The Terminals (13 page)

“Colonel Kurzow wishes to ask your forgiveness for what happened to you.” The voice came again.

Alisa walked forward and through Edison's chest, toddling over to balance her hand on the knee of the other man.

“Oh, baby,” Camilla cooed as she reached down and collected Edison's daughter. The explosion had taken Edison's scalp and scooped most of his brain with it. It had been quick, but not painless, and terribly disorientating.

“Forgiveness?” He looked back to where his daughter was now in the arms of the other man. Would the Colonel's life or death allow him to kiss Alisa's skinned knee? Would she remember his face when she thought of her
daddy
?

Alisa settled in the lap of the other man and her eyes fixed on Edison.
His
dark brown eyes.

“Never,” he whispered.

Attila flinched as though he'd been punched.

“Never,” he whispered.

I buried my face in my hands. I smelled the residue gun oil.

“You want to try for another?” Attila asked.

I shook my head without looking up; the tinder of hope snuffed.

“It only takes one to hang a jury,” he said.

One guilty verdict, one missing, nine undetermined. But I didn't care anymore. The murderer who convinces the jury of her innocence, she still knows she's a murderer.

Chapter 20

Charlie grimaced as he took
the shank of the hook between his thumb and forefinger and tugged to remove it from his palm. The tip twisted beneath his skin so that whichever way he jerked, its barbs caught. With a roar of exasperation, he wrenched it out, together with a triangular flap of himself. Blood welled in the hole.

Even free of the hook, pain seeped through his veins as if the barbs had delivered venom. He turned his attention to the next hook, but as he shifted his weight another four slipped under his skin. He sank into a pool of hooks. Already he stood chest deep, with his arms held up over his head.

Slowly lowering an arm on to the hooks to brace himself so that he wouldn't sink deeper, barbs immediately snared his forearm. Lifting it pulled and stretched the skin; the hooks anchored by yet more hooks. Each would take their allotment of blood, muscle, and sinew. Tines that failed to pierce him left burning welts.

If he didn't move, he would soon be submerged. He needed to swim.

Reaching out, he dipped his fingers into the hooks and swung his head back and forth as he screamed. He hauled, losing part of his hand, part of his mind. He leaned forward now and pressed his chest down. Another stroke. To swim slowly was misery. He drew his hand back sharp and quick and gained a foot forward. Engulfed in agony, he paused.

He was never beyond pain. To drown would have been preferable, or to lose consciousness; here, however, consciousness was a bright hell that refused to loosen its lucid grip. He sank amongst the poisoned, barbed tines, having lost what little momentum he'd gained. He drew a breath, feeling the hooks catch on his robe as he inhaled, and tear as he exhaled. Blood shook from his fingers as he reached over his head for another stroke.

It was a pale, bone-colored sea. And it was a sea. So that even stopping, the hooks never ceased catching on him. He knew that to drown in a sea of hooks was never to resurface. The hooks grated as they rubbed, bone upon bone. Bone from all of those who had gone before. Resentful, eager, hungry, aware bone. Voiceless bone which could never be free of the deep. Their rubbing spoke to him, a lulling rhythmic grating that coaxed him downward despite what his disintegration would mean.

His robe shredded and was gone. The pain favored quick jerky movements. Each inch he howled. Tears dripped from his eyes. Blood ran into the gnashing waters. He had no choice but to continue, or to fail.

The hooks gathered his meat into tents before pulling it away in chunks. He dug his hands in again. Baiting the hooks with his flesh and then hauled. The points ripped at his chest and stomach, thighs, and groin. Soon all the skin was stripped, and blood lubricated the hooks, making for quicker passage.

His voice was lost and his heart pounded in his ears. Charlie never grew accustomed to it; the human ability to conquer even the worst torture through loss of consciousness was gone. He was maddeningly, inhumanly aware. His only hope was that the next hell would be better, that it couldn't possibly be worse. And that the creature in the distance roaring in pain was Hillar the Killer.

Sinew tore. Muscles corroded. Hooks caught on bone. No longer could Charlie lift his head to keep it from the tines. The hooks flayed his throat, his chin, and then face. The dust of their rubbing clogged his nose holes and lodged in his eyes. When the loss of muscle threatened his ability to swim, he flipped on to his back. New pain. New flesh to score, but he could go forward. Above him, the sky roiled with black and blacker clouds. It was unforgiving, and cold, and mechanical, but it was a heaven to the sea of pain.

“Help me!” he croaked to it, his jaw in agony. Throat gurgling. He stopped for a moment, to let the torment of tearing flesh dissipate, to leave only the cold burn of poison and crushing terror to consume him. Bone rasped. Waves of hooks crested and ripped, crested, and ripped. They lapped away his ears and hollowed his cheeks. The cold press closed about his eyes as he sank.

“Help yourself,” he whispered in reply. He took an agonizing backstroke. Then another. When he craned his neck, he saw shore. Hooks crashed against it.

Charlie bore down and swam closer until his skull pressed against something firmer than the hook sea. He pulled himself on to the beach, its barbs jabbing into him like caltrops. The bases of his feet were one of the few areas not entirely stripped. He stumbled on them and let the bony spurs of the beach chew his soles. Flesh sloughed from his shoulders as he shambled to the crest of a dune and looked on.

He dropped to his knees.

In the nimbus of light, a golden-robed woman led Hillar forward. Beyond the last scattering of bone hooks and bone sand, the beach disappeared, replaced by a white nothingness except for the woman who seemed unconcerned with the gnawed fingers she held. Charlie laughed—a choking sound he barely heard. Never had he known the absence of pain to be such rapture. Never had he been so needful of a reward.

The leg beneath Hillar's right knee was missing and so he hobbled. The light cast sheen over his shiny red bare muscles and tendons. The tattoos lifted in scraggly remnants, and Charlie could only hope that at least they might now be free. He noted the crystal dancing at Hillar's neck and urged himself to action.

Charlie drew himself to his feet, the pain greater for all its freshness. Darkness closed its curtains about him, and he fought for consciousness, slipping to the ground. Hillar turned, eyeless and earless, but seeing, and he grinned with his bare jaw and nose-less face. He clutched the thin waist of the woman. She hugged him closer, pressing her breast against his stomach and supporting him so that he could hop the remaining distance into the promise of light.

And as darkness fell, Charlie remembered the crystal, the mission. He remembered the name.

IAO
. But he had no throat, or voice, and his chest glistened white with bony ribs. His fingers traced the letters in the sands.

It was enough. A woman came and held Charlie, and he felt the press of her breast against his bare bone, he heard the dulcet voice, and he ignored that the woman's skin was closely scaled, and that her eyes were the dull matte black of a shark. Together they reached the light, and Charlie was glad because nothing could be worse than the sea of hooks. Nothing.

Tears of gratitude sprang to his eyes, blurring his vision in the glare. He eased back onto a plush divan. Fingers ran over Charlie's thighs; they slipped through the crack of his buttocks; they traced up his back and circled the nape of his neck. The light was so bright to be blinding, and he captured only flashes of shadow. He sucked honey from a slender digit and then two. Mouths sucked at him and his pleasure redoubled. As with the pain in the sea—barely a memory—there was no soreness, no lapse in his ability for coitus. No ceiling to pleasure. His vows forgotten. His hands moved seemingly of their own accord, tracing to her shoulders, to the soft spot where neck met collarbone.

A tongue traced up his spine. Only a steadily growing hunger marred Charlie's ecstasy. A hunger briefly sated in the throes of orgasm. His thumbs pressed and fingers tightened, closing on one another. As the woman screamed, he quaked as he came. Quaked with the tension in his muscles, which he released in a sudden roar of power, throwing the body to the altar and grasping for the next.

Charlie shut his eyes against the pain of the now too-bright light, and shut his ears against the pain of the remembered scream. Light shone red beneath his closed lids. As the light swelled, so too did his need. When a shadow passed before the glare, he grasped for it, catching the dark shoulders of the form and jamming himself into it until the hunger was gone. His partner cooed and moaned encouragement. But in a moment, the hunger multiplied.

Fingers found his member, and he tossed his head back as his body shuddered. But the hunger returned, one, two. Quicker. Hunger and guilt and now disgust. The need was too strong. He grabbed the figure's hair and twisted the shadow into him. Not enough. Again his fingers found her nape and squeezed. Screaming, and for a brief moment he was free and could think—then passion surged. And he sought out the shadow, its honeyed fingers. Charlie lunged and missed, only clutching the emptiness of his stomach.

The shadow teased. Charlie caught something, a wrist perhaps, and pulled it to him, and he groped for a hole, and finding nothing, he tore one and drove himself there, hooking fingers into ribs, until he was done.

One second. Not even. The briefest release, but sublime. Hollowed out, he needed more.

But the cooing and easy tones of his lover had turned to taunts. The honey was gone, replaced by dry flesh, but Charlie was hungry. He found a spot between two bones lubricated with his diminishing spittle and, fingers clutched around the spinal column, for an instant, was nourished as it splintered. And with the snap came the scream a final time and he knew it. He'd heard it once before, loud despite the distance as he sprinted from Jo, as Jo had died in the park, alone and calling.

Something mumbled in the din of Charlie's need. It prodded him. It shook him to awareness.

The pleasure was suddenly ripped away. And he was left empty. No more shadows. No more light. Only hunger, guilt, and his need. He humped at stone and the bones of souls trapped here long ago.

“There's an abandoned grain elevator off the rails near the town of Gramsbeak.”

Release, and for that fraction of time Charlie could think again. Hillar spoke. “You'll find the kids there.”

“Thank you, Charlie.” The disembodied voice was Attila's, but Charlie knew they didn't address him.

Melodic voices decayed into fury. Their spell cracked by the words through the crystal.

“Attila.” Charlie gasped and fell from his bed, landing hard. He clawed at his eyes to peel away what glued them.

“Good luck,” Hillar's voice rasped.

Charlie screamed. Finally the mesh of his lashes broke, and he could see.

Stone altars, tipped at each corner with a spout for drainage, stretched eternally. Each one was a duplicate of the one buried in his ancestral memory, the one pictured before the cowl-framed monk and his human sacrifice. The one upon which Seth had discovered gnosis while killing his fellow Borborite, Theudas. But Charlie knew no gnosis, despite the ache of his hands, despite the sacrifice of Jo. Experience was the way of the Borborite.

Charlie leaned against his altar, skeletal and wasted. Through gaps in his chest wall, his spark flashed feebly. On other altars lay bones. On some, sickening forms mounted bone or mashed themselves into rock, before slumping to rub again. But on another stood Hillar.

“
ASTAPHANOS
,” the killer cried and darkness oozed down from above like an insect's proboscis. It curled about his waist and lifted him.

Charlie shambled from one altar to the next, his bones clattering with each impact. Hillar laughed, whole again. Climbing to the top of an altar, Charlie took a final leap upward and jumped higher than he thought possible, his bony fingers brushing Hillar's heel, but he was too late. He fell, writhing through the air, back to the ground.

“
ASTAPHANOS
!” He longed for the Archon's darkest grip.

Chapter 21

“Can we trust it?” I
asked, sitting beside Attila on Morph's cot.

On the bed where she lay, Morph was making annoyed grunts at us. Deeth administered her lie detector test. I didn't want to act on Charlie's most recent declaration. I didn't want to leave Morph. If I was honest with myself, I'd have said that I sought comfort from her. Why does a message from a dying person hold more weight? Why is it that looming death strips the banality from words, to make us listen? Is it only that the dying have so few words left?

“Excuse me, but would you get the fuck off my bed?” Morph waggled her fingers. “I'm trying to die here, and where I come from that's an important life event.”

The general snickered from the doorway, hovering like biding Thanatos. I knew he'd duck behind the mirror before the injection, however; he was a voyeur, not a participant.

“Sorry, Morph,” I mumbled, but didn't move nor take my eyes from Attila, who continued to stare into his crystal. “So?”

“What choice do we have?” he asked. “We've made contact again. That's good. Charlie's there—we know that.”

I wanted to believe. “So we don't need another Euth.”

“And what are the five pillars of Sunni faith?” Deeth's baritone rumbled about the room.

Charlie was still here, too, in front of us, gray and collapsing. It had pissed Morph off, but Attila was insisting Charlie remain because the connection was so fragile, or so he explained.

Despite her annoyance and the straps around her chest and arm, Morph looked at peace. Everything but her face was covered in white silk, so that her expression floated over the bed like an exotic moon. Her black eyes sparkled and she drew shallow breaths. I had seen her do this between shots of morphine and suspected she avoided the press of her diaphragm against her liver. She was no longer on any drugs.

“Shahada, Salah, Zakah, Saum, and Hajj.” The words were like a melody, and she spoke them with a reverence I'd never held for anything except my father—a father I hadn't known.

“Blah, blah, blah … stop wasting time,” the general snapped.

Deeth swiveled on his seat, eyes swinging to aim at the general. I couldn't see the look on Deeth's face, but the general blanched, stuck his mighty chin into his neck, and held up a hand.

“I meant Christine.” His hand fluttered with impatience, and I saw his fear of the doctor in the motion. What did Deeth hold over the general? Up until then, I'd thought Deeth was an order taker, but there was more here. I couldn't help but smile. “Colonel, get on the horn to Volt.”

I looked to Attila. “Anything more from Charlie?”

“Sorry, Chris.”

Fingers found my hand, and I looked over at Attila before I realized that Morph had taken it. I leaned in so that her lips were an inch from my ear. “Go get the kids,” she whispered. “Then escape this hellhole.”

I jerked back, and she was smiling, answering another of Deeth's questions that I had somehow missed.

Although Attila looked like he wanted to know what she had said, he remained quiet.

I bent and kissed Morph's forehead, trying to think of something witty to say. I couldn't come up with anything. “It was nice to have met you, Morph.”

“Kade,” she said. “My name's Kade.”

“It was a pleasure to call you friend, Kade.” I nodded and headed for the door, accelerating to brush past the general before the tightness in my chest could reach my eyes.

It was dark on the helipad, but Pat was near the door, smoking a cigarette. “Can't say I like the night shift,” he said. “Too busy lately.” It was three A.M.

I dialed Volt, and he answered on the fourth ring, “Better be good.”

“Agent Volt? Christine Kurzow.”

“Go ahead, Colonel.”

“We have another location.”

He was silent, and I looked at the phone to check the connection.

“You know. No one can figure out how you came up with the last one. We puzzled it out, and we're pretty good at that sort of thing, but no theory holds water. And now you're back with another.”

Pat saluted me and climbed the three steps to the elevated pad.

“Yes, Agent, I have another.”

“And your intel? What's the intel leading to this belief?”

“We believe the intel to be accurate.”

“Like last time, because last time—”

“I know what happened … Tell the media the truth, that the intel is coming from the Army and to bash it if they want. We'll send them a memo so redacted they won't know the year it was written.”

“This isn't about who will shoulder the blame,” he retorted. “It's about men and women. Dead ones.”

“And children. Dying children, Agent. If you haven't forgotten,” I said, and then because Morph was dying and I think I needed to rationalize what I did, I added: “We weren't drafted. We joined our units on a voluntary basis, knowing the risks. But those kids, they were on a field trip.”

“Goddammit.” And his voice grew distant as he spoke to someone I imagined to be his wife. He came back: “Give it to me.”

“Grain elevator, Gramsbeak.”

“What's your ETA?”

“Three hours.”

The helicopter whined, and the rotors began to slowly rotate.

“That'll make it fifty-two hours for those children, Colonel,” the agent said before hanging up. “I haven't forgotten.”

“Said to wait, saidtowait, saidtowait,” she half-sang, half-chanted. In the bell of their prison, the words echoed, tinny and sharp. At Ming's side, Cordell's breathing had grown ragged.

If Ming could have, she would have placed her palms over her ears. One of the other kids had begun to jerk and spasm. Ming wondered at the medic-alert bracelet she'd seen on Anya. Anya was Scandinavian or something, definitely had Viking in her blood, tallest in the class and not in a willowy way, stronger than Ming could ever hope to be—like one of the Hawkeye line backers—but she'd had a stainless-steel pendant with a red snake wrapped around a red staff. Ming suspected Anya was having a seizure. She rapped her head against the ladder cage.

“Saidtowaitsaidtowait—wait!” The woman screeched angrily and gripped someone and shook them while she screamed. “Not you, not you.”

Not Alistair, not Alistair
, Ming thought.
Take me, take me
.

But when hands, bony and strong clutched her shoulders, she cried out and didn't want to die. Where was her dad? Her mom? Why hadn't they come for her?

Everyone was screaming and moaning and weeping, and Ming swallowed her fright. The hands left her, and after a few minutes, the crying settled. No one had the energy to cry long. And Anya, or whoever, had stopped jerking against the ladder.

Ming's arms were asleep due to holding them above her head, and her wrists bled where they chafed against the metal. She pulled at the handcuffs, and either due to the fasting or the length of time her arms had been held up, they slipped right up to the base of her knuckles. The darkness hid her surprise.

“I dun wanna die.” Luke's lament broke the quiet, running from a whine to full scream.

With one hand nearly free, Ming's resolve returned.

“Luke,” Ming croaked. “Stop it.”

And he did.

“You're not going to die, Luke,” Ming said. “No one …” She bit her lip, glad for darkness. “No one is going to die.” Her voice held steady with the hope inspired by the loose handcuffs.

Quick steps rang out, ending abruptly. Close. Ming sniffed the woman's perfume, lilac now laced with coppery blood. She could feel her captor's breath on her arms, smelling the chocolate and caramel from the energy bars the woman ate, and something else, like spoiled meat.

A flashlight blinked on, not a foot from Ming's nose. She couldn't see past its glare and was unable to shut her eyes to it.

She turned her head away, and next to her, Jake hung limp. When Ming kicked his shins, he barely moved. People
were
going to die. Ming had to do something.

“Mommy! Moooommmmy!” Luke began again.

Ming sensed that if everyone were quiet, they all would stay quiet; they could be brave together. But silence was a thin veneer.

“Ommigod, ommigod, ommigod,” someone suddenly chanted. “She's been eating Jackie … eating Jackie.”

Ming drew back from the woman, as close to the metal rings as she could, anything to be away from the killer and her fetid breath. Bile climbed Ming's throat. She heaved but nothing came out. She couldn't see Jackie but images of her torn and chewed neck bloomed in her mind as Ming fought to control the panic clenching her guts.

“So scared … so cold … can't take it.” It was as if someone had clicked off the mute in the room.

The woman laughed ponderously, like the chop of an idling motorbike, and the flashlight bobbled along with the sound.

The fear hanging palpably in the chamber was tearing them apart, bleeding them of their last stores of energy. More than ever, Ming realized, they must not be overcome. To be overcome would be to panic and to die.

“Hey!” Ming yelled—the light stilled. “Jake, Luke, Anya, Leslie, Cordell … Alistair …” She blanked on the rest of the names, only coming up with Jackie's, and they kept crying. “Hey!” Everyone quieted and the laughter of the woman was left to echo alone. “Don't give up. Stay with me.”

The woman brought the light so tight to Ming's face that the bulb warmed her cheeks.

“What d'you say I challenge you to a staring contest?” Ming asked. She glowered into the light with her sewn-open eyes.

“Come on, if I blink, you can kill me next,” she said. “You blink, you let us go.”

The woman remained silent.

“Hey, miss, look at us.” Ming managed a crazy cackle. “We're
eyeballing
you.”

“Saidtowaitsaidtowait …”

“Don't mean to
stare
,” Ming told her. “Don't mean to be rude.” Ming flushed and tasted the salt of her tears. “Blinking serves a function, you know?” The woman's laughter began to idle again. “I'm not crying; my eyes are just watering.”

“I want my mommy,” Luke whined.

“The tears are not for you …” Ming trailed off as the light disappeared, and she was left with the echoes of Luke's cry and the retinal afterglow as her eyes adjusted to darkness again. Ming strained to hear the woman, but sensed neither breath nor movement until a sudden snick of a blade broke the silence.

The gag was stuffed back into Ming's mouth. The blade burned over her cheek, forcing a whine. Then the woman stepped lightly around the chamber, walking in a slow outward spiral. Metal dragged across metal, the scratch hiccoughing as Ming imagined the knife tip tripping over imperfections in the wall. The blade left the wall, and the steps of the woman's spiral began to tighten, and her muttering stopped.

She paused; Ming sensed her close, her breathing ragged with excitement. Ming flexed her stomach, ready for the blow.

“Not me,” someone cried. A girl. Probably Susan. Twelve, a voice like an angel, still reversed some letters and numbers when she wrote, but wanted to be an English teacher when she grew up.

Oof
. Something smacked into flesh, followed by a wet gurgle. The gurgling splashed over the ground and a metallic odor pervaded the room while the woman shrieked.

“Why should I wait,” she yelled. “WhyshouldIwait?”

And the chamber filled with Susan's screams. Ming's stomach rebelled again and again. With the gag, she feared she'd choke on her own vomit; or worse, she would need to use her free hand to remove her gag and let on that she was free.

In pained chorus, everyone added to Susan's voice.

The woman jabbed. Her breathing became heavy and labored. She loosed grunts with each impact, and must have struck bone as she'd swear and the grunts would stop and she'd make a sound like she wrestled with an axe stuck in a chopping block.

Susan was silent.

Ming swallowed her vomit. They'd all hung for so long without food and water that the noise quickly died. They listened to the smacks of fists, and the sucking thrusts against Susan's sternum. Many whimpered and moaned. Blood drizzled into the pool at their feet, the rhythm of the drips gradually easing.

The light flicked on, and Ming struggled to focus her vision. The woman's appearance was shockingly gentle-looking, despite the red spattering her cheeks, ringing her mouth, and dousing her cleavage. Pretty. She wrapped one arm tight about her, leaving bloody prints on her triceps. With the other, she reached out and rested her fingers across Susan's carotid artery. She inspected Susan's eyes and opened her mouth as if hoping to find something.

“Fuck!” Her fist mashed Susan's nose. She shook her hand and breathed noisily as she bit down on her bloody knuckles to stave off the pain.