Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End (19 page)

“
I don't understand wh–”

“
I'm answering your question, Mr. Trevino.”

“
Agent Trevino.”

“
Okay, sure.” She leaned back. “You’ll make legends with your
bullets, martyrs of a rebellion that didn’t even exist until you
started firing.” Especially when that message I recorded gets out,
Lilith thought. An army of fools would flock to the Behemoth’s
location in hours. She hid the thought behind a smile.

“
We didn't create this thing,” she continued when he just sat
there. “This nation was ready to fall. We're God's
messengers.”

“
Bullshit. Are are you connected with terrorists?”

“
Please. Protesters will knock down your gates if you lock
them away. If you make this happen, you’ll find out you’re
outnumbered. You’d have to kill us all.”

“
That might be the outcome, yes,” Trevino said,
grimly.

“
I'm not talking about the band...”

Trevino didn't want to go
where she was leading.
Leading
? He thought. Why in hell was
she leading in an interrogation? “There's no way idiots like your
friends organized this. Last I dealt with them they were a group of
disorganized pranksters. Suddenly it's a fucking insurrection.
Who’s backing you?”

“
Hey, could you move the ashtray over here? Thanks. No, you
don’t understand. Do you think individuals sculpt history?
Everything happens because of something else. It’s only in
hindsight that we call out a Hitler or an Einstein and say, ‘There.
That’s where that started.’”

“
You're saying–”

“
How did it feel to kill all those kids?”

Trevino boiled for a
moment. He stubbed out his cigarette and reflexively reached for
another.

“
Not good, then.”

“
No.”

“
How many more are you willing to kill?
You’re
bringing the war on terror to
the U.S. We’re just the straw men. Newsflash: you are the
terrorists.”

“
Not interested. Get to your point, if you have
one.”

She savored the last drag
of her smoke before putting it out. “I don’t usually allow myself.
Singer, you know. Okay. How's this for a point? I can give you more
than information. I can give you the band. On a platter like roast
pigs. Apples in their mouths. Actually, no. I'm picturing that, and
it's just gross.”

Trevino scowled, his face
crinkling like worn leather. “You mean you intend to, what?
Defect?”

“
Something like that. I always thought there was something
sexy about double agents. Do you?”

“
I don’t believe you. Why would you do that?”

“
You couldn’t possibly understand. Let’s just leave it at
‘bitches be crazy.’ You’ll buy that, right?”

Trevino sucked in another
breath of burning tobacco and fiberglass and god knows what else.
Sometimes, just for a second, he wondered if the entire world,
everybody from the cardboard-box, ten-layers-of-clothes,
reek-of-cheap-alcohol-and-rotten-meat “go’way tryin’ ta schleep”
homeless to Mary fucking Teresa were toys in the attic. God
existed, and he was at the tail-end of a seven-billion-year PCP
binge.

He shook away his thoughts.
“Guess I’ll have to. But I don’t trust you. If I find them with a
goddamn army, we’re going to take them.”

As Lilith was escorted to a
holding cell, Trevino flipped open his cell. His eyebrows knitted
together as he stared at the number displayed on the screen. The
door slammed, and he was left alone with his thoughts.

The pieces didn’t
fit.

Finally, he pressed the
green button, and waited for the expected voice on the other
end.

“
Adam?”

“
Sheila. Yeah, it’s me. I just needed someone to talk to
that’s not directly connected to any of this. Someone with a clear
head.”

“
You still on that assignment?”

“
Yeah, that’s what I want to talk to you about…”

“
I’m really surprised you got a
promotion
out of what you did,” she
said.

Her tone caught him off
guard. “I’m sorry?”

“
It just pissed me off a little, I thought I’d hone up to it
right off the bat. Partners, now you’re gunning to work federally.
Whatever.”

“
You sounded pretty fucking...what’s the
word...
conciliatory
with those answering machine messages you left back when
I–”

“–
Just forget it, okay? I saw the reports. You caught one of
them. Glad to hear it.”

“
Sheila, Listen. The mercenaries blew the op. This is getting
really ugly. At this point there’s no option but to blast them off
the face of the planet. I get that,” Trevino said.

“
What’s this really about, Adam? You’re not wondering if
they’re legit, are you?”

“
I’m wondering if any of this is legit.”

“
Adam. It’s all legal. Repeat after me: these are
terrorists.”

“
That’s not what I meant. It was rhetorical in the first
place, I was trying to get to a point.”

“
Get there. I want lunch and I know you hate it when I chew on
the phone.”

Trevino reflected on what
Lilith had said a moment earlier. “I’m going to have to call in the
guard, or we need to outsource this to people who aren’t...Look.
I’ll have no trouble sleeping if I put a bullet in the heads of the
initial targets. What is eating at me is that there’s a really thin
line between civilian and combatant, here.”

“
These are terrorists.”

“
That’s what I’m getting at. Do you have any idea how many
fans they have? What happened at that concert was a fucking
bloodbath. This story is going to out, and we don’t even have our
damn suspects. Where does it end?”

“
Oh. Okay, I get it now. You called me up right before my
lunch break to try to assuage your conscience. Then you can go in
there and make a dirty job seem patriotic somehow. I won’t do
it.”

“
I wouldn’t–”

“
Adam. You’re so naïve sometimes.”

“
These are people’s children.”

“
So are Iraqis. They don’t pay me to sort this out. I’m
hungry. You want the job? Do it. Your job is to catch them, not
worry about PR fallout, or your damn conscience. It’s too late for
any of that now, Adam. I’m just being straight with you. Will you
listen to what I say very carefully?”

“
Why do you think I called? We worked together for years
Sheila. I trust you.”

“
This has to look like a
war
, or else you’re
fucked.”

The phone went
dead.

Well. This was definitely
the most bizarre case he had ever worked. He sat down and lit
another cigarette. He’d smoked a lot more and slept a lot less,
these past few months.

Chapter Eight

How long have I been
dreaming? Am I awake?

They gave me
something
–
some
pharmaceuticals, a long time ago. Though they were meant to help
with my burden, instead, these poison tablets shattered my world,
leaving me in endless gray hallways.

The smell of mold tells me
I’m back at Pennhurst. They must have caught me, somehow. The
underground labyrinth beckons, calling out from an unseen center.
Fascinated and horrified, I drift through the catacombs towards
this center, following the etchings on the walls like a spool of
thread, winding in, and down.

The walls are adorned with
murals gouged with bleeding fingernails and sharp sticks,
children’s paintings and graffiti. Stuffed animals. Broken
umbrellas. There are boxes full of trinkets, probably deeply
meaningful to some person at another place, in another time.
Letters written in graphite and crayon. Old bottles of perfume.
Rusted keys. A beat-up tricycle. The memories and scattered
possessions of the fallen, the neglected, and the
abused.

It – whatever it is that
draws me here – directs my attention to a room numbered 333. I
press my face up to a smeared window and look inside. I can make
out the figure of a young man bathed in seductively flickering blue
light.

He is completely naked but
for the restraints binding him to an upright table. His eyes stare
lidlessly at images on a screen before him: mother, father and
child, clasped together in a blurry family portrait, over-saturated
and scratched, like a distant memory; a boy and girl holding hands,
there and then gone, a flicker of hope in black and white; banners
and flags; girls dancing in sequined dresses as fireworks erupt
behind them; the quivering, painted lips of a girl, naked,
vulnerable, in ecstasy; the glint of a wedding ring, parents in the
background, pantomiming happiness as they feel their own end moving
inexorably nearer; computer screens, printouts, spreadsheets, gray
slacks, then a fading image of wrinkled arms, wreathed in medical
tubing, and the lonely darkness, as the words “Happily Ever After”
take the screen, and remain.

With a start, I realize
this boy is me.

I am stuck, trapped in the
underworld. Trapped in a labyrinth I can’t escape.

“
And how are we feeling?” the doctor asks. He is an older man,
built like a bear. His breath wheezes as he stares me
down.

I look down at my hands.
Wrapped in bandages. I remembered staring at myself in the mirror,
my face distorted by rage. What I saw there was unfamiliar, though
I recognize it as my own. The mirror shattered. Silver splinters
float around me.

“
How are you doing today?” My eyes don't raise in response to
the voice. Gauging by the lattice work of angry gashes. I wasn’t
doing so well. I am tied to a wheelchair. Not well at
all.

I could feel his eyes
searching for something. My face was a mask, a dead weight
fashioned of heavy and soggy clay, so it was unsurprising that he
should be stonewalled. I still haven't moved, or met his prying
gaze.

Instead of replying, I turn
to find bubbling and cracked paint. Columns of mold. Shelves of
rat-gnawed feces. “Where am I?”

“
Unit A, Modular 3. Pennhurst.”

This was unlike the
sessions I recalled. I had been facile, detached. Safe in the
knowledge that I could run circles around the doctors and cage them
in a prison of words. No, it was different. I am exposed.
Naked.

I look down at my arms
again. The slashes are puffy and oozing in the first stages of
healing. Why am
I
here? The answer is in that web of dried blood
and new skin. Who am I now? That question hangs around me like
smoke. It chokes my vision, steals my breath.

With great effort, I peer
up at the impenetrable eyes of the doctor. “What year is
it?”

“
I’m supposed to ask you that.” But then he shrugs. “It’s
1972.”

“’
72? I wasn’t born yet.”

His fingers absently drum
on his desk. “Who do you think you are?”

I hear footsteps behind me.
Orderlies cart me away into cavernous, dark tunnels.

I’m flocked by a procession
of ghosts. They are dressed in rags, their stained underwear wedged
between chicken legs, their eyes black and glassy. It’s hard to
believe these creatures were ever human. One of them pushes past
the orderly long enough to lay a hand on my forehead.

“
Coram sanctissimi Sacramento, sive in tabernaculo asservato
sive publicae adorationi exposito, unico genu–” she says, before
being elbowed in the ribs and pushed aside. The orderlies have to
use more force to keep the gibbering masses back, as they scramble
to touch me, begging for me to release them from the prison of
their atrophying flesh and bone. Their hell is all around them.
Only death brings serenity, in forgetfulness.

Their faces remain serene
as their bodies sustain crippling blows, cushioned by religious
ecstasy. I am their Jesus.

The room the orderlies
leave me in is truly a hole. It is too dark to see anything, aside
from the lights of the hall reflecting in the stagnant water that
pools on the floor, but I can tell there is something dead in here
with me. It drives me a little mad – being unable to see it, unable
to know what is rotting, possibly feet from the wheelchair I’m
strapped to.

An indeterminable time
later, I am carted out to see the doctor again.