Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End (17 page)

Don cracked open a book on
his desk.
Bibliomancy
. He opened to a random page. “One must be free to learn how
to make use of one’s powers freely and usefully. The first attempts
will surely be brutal and will lead to a state of affairs more
painful and dangerous than the former condition under the dominance
but also the protection of an external authority. However, one can
achieve reason only through one’s
own
experiences, and one must be
free to be able to undertake the– ”

The Colonel spluttered, shooting spit as he
cut Don off.

“–
Don! Please for the love of everything holy tell me you
aren’t reading Emmanuel Kant to me right now.”

Now he was the one being cut off, by a
baritone voice in the background bellowing “oh God oh God OH
GOD!”

The Colonel
relaxed.
“Eh. You harpooned your whale,
Ishmael. Now get off my ass. I owe these DNA coated foundlings a
line of shitty mob coke.”

The best and the brightest might be good
enough for Silicone Valley, but he needed to add derangement to the
bill. When you’re looking up at such an overwhelming opponent, you
gotta go squirrely.

Recruitment went smoothly,
as Don methodically moved from partners to employees. Supply them
with a living wage and the freedom to actually
be
themselves, most people
would
do
just
about anything. Propaganda was the easiest of all. Anything to
avoid that cookie-cutter 9-5. As he continued making phone calls
and everything fell into place, he started to feel the dominoes had
been set for years…maybe even decades. Was he just a single link in
a long chain?

In the end, it didn't matter. Was God's hand
moving him, or was he a part of God's hand? It was time to put
agents in the field.

The feeling of cool shell casings in my hand
brings me back. Brings me back from what? I’m not quite sure. But
the adrenaline pumps through me all the same. The heart races,
blood throbbing through sluggish capillaries. The only evidence of
these internal gymnastics is a sudden flush followed by a sheen of
sweat, the sensation of ants crawling rapidly across the base of my
neck. Rationality be damned, my body is an athlete primed for
action. These shells hold a vital secret.

I received them in the mail along with a
simple handwritten note: “Cell 036: Activate.” There were no
instructions. But the Universe would show me what to do. These
bullets are the first part of its encrypted message.

I pull one of them out of the pocket of my
overcoat. Inspect it, rolling it back and forth in the glittering
candlelight of the restaurant. My business partners are speaking to
me, glasses of Chianti dangling from their drunken fingers, but I
can’t hear them. The words escaping between bites of half-chewed
filet Mignon and lobster bisque are bland mush in my ears.

Derivatives trading? The
fuck kind of nonsense is that? There was nothing in the room but me
and that bullet. Deadly yes, but what it really stands for is the
harsh light of truth. The
only
truth.

Didactics crumple under the clear “is or
isn’t” of a shard of metal, traveling many times the speed of
sound. Your skull shatters like fine china on the kitchen floor, or
it doesn’t. Here is the modern equivalent of Kierkegaard’s
Either/Or, updated, streamlined, stripped of faith and hope. These
assholes want to talk to me about derivatives trading. In ten
years, your pathetic imaginary pyramid is going to be nothing but
ash.

The bullet I now cradled in my sweaty palm
was live. Even though I am a rocket scientist, I wouldn’t need to
be one to know what this means: it’s time for shit to get heavy.
This clarity brings a sickening vertigo that I am at a loss to
explain rationally. I have the conclusions, but not the postulates.
This I knew for certain: the security of the free world is at
stake, and I alone hold the ability to save it in my hand.

I lean towards one of my compatriots,
placing a bullet in his hand and closing his resistant, clammy
fingers around it for him. “If you are in danger of being caught,
bite down on this. Bite down hard. Do it for the Mother Hive Brain
Agency. Do it for mankind. For the love of our one eyed,
ether-crazed God, just do it. If you are successful…report back to
me in a week. You know where to find me.”

I watch his reaction with clinical
intensity. If he knows, he is one of us. If not, he will be marked
for erasure. There can’t be a moment’s hesitation at times like
this, not room for a blade of grass to slide between the
chinks.

The man’s eyebrows raise when he recognizes
the small but deadly parcel in his hand, leaving a trail of
wrinkles right through his receding hairline.

Not one of us, I note.

I don’t have time for this. I need to get
back in touch with the other agents.

It is
time.
With that I stand up abruptly, and
grab my fedora. I am ready to report for duty.

Chapter Seven

Dennis walked down a dusty
highway. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

“
Fuck,” he said, to no one. His head, wrapped in an
American-flag bandana, hung a little lower.

The skies opened up. Soon,
he was trudging through quickly forming puddles. Spitting out a
mouthful of rain water, he stopped and looked down at himself. His
shoulders drooped.

Streams were already
forming in the gullies along the side of the highway. At that pace,
it would be a flood in no time. The weather kept getting more
freakish.

“
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

Headlights pierced the
murkiness ahead. He didn’t notice at first, but when he did, he
stopped and began waving his arms.

A luxury sedan pulled over.
The driver, a kid with black-dyed hair and pathetic facial hair,
looked at him through his Matrix sunglasses. A redhead leered at
him from the back seat, and an emaciated ice princess rode shotgun.
He doubted she was capable of facial expression, aside from a
perpetual look of surprise painted about two inches above where her
eyebrows should have been.

“
Where are you going?” the boy asked.

“
Rapid city, South Dakota.”

“
That’s... really far to walk.”

“
Yeah. Can you give me a ride?”

“
Only if you can
handle
riding with us.”

Dennis frowned. “Your name
is Morpheus, isn’t it?”

“
No, it isn’t.” Morpheus said, blankly. He lowered his
sunglasses and tried to give a piercing stare. “We operate on a
different level.”

“
Okay. It’s cold, it’s wet and it’s possible my fiancee ran
off with a friend of mine. So...”

“
Get in.”

“
Thanks.” The girl in the back moved over, and he hopped
in.

Morpheus cranked up the
music. The ice princess rolled her eyes and turned it down
immediately.

“
Turn it back up!” Morpheus whined.

“
Do you want me to keep blowing you, or not? Listening the
whole way will
totally
ruin the show for me. I want it to be fresh.”

He sighed, but let it
be.

“
Asshole,” she muttered under her breath, and then turned
around. “What’s your name?”

“
Dennis. Where are you headed?”

There was a muffled banging
sound from behind them, but no one seemed to react.

“
To see the best band ever,” Morpheus said.

The redhead smiled. She
gave an awkward laugh and tried to move closer. Dennis,
not-so-subtly, leaned in the other direction. He marveled at how
much she looked like a pug.

The banging sounded
again.

“
I think something is wrong with your car,” he
said.

“
Oh no,” the ice princess said. “That’s the guy who owns this
thing. Total suit.”

“
Man! You should have seen him!” Morpheus said.

“
Terrific.”

Dennis’ head knocked from
side to side as they continued down smaller side-roads. They
stopped suddenly. He had been drooling on himself, he
realized.

“
We’re here,” the redhead said. She was laying on his lap, but
thankfully bounced out the door before he had the willpower to
dislodge her himself.

He rubbed his eyes.
“Here?”

“
You’ll thank us later.”

“
Uh-huh.”

Morpheus tapped the key
chain, and the trunk swung open. A man in his mid-fifties struggled
against the cocoon of duct tape wrapped around his body. His eyes
bulged from screaming into a gag for hours.

“
What do we do with him?” Morpheus asked.

“
Let him go,” Dennis and the redhead said at the same time.
This led to a really awkward moment where she stared at him
adoringly with piss colored eyes. Dennis was finding it hard to see
how any of this was better than dying in a flood, hours
before.

“
Kill him,” the ice princess said, derailing his
thoughts.

“
Kill him?” Dennis looked around. “The fuck
are
we? The fuck is
wrong with you people?”

Morpheus tossed the keys
into the trunk and slammed it shut. “There. He won’t be able to get
out, now.”

They stared in bewilderment
at the trunk and then him in turn.

“
Typical,” the ice princess said. She smacked him on the head,
hard.

“
I guess we’re all walking,” Dennis said.

“
Huh?” Morpheus asked.

“
You locked the fucking keys in the truck. How do you plan to
drive away?”

It finally dawned on him.
“Ooooh, right. Sorry. Well, we’re here anyway.”

They started off down a
path.

“
You stole a car to take me on a date. Why? Because you don’t
fucking
have
one.
Who does that?” the ice princess asked.

“
Pretty cool, right?” Morpheus said, grinning.

“
It shouldn’t be far,” the redhead said.

They made their way through
rocky terrain spotted with pine trees. Dennis saw a shadow moving
off to one side. “What is that?”

Morpheus squinted. “Oh,
probably another fan.”

“
Fan?”

“
Yeah. Don’t worry about it.”

“
Alright,” Daniel said, still worrying about it.

More shadows in the
near-darkness. Then he saw what looked like Christmas lights. As he
got closer, he saw that they
were
Christmas lights, wrapped around the bulging form
of an old man dressed in a sheet. It was stained and painted with
an incomprehensible script.

“
Hello fellow travelers,” the man said as they approached. He
had a staff, which was clearly a broomstick with a pine-cone glued
to the top, and a bushy white beard.

Dennis walked right past
him, careful to avoid eye contact. A former East Coast city
dweller, he knew the power of avoidance. Once you locked eyes with
the crazy, you were in their world. The man ranted to another group
as he fell out of earshot about “Draco dragons” abducting teenagers
to steer his “white-powder time chair,” and something about
reptiles eating human pineal glands.

As they continued, he saw a
series of glowing orbs leading a path through the pine forest. Many
hundreds of people were converging at the lights, and following
them further in.

“
They’re like willow-wisps,” the redhead said. “Guiding us to
Babylon.”

The forest thinned, and
Dennis saw the stolid faces of the presidents lit artificially from
beneath. But that is where familiarity stopped. It was like Burning
Man had formed an independent, nomad nation and decided to take
over Mount Rushmore.

Eighty yards above the mob,
Trevino waited with a spider’s stillness.

“
Target acquired,” a mercenary beside him said. He was looking
through the scope of his AR-50 sniper rifle.

“
Not until my order,” Trevino said. His voice carried via his
headset to men positioned all around the perimeter. Babylon’s
security apparatus boiled off doubt that the crew he faced here was
a dangerous one. Either Babylon hired a crazy man for too much
money, or these little psychos were getting organized. The suits
were onto something, and they couldn’t tell him what.

He had spent too many
nights on too many rented beds, splicing and peeling back the
memories of their meeting. Those three were inarguably criminal,
fine. A case could be made that he faced a fledgling, domestic
terror cell. But sending him out with a gun and an order to
assassinate three American civilians had never sat right with
him.