The Unearthing (32 page)

“It certainly fits with the attacks on Professors Echohawk and Scott,” The Chairman observed, “And that means we must move against the United Trinity Observants immediately.”

“The World Council Security Commission has already called for an emergency session to do just that,” The Security Commissioner said.

“Good!” The Chairman said, “And when the World Council’s passed that resolution, the United States will have already taken care of Gabriel Ashe and his followers.”

“Mister Chairman, I don’t think you would be well advised to take unilateral action against Ashe,” The Security Commissioner said, uncomfortably.

“Gabriel Ashe has organized and orchestrated attacks against American Citizens, while on American soil,” The Chairman growled, “Which means dealing with him is an internal matter outside of the World Council’s jurisdiction; the World Council can have the United Trinity Observants in the rest of the world. Gabriel Ashe is ours.”

“I don’t think it would be wise to make Gabriel Ashe into a martyr for every cult, militia and anti-government group out there, Mister Chairman,” The Minister cautioned.

“I am inclined to agree with my Canadian counterpart on this one, Chairman,” The British Minister of Defence added.

“And the United States is not about to sit back and discuss this in a
committee
,” The Chairman retorted.

♦♦♦

Gabriel Ashe’s Night of Blood would go on for five hours, before the last of his so-called Knights of Christ were run to ground. Those who had not been killed or arrested by then were now dug in behind the fortified facades of the Churches of the United Trinity around the world. Police and military forces surrounded these structures. As the sun rose into the sky over the Village in the World Ship Preserve, Colonel Margaret Bloom herself stood at the barricade sealing off Gabriel Ashe’s compound, Major Benedict at her side. Ostensibly they were standing guard, waiting for an arrest warrant to be issued by the Justice Department. However Bloom’s hope was for action, resistance, an attack that would justify making sure no one inside the Church came out breathing. They had a ten meter perimeter around Gabriel Ashe’s base of operations, with security guards posted in all the sewers and conduits going in and out of the Church and every other building within a kilometre. The Protectorate’s Peacekeepers were patrolling heavily as well in case Ashe and his followers had other means of escape.

Bloom took another hard look at the structure of the Church. In many ways it was typical, with white stucco walls and a low, sloped roof. Rounded corners and adobe-type windows added a certain distinction to the building, but it could well have been an Irish Catholic parish in some bedroom-town suburb as opposed to the fortified bunker of a maniac who believed himself to be Jesus Christ’s only begotten son. Bloom prayed that Justice allowed her to go in with them. Otherwise, she and her soldiers would be on parade while the DoJ went in with DHS, FBI and ATF special units. Bloom wanted to storm that damn compound. She hoped something, anything happened that would justify that neither Ashe nor any of his supporters made it out alive.

“What’s keeping Justice?” she muttered irritably, “I want action!” She turned to Benedict, who was nodding his head as he listened to his linx. Benedict turned to her, his face grave.

“Was that Justice?” Bloom asked.

“No, Ma’am,” He said, “You’d better switch to Channel 8A0N3W5. It’s about your daughter.”

♦♦♦

When they reached the hospital, the trauma center was already overflowing. Emergency cases from the attacks were everywhere; James remembered seeing images like these on the Grid during the last serious war overseas; hundreds of wounded and dying flooding hospitals in what had become an urban war zone. Laura’s injuries were grave enough for her to be taken immediately into surgery. James and Allison had miraculously escaped with only minor injuries and were left to sit and wait. They waited two and a half hours to be triaged and another six hours to be seen by doctors. And still they waited, worried, wanting for news on Laura’s condition.

Allison bided her time by trying to contact the World Ship Summit, to let Laura’s mom know what had happened. There was no way to get through; all Grid linx lines into the World Ship Summit were prioritized and shut down to public access. When Allison returned to the waiting room, she realized why: The display console in the waiting room had been switched to INN, which was broadcasting coverage of the worldwide attacks. Allison was dumbstruck. And all James could do was ask over and over again under his breath the same two questions:

“How? Why?”

It was late morning when, finally, one of the surgeons who had been working on Laura came down.

“Your friend is out of surgery,” He said, “There was damage to her spine and right lung. We were able to repair her spinal injuries, though we still don’t know the extent of the neurological damage she might have suffered. Her right lung was shredded and had to be removed. We’re cloning a new one for her, but that process can take several weeks.”

“We--can we see her?” James asked.

The doctor shook his head. “She’s heavily sedated right now; unconscious and on a respirator to help her breathe. The best thing you can do is go home and get some rest. We have your linx codes. We’ll call if there’s any change.”

And so Allison and James made their silent way home. Allison wearily slipped her key into the lock and opened the door. She tried again to send a linx to the World Ship Summit. She got through and began trying to connect to a live operator who would be able to relay either her or her message to Colonel Bloom. As she struggled with this, James went to shower. Allison was just finishing the linx when James finished his shower. He went into the living room and dressed in a clean t-shirt and shorts while Allison, wiping tears of frustration/rage/exhaustion from her eyes headed down the hall for her own much-needed shower. James opened up the sofa bed and lay down. He stared at the ceiling, trying not to think. The sun was already high in the sky and the living room was bright. He still felt that he might be able to sleep, if only to shut out everything he’d just been through. The violence he’d witnessed tonight; five hundred people alone dead inside Freebase, twelve thousand dead across the city; it was so much worse, so much more horrifying than anything else he’d ever witnessed, including the assassinations of Professors Scott and Echohawk. The two events were undeniably linked. James had survived both, but both had shattered his faith; in God, in Humanity. James had watched Mark Echohawk die, struggling for breath, drowning in his own blood. Tonight, he had watched Laura Echohawk very nearly suffer the same fate.

The shower stopped. James listened to the new gap in the silence of the apartment until he heard Allison’s footsteps padding down the hall, back towards the living room. She stood in the doorway, wrapped in her ratty bathrobe.

“James?” she asked hesitantly, “James…after all that’s happened…I—I really don’t want to be alone, right now.”

Allison led James back to her bedroom. James’ heart was hammering out an frightened, anticipatory tattoo; he wanted to be with Allison for a flood of reasons: He had a crush on her; the memory of the smell of sex on her skin from the other night on the balcony still haunted him; he didn’t want to be alone tonight any more than she did; after everything he’d been through since the Prof had died, James wanted to feel
alive
, again.

Allison paused in the doorway, turning around to kiss him. She broke contact quickly and stared at him a moment. For a panicked instant, James thought she might have changed her mind, but she kept looking and he found himself growing hotter, staring into her contemplative, lustful jade green eyes. The moment took her and Allison pulled James into a tight embrace, sliding her hands under his shirt, feeling his back warm and muscular beneath her hands. James kissed her, relishing the taste of her mouth. He undid the belt of her robe, sliding his own hands around her back. They drew together and Allison found James hard already beneath his shorts as she pressed into him. She pulled him out of his shirt. Once free of it, James threw open her robe and scratched his nails roughly across the contour of her breasts. Allison gasped at the sharp sensation and then moaned as he squeezed. She shrugged free of her robe and drew him to her again for a deeper, longer kiss. She could feel the heat building between her thighs as his strong arms pulled her against him. His scent and the residue of soap on his skin permeated the air around her, an overwhelmingly clean, strong, masculine smell. She scratched her nails down his back and under the waistband of his shorts, dug her hands into his buttocks, pulling him harder against her. James felt his cock press against her prickly pubic hair as she hitched her left leg over his right. He gasped with the sensation; part of him was in awe that he would be with Allison. He wanted her so much…he couldn’t believe it was happening. James gasped again as Allison slid a hand down across his scrotum and gripped his cock, tightly.

“God…” he rasped. James pushed Allison backwards into her room, dark from the heavy curtains over the window. He closed the door behind him, slamming it shut. They found their way to Allison’s bed, climbing atop the covers. Allison leaned to light some candles on the shelf over her bed. James admired her backside shimmering in the candlelight, her red hair like silken fire spilling down against her pale skin. Allison turned around and smiled at catching him looking. She leaned back to watch him watch her. James blushed, embarrassed, not quite knowing why. Allison reached for him, pulling him onto the bed with her. They kissed for a long while, their hands caressing and exploring, bodies grinding into each other with wet determination. The only sounds in the candlelit room were their whispered sighs and gasps and the louder noise of the bed sheets rustling beneath them. Need slowly overtook them. James moved in Allison’s hand, Allison pressing his calloused fingers harder against her sex. Finally, her need surpassed his. She pushed him down, wanting his kisses elsewhere. He turned around, giving her access to him. She clenched her legs around his head as he tasted her for the first time; she held him like that, relishing the contact before taking him in her hand and into her mouth. Their moans and cries grew louder, more desperate, as passion took hold. Allison came first, quickly, intensely and she rolled away from James while the strongest waves of sensation elapsed and before he could come. Sated but not satiated and James still very much in need of release, Allison straddled him, pressing her hands hard into his shoulders as she let him inside. She kissed him, tasting herself in his mouth as they made love, desperation and need still not lost to either of them. Soon her thrusting lost is slow deliberateness, gaining force and urgency. She took one of his hands away from her breasts and moved it down. Soon they were both thrusting, both crying out both aching in the throes of passion.

♦♦♦

James dozed while Allison went to wash up. Her return startled him awake, gasping, his heart thundering in his chest.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” He lied, pushing back the death-dream’s terror by sheer force of will, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Allison caressed his chest, playing in the hair that grew there, tickling his nipples.

“No regrets?” she asked.

“No,” James replied, “You?” She smiled and bent to kiss him.

“None,” She answered. Allison retrieved a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray from the shelf over her bed. They each lit one, smoking in silence.

“I checked the linx,” She said, “No word on Laura.”

“I guess that’s a good thing.”

“I guess.”She stared at him, seeing the faraway look in his eyes, visible in the candlelight and dawning daylight from outside.

“James…
are
you okay? Really?”

“I don’t know,” He said after a moment’s reflection, “I want to…I mean, this sounds stupid and selfish given what’s happened to Laura, tonight…but all this death…I keep thinking of my own. I need to know what’s out there. I can’t accept not knowing. I…I need something to believe in.”

“We’ll find it, James. I promise.”

♦♦♦

As the United Trinity Observants’ Knights of Christ began their attacks, another attack was about to take place; the ongoing Night of Blood would, in fact, later be used as a cover for what was about to happen: Argentinean military dictator Roberto Diaz was orchestrating an invasion force that was taking over South America. Among his arsenal of weapons was a laboratory-enhanced version of the deadly Kreutz virus, which he’d already unleashed on Sao Paulo. The city’s population was wiped out in a matter of days and the virus spread from there into the surrounding suburbs and towns before it was contained.

Diaz was at his retreat in the hilly countryside far beyond Buenos Aries. The compound was alight and alive in the night, a party going on in the large walled garden. Behind thick stone walls topped with battlements and heavily armed guards, the partygoers were sheltered from the ravages of the war tearing across South America; a war started by the fanatical madman who was in fact host of the evening’s festivities. Captains of industry, military leaders, heads of state sympathetic to the Argentine Ambition, as the war was termed. All of General Diaz’s allies were in attendance, while only a few hundred kilometres away bloody battles were being waged by his troops. An aide approached Diaz and spoke to him briefly. Diaz nodded, replying. The aide departed and Diaz continued to work the crowd. The General had no way of knowing his guards in the foothills had been taken out and that even now he was centered in the site of a high-powered sniper rifle. Colonel Isaac Jude watched Diaz impassively through the night-scope of his rifle. He had a clear shot.