Читать книгу Genesis Sinister - James Axler - Страница 11

Chapter 3

The God War was over.

The mop-up, however—now, that would take a little longer.

Kane, Grant and Edwards stepped out of the rain and made their way past the open double doors of the old aircraft hangar and into the grumbling crowd that waited beyond. Within, close to forty or fifty people were waiting, the muttering sounds of their voices echoing from the high ceiling.

“Just like old times, isn’t it?” Kane said under his breath as the three men entered the huge room.

Edwards nodded. “Yeah, it’s a regular triple-P, all right.”

“Triple-P” was slang for a Pedestrian Pit Patrol, a task all three men had had to perform in their past lives as Magistrates for ville authorities, lives all three had put behind them.

At some point in time, the building they entered had been used to store aircraft and automobiles, playthings of the very rich. That was before the nukecaust had changed the rules of the world, and civilization had been dealt such a blow that it had seemed for a while as if it might never recover. Even now, two hundred years later, these places still existed, abandoned and almost forgotten, relics of a bygone age just waiting to be put to use once more.

The ceiling dripped rainwater through gaping holes, and what glass remained in the windows was white with birds’ droppings. Right now, even as the orderly crowd gathered, the sound of pigeons cooing trilled through the building, a sonic bed that was almost subliminal in its constancy.

Kane glanced up at the ceiling, watching for a moment as two pigeons took flight one after the other, a third joining them a moment later, weaving through the high girders that held the roof in place in a fluttering of gray feathers. The crowd ignored them.

In his early thirties, Kane was a tall man with a strong build that even his loose denim jacket could not disguise. With wide shoulders and rangy limbs, his physique resembled that of a wolf. He had the nature of a wolf, too, both a loner and pack leader depending on what the fates threw at him. His dark hair was cropped short and he was clean shaved for the first time in more than a month. As an ex-Magistrate, Kane was one of the enforcers of the now-fallen baronies that had dominated the former United States. He had been exiled from the barony of Cobaltville after stumbling upon a conspiracy that had threatened the very integrity of the system he was pledged to protect. Exiled along with his Magistrate partner Grant and archivist Brigid Baptiste, Kane had been recruited into the Cerberus operation in its infancy. Ever since, he had been battling against the Annunaki threat to Earth in all its myriad forms, and most recently he had taken down Ullikummis in a battle that raged not simply across Earth but through multiple planes of reality. Standing in a decrepit aircraft hangar amid a gaggle of other humans, Kane was glad to get back to something approaching normality once more.

The two men walking at Kane’s side were similarly intimidating men. The first of these was Grant, Kane’s longtime brother-in-arms whose relationship with Kane dated from way back to his days as a Cobaltville Magistrate. Tall and broad-shouldered, Grant was an imposing figure with ebony skin and not so much as an ounce of fat on his body. His hair was shaved close to his skull, and he had sported his trademark gunslinger’s mustache. In his mid-thirties, Grant wore a long black duster made from Kevlar weave. The coat skimmed the tops of his boots, giving him a funereal look.

The other man was called Edwards, who was similarly well built. He had chosen to forgo a jacket, leaving his rippling arm muscles cinched beneath the tight sleeves of his dark cotton shirt. He was closer in age to Kane. Like Grant, his hair was shaved close to his skull, drawing attention to his bullet-bitten right ear. During the war with Ullikummis, Edwards had been duped into acting in the interests of the enemy through a hidden implant in his skull. That implant had been removed via ultrasonic surgery just four days earlier, but Edwards was in the field already—determined, as he put it, to make up for lost time. Kane and Grant kept an eye on him, neither of them sure that he could be fully trusted yet.

There was a fourth Cerberus agent in the room, an albino woman called Domi who had been tracking down information about this meeting for several days. She had patched through to Cerberus just a few hours before, confirming the time and location and giving the go-ahead for the others to move in.

The meeting itself was in the West Coast territory of the old United States of America, just forty miles from the majestic settlement of Luikkerville. Built on the ruins of Snakefishville, Luikkerville was a city constructed from faith, its populace enthralled by the preachings of Ullikummis and his followers. News of Ullikummis’s passing had done little to temper that burgeoning faith in the region, and Domi was there to ensure it remained at a manageable level. Where the Annunaki were involved, that was often easier said than done.

The crowd numbered close to fifty, and they came from all walks of life, all ages and ethnicities. But there was a definite atmosphere in the room. Kane could sense an atmosphere of dissatisfaction and mistrust, the belief that some great betrayal had occurred. Their god was dead.

Kane and his team continued moving through the crowd, splitting up with assured casualness as they lost themselves amid the ragtag congregation.

“...brother died,” Kane heard one of the crowd complain as he walked past. “Disappeared in a warp and never came back.”

“Yeah,” his companion agreed. “Same thing happened to my cousin. Ain’t seen him since Sunday.”

Kane moved on, gently pushing the occasional crowd member aside as he found a good vantage point to view the raised stage that dominated one end of the room.

Elsewhere within the crowd, Grant and Edwards made similar progress, making their way through the throng without drawing attention to themselves. All three men were trained Magistrates and they knew how to work through a crowd, walking with that inherent authority and challenge to their step that made others move aside.

A simple podium had been erected at one end of the hangar, just boards raised on piled blocks, and Kane, Grant and Edwards took their places as a woman stepped up onto it with the help of a man in a hooded robe. The robe was made of rough hessian material, and it featured a red shield insignia over the left breast. Kane winced as he recognized the design. Just a few years before, he and his colleagues had worn something similar in their roles as Magistrates; this new religion had appropriated much of the iconography of the dying villes in its manipulation of the populace. The woman looked to be in her late twenties, with mouse-brown hair to which she had added streaks of purple like an anarchic road map. She walked with a shuffle to her step, and Kane saw she carried a little extra weight around her middle beneath the loose, floaty dress she wore. The dress was white, and it billowed around her as it caught the drafts from the broken windows, clinging to her legs as she took each step.

To the side of the podium, two more of the robed Magistrate stand-ins waited, their hoods down revealing their emotionless expressions. They were watching the crowd warily.

The crowd came to a hush as the woman stood astride the podium, casting her eyes slowly over them, an appreciative smile forming on her lips. The woman raised her arms and, once the crowd was silent, she spoke.

“I was made a promise by Lord Ullikummis,” she announced in a clear voice, “that stone would be the future. That stone would be our future.”

A little rumble went through the crowd, and voices were raised in dissent.

“I heard it was over.”

“Yeah, Lord Ullikummis abandoned us.”

“He died.”

The woman raised her hands for silence. “Please, people. Please.”

Gradually, with a palpable sense of reluctance, the crowd quietened.

“Ullikummis is dead,” the woman on the podium announced. “The rumors are true.”

Someone in the crowd cried out, and others raised their voices in shock once again, taking a minute to finally quieten once more.

“Ullikummis ascended,” the woman continued, “to watch over all of us, to better guarantee his utopia would come to pass. And he left us a gift.”

The woman pulled at her waist then, and Kane saw that what she wore was not a dress after all but a skirt and top of the same shimmering material. She raised the top, lifting it up and over her belly until it cinched just below her breasts. Her pink belly was swollen, a little bump showing in line with her hips. At first, Kane had taken the bump for fat, but now he realized his mistake.

“He planted his seed in me before he ascended,” the woman announced to the stunned crowd. “I am the Stone Widow, and Ullikummis’s child grows within me. Our lord has departed, but his flesh shall live on.”

Once again, the crowd began to talk, raising questions and surging forward to see and to touch the swollen belly of the pregnant woman who called herself the Stone Widow.

Careful not to draw attention to himself, Kane engaged the hidden receiver of his Commtact and subvocalized, “Edwards, what are you making of this?”

A moment later, Edwards responded, his voice crystal clear in Kane’s head. “I need to be closer to be sure, Kane.”

Commtacts were communications devices that were hidden beneath the skin of the Cerberus field personnel. Each subdermal device was a top-of-the-line communication unit whose designs had been discovered among the artifacts in Redoubt Yankee several years before by the Cerberus exiles. Commtacts featured sensor circuitry incorporating an analog-to-digital voice encoder that was subcutaneously embedded in a subject’s mastoid bone. Once the pintels made contact, transmissions were funneled directly to the wearer’s auditory canals through the skull casing, vibrating the ear canal to create sound. In theory, even if a user went completely deaf he or she would still be able to hear normally, in a fashion, courtesy of the Commtact device.

Kane bit back a curse as he saw Edwards’s tall form pushing farther toward the very front of the crowd. The man’s height made him conspicuous and, unlike himself and Grant, Edwards had never had much experience working in low-key ops like this one. Instead, he just barreled on, eyes on the prize.

“Cool off, Edwards,” Kane subvocalized. “You’re drawing too much attention.”

“Well, shit, Kane,” Edwards’s voice came back. “Whatever’s left inside me from that monster needs to get close to sense things. So, I’m getting close. You got a better idea, I’m all ears.” As he spoke, Edwards peered across the heads of the crowd, fixing Kane with a challenging stare.

Kane looked away, his eyes automatically playing over the rest of the crowd. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t how it should play out. Edwards had been turned into a traitor against his will, and now that he was back on side he felt like he had something to prove. If they weren’t careful, that desire to prove himself was going to land them all in very hot water.

* * *

MEANWHILE, CLOSE TO the rear wall of the hangar, the fourth agent of the Cerberus team had slipped past the celebrants and was making her way along the length of the room behind the stage. Domi was an albino with chalk-white skin and bone-white hair that was cut into a short, pixie-style bob. Barely five feet in height with eyes a fearsome red, Domi had the figure of a teenage girl, with tiny, bird-thin limbs and small, high breasts. Right now, she was wearing a simple, airy ensemble, a light dress that left much of her pale skin uncovered. Given her choice, Domi would prefer to wear less and perhaps nothing at all. A child of the Outlands, Domi found the feel of clothing on her skin restrictive.

She had been tracking this group for several days, and had already witnessed two of their “performances,” for want of a better word. She balked at calling them sermons; there was nothing holy or reverent here that she could see. The group had come to recognize her, not in the least since her appearance was so distinctive, and she had told them her name was Mitra, a preferred alias she had used a few times while infiltrating similar pseudo religious groups. As “Mitra” she was trusted, a gentle-hearted innocent with a sickly parent who was looking for a new family in the form of this congregation. The story gave her enough credibility to pass herself off unnoticed as the false sermon continued.

While the crowd’s attention was on the preaching Stone Widow, Domi ducked under the stage and peered at what lay beneath. The stage had been constructed of several sheets of wood, placed end to end and held aloft by piled cinder blocks at regular intervals. Visibility was poor underneath, but Domi could see that the area was being used for storage. She wanted to know what was being stored.

The woman speaker’s coat was under there, neatly folded and placed by the open end of the stage. Other than that, the usual kind of things one would expect from travelers—several canteens filled with water along with some travel bags. Domi crouch-walked toward the bags—one of which was unbuckled at the top—and peered inside, spying a change of underwear along with some dried strips of cured meat in a separate bag with a clasp tie at its top. She sniffed the latter bag for a moment before moving on, head ducked beneath the stage. The height of the stage was about three feet, and Domi had to move slowly to find her way around.

Above her, the woman continued her proclamations about being the mother of the god’s child, and the crowd oohed and aahed as prompted. Through the medium of the low stage, the voices sounded hollow and eerie, as if coming from a great length of tunnel.

Up ahead, Domi spotted a wooden box that had been pushed a little more than arm’s length from the stage’s edge and against the side wall, just enough to keep it safe. The box was about fourteen inches in height and roughly square.

Checking the edges of the stage for movement and confirming there was none, Domi made her way slowly toward the crate on silent tread.

* * *

UP AT THE FRONT OF THE crowd, the Stone Widow was continuing to explain her role in the New Order. Words like messiah were being bandied about, child of god, saviour. The audience was lapping it up. The sense of relief was palpable; these people craved something to believe in now that their god was gone.

“When this child is born,” the woman continued, “he will be the first step in the evolution of our new world. A child born of god and woman. A force to lead us all.”

Edwards had reached the front of the group now, and he stared at the woman, eyeing her belly. Edwards had been seeded with one of the semisentient stones that came from Ullikummis to fulfill his will. While most of the stone growth had now been removed from his skull, parts of it tenaciously remained—not enough to do any damage to Edwards, but enough that he could sense other obedience stones and their ilk. He sure as hell could detect something here, but it was dull, like a niggling itch.

“Well?” Kane asked over the Commtact. “Anything?”

“Definitely something here,” Edwards replied. “Gonna have to pinpoint the source.”

As he spoke, Edwards reached forward, hand outstretched, and slapped his palm against the speaker’s ankle, the way others of the congregation had.

The woman was surprised by the hard grip, and she stopped midspeech to stare at the shaved-headed man who had grabbed her. “Let go, you’re hurting,” she said.

“Just wanted to touch the sainted lady,” Edwards explained as the robed figures came hurrying toward him from the back of the podium.

“Get away from the glorious widow,” one of the robed goons ordered.

The woman on stage kicked out and stepped back from Edwards, leaving him stumbling forward into the stage. The buzz in his head was there, but it was slight, and touching the so-called Stone Widow didn’t seem to make any appreciable difference.

“I just wanted to,” Edwards said, “to be close to the new life that’s coming.”

“So do I,” another member of the crowd called. “Let me feel the new life.”

“Let me be close,” another shouted.

“And me!”

Suddenly, Kane and Grant found themselves being pushed forward in a human wave as the crowd surged to get closer to the Stone Widow, even as Edwards was shoved violently against the edge of the stage itself.

“Fuck, Edwards, what have you started?” Kane muttered into his Commtact link.

* * *

BENEATH THE STAGE, Domi’s crimson eyes widened as the wooden box began to throb, its contents rattling within.

* * *

CONFUSED, BLACK JOHN Jefferson peered around him, trying to figure out where he was. He was surrounded by jungle, dense foliage thick with sap and the buzzing of insects like a wall of sound on the air. Tiny black flies swarmed about his wounds, feeding on his blood.

There was no real path to speak of, and Jefferson looked behind him, trying to recall if that was the direction he had come from. He had been on board the sinking fishing scow, had dipped under the waves when it had finally disappeared. The wound on his head had felt bastard hot where the sun struck it, but the salty water of the sea had made it sting even worse, doing nothing to cool either his skin or his temperament.

He had floated there awhile, the waves rolling about him, sending him on an undulating journey to wherever they chose. He remembered a beach, golden sand, a jungle running along its edge, palm trees and rubber plants. He had to have blacked out somewhere and had since been running on instinct.

He could recall nights like that when he’d been drunk, and his body had continued functioning anyway, whether his mind was really awake or not. Instinct could do that to a person—the deep-rooted instinct to survive.

Black John pushed the stem of a plant away as it tickled at his nose, shoving it aside with a groan of pain. His body ached and the wounds on his chest were still weeping, a clear pus coming from the broken skin where the bullets had struck, along with tiny slivers of congealing blood like red splinters. He’d kill them; that’s what he’d do. Salt, Six, all of them. They should have followed his number-one creed—to leave no witnesses. Leaving him alive would be the last mistake those ungrateful sea dogs would make.

He battled on, fighting with the foliage, seeking something to vent his anger upon. Then, as he shoved the low branches of a towering palm out of the way, he saw the building. It sat there, nestled in the jungle’s green embrace, as big as a cathedral. Constructed of stone the color of sand, the building had grand, sloping sides and a wide expanse of steps running up its center to a smaller structure that rested at its apex. The walls were notched with carvings, shadowed crevices in some script that the pirate couldn’t recognize but assumed to be written words.

Black John eyed the building, estimating it to be more than three stories in height, but still shorter than the tallest of the palm trees surrounding it.

With nowhere left to turn, Black John trudged toward the structure, wondering if anyone was inside. He was in need of medical attention, he knew, and the blood-spot trail he left on the jungle floor informed him he likely didn’t have that much time left. He reached down for the gun in his holster only to find it was gone. It didn’t matter—whoever lived there would either help him or he’d execute them and then he’d help himself with whatever he could find. In the end, it was always that simple.