The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All (27 page)

    As this disfigured conglomeration encroached upon Ms. Diamond, she convulsed in a pantomime of making a snow angel against the pavement. A heavy, wine-dark vapor trail boiled from her, and was siphoned into the funnel maws of the monstrous couple. She withered and charred. The others crawled atop and covered her completely.

    The passenger compartment filled with the sour odor of feces. Mr. Rawat screamed and when Kara realized what was happening outside she screamed too. The gun cracked twice more, then Dedrick was in the front seat and bellowing for Ms. Valens to drive, drive, drive! and the chauffeur floored it while Dedrick's door was still open.

    Lancaster didn't have the wits to react to the knife that appeared in Mr. Cook's hand. He gaped dumfounded while Mr. Cook nonchalantly reached out over his seatback and grasped Ms. Valens's hair and sliced her throat neat as could be. However, Dedrick continued to prove quite the man of action. He reached across Ms. Valens's soon to be corpse and took the wheel and kept the vehicle pointed down the centerline as he poked his large bore magnum pistol through the partition and fired. The bullet entered Mr. Cook's temple and punched a paper mache hole out the opposite side of his head. The report stunned and deafened Lancaster who raised his arms defensively against the splash. A chunk of bone and hair caromed from the ceiling, splatted against Dr. Christou's jacket breast and clung like a displaced toupee. Now blood was everywhere-fizzing from Dr. Christou, misting the window in gruesome condensation, spurting from the chauffer's carotid artery, gushing from Mr. Cook's dashed skull, filling Lancaster's mouth, his nostrils, everywhere, everywhere.

    Mrs. Cook ended Dedrick's heroics. She grasped the barrel and jerked and the gun exploded again, shattering the rear window. She made her other hand into a claw and gently raked drab, blue-painted nails across his face. One of his eyes burst and deflated, and the meat of his cheeks and jaw came unstitched as if kissed by a serrated saw blade and his face more or less peeled away like a decal. The man dropped the gun and pitched backward and out of view.

    More blood. More blood. More screaming. It was chaos. The limousine left the road, bounced into the ditch and plowed a ragged line through a wheat field. The occupants were violently tossed about, except for Mrs. Cook who sat serene as a padishah on her palanquin.

    The car ground to a halt. The passenger door opposite Lancaster opened and Mr. Blaylock stood there in an evening suit. He said to Mrs. Cook, "Chop chop, my dear. Dark is wasting." He bowed and was gone.

    Mr. Cook's dagger had flown from his hand and lodged in the plush fabric of the seat between Lancaster and Dr. Christou. Lancaster caught his balance and snatched the knife, and it was heavy and cruelly curved and fit his hand most murderously. He stabbed it like an ice pick just beneath Mrs. Cook's breast. the blade crunched through muscle and bone and slid in to the hilt where it stuck tight. He tried to climb through the broken rear window. She cackled and clutched his ankle and yanked him to her as a mother retrieving her belligerent child. She kissed him and life drained from his limbs and he was paralyzed, yet completely aware. Completely aware for the hours that followed in the dark and desolate wheat field.

***

    When it was over.

    It would never be over. Lancaster knew that most intimately.

    But when it was over for the moment, he walked to the lights on the road, pushed through the rough stalks, occasionally staggering as his shoe caught on a furrow. Police car lights. Fire truck lights. The blue-white spotlights of low-cruising helicopters. The swinging and crisscrossing flashlight beams of the cops trolling the ditches. Roache had pulled out the stops.

    He walked deep into the dragnet before somebody noticed that a civilian, pale as death in a blood-soaked suit, wandered amongst them.

    The police whisked him directly to a hospital. Physically he was adequate-bumps and bruises and missing the tip of his tongue. Rather hale, all considered. The shrink who interviewed him wasn't convinced of Lancaster's mental stability and prescribed pills and a return visit. The police questioning didn't prove particularly grueling; nothing like the cop shows. Even Roache was eerily sympathetic. Company reps debriefed him regarding the car accident and promptly deposited a merit bonus in his bank account and arranged a vacation in the Bahamas. He didn't protest, didn't say much beyond responses to direct questions and these were flat, unaffected and ambiguous. He shuffled off to the islands, blank.

    Following an afternoon that was one long stream of poolside martinis and blazing sun, Lancaster stumbled back to his hotel room and saw a man lounging in the overstuffed armchair by the bed.

    "Hi, I'm Agent Clack, National Security Agency. We've chatted a few times on the phone." Agent Clack propped his feet on the coffee table. He smoked a cigarette.
Gauloises
.

    The irony wasn't lost on Lancaster. "What are you, a college sophomore?" He walked to the bar and poured a vodka, pausing to gesture if his guest wanted one.

    Agent Clack waved him off. Indeed, a young man-thirty tops. Pretty enough to model for a men's catalogue, he styled his wiry black hair into an impressive afro. He dressed the part of a tourist; a flower print shirt, cheap camera slung around his neck, khaki shorts and open toe sandals. Lithe and well-built as a dancer, danger oozed from him, aw, shucks demeanor notwithstanding. "They like 'em young at HQ. But I assure you, my qualifications are impeccable. Had to snuff three dudes to get the job, kinda like James Bond. Jack Bauer is a pussy compared to yours truly. You're in good hands. Enough about me. How you holding up?"

    "Am I being charged?"

    "You responsible for the massacre? My bosses don't think so. Neither do I. We're looking for answers, is all."

    Lancaster shrugged and drank his vodka. "Did you find them?" He looked through the window when he asked, staring past the brilliant canopy of umbrella-shaded tables in the courtyard to the blue water that went on and on. "I told the cops where. The best I could remember. It was dark."

    "Yeah, we found the victims. Still hunting the murderers. They seem to have evaporated." Agent Clack took a computer memory stick from his shirt pocket. "There are hundreds of pics on here. Satellite, aerial, plenty of close-ups of the action, well, the aftermath, in the field. It's classified, but… Wanna see?"

    "I was there."

    "Right, right. Still, things look a lot different from space. It's kinda weird, though, that you were taken from the isolated Roache property. I mean, the remote offices were an ideal setup for a prolonged torturemurder gig."

    Lancaster thought of the disc of blackened earth he and the rest had been dragged to, a clearing the diameter of a small baseball diamond in the heart of the farmland, thought of what lay some yards beneath the topsoil, the subsoil, and the bedrock; an ossified ridge that curled in a grand arc, the spine of a baby Ouroboros, a gap between jaws and tail. He still smelled the blood and piss, the electric tang of pitiless starlight, the nauseating stench of his own terror. He said, "That dead ground, nothing has ever grown there. I imagine the Indians avoided it during their hunts, that the white farmers tilled around it and called it cursed. It's older than old, agent. A ground for bloodletting. Places like it are everywhere."

    "I don't give a shit about Stone Age crop circles. Who was behind the kidnapping. What was the motive. I'll let you in on a secret-we got nothing, man. No claims or demands from terrorist groups, no chatter, nada. That isn't how this goes. We
always
hear something."

    "Motive? There's no motive. The ineffable simply
is
."

    "The ineffable," Agent Clack said.

    "The Cooks are in league with…"

    "With who?" Agent Clack raised a brow.

    "Evil."

    "Get outta here."

    "Abominations that creep along the byways of the world."

    "The big E, huh? Er, yeah, sure thing. I'm more into the concept lowercase e, the kind that lurks in the hearts of men. Anyhow, it wasn't the Cooks you were entertaining. The real Cooks were murdered in their home several days before the incident in Kansas. But you knew that."

    "Yes. I was shown."

    Agent Clack blew a smoke ring. "And these other individuals. Gregor Blaylock and his entourage. The grad students…"

    "Let me guess. Victims of a gruesome demise, identities stolen to perpetrate an elaborate charade." Lancaster smiled; a brittle twitch.

    "Not quite that dramatic. Guy's nonexistent. So are his assistants. Our records show he,
someone,
corresponded with Christou over the years, but it's a sham. There's a real live prof named Greg Blaylock and my guess is whoever this other guy is, he simply assumed that identity as needed. It's a popular con, black market brokers fixing illegals up with American citizens' social security cards. Could be a dozen people using the same serial number, sharing parallel identities. Not too hard. Blaylock and Christou hadn't actually met in person before that night. So."

    "Blaylock's a cultist, a servitor. He was on the killing ground as a master of ceremonies. He… Blaylock coupled with Mrs. Cook while the nightmares fed on my companions, one by one." Lancaster poured again, swallowed it quickly. Poured another, contemplated the glass as if it were a crystal ball. "Everybody was after Christou. The monsters liked his books. What about you and your cronies? Was he a revolutionary? Bomb an embassy back in the '60s?"

    "That's eyes only spy stuff, grandpa. I'll tell you this: the geezer mixed with politically active people during his career. The kind of dudes on no fly lists. He was once a consultant for the intelligence services of our competitors. Quid pro quo. Those bodies we examined…That was beyond, man. Way, way beyond. All the blood and organs removed. Mutilation. Looked like the victims were burned, but the autopsies said, no. A brutal, sadistic, and apparently well-plotted crime. Yet the hostiles let you walk. There's a mystery my superiors are eager to get solved. Help me, man. Would ya, could ya shed some light on the subject?"

    A sort of hysterical joy bubbled into Lancaster's throat. Yes, yes! To solve the ineffable mystery would be quite the trick. Certainly, Agent Clack despite his innocent face and schoolboy charm was cold and brutal, had surely seen and done the worst. Yet Lancaster easily imagined the younger man's horrified comprehension as the most vile and forbidden knowledge entered his bloodstream, began to corrode his shrieking brain with its acid. His lips curled. "Mrs. Cook called, a horrible sound unlike anything I'd ever heard, and three of the… things that attacked Ms. Diamond in the road shambled from the darkness and dragged us away, far from the limo and into the fields. Mr. Rawat, Kara, and their bodyguard were alive when they were dumped into the center of the clearing. The bodyguard, Dedrick…despite his horrible wounds. All of them were alive, Agent Clack. Very much alive. Dr. Christou too, although I could hardly recognize him beneath the mask of blood he wore. The blood was caked an inch thick and the fresh stuff oozed around the edges."

    "I'm sorry you had to go through that. I still don't understand how we missed you out there. The wheat is only four feet tall." Agent Clack sounded more fascinated than sorry.

    "I don't know how it was done. But it was. Black magic, worse."

    "So, what happened? Exactly."

    Lancaster hesitated for a long moment. "Eyes only, agent. My eyes only."

    "Now, now, codger. You don't wanna fuck with the man with the shiny laminated picture I.D."

    "The others were drained. Drained, Agent Clack."

    Agent Clack dropped his cigarette butt on the carpet and ground it to bits under his heel. He lighted another and smoked it, expression obscured by the blue haze. Finally, he said, "Alrighty, then. The investigation is ongoing. You'll talk, sooner or later. I've got time to kill."

    "There are unspeakable truths." Lancaster closed his eyes for a long moment. "It pleased them to spare me in the name of a venerable cliche. Cliche's contain all truth, of course. The purpose of my survival was to bear witness, to carry the tale. The thrill of spreading terror, of lurking in the night as bogeymen of legend, titillates them. They are beasts, horrid undreamt of marvels."

    "Gotta love those undreamt of marvels."

    "You couldn't understand. After their masters fed, Blaylock and Mrs. Cook made Christou and the others join bloody hands and dance. The corpses danced. In a circle, jostling like marionettes. And Blaylock and Mrs. Cook laughed and plucked the strings."

    Agent Clack nodded and dragged on his cigarette then rose and regarded Lancaster with a kindly expression. "Sure. You take care. My people will be in touch with your people and all that jazz."

    "Oh, we won't meet again, Agent Clack. Christou is dead, ending that particular game. Gregor Blaylock and the rest are vanished into the woodwork. I've told the story and am thus expendable. Very soon. Very soon I'll be reclaimed."

    "Don't worry, we're watching you. Anybody comes sniffing around, we'll nab 'em."

    "I suppose I'm comforted."

    "By the way," Agent Clack said. "Is anyone else staying here with you? When I came in to wait, swore someone was in the bedroom, watching from the door. Thought it was you…Couldn't find anybody. Maybe they slipped away through the window, eh? Call me paranoid. We spooks are always worried about the baddies getting the drop on us."

    "It wasn't me," Lancaster said. He turned and glanced at the bedroom doorway, the dimness within.

    "Hah, didn't really think so. More oddness at the end of an odd day."

    "Well, agent, whatever it was, I hope you don't see it again. Especially one of these nights when you're alone."

    Agent Clack continued to gaze at the older man for several beats. He slipped the memory stick into his pocket and walked out. He didn't bother to close the door. The gap filled with white light that slowly downshifted to black.