The Conformity

Text copyright © 2015 by John Hornor Jacobs

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jacobs, John Hornor.

The Conformity / by John Hornor Jacobs.

pages cm. — (The Twelve-Fingered Boy trilogy)

Summary: “Shreve, along with Jack and his girlfriend Ember, travel to Maryland to solve the mystery behind “the elder,” the ancient, malevolent force hidden near Baltimore, which has been sending psychic tremors out into the world causing mayhem, mass suicides, and the beginning of the end of civilization.” — Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-7613-9009-1 (trade hard cover : alk. paper) —

ISBN 978-1-4677-6182-6 (EB pdf)

[1. Supernatural—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.J152427Co 2015

[Fic]—dc23

2013028517

Manufactured in the United States of America

1 – BP – 12/31/14
eISBN: 978-1-46776-182-6 (pdf)
eISBN: 978-1-46777-900-5 (ePub)
eISBN: 978-1-46777-899-2 (mobi)

one

The sound, when it comes, is hard to take in all at once. It's too big for immediate comprehension. At first it's just the blaring sound of the Klaxons beating in the arteries of air, rising and falling in ear-rupturing waves, but then, layered above it, there's the moan that's more than a moan and more than a scream. It's the cacophonous groans of thousands of human mouths, straining. Agonized. It's the sound of misery. It affects me at a root level. I sit bolt upright in bed, shocked. My nuts draw up, my skin crawls, and my heart begins hammering in my chest like my rib cage is a penitentiary and it's gonna bust out,
incarcerado
no more, and start boogying down the highway.

The rib cage holds, but the heart keeps hammering.

Jack pops up from his bed—always the first to rise—with Tap right on his ass. They both rush over to the dorm window and peer out into the half-light of pre-sun morning.

“Holy shit,” Jack says, and then immediately dashes over to grab his trousers. Somehow he tugs on boots as he's standing. I'm up and dressed and slipping on running shoes when Tap, still at the window, barks, “The Conformity! One of those walkers—” and yanks open the dormer window, letting a blast of frigid air into the room. He steps up onto the ledge and launches himself into the air. Jack, dressed, climbs up to stand on the wide stone casement.

Jack and I can't fly tandem yet, so I race to the dorm room door and yank it open. I feel more than see Jack lifting off into the air with a pulse. He arcs across the sky.

Soldiers! They're in the valley!
he sends in a strange mental yawp to the Irregulars, exultant and fearful.

On my way to the armory,
Danielle sends back, her mental voice cold and hard as steel.

Casey? Where are you?
I ask.

Heading up the trail toward the water tower.

Right,
I respond.
I'm coming.

I'm hustling, man-child,
Bernard sends.
I'm hustling. Here's a pick-me-up,
he says, and then there's a quick flurry of mental beats and staccato images and my body floods with energy, my muscles thrum, and I feel as though I could outrace the sun. The cold is pushed away. I'm warm now, like I've swallowed batteries and there's some unknown dynamo ripping a relentless rhythm in my belly.

Wow,
Casey sends.
My hair's standing on end.

The crash, though, when it comes, is really gonna be a bitch,
Bernard adds.

I carom down the hall, past the surprised looks of other half-clad extranatural boys—most of us bugfuck non-flyers—down the stairs, and burst through the double doors and outside into the half-light of morning. The freezing air is now just an afterthought. Last week's snow is still clinging to the ground and piled in drifts along pathways, roads, campus sidewalks. My breath comes as vapor before my face.

I can't see it yet. The sirens are like a thin poison in the air, reminding me of the Helmholtz. It's hard to think with the rising and falling of the sound. But then it dies.

And the moaning, the screaming comes. Thousands upon thousands of mouths, groaning in agony. It's like an ambulatory circle of Hell.

There's a crack and then another, the hard sounds of timber shattering. The booms of trees falling. And moaning.

I run, arms pumping, across the valley. With Bernard's beat, the electric tempo running in my blood, I could outrun a leopard, leap over a bus. Eating the distance, feet pounding on pavement, on dirt.

A Jeep slews on the gravel path, carrying three Army soldiers, one of them Sergeant Davies. He spies me and double-takes, giving me an oh-shit-I-don't-want-to-fuck-with-this-kid-but-I'll-get-canned-if-I-don't look that the Army guys get now that they're pointing the guns outward, rather than inward
at
extranaturals. He motions for the driver to stop while the rear man hefts an M14 with grenade launcher and scans the skies. It's a tremendous weapon, but he doesn't look reassured because the sirens are screaming again and the cracks of falling trees split the air—like Godzilla himself is approaching.

“Don't you look excited, Li'l Devil,” Davies says as I pull myself into the back of the Jeep.

“Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I need to get to the water tower.”

He nods, looking grave. “That's close to Bunker H. We'll escort you there and then collect the Director.”

I didn't know that's where Priest lurked at night, but it makes sense. He asks Jack and me to attend training briefings often nowadays—a bit of organization we never had from Quincrux—but we don't have a bridge club or play tiddlywinks or do whatever the hell they used to do for fun back when he was born, however many lifetimes ago. Biggest hobbies back then were crucifying Christians and toga parties, maybe. Who knows?

“And engineering?” I ask. “Any word? Without enough power, the Helmholtz won't have the juice to drop the soldier.”

“None yet, but most of the power lines are underground so they won't be—” His radio squelches, and a string of muddy sounds comes from it, words only soldiers can understand, apparently. He squeezes the transmitter and says, “Roger that,” then turns to me and says, “Teams are aloft,” precisely at the moment when five red blurs cross the sky immediately above us. The Red Team, heavy with armament.

Davies shoves an oversized military walkie-talkie into my hand. “You'll need it.”

“Letsgoletsgoletsgo,” the driver says in the rapid-fire way I've come to expect more from war movies than from everyday life, but what can you do? World's gone to shit. We're just the pieces of corn making it more colorful before the end swirl down the toilet.

The Jeep surges to life, spinning wheels and tossing gravel into the trees behind us. When the water tower comes into view, they slow long enough for me to hop out. Normally I would have face-planted in the gravel, but Bernard's beat still thrums in my body and I only stumble a little, catching myself with a burst of speed up the rise and past the razor wire. A small silhouette waves at me from the top of the tower—Casey. She's already had time to climb or lift herself to the summit. She stands next to the fat antenna array of the souped-up Helmholtz field transmitter.