Down: Trilogy Box Set (120 page)

“Is there nothing I can say to change your mind?”

“You can say you love me. I’d like to hear that but it won’t change my mind.”

“I love you.”

Ben unlocked the door of his mews house in Kensington and paused in the hall. He had the sense he was a stranger. In the past two months he had slept there no more than half the time and those nights had been fraught with marital extremes of temperature—coolness at best, hot anger at worst. At first his wife had suspected an affair but when he’d convinced her it was only the pressure of a very big case, somehow that made it more hurtful. Surely, his wife had argued, if his job was threatening to destroy their family then it was incumbent on him to seek reassignment or to walk away. With his family and political connections she argued he could land a good job in the city, but Ben would not engage in a discussion. The one thing she had not done was ask about the case. As an intelligence officer’s wife, she was too well-programmed to ask. And what would he have told her if he’d decided to be truthful? That I have become the nation’s Heller catcher? That I find them and send them back to Hell? That would have gone down well.

He heard the triplets playing upstairs. The TV was on in the den and that’s where he found her having her morning coffee.

“Hello,” he said.

She hardly looked up. “Here for a change of clothes?”

“Something like that. I want you to take the girls to my parent’s house in the country.”

“Why?”

“You’re watching the news. I don’t think it’s safe in London.”

She came to a quick boil. “Yes I’m watching the news and they’re not saying anything! Is this your bloody huge case, Ben? Well is it?”

He put his bag down. “Yes.”

“Why aren’t they saying what it is? Is it terrorism? Is it the zombie apocalypse? Why aren’t they saying anything?”

“The PM will be speaking at noon.”

“So my husband, my knight in shining armor, can’t tell me what’s happening a few hours in advance.”

“You know I can’t. After his speech the traffic will be awful. I’d like you to get a head start out of town.”

“You know what, Ben, you want to treat me like every other Londoner, then I’ll just have to sit in traffic like every other Londoner. Go away. If this mess has gotten so bloody awful then you’re obviously as bad an agent as you are a father.”

John checked Kyle into his hotel in central London and sat outside the bathroom while his brother showered, feeding pods into the coffee machine. It was clear it was going to take more than a shower and coffee. Kyle needed sleep so John took a taxi over to the Royal London Hospital to satisfy a promise to Emily to have his old stab wound checked. While he waited for his surgeon to come out of the OR he rang Ben.

John heard children in the background and asked, “Where are you?”

“Home for a bit. Returning to the office shortly. Where are you?”

“At the hospital getting checked out.”

“Did your brother arrive?”

“Picked him up at the airport. He’s having a rest.”

“Have you told him what you want him to do?”

“Not yet. What’s happening at the hot zones?”

“Drones are detecting a steadily increasing ingress of Hellers. It’s not a flood yet but it’s worrisome.”

“It’ll get to flood stage but it’s going to take a while,” John said. “Word of mouth over there is literally word of mouth. They can’t do flash mobs.”

“At least that gives us time to get your plan into effect. Can you get to Thames House by two?”

“I’ll be there.”

His surgeon arrived. He poked around and checked John’s wound, declaring that at one month post-op he was healing well and was free of infection. The surgeon clucked like a hen when John told him he’d had a doctor friend remove the stitches. He scolded, “Why didn’t you come here for your appointment?”

“I was out of town.”

John returned to the hotel just before noon and Kyle was still snoring away. He ordered a couple of hamburger platters from room service and turned on the TV.

“Kyle. Wake up.”

He received a foggy reply and some choice curses.

“Come on. You need to see this. You’re going to hear why I sent for you.”

“From who?”

“The prime minister.”

“Of England?”

“Wake up, bro. Yes! You’re in England. His name’s Peter Lester. You’re going to meet him today or tomorrow.”

Kyle’s eyes blinked open. He propped himself up on an elbow. “I’m going to meet the prime minister?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck. You got any aspirin?”

“I put a bottle in the bathroom.”

Kyle returned and sat on the edge of the bed in his boxers, his beer belly on full display.

Peter Lester appeared from the iconic black door of 10 Downing Street, stood at a lectern and looked solemnly into the camera. Behind him, off to one side, stood the Archbishop of Canterbury, his hands tightly clasped at his waist.

“I speak to you today about an unprecedented crisis,” Lester began. “While it is an international crisis, it is affecting Great Britain most directly and London and the Home Counties most specifically. The Massive Anglo-American Collider in Dartford, a source of great national pride, has become an instrument of worry. For the past two months the supercollider has been operating at very high collision energies, levels that were not explicitly authorized. There will be ample time in the future to assign blame and as prime minister I am prepared to accept oversight failures on behalf of the government. But this is not a time for politics. It is a time for concern and a time for action. As a result of a confluence of events the collider has opened up a channel into what has been described to me by scientific experts, as another dimensional state, another universe, perhaps. That universe includes a place much like our Earth but with important and disturbing differences. It seems that it is populated by people from our dimension, our world, who are deceased, people who have done great evil during their lives. These people see it as a place of eternal punishment. They see it as Hell. We have knowledge of this dimension because, I can now confirm, we have had several people, including security and scientific personnel from the collider site in Dartford, who have been there and have returned.”

“Is this for real?” Kyle asked.

“Afraid so,” John said.

“He’s talking about you, isn’t he?”

“Yep.”

Lester had always been a cool customer in front of an audience but his throat sounded dry and he was blinking excessively. He took a sip of water before continuing. “Clearly this development will alter the way all of us look at our place in the cosmos. It will cause some of us to alter the way we think about religion, divine intervention, the consequences of evil. The Archbishop of Canterbury will say a few words on this when I’m done. We will have ample time in the future to debate all the implications. However, for the present we must focus on the safety and security of people living and working in the greater London area. There are presently four geographic areas of concern. They are the towns of Dartford, Leatherhead, Sevenoaks, and Upminster. All these towns lie near the M25 and the collider’s tunnels that ring London in a giant oval. We have established a security cordon of police and military around these towns and have been evacuating members of the public. Unfortunately, there has been an influx of residents from this other dimension and some of them appear to be violent criminals who regrettably have caused casualties. We are continuing to evaluate how best to evacuate trapped citizens. For the moment, for those people who are in Dartford, Leatherhead, Sevenoaks or Dartford, we urge you to shelter in place and affix a piece of white paper or cloth to your front door or place of work so security personnel can find you. If you feel it is not safe to shelter in place and you choose to make your way to a security cordon, carry a white cloth when you approach so that you may be recognized as a citizen. Appearing below me on your screens is a special hotline number to call to advise the authorities of your present situation. Presently there is no reason to evacuate other areas of greater London but we will be closely monitoring the situation. Rest assured that the best scientists in Britain and elsewhere are working on finding a way to permanently close the points of connection between our two dimensions.”

John switched off the TV.

“He was still talking,” Kyle said.

“That’s the meat of it. I’ll tell you what he isn’t going to say.”

Kyle found his jeans and pulled a clean shirt out of his bag. “Go on,” he said. “You’ve got my attention.”

“This is a grade-one cluster-fuck,” John said. “I’ve been over there twice and it makes the worse shitholes in the world seem like the lap of luxury. It’s got all the world’s evildoers and major assholes from the beginning of history to the present, all glommed together in medieval kinds of villages, towns, and cities. Geographically it’s pretty much identical to the Earth but that’s the beginning and the ending of the similarities. Once you die and go there, you’re there forever. You can suffer but you can’t die. There’s way more men than women which isn’t surprising since we all know that testosterone is the root of all evil. The only good thing about it is there aren’t any children. They’ve got plants and animals so there’s some agriculture and a lot of hunting. The worst of them are called rovers which are basically gangs of rapists and cannibals and there’s evidence that some of them have crossed to Earth. There’s no way out which is why the Hellers are going to be flocking to the hot zone connections that’ve formed between the two worlds. Each country is ruled by a feudal kind of ruler and a bunch of nobles who treat their people like slaves. They’re constantly at war with each other, launching attacks and land grabs.”

Kyle interrupted him. “You’re saying all of this with a completely straight face.”

“Because it’s true. This afternoon you’ll be meeting other people who went over with me. They’ll tell you the same thing.”

“And Satan’s cruising around, zapping people with fireballs?”

“No Satan, sorry.”

“And who decides whether someone’s going to be taking the down elevator to Hell?”

“Wish I knew. When the dust settles maybe I’ll pick up a Bible and have a read.”

“Okay, I’ll make the assumption you haven’t gone completely fucking crazy and play along.”

He made a move to the mini-bar but John wouldn’t let him touch anything harder than a soda.

Kyle cracked a can of Coke and said, “So I assume, since you used the word medieval, that these dudes don’t have jet planes and nukes to lob at each other.”

“We’re talking swords and cannon, flintlock pistols and rifles. They’ve got bits and pieces of turn-of-nineteenth century stuff like the telegraph and a few steam cars but the people who wind up there aren’t exactly the engineers and designers and creative types of the world. So they’re mired in old tech.”

Kyle pulled the curtains to let the light in. He squinted at the heavy traffic clogging the streets and listened to the sirens of emergency vehicles, some near, others far.

“So what’s this have to do with me?”

“I’m going back there real soon with some badasses to try and stop Hellers from crossing over while the scientists figure out how to fix this. I want you to come along.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know anyone else who can do what you can do.”

“You don’t know anyone who can get drunk and make women hate them?”

John laughed. “I know lots of guys who can do that, me included. I mean the other stuff you do.”

“Oh, that stuff. Well shit.”

“Ben Wellington, Trevor Jones, meet my brother, Kyle.”

“It’s good of you to come so quickly, Kyle,” Ben said, showing them to his seating area.

They were on a high floor in Thames House with a river view. They could see the traffic jammed up on Southwark and London Bridges.

“It’s gridlock,” John said. “We ditched our taxi and walked.”

“I had to walk too, from Brixton,” Trevor said.

Ben shook his head. “It appears people didn’t take the PM’s keep calm and carry on message to heart. They’re getting out of Dodge with some urgency.”

“Can’t blame them,” John said.

“My parents won’t budge,” Trevor said. “I gave up trying.”

“Did you hurt your leg, Kyle?” Ben asked.

“The limp’s old as the hills,” Kyle said. “Car crash from my wild and crazy days.”

Ben poured coffees all around. “I see. Is Emily going to be joining us?”

“She begged off,” John said. “She’s tied up on conference calls with the CERN people and with her experts. She’ll meet Kyle tonight at my place in Dartford.”

“Isn’t that a bit too close for comfort to the hot zone?” Trevor asked.

“It’s four miles from the lab,” John said. “We’ll be okay for now. How we’re going to get there’s another matter. The M25’s going to be a parking lot.”

“I’ll arrange for the helicopter to drop you off on the way back from Herefordshire,” Ben said.

“Before we start,” John said, “Kyle needs to hear from Trevor. I spent so much time punking him when we were growing up he doesn’t trust a thing I say.”

“It’s a fact. He’s always been a lying son-of-a-bitch,” Kyle said, without humor, “but I’m kind of thinking that this is too weird not to be true.”

“I can guarantee you it’s true,” Trevor said. “I’ve only been there the one time but I’ll tell what I saw and what I know.”

When Trevor was done, Kyle shrugged and said he was satisfied.

“Does that mean you’re in?” Trevor asked.

“I still need to think on it.”

“Understandable,” Ben said. “What do you say we make our way to the helipad? Don’t want to keep the lads waiting.”

The Officer Commander, Major Gus Parker-Burns, greeted the occupants of the MI5 helicopter on its touchdown at Credenhill, Herefordshire.

“Gentlemen, welcome to 22 SAS Regiment,” he said. “Come with me.”

Inside a low, drab operational center, Parker-Burns showed them to a conference room and offered a pot of over-stewed coffee. He was about John’s age although smaller, clean-shaven and fit, turned out in a camo uniform and a sand-colored beret with the regimental badge, the downward-pointed Excalibur wreathed in flames. He had a folder and when everyone was seated he opened it and referred to some briefing documents.