Burn (2 page)

“Courtesy of the Master,” he said. “Ice water and bread for the Sabbath. Basin and towels below.”

“Thanks,” Isaac said, trying to keep his voice casual. “We heard the embassy was bombed. Any scuttlebutt on that? Is the Master safe here?”

The attitude returned.

“We can take care of the Master,” he said, “don’t you worry about that. Now, who’s going to take care of
you,
that’s the problem. Willy and I got the nod. Okay? They shot a couple of Irish that bombed the embassy, but they’re still looking for a yankee colonel, a Catholic. So, to take care of you we keep you here. The Mongoose picks you up at sunrise Monday. I am to remind you that you are not to perform work from sunset today until sunrise Monday. But you travel with the Master, you already knew that.”

“Right,” Isaac said.

He nodded towards Maggie wringing watts out of the battered Lightening.

“What about that? We need the batteries, you need power.”

The guard shrugged, his blue eyes steady, intimidating.

“No souls, no sweat,” he said. “The Innocents don’t count.”

“What do we do if whoever’s bombing the embassy bombs the airport?”

“They won’t. Everybody needs the airport, it’s hands off.”

That’s why they can afford two zitfaces on security,
Isaac thought.

“Where can we get a ride to town? We can get a room. . . .”

“You’re to stay here until sunrise Monday and observe the Sabbath; those are my sole instructions.”

“What if we just leave?”

“Then you’d be forcing me to work on the Sabbath, and I’d prefer not to think about that. And I’d prefer
you
don’t think about it, either. Besides, you have zero chance to beat that lock. At least, while I’m alive.” He patted his Sidekick and his rifle for emphasis, and he did not smile.

“I see.”

“Good.”

The guard jerked a thumb over his shoulder, towards the office door.

“The Master’s speaking at eighteen hundred and we’ve got a peel if you want to come in and watch.” His gaze flicked to Maggie, then back. He shrugged. “After all, it’s your power.”

“Right,” Isaac said. “Thanks.”

He turned the cart around so that the wobbly wheel was in the back, then spoke, trying to make it sound like a casual afterthought.

“Maybe you two could give me and Mirian an idea of what to expect down here.”

The blond laughed a laugh much older than his years. He strutted towards the office, and called over his shoulder, “Expect anything. And
no working
on the Sabbath!”

Isaac pushed the cart to the rear of the hangar, where Mirian and the Innocents waited for the fresh spring ice water and the hot, fragrant mini-loaves of bread.

“What did he say? Are we locked in here?”

Isaac unpacked the ceremonial bowl and towels from the cabinet in the cart, poured them each a glass of ice water while there was still ice. They both downed a glass before filling one for each of the Innocents. The Innocents had no souls and the ritual meant nothing to them spiritually, but they liked being included, and this was the kind of thing that made them a team.

“Well?”

Isaac didn’t answer. He filled the foot-washing bowl from one of the stainless-steel pitchers, then knelt at her feet and began the Sabbath ritual.

“I really hate being locked in,” Isaac whispered, more to himself than to Mirian. “I got locked in the pantry as a kid. My parents said they couldn’t afford a babysitter. Sit down.”

Mirian said nothing and sat on the cot. Isaac removed her tennis shoes and sweaty socks, placed a clean towel under her feet and began washing them slowly, carefully, as he would want her to wash his own. She would just take a quick swipe with the cloth over his shoes, this he knew, but he thought that with enough example she might become more patient and see the virtue in this small but intimate gesture.

That’s the nice thing about ritual about instinct,
he thought.
It gives you time to think

Apparently they would have the whole weekend to think. And sweat. And remember what was in those cases from ViraVax.

A disagreeable smell soured Isaac’s nostrils, and he swallowed a biting remark about Mirian’s personal hygiene. The disagreeable smell turned putrid, a combination of burning hair and overdead meat.

“Whew!” Mirian said. “What . . . ?”

“Green!” Willy shouted from the office. “Green! Help me!”

Isaac and Mirian looked at each other for a blink, then Mirian snatched up the palm-cam while Isaac ran for the front of the hangar. What greeted him there stopped him cold, and he waved Mirian back. She stood fast in her bare feet and started filming anyway.

The blond’s uniform lay crumpled across the communications console, and it leaked a foul organic goo from a mess of rubbery bones. Willy lay on his back under the desk, his brown eyes wide, unblinking, staring at Mirian.

“She’s so pretty,” he whispered.

Willy winked at Mirian and the eyelid stayed closed. His chest heaved one last shuddering sigh, and then his whole body sighed. His face and scalp slumped from his skull and his brown eyes liquefied in their darkening beds.

“God save us,” Isaac whispered.

He covered his mouth and nose with his shirttail and couldn’t take his focus off Willy’s Sidekick, barely visible under the stinking viscosity that used to be the man who knew the access code. Isaac couldn’t bring himself to cross the threshold of the office, much less reach for that Sidekick.

A pale blue flame licked across the blond guard’s remains.

Isaac would have thought it a trick of holographic animation if it weren’t for the stench. He held his breath, reached a trembling hand to the half-empty water pitcher on the desk and tossed the ice water at the flames. There wasn’t enough water to contain it all, and in a moment little tongues of flame flickered over Willy, too.

“Maggie!” Mirian screamed behind him. “Maggie! Oh, God, Isaac!”

Isaac didn’t have to turn to know what was happening. He just stared, stupefied, as the spreading mess engulfed the office floor and burned up the Sidekick that controlled their hangar door, their prison, their sweltering, sheet-metal tomb.

Chapter 3

Branches were broken off that I might be grafted in.

—Paul, Epistle to the Romans

Major Ezra Hodge of the Defense Intelligence Agency fielded the heat for the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in La Libertad because everybody was short-handed and fielding heat was part of his job. No one at the embassy or on the damage control team knew what happened, and Ezra the Invisible wasn’t telling. Hodge, himself, had planted the bomb in Colonel Toledo’s car. He had done it under orders, but these orders arose from a Higher Authority than the Defense Intelligence Agency. The New Prophet of the Apocalypse, the Angel of Eden himself, laid out the scenario and Ezra the Invisible pulled it off.

The children were all that mattered. Eden would be worthless without Adam and Eve, and it was wise of the Angel to gather them in while Revelation ran its course.

Dajaj Mishwe’s part of the operation had been mightily screwed, but Hodge activated a contingency plan that might yet see him alive on the far side of the Apocalypse. His was a sweet dream of a plan that included an elegant sailboat and the perfect companion.

This companion was not yet a Gardener, but Hodge had faith that Rena Scholz would see the light when the flaming sword fell. She had been a nun, but abandoned Catholicism when she joined the Army. He’d done his research—she didn’t drink, didn’t date and read voraciously in theology. Hodge imagined that in her gratitude for saving her life, Major Scholz would love him, that they would let the Apocalypse run its course and then sail back with Adam and Eve to populate a fresh, new Eden based on the Angel’s plan.

Hodge fanned his face with a fistful of papers. His tiny office was a sweat-trap across the street from the U.S. Embassy. The pea-green cubicles around him were jammed with tacticians, logisticians and propagandists of every stripe. The noise level was high, but not high enough to drown out the single word that followed the tone on his Sidekick.

“Revelation,” his Sidekick said, and it repeated “Revelation” in its pseudobiologic voice until Major Hodge reluctantly replied, “Revelation. Acknowledge.”

The GenoVax delivery to Mexico City is secure,
he thought.
The last EdenSprings shipments went out today, as did the great sword that hangs over the Sanhedrin tonight. We will take off the heads of many serpents, the nearest one first.

The Angel’s Artificial Viral Agents floated in the ritual ice water of the Gardeners, in the bottled waters of nearly every market, vending machine, cafeteria and airline. Similar AVAs slept in the communion wafers of the idolators. God would sort them out.

Hodge’s job was to stir up the serpent, first, and get it to focus on the flute in front of it rather than the sword poised above. With the Master dead, confusion among the Children of Eden was already a strong ally. The Master’s myocardial implant already had triggered its coded signal, verifying his heart’s failure to Central Command. It was, perhaps, fortunate that it had to fail here in Costa Brava. Now that ViraVax was off-line, it fell to Hodge to verify the signal. Hodge took his time with this, thereby adding to the confusion.

He had no word from the Angel at ViraVax. Their backup communications ran four redundancies deep, and all were silent. Hodge could only imagine the madness of the final scene at ViraVax, with hundreds of bodies melting from their bones, and it was possible that someone or something had, indeed, killed Dajaj Mishwe. Flaming Sword was designed to unfold on its own even if he, Hodge, died, but Hodge preferred to live.

Major Ezra Hodge and Dajaj Mishwe had worked together before, in certain private experiments on the nature of death that the two of them ran while they were in EdenWood together. Hodge was fully prepared to carry on the mandate of Revelation and the Apocalypse without the Angel Mishwe.

Hodge would permit, even encourage, the Defense Intelligence Agency to investigate the ViraVax site immediately. They could find nothing that would save them, and any GenoVax residue that remained would eliminate the investigators soon enough. There was nothing to lose even if the Agency sealed the site in concrete, and Hodge might even gain a little more time.

Hodge did not care, now, whether ViraVax came to the attention of the outside world. In a few short weeks, the outside world—the
human
world—wouldn’t even exist. The Angel of Eden had the right plan: “Destroy the believers and the unbelievers alike, let the Lord Our God sort them out.”

Hodge himself intended to be sorted no sooner than absolutely necessary. The Angel had promised him immunity, and Ezra the Invisible held firm to the dream of the sailboat, to joining Adam and Eve in Eden with the beautiful, blonde Rena Scholz at his side.

Hodge prepared the first in a series of slapshots from a kit that Mishwe provided for him. He unfolded the text accompanying his first shot and read it aloud: “I have the keys of Death and of Hell,” then he injected himself on schedule.

The series promised immunity from GenoVax and a doubling of his life span. He had a backup kit stored safely away to protect Major Scholz, the companion of his dreams.

Hodge performed a couple of data diversions on his console, then waited for acknowledgment from the Sanhedrin in Texas. The shutdown signal at ViraVax triggered an automatic computer feed into the Agency’s file, which Hodge had already shunted. While it probably wouldn’t matter much in the long run, Hodge didn’t want to give too many heathens and idolators the chance to dig in. He might have to fight them later.

The major was only slightly disturbed that the feed stopped abruptly right after it started. The Angel had a backup plan, just in case, and Hodge was that plan. The world would be a lonelier place without the Angel, but Hodge was already far too busy to give it much thought.

In one sense, the breakoff of the feed was a relief to Hodge.

It feeds into the Sanhedrin’s Central Security and Communications, too,
he thought.
The Sanhedrin doesn’t need to see their fellows melting down into sludge quite yet.

Less information meant more time to spread the series of AVAs that the Angel called “GenoVax.” Hodge preferred “Flaming Sword.”

Major Hodge knew, by the messages flowing into his own Sidekick, that phones were ringing in the homes of Children of Eden all over the world. They would be told that their Master was dead and a successor must be chosen. The Sabbath and their grief would keep them occupied just long enough for everything to be set into motion. They would meet, share bread and ice water, and they would die, successor or no.

Only Commander Noas and a few of his Operations staff in the Jesus Rangers knew the truth about ViraVax. They were too few and too far away to do anything about it. And they would never suspect that their own company had produced the catalytic agent of the Apocalypse, and used their own people to seed it into the rest of the world.

Lines also buzzed in the offices of the DIA and, by now, perhaps the White House itself. The White House had its own distraction—water wars in the countryside and turf wars in the cities. He had a few surprises in store for the administration, too. That had been easier for Hodge to arrange than the bomb in Toledo’s car.

The purest, most contagious version of Flaming Sword was in a warehouse in Mexico City, this Hodge had confirmed, and it would be distributed as vaccine to the World Health Organization as planned. Special shipments were in place already—one each for China, India, the United States, Europe and the Middle East. Everyone else would burn in the fallout.

Even if Colonel Rico Toledo were found alive, he was already discredited and he wouldn’t make it for long. If nothing else, Hodge would see to that himself. The two children that the Angel called Adam and Eve must be brought safely into his own custody eventually, but he had all the time in the world to locate them. Hodge didn’t worry about the children; the Angel guaranteed him that they had been created immune.

Any virologist who survived at ViraVax would be no help to anyone. Flaming Sword was swift and deadly, too swift and too deadly for anyone to produce an effective defense. In the short time they had left, anything any virologist knew was moot. Besides, if there were survivors, Hodge would take care of them, too.

Hodge was proud of the stroke of genius that got his dummy corporation, a
Catholic
corporation, the contract for the Catholics’ communion wafers. Easter Masses throughout the world would precipitate a great flambé over the next couple of weeks. The viral agents in the wafers were the slowest of the lot, taking up to twenty-four hours to hit critical mass.

The Gardeners, as the Children of Eden called themselves, would fall to the Sabbath water, swift and shocking, but painless. Or so he was told. The Gardener holocaust would provide the proper diversion while Flaming Sword did its work in clinics, churches, refugee centers, cafeterias and airlines throughout the world.

Hodge wondered about the inevitable mess, the billions of suppurating bodies, but he supposed the earth itself would clean that up, in time. The Angel had assured him that this would be no problem. He felt bad about all the animals that would starve in their pens, and worried about whether or not vermin would thrive in the aftermath. Ezra Hodge hated rodents of all kinds, but especially rats. He had asked the Angel Mishwe to eliminate them, too, but was told that, of all God’s creatures, only this sinful pack of humans offended Him. Flaming Sword would spare the rats.

Hodge had to admit the possibility that he himself might not be there to see it, but his faith was so strong that this was something he did not regret. He had, in fact, no regrets and was eager to play such an important role in God’s plan. Still, when he fingered his sidearm and imagined its cold steel in his mouth, his heart raced and his sweaty palms turned cold.

Major Hodge turned his attention to the closed-circuit view of the emergency communications center that he had provided at the embassy. He studied Nancy Bartlett as she spoke with her father, the United States Secretary of State, via satlink.

Nancy Bartlett, mother of the new Eve, stood behind the desk of the U.S. ambassador to the Confederation of Costa Brava while her aide finished the link to Washington, D.C. Nancy’s blue eyes were red from crying and from the smoke. She kept her hands on the desktop in an obvious attempt to control their trembling. The clock on the console in front of her chimed once to announce the six o’clock hour. The office was a madhouse of people and makeshift electronics in the aftermath of the embassy bombing. In just a couple of hours, Hodge had converted the ambassador’s personal quarters into the new embassy command center. He didn’t care that they didn’t thank him; it gave him the chance to install certain monitoring devices like the one he was viewing.

“Mrs. Bartlett,” the aide said, “your call to the Secretary of State is ready. Go ahead.”

Nancy’s blonde hair was disheveled, and she tucked it behind her ears. Her blue power suit was streaked with plaster dust and water. Hodge presumed she hadn’t cleaned up after the bombing because she wanted her father to see her this way. Nancy Bartlett was prepared to use every emotional tool at her disposal to get her daughter back. Hodge respected her for that, and thought maybe the woman would feel better knowing that her daughter had been chosen—no,
created
—to be Eve.

It didn’t matter. Nancy Bartlett was a Catholic; she wouldn’t live long after Easter Mass, anyway.

The peel-and-peek on the opposite wall lit up, and the Secretary of State appeared—ashen and exhausted.

“. . . Old,” Nancy whispered, involuntarily, but not loud enough for her father to hear.

Hodge knew for a fact that Nancy had not spoken to her father since her husband had been killed over a month ago. He had studied the Bartlett family long enough to know that the Secretary believed that Red Bartlett had stolen his daughter away to the ends of the earth. Staying on in Costa Brava after her husband’s death had been the ultimate betrayal of her father and her native land. At least, that’s how her father saw it.

Nancy Bartlett straightened her shoulders, cleared her throat and faced the video pickup to the right of the screen.

“Dad,” she said, swallowing a sob in a tight throat, “my baby’s missing, and so is Harry Toledo. A farmer saw Sonja’s plane forced down by an unmarked Mongoose up in the Jaguar Mountains. He thinks the kids might be alive. . . .”

Here her voice betrayed her shock and grief by tightening up her throat too much to speak.

“I know, Nancy,” he said. “I got a scramble from Colonel Toledo earlier, via an Agency field linkup. . . .”

“That
bastard!”
she snapped. “I
knew
he was behind this. He bombed the embassy and took the kids . . .”

Secretary Mike Mandell raised a hand to calm her down.

“Nancy, listen,” he said. “It’s not like that at all. Let’s take one thing at a time. You and Grace weren’t hurt in that bombing, were you? The wires here say that six people died and a lot of us are worried about you.”

“No, Dad, we’re okay. Physically, anyway. And how very thoughtful of Rico to contact you instead of me, or his ex-wife. Look, I don’t know what he told you, but you know you can’t believe that slimy bastard. President Garcia has troops all over the countryside looking for him. He’s turned to the guerrillas and he’s probably got Sonja and Harry in some hellhole in the mountains.”

“Rico didn’t take the kids.”

Her father said it slowly, to make it clear.

“He didn’t bomb the embassy,” he said. “It was a diversion, to put the heat on Rico.”

Hodge sat forward at this. He had not expected his efforts to be pinpointed so soon.

“But why?” Nancy asked. “Who’s behind this?”

Her father’s gaze faltered for a moment as he listened to someone off-camera.

“It appears that the Gardeners are behind both the bombing and the kidnapping.”

“The Children of Eden? But why, Dad? What could two teenage kids mean to them?”

Mike Mandell sighed, and in that sigh Major Hodge heard the deep wheeze of death in the Secretary’s lungs.