropped to one knee. He held his little Star Trek gun with both hands, aiming down the length of the pier.
I should be safe. Louise had made the sacrifice for me, hadn’t she? Put the blood over the door. But the Human League had no such protection. Their rooms hadn’t been made up. They were intruders here.
“Toby protects this place,” I said.
“Who’s Toby?” the commander said.
A slab of white flesh launched from the water beside the pier, rose in a spray of water. Blacksmith arms thrown wide, goggled eyes black and glinting. His mouth stretched open, inhumanly long, loose-hinged as an orca’s.
The soldier didn’t have time to move. He was struck and carried over the side of the pier before he could even scream. The two of them splashed into the black water and disappeared.
“Toby,” I said. But it wasn’t. Not now. “The Shu’garath,” I said.
The commander looked at me, aghast. The copper wires stitched into his face caught the moonlight. “See?” he said.
“See?”
He grabbed the cables attached to the back of my helmet and yanked, pulling me off my feet. The battery pack banged again into my lower back. He dragged me backward toward the end of the pier, splinters slicing into my forearms and wrists. I screamed, swore, shouted, my voice high and keening like a toddler throwing a tantrum. I kicked my legs, trying to dig my heels into the planks, but he yanked me along without difficulty.
“It never ends,” he said. “The terror never ends. We can’t live like this, Del. We can’t live with these monsters.”
Behind us, at the midpoint of the pier, a white hand gripped the edge, and the Shug pulled itself effortlessly up. It turned, opened its mouth, and roared.
“Stop!”
I screamed. But I didn’t know who I was screaming to. Both of them. Everyone.
“I’m sorry, Del,” the commander said. “We can’t live like this.”
He jerked me to my feet, and tossed me backward over his leg. For a moment I was airborne, looking back: the commander on the edge of the pier, bent with the effort of his throw, his eyes on me. And behind him, the huge figure of the Shug, slouching toward the commander, mouth agape.
I struck the water. Icy water engulfed me and I grunted in shock, coughing air. I thrashed, trying to bring my arms out from behind me, but the plastic cuffs were unyielding. The weight of the battery pack pulled me down, reeling me into the dark.