Alien Caller (45 page)

“From there it
was all downhill. Dimock escaped first to Mexico, and then on to
Asia and the North Pacific, where he murdered practically everyone
he met. He went from international terrorist to arms dealer and
random mass murderer. Trap after trap was set for him by all the
agencies as well as armed forces. He escaped every single one, and
always always killed more people than God. All of it was covered
up, explained away as acts of nature or terrorists bombings, but
all the while it became harder and harder to hide his evil.”

“Yet what he
did to the American forces sent against him was as nothing to what
he did to the foreign powers who hired his services. They wanted a
terrorist and they got one. Time and time again they paid him good
money, and he repaid them with blood. Their own. They too, sent out
army after army to get him. We have no idea at all how many of them
died. But we found at least a dozen mass graves on just one of his
island hideouts, the smallest with over six hundred bodies.”

“We have
absolutely no idea how many more of those are out there. What we do
know is that free of the CIA and the DOD’s control and with all the
money he could want, he decided to go on a life long holiday.”

“He spent
months at a time on hunting missions in China, all through Asia,
and the former Soviet territories, destroying whole towns, and then
taking on their armed forces when they finally arrived. For him it
was like being on safari while the governments, desperate to stop
mass panic and not implicate themselves in his crimes, had to try
and cover up what had happened. Mostly they blamed natural
disasters, terrorists and rebel insurgencies.”

“In between
times he returned to the States to track down and kill everybody
who’d ever tried to do him harm, or even good. Of the twenty
soldiers or so and myself who survived the first assault, only
myself and two others still live. Mainly because we were overseas
when he struck. The generals died and so did most of those who had
waged the second assault on him. Their families too.”

“Until then I’d
only been one of a number of people he wanted to kill. But that all
changed nine years ago when I was forced to kill his psychopathic
half-brother to save a city. He was trying to destroy Washington.
He had planned to gas them with a powerful nerve toxin that his
brother had obtained for him. I didn’t mean to kill him, but he
left me with no choice. And ever since then I’ve moved up to the
number one slot on Dimock’s hate list. This is not his first
attempt to kill me. Not by a long shot.”

“His first
direct strike on me was in an apartment block in Turkey. I was
scheduled to meet an informant on the seventh floor, but my car
broke down and I was late. I arrived by taxi, just in time to watch
the entire building disintegrate in front of me. One hundred and
thirty people, all dead in my place. Terrorists were blamed by the
government I believe. They were nearly right. The only thing they
got wrong was that in reality there was only one.”

“Dimock made
two more strikes against me, and each time hundreds of others paid
the price. I only survived by virtue of the fact that I had learned
how to hide extremely well and had some dumb luck. Hill is not my
name, though I’ve worn it now for over a decade. I was originally
David Bennett. This is not my face either. I’ve had extensive
plastic surgery. Even my voice and my fingerprints were changed.
The same ruse wasn’t enough to protect my colleagues. The other
agents who’d been with me on the capture of his brother. They’re
all dead along with their families, and he went to new lengths to
torture them. And to show us how he did it. The longest of them
lasted nearly three weeks under his care. I am again the only
survivor and his most precious target.”

“Finally, five
nearly six years ago he was captured in a sting operation after
he’d tried to obtain some nuclear weapons. It had nothing to do
with his gun running. He wanted to use them. It wasn’t about power
or money, it was about killing. Nothing could have made him happier
than watching cities burn at his command.”

“More than a
thousand men took part in that, as they trapped him in an island
warehouse, and started blowing the building apart around him.
Missile after missile went into that structure, until finally what
was left was a pile of rubble no higher than a foot stool. Then
they opened up with the daisy cutters and actually started melting
the ground for mile after mile. Imagine their surprise when three
days later they dug him out, and he still had a pulse. Nothing
could have survived. But he did. He was officially brain dead, had
been without air for several days, yet he still had a pulse.”

“We should have
killed him then and there. God knows we tried. I tried. Orders or
no orders. But I was locked up before I could get to him with the
napalm. I was accused of disobeying orders. They would have tried
me too if there hadn’t been so many other attempts. Generals as
well as privates. We all knew he had to die. But as always some
well meaning fools protected him.”

“Instead while
at least fifty of us were held in make shift prisons, anything to
keep his comatose broken body safe from us, yet another agency,
this one without even a name they would share with us, not even the
DOD, grabbed his supposedly broken body at gunpoint, to study. They
said they’d dissect him, and we prayed it was true. But even then
we knew it wouldn’t happen. It never happens.”

“Instead
yesterday? Last week? He escaped. Heaven alone knows how many are
dead this time, and he seems to be even stronger than before.
Whatever they’ve done to him this time, it’s only served to make
him stronger, again. I maybe could have killed him, maybe, if he’d
only been at the same power as before. But he’s not. He’s more
powerful than ever, and even if my defences hadn’t been compromised
I would have lost. Even so I must have done him some terrible
damage. Maybe enough to cripple him, maybe even more.” He
remembered Dimock’s body on that table beside him, and knew at
least some of why he was there was due to him.

“Now you tell
me he’s alive again. Once more he’s eluded death. I’ve lost count
of the number of times that’s happened. And worse, you’ve healed
him. Again. He was dying, his body slowly burning out, without hope
of survival and there was at least an end in sight for his evil,
and now thanks to you he’s well again. Once more he’s been
captured. Captured but not killed. Once again someone says they’ve
found a way to keep him safe. To control him. There is no such
thing.”

“He will
survive. He will escape. He will grow stronger. He will kill. He
will lay waste to your people like you have never seen before. He
will take your technology and feed it to you just like he took that
jet against me. He will rape your men and women and children and
then he’ll kill them along with their loved ones. He will feast on
their corpses and bring darkness and pain to your worlds. And he
will negotiate for their release, always in bad faith, always
wanting only one thing; more victims.”

“I won’t stop
your people doing this. I can’t. But you have to know that basic
truth. It’s always the same. He will escape, just when you think
he’s doomed. Every single control measure will fail. Despite being
weakened, he will come back stronger than before. Faster and
meaner. He will kill and torture your people. And he will come for
me if he knows I’m alive.” It sounded paranoid, but the real horror
was that it was all true.

“He’s going to
be exiled on a world light years from anywhere,” came Cyrea’s
response. “A plague world. One that has a nasty bacteria on it,
capable of destroying most ecosystems, so no one will go near it.
He has no technology, no super strength, no hope of rescue. He
can’t build a space ship and no one will go near the system with a
barge pole, not even by accident. He is trapped.”

“I’ve heard it
all before.”

“Do you know
how far a light year is?” Actually he did, but he didn’t want to
descend into a pointless argument quibbling about facts. Dimock had
nothing to do with fact.

“About a couple
of days travel for your people.” She tried to object but he held up
his hand to shush her, hating himself for doing it, but he would
have hated himself far more if he hadn’t.

“It doesn’t
matter. There is no far enough. He will come back. He will come for
me - and for you. If he even suspects I’m alive he will let nothing
stop him from coming after me. And he will destroy everyone who
gets in his way. Everyone who he can blame for marooning him on
another planet. And anyone else he thinks it will be fun to kill.
Which is all of you. Men, women, children. That’s what he is.”

“He will do no
such thing. You’re just being paranoid.” The look in her eyes said
Cyrea wasn’t just trying to reassure him, she was worried about
him. He was being unreasonable. Going against all logic. And her
people loved logic.

“Maybe, but I’m
paranoid for a reason. I know I sound like a demented lunatic. I
really do. But I know this creature as you could never understand
him. I know him as something you cannot even imagine. I’ve walked
among his victims. Buried far too many of them myself. I’ve seen
the evidence with my own eyes. And known the smell.” Which was
actually the worst part of it. Some days, often when his mind was
wandering, that smell would come back from nowhere to haunt
him.

“Even now,
years after the fact I dream of an abbey I once saw after Dimock
had visited. It’s a nightmare really, which I have tried for nearly
a decade to put behind me.” But there was no way he ever would.

“I walk along
its beautiful hallways, past the stained glass windows, trying to
avoid the lakes of drying blood everywhere. But I can’t. The entire
floor is covered, and the lakes of blood became waterfalls down the
stairs which pool into an ocean on the ground floor. The flies are
terrible, feasting, laying eggs in the bloated corpses. Hundreds of
them, all loaded with maggots. The smell is indescribable, a
mixture of decay, blood and sewage. Many of the order are still
partially dressed in their black cassocks, the nuns in their
penguin suits. All show the evidence of torture as he nailed them
to the floors and walls. He crucified them, staking them out like a
gigantic artwork, whipping them with thorn bushes, setting crowns
of barbed wire upon their heads, even spearing them in their sides.
You see he considers himself the true god, the only god, and they
are by definition, blasphemers.”

“Those that
weren’t part of the Order he played with as he normally did, raping
them, the children from the little monastery school especially. He
began eating them, some while they were still screaming. He even
set up a make shift barbecue in the main hall, so his victims could
watch him cooking the flesh he stripped from them, and eat it. But
the many videos he left show that he didn’t eat it all cooked. And
several of the children, he cooked alive. Laughing as they screamed
on his makeshift BBQ.”

“The worst of
it all is that he had days to play with these people. It was a
remote monastery, and anyone who came calling, at first the odd
member of the flock, and later the police, he simply added to his
little corner of hell. That time gave him what he most wanted, the
chance to torture people as he would. He made parents eat some of
their children simply to save some more of them. He sprayed the
blood of babies across their parent’s faces as he killed them in
front of them. He forced the religious to disavow their beliefs to
save lives, even made them worship him. He broke them all, bit by
bit, destroying their souls as he broke their minds and their
bodies, and when he left, nearly two hundred more innocent victims
were dead.”

“Above all it’s
the smell that haunts me now. The smell of blood, stale blood
everywhere, of corpses rotting slowly in the sun, and burnt flesh.
So thick and cloying that you can’t get it out of your nostrils,
even after you leave. The smell of death. Of rotting, bloated
corpses as the flies start their work. Of cooked human flesh.
Odours that you can’t ever wash out. That and the soulless stares
of his victims as they looked into his cameras. They had nothing
left. Not family, not faith, not even hope.”

“So please
don’t tell me I’m paranoid. I know I am. And I know why. Because
the worst part of that nightmare isn’t that it’s a dream. It’s that
it’s a memory. I was there. I’ve seen that abbey. I’ve walked those
halls. I’ve studied those tapes. And I’ve lived with the shame of
knowing that all of those innocent people, the children and so many
others would be alive today if only I’d acted. If only I’d killed
him. I had that opportunity twice and I didn’t take it. I regret
that to this day.”

“I have done
bad things in my time. I always believed I was doing the right
thing, though now I know I was often wrong. But by far the worst
thing I have ever done in my entire life was in failing to kill
Dimock. And now I’m doing it again. By far the worst thing you can
do now is to not let me kill him as he deserves. It’s not just for
justice though it is most just. It’s to save lives, yours as well
as mine.” Cyrea reached out a hand to hold him even more tightly,
wanting to give him comfort. But there was no comfort possible. Not
with Dimock alive.

“Let me put
this simply.”

“Dimock will
escape. He always does. Probably someone will rescue him, and of
course he will torture and kill them for it. You can warn them but
they never learn. He will lie to them, and despite it being the
very definition of stupidity people will believe him. Then he will
have their technology at his fingertips. Their advanced technology.
Spaceships, weaponry and heaven alone knows what else. He will use
it. He will come for you. For us all. And he will come back
stronger and more deadly than before. There are only two reasons he
wouldn’t come for me. The first is if he’s dead. But you won’t
allow me to kill him and though it’s probably the very definition
of insanity and I hate myself for it, I won’t cross you on it.”