Mercury Revolts (33 page)

His goal had presumably been
to dislodge Michelle, but he managed to hit the wall precisely between two
studs, smashed through both layers of drywall, and disappeared from Eddie’s
view with Michelle presumably still firmly attached.

Meanwhile another of the
goons had come around and Eddie ran over and pounced on him. Without the
ability to perform miracles, Eddie didn’t have much of a chance against a
single unarmed man, to say nothing of six men with assault rifles. Fortunately
this particular man was prone, dazed, and injured, which gave Eddie a fighting
chance.

Eddie punched the man as hard
as he could across the jaw, which had the dual effect of waking him up and
pissing him off. The man gripped Eddie by the throat and threw him off as if
Eddie were a light jacket. Eddie landed on top of another barely conscious man,
who stirred and groaned. Eddie considered punching the man, thought better of
it, and sprang after the other man, who had gotten to his feet and was heading
toward the computer terminal. Eddie dove at the man, gripping him around the
ankles. The man pulled one of his legs free and continued walking toward the
terminal, dragging Eddie across the floor as he went.

He’d reached the terminal and
was bending over the keyboard when Eddie heard a voice above him.

“Eddie!” the voice cried.

Eddie looked up to see Suzy
peering through the hole in the ceiling at him. She was pointing a hair dryer
at him.

Eddie smiled. The
anti-Balderhaz field gun was a little too close for maximum effectiveness, but
he only needed a very minor miracle at present. Eddie waved his hand and the
man suddenly stood straight up, gasped, clutched his chest, and fell over
backwards.

“Jesus Christ, Eddie!” yelled
Suzy from above. “What did you do?”

“Stopped his heart,” said
Eddie, getting up to look at the monitor. As he watched, the indicator went
from ninety-nine to one hundred percent. “Thank God,” murmured Eddie.

Then the screen went black.

“Oh, shit,” said Eddie.

“What?” asked
Suzy.
“What happened? Did it say the patch was successfully
installed?”

“No!” cried Eddie. “It went
to one hundred percent and then everything went black! I don’t know what
happened!”

“Did you touch something?” asked Suzy.

“No, I didn’t do anything! It just went black for no reason!
Is there some…”

A window popped up. It read:

   
An update is available for Java. Would you like to update Java now?

“Holy fucking shit,” groaned Eddie. He clicked
No
and the window
disappeared. In its place another window appeared. It read:

     
Myrmidon patch successfully installed.

“Never mind,” said Eddie. “We’re good. Mission
accomplished.”

“But you killed that guy!” yelled Suzy.

“Huh?” replied Eddie.
“Oh, no.
Hang
on.” He waved his hand and the man suddenly jerked awake and gasped for air.
Eddie leaned over him. “You OK, buddy?” he said.

The man stared at Eddie with a look of terror on his face.

“He’s fine,” said Eddie.
“Just had to
restart his heart.”
He turned back to the man. “Stay out of trouble, OK?
Don’t do drugs.”

Through the hole in the wall Eddie heard a distant crash.
Evidently Michelle and Gamaliel were still going at it.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Suzy.

Eddie nodded. “Back up. Keep the gun pointed at me.”

Suzy disappeared from view. Eddie floated through the hole
in the ceiling and landed on the roof a few yards from her. “How do we get
down?” he asked. Eddie had used the anti-Balderhaz field gun to allow Michelle
to levitate Suzy onto the roof, and then tossed the gun to her.
Getting down, though, posed some logistical problems now that they
had lost a member of their team.

“What about Michelle?” said Eddie, as they made their way to
the edge of the
roof.

“Screw Michelle,” replied Suzy. “I hope she and Gamaliel
tear each other to pieces.”

“Yeah,” said Eddie, “but how do we get down?”

“It’s not that far,” said Suzy. “Just lower yourself over
the edge and drop to the ground. Then I’ll lower myself down and you can catch
me.”

Eddie stood at the edge of the roof and looked down. Some
twelve feet down was pavement. He bit his lip. They could hear shouts coming
from the hole in the roof.

“Fine,” said Suzy. “I’ll go first and you can float down,
you big pussy.”

Suzy climbed over the edge and hung for a moment before
dropping to the ground. She got to her feet and Eddie tossed her the
anti-Balderhaz field gun. She took several paces back and aimed the gun at
Eddie, allowing him to float gracefully to the ground.

“All right,” Suzy said. “Now let’s get the hell out of
here.”

They scaled a chain-link fence and took off running across a
vacant lot. Behind them they heard the shouts of pursuing men. But pursuit was
futile, as Suzy and Eddie had left the Balderhaz field. Eddie scooped up Suzy
in his arms and took flight, leaving the men cursing below. Gamaliel and
Michelle were presumably still doing their best to kill each other.

Eddie, Suzy and Michelle had done their part. Now everything
depended on Mercury getting the transmitter in place.

Chapter Forty-five
      
 

About a thousand miles above
Earth; August 2016

The transmitter
once again shot past the satellite, reached its apogee, and then began tumbling
back to Earth. Mercury, in the clutches of two demons, vanished into the great
mass of blue and white below. The matter was now out of his hands.

Miraculously, as the
makeshift contraption fell past the satellite, it slowed, came to a stop, and
then reversed course. A small head peaked out from inside the drum, took a look
around, and then disappeared back into the drum.

A moment later, the owner of
the small head, a diminutive cherub named Perpertiel, climbed out of the drum
and, with a roll of duct tape in one hand, fluttered toward the satellite,
dragging the transmitter behind him. Strictly speaking the fluttering was
unnecessary as there was no atmosphere to speak of, but then Perp didn’t
actually need the wings to fly in the first place. For Perp, it was all about
style.

It wasn’t particularly
stylish to hide out inside an oil drum and nearly lose his lunch three
different times, but that was evidently what was required of him. He was the
only one who could fit inside the drum, and in any case he supposed that the
indignity of his assignment was still preferable to being incinerated on
reentry. He had to hand it to Mercury: when he got an idea in his head, he committed
to it.

Perp
levitated Balderhaz’ transmitter while unscrewing the bolts that held the
factory model in place.
He let the
old transmitter fall to Earth and moved the new one into place. A few yards of
duct tape
later,
and he’d performed an installation
that would have gotten the thumbs up from MacGyver himself. He plugged in the
signal cable and that was that. Assuming that Suzy’s patch had been loaded,
they would now have complete control over Tiamat and her minions.

Perp let go of the satellite
and fell toward Earth, his wings fluttering in the nonexistent breeze.

Chapter Forty-six
               
 

Grand Rapids, Michigan; August
2016

After a few initial missteps the
chip implantation program was going remarkably well, and it was no coincidence
that the turnaround coincided with the arrival of Zion Johnson. Zion Johnson
had met with his staff an hour after landing in Grand Rapids to explain to them
that they’d all be getting chipped on national television to demonstrate both
the innocuousness of the chips and the fact that nobody was above the law. He’d
only had to fire three of them, who objected on principle. They and their
principles were now locked up in a makeshift holding cell, awaiting chip
implantation. If it made them feel better to put up some momentary resistance,
Zion Johnson wasn’t going to begrudge them that.

Zion Johnson and his underlings were chipped at a press
conference, as planned. After they had the chips implanted, a reporter asked
them if they felt any different. They all laughed and said no. “What am I
supposed to be feeling?” one of them asked, which struck Zion Johnson as funny.

Zion Johnson did feel different. Perhaps because he had
always been so loyal, he was acutely aware of the tiniest seed of disloyalty
inside of him. His patriotism was like the faith of an ascetic monk who flogged
himself mercilessly for being unable to rid himself of the last vestiges of
doubt. And now that doubt, that seed of disloyalty, was gone.

Some part of him missed it, missed the constant struggle,
the need to recite his mantra in the face of adversity. Now his mantra was
redundant. There were no longer any obstacles to perfect patriotism, perfect
obedience, and so there was no need to struggle, to rally his will to overcome.
Superior attitude, superior state of mind
now held no more meaning to
him than
six foot two, graying hair, size ten shoes
. His attitude and
state of mind were always superior, and he was starting to forget why he’d ever
needed a mantra in the first place. It seemed silly now. Why would anyone
question authority? Zion Johnson wasn’t going to tolerate anyone questioning
his, and he wouldn’t expect the president or Tiamat to tolerate it either. He’d
initially had his doubts about Tiamat, but now he saw her as embodying all of
his most cherished ideals.
If she didn’t always seem to be
the most honorable, honest, or patriotic person, it was because her ways were
beyond the understanding of a mere soldier like Zion Johnson.
He would
die for Tiamat if that’s what she asked of him.

At present, Zion Johnson was overseeing the opening of the
newest chip implantation center, in an abandoned Build-a-Bear store in a strip
mall on the southeast side of the city. Smiling citizens were lined up out the
door, and cameramen were documenting it all for the evening news. In actuality,
most of the smiling citizens had already been chipped. They’d been asked by one
of Zion Johnson’s underlings to show up in a show of support for the chip
implantation effort and, having been programmed to do whatever was asked of
them by authority figures, they’d happily complied. Several of them had taken
the day off work to wait in line, go into a back room when their names were
called, exit out the back of the building, walk back around to the front, and
do it all over again. They would happily do this for weeks on end if asked, but
a few of them did have to be sent home after making themselves sick on the free
juice and cookies.

Only about one in five of the “customers” was an actual
implantation candidate, and half of those were homeless people who were only
there for the free food. But that’s how you had to start with these things. It
was always easiest to control the disenfranchised. Once the distribution of
food rations was linked to chip implantation, they’d start seeing more of the
lower middle class showing up. And then, when people had gotten used to that,
they’d start offering chip recipients special passes allowing unchecked travel
throughout the city. The trick was to roll out these programs in an orderly and
gradual way, to minimize the outrage. Of course, he could move faster in Grand
Rapids than in a typical psy ops mission because with the chips, conversion was
assured, instantaneous and irreversible. There would be no sunshine patriots or
turncoats in Grand Rapids. Zion Johnson expected the entire city to be
converted within a month. And then they’d move on to the next city. America
would hit the tipping point within a year.

But as Zion Johnson stood by, admiring the efficiency of his
operation and enjoying a chocolate chip cookie, he was suddenly struck by a
pang of doubt. It was a small pang—tiny, even.
The sort of
pang that he wouldn’t even have required even a single recitation of his mantra
to exorcise.
But it was such an unexpected sensation that he dropped his
chocolate chip cookie on the floor and simply stood for a moment, regarding the
kernel of doubt the way one might stop to observe a fragile faun that one has
unexpectedly come across in the woods.

Then, as he stood there reflecting on his doubt, another
feeling struck him: anger. He wasn’t even sure at first what he was angry
about, but the anger collided with the doubt like a breeze hitting a flame, and
the doubt grew larger. The doubt fed the anger and the anger fed the doubt, and
soon he was shaking in fury.

One of his underlings—a pudgy female Homeland Security
intern—had apparently noticed the change in his demeanor and walked up next to
him. “Sir?” she said. “Do you want me to get you another cookie?”

Zion Johnson turned to look at her, at first unable even to
comprehend what she had said to him. Finally he murmured, “No. No cookie.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, and bent over to pick up the cookie
he’d dropped.

“No cookies for anyone,” said Zion Johnson quietly.

“Sir?” asked the intern.

“NO COOKIES FOR ANYONE!” Zion Johnson shouted. The people in
line turned to stare at him. A few of them slipped their cookies into their
pockets.

Zion Johnson drew his gun from its holster and held it over
his head. “NO COOKIES FOR ANYONE!” he roared again, and fired five times into
the ceiling.