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Feb. 16th, 2009 12:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vervaceousTitle: Vector
Fandom: Harsh Realm
Rating: NC-17 for language, violence, and explicit adult situations
Wordcount: 60,155
Summary: Three years after his entry into the Realm, Tom Hobbes finds his stagnant day-to-day existence disrupted by the worst threat he's ever faced--and the entire Realm faces it as well.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
-11-
“Is that box secure?”
McDonald looks at Mike as if he's being jerked out of a dream, eyes wide and startled. “It's... yeah, it is.”
“Unbreakable?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Mike lifts a hand to his face, rubbing it over his jaw, eyes falling closed for a few seconds. “Okay. We should be fine. But no one else should handle it unless they're suited up. At least gloves and a mask.”
McDonald frowns, even through the fear twisting his face. “I don't need you to lecture me on safety regulations, Pinocchio. This is my lab.”
“This isn't a goddamn pissing contest. Look, fine, whatever. But that thing. That thing is just fucking...” Mike points a finger at the sample and it's trembling very slightly. Something in the room has changed, something fundamental in the atmosphere. There had been so much hope. It's not worth anything, Tom thinks, wishing he was close enough to the wall to sag back against it. Not worth anything at all.
“We should go.” Mike turns, shaking his head, and as he faces them Tom sees how utterly pale he is. Maybe he'd been hoping too much. Maybe they all had. It was supposed to work. Something to overturn the idea that the infected are better off shot on the spot.
Kiana.
“You go,” Tom says. “I'm going back to see her again.”
Mike turns on him, face dark and incredulous. “Why the fuck?”
“Because I need to.” Tom stares back at him. In a sick way he's grateful for all this. Last night feels entirely meaningless now. “She's dying, Mike. Isn't that reason enough?”
Mike looks at him for a few seconds, mouth working slightly, and finally he huffs out an exasperated sigh and turns back to the door again. “Fine. Just be outside and ready with the rest of us.”
Florence touches Mike's arm, inclines her head towards Tom. I'm with him. Mike holds her gaze, then shakes his head and sighs again. The door hisses open and they follow him out. Behind them Tom hears the girl muttering to herself.
“Just different enough. Oh Jesus. Jesus Christ.”
* * *
The Guardsman seems mildly surprised to see them again, but he steps back to give them space, and in a few seconds he's retreated into the background again, and Tom only has eyes for the thin girl behind the glass, staring dully back at him. He feels Florence beside him, and in a vague way he's grateful for her. In another sense she doesn't really matter. He would be here regardless.
“Couldn't get enough, huh.” Kiana muffles a cough behind her fist, wiping it on her smock. It leaves a thin red stain behind. “Fine with me. I got nothing but time, asshole.”
“We just ran your sample,” Tom says. He's not sure what else to say. He's not sure if she'll even know what he's talking about. But something in her eyes flashes and she seems to sit up a little straighter.
“Yeah? And?”
Tom drops his eyes and for a moment or two he isn't sure he's going to be able to answer. Though he owes her an answer. He owes her that if nothing else. He didn't take her from her home, he didn't slaughter her family, and he didn't make them sick to begin with, but he's here, he's sleeping in Santiago's bed and eating his food and he might just as easily be wearing the same uniform as the man behind him.
He's always tried to be a good soldier. He's always tried. We are all guilty. There's no one innocent who carries a gun.
“It didn't work,” he says softly. “It's not... it just didn't work.”
“Oh.” The faint light in her face dies abruptly and she looks down at her knees. But the rage seems to have died out of her as well. There's not a truce between them, Tom wouldn't assume it, but at least hostilities are on a kind of hold.
Though he would have almost preferred it. They'd told her they could use her to help people. Mike had told her. They must have told her that they could save her with her own blood. And it's not true. And she sees it, without him having to say any more.
She reaches up, tugs at the tight curls of her hair with no real object. “So what's gonna happen to all the people?”
“I don't know.” Tom's vision blurs and he looks away, blinking a little. She's so small, so young. Somewhere, he has a child of his own who he's never seen, never held. Kiana is just a child and there's no one to hold her now.
“They're gonna die.” She says it flatly, in a way that invites no argument or contradiction, as if Tom would be prepared to offer her any. She nods at Florence, standing a little behind him. “Why doesn't she talk?”
Tom glances back at her, as if looking for some clue to a response, a clue that isn't there and never has been. “She just doesn't. She never has.”
“She's one of those women, isn't she? The healer women.” Kiana stands, tottering slightly, and takes a step towards the transparent wall. “Why doesn't she do something?” Her voice is rising. “Why doesn't she fucking help me?”
“She can't...” Tom whispers, but it feels like a sorry excuse and the words die on his lips. He can't see Florence but somehow he doesn't need to. He can feel her, like she's inside his head, and it's almost overpowering.
“Why the hell can't she?” Kiana leans against the glass and coughs, and a thin line of blood slips down her chin. Her nose is bleeding. Her eyes are red, redder then even when he'd last seen her. “I just wanted...” She makes a quiet sobbing noise and slips down to the floor, one hand on the glass. “This wasn't supposed to happen.”
No, it wasn't. Nothing he has or knows or can say is equal to this. “I'm sorry,” he whispers again, and hates himself for the words.
“Sir.” He turns and the Guardsman is beside him, reaching out to touch his shoulder. “I think maybe you should get the lady out of here.” He turns further and stares. He hadn't heard her, of course he hadn't, why would he? But Florence is slumped against the wall, arms wrapped around her middle, crying so hard that she's shaking. He's never seen her cry like that. He's never seen her cry at all.
“Florence... hey.” He reaches for her and she collapses against him, face burrowing into his shoulder. The man is right; he has to get her out of here. Way out of here. She should never have been here to begin with.
“Thank you,” he manages to say to the Guardsman as he helps the two of them out, and when he glances back Kiana is still on the floor, palm flat against the glass as if seeking to touch someone who isn't there.
* * *
He manages to get her out of containment and then they both go down together, onto the floor with the oppressive whiteness of the hallway all around them. The light is too bright so he closes his eyes and holds her, and after a time he feels her beginning to still.
“You didn't have to come,” he says softly, his hand moving slowly and aimlessly over her back. “You don't have to do that to yourself.”
She pulls back and looks at him, her face red and tear-streaked, but her eyes are still hard and clear, and her expression is clear as well. Yes, I did. You did.
He doesn't know what to say to that, so he doesn't say anything at all. His hand keeps moving and he settles back against the wall. “I don't know what's going to happen now.”
She shakes her head slowly, but for once he's not sure if she's agreeing or trying to deny something. But he doesn't think she would know. For all her power, she never claimed to read the future.
Except in one place.
“You think I'm special,” he says, hesitant, and after a few seconds, also hesitant, she nods. “Why?”
She reaches out and lays her hand against his chest, over his heart, and then moves up, her palm cool against his brow. Your heart. Your mind.
“I'm not special,” he says, and he's said it so many times over the years, to crowds, to individuals, to himself. “I'm just a man. People think I'm more than that, I'm just gonna let them down in the end.” And for a while it had been a means to an end. But he still remembers the shooting. The screams. The burning tents and buildings.
Florence shakes her head again, cupping his cheek in her hand. She was there. She knows. He doesn't know how she can still believe. He takes her wrist but he doesn't pull her hand away. He wonders what someone would think, to find them here together, half sprawled on the floor and more than a little tangled.
He doesn't care what they'd think. Very soon, it might not matter anymore what anyone thinks about anything. What will it be like, when all the minds creating this world go dark and silent? What will it look like to watch a world fade and vanish, line by line and character by character?
If we should live so long.
“Come on,” he says, slowly getting to his feet and reaching down to offer her a hand. She takes it and rises, slow as well but graceful in that way she always is, and when she gets her boots under her she looks steadier. Almost normal again.
But he can see the collapse still threatening under her surface. They can't stay here much longer.
“We should go,” he says, looking back down the hall towards their exit. “We should... get packed, I guess.” Though he's not sure what he has to pack. It's not like he's even unpacked to begin with. This place has never felt like a home or a place to settle. He's starting to realize how much he's itching to move on.
Even through the fear of what they might find.
* * *
“Hitchins.” He meets the man in the hallway outside his room, and Hitchins looks up sharply at the sound of his voice, flushing bright and immediately. Maybe he'd been heading for Mike's room. Maybe not. Tom is discovering that he doesn't particularly care.
“I—Hobbes. Hi.” He takes a step back and rubs the back of his neck with one hand, looking about as uncomfortable as Tom has ever seen anyone. “You're heading out this afternoon, right?”
Tom nods. It's hard to hear Hitchins's voice, now, and not think about what he sounds like when he's coming. Like a goddamn train wreck, Tom thinks, but that isn't really right. Not exactly. “In a couple hours. Look, Hitchins...” He doesn't have the patience for awkwardness and even if he did he's far too tired for it. “I got a dog in there. Dexter. Is there any way you can feed him while I'm gone? Take him outside now and then?”
“Oh.” Hitchins blushes again, and Tom's worried for a moment that he might say no, but then he's nodding, red but nodding. “Yeah, I can do that.”
“Thanks.” Tom nods towards his door. “I gotta...”
“Yeah. Hobbes.” And he stops Tom with his hand on the door handle. “I'm...” And then he shakes his head. “Sorry. Never mind.”
Sorry I was a porn movie soundtrack in your room last night, Tom thinks, and somehow he almost laughs. “Okay, Hitchins. Okay.”
* * *
When he finally steps outside with Florence behind him, there's already a small crowd waiting, ten or twelve men in their olive green uniforms, red berets bright in the thin sun. There's three humvees parked at the base of the steps, and though it's clearly a military operation, Tom is reminded absurdly of a school day trip. Now everyone find a partner and hold hands.
His gaze flicks to Mike, leaning against one of the vehicles with his old clothes on and a pack over his shoulder, and flicks away again. He and Florence are also dressed in the clothes they'd brought. It's a feeling of returning, of being unable to take along what they'd been given. It doesn't feel like his, doesn't even feel exactly real, like if he took it past the fence it might turn to ash and blow away.
And wouldn't that be embarrassing.
He steps forward, hitching his own pack higher on his shoulder, and draws up beside Mike. “So how're they letting us do this, anyway? They didn't take the chips out.”
Mike shrugs. “Tech these days, they can just reprogram them remotely.” He nods to Waters, standing a few yards away and talking to two other soldiers, and his face twists sourly. “They gave him a thing. Like a portable tracker. As long as we stay close to him...” He sighs and looks away again. “I'd like to get close, all right,” he mutters. “Foot-up-his-ass close.”
Tom regards him carefully. There's something that he's seeing here, and he's been seeing it since they got here. “You really don't like him. I mean, really. Like you knew him from before.” He looks back at Waters and thinks about Sarajevo, about the roar of the bombers and the trembling of the two of them, huddled together and waiting for impact, and just before the bombs fell Tom whispered to him that everything would be okay.
Things change.
“Yeah, well.” Mike smirks faintly and shrugs again. “He was a little kiss-ass who always wanted my job. Hope he's fucking happy now.”
“Yeah,” Tom says, looking down at his boots. Part of him wants to forgive. Part of him. Another part of him, a part he hadn't even known existed until this place, wants to knock Waters onto the ground and stand on his throat and watch his face turn purple. “Me too.”
“All right!” Waters steps away from the small circle of Guardsmen and raises his voice. “Listen up. We move out in five. You've all been apprised of the situation. You know your jobs. We get out there, we get this guy and we get back in one piece.” He takes a step towards the lead humvee. “Let's roll!”
The three of them are piled into the back of the middle vehicle, but not before Tom glances behind them and sees white plastic bundles being loaded into the trunk. He glances at Mike questioningly.
“Hazmat suits,” Mike says simply, and looks out the window.
Tom closes his eyes. So it's real, now.
-12-
He holds his breath when they pass through the fence, and he remembers when he was a boy, holding his breath to pass a graveyard. Holding his breath so no ghosts could enter his body. In his mind, those ghosts had never had the power to make him bleed.
Long before they reach the fence they've left the more thickly populated areas behind and as the road unfolds in front of them the land passing becomes long stretches of open field, dotted with copses of naked trees. On one level it's jarring, after so many days and nights of gleaming towers and pavement. On another, it's like coming home, and once the fence is far behind them he lets out a sigh and feels something deep inside him begin to relax.
Relax. That should be funny. He might not have believed it, a week ago.
“So how far are we going?” he asks quietly, following Mike's gaze out the window. Mike shrugs.
“A ways. Probably gonna take about a day.” He pauses and glances at Florence, and it might not mean anything, and then again it might. “We're going west.”
He remembers. The badlands. “Is that bad?”
“I dunno.” Mike looks out the window again, broken fenceposts whipping by into a blur. “Maybe. We'll see.”
Tom sits back, leans his head against the seat and closes his eyes, tries to sleep. Tiredness is such a constant state by now that he notices it when he doesn't feel it far more than when he does. But this feels like an even deeper kind of weary, the kind that works its way into his bones and seems to scoop out the marrow, leaving him hollow and tottering. Being outside the fence is a relief. It's also the only real relief he has now.
He's sitting next to Mike, pressed against him by the cramped space of the humvee, their knees and hips touching. Close quarters is something new and it shouldn't even be worth remarking on. He should be able to lean his head on Mike's shoulder and sleep if he needs to.
But he doesn't.
We should talk. What about? They'd been drunk, both of them. It's amazing he even remembers it. Drunk, tired, missing Sophie, and he hadn't even meant to. Accident, completely. Maybe Mike doesn't remember, anyway.
He sure as hell doesn't seem to care.
Mike has fallen into and out of a lot of beds since he's known him and maybe that's all this was, all Hitchins was, just a quick drunken grope and then meaning nothing the next day.
But he can't get away from Mike's face. The mortification. The utter oh, shit look of him. It had almost been funny. If he'd been watching from outside he might have laughed. His own face. The initial confusion. He's never kissed a man. He never thought it would feel quite like that. He's not sure what he'd imagined it would feel like.
People are just more complicated than that.
He opens one eye a slit and the wall of a house passes in the window, just the wall and nothing else, the edges of it blacked with fire. He thinks he sees a shape huddled in the grass beside it. He might have imagined it. He closes his eyes again and the wall is gone, as gone as the house is. After a while the hum of the engine and the murmur of conversation from the front seat is gone as well, and then everything else follows. The line between waking and dreaming is thinner and thinner these days. Just another fence to pass through as though it weren't even there.
* * *
They stop to eat dinner by the side of the road, men setting up portable stoves and cracking open packets of rations, heating things in small pots. Tom stands dully in the center of it all, looking around and wondering how this can feel so familiar and so strange both at once. He's not really a soldier anymore. What's a soldier without an army?
“You should eat,” Mike says from behind him and a little way to the side. “Won't get too many chances for a while.”
“I'm not hungry.” He looks off to the left; Florence, leaning against one of the cars with her arms over her bent knees. She's not eating either.
Mike rolls his eyes and steps away again. “Fine. Just gonna kick your ass later, if you start gnawing on my arm.”
Tom smiles thinly. “Too bad I left the mutt at home, right?”
Mike looks back at him, expression mildly surprised. “Hey, yeah, you did. How's he gonna eat?”
Tom shrugs. “Hitchins is feeding him.” Casual, very casual, and yet he finds himself watching Mike's face closely. Not sure what he's looking for. Something. Mike's eyes narrow just a touch.
“Is he.” Something that might be in the same ballpark as a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth before it lets go again. “Huh. Okay.” And he turns without another word, crouches down with a group of Guard, engaging with them in clipped, one-word statements. But Tom catches a glance from him, a strange little smile.
He doesn't like discomfort when he's not sure where it's coming from.
He moves over to Florence, sits down beside her and watches the sun sinking behind the trees, the light still greasy and colorless, just as it had been. She doesn't look at him immediately, and when she does she looks tired, as though she hadn't slept in all their time in the city. Perhaps she hadn't. It's not like he really has any way of knowing.
“What can you tell me about the west?”
She looks at him a little more directly, her eyes widening just a touch. Her expression is unusually hard to read, not because she's holding anything back, but because what's passing over her face is a flurry of things, so fast and so flickering that it's difficult to pin any of them down. Finally she looks down again and shrugs, giving him a faint, wry smile.
You know I can't tell you much of anything.
“I know.” He returns the smile, briefly, and leans back again, hands on his knees. The land all around them feels very big, very open. They haven't seen another person since they set out. “Just... the way Pinocchio and Santiago were talking about it...”
He doesn't turn his head again but he can feel her looking at him, and finally she touches his forearm to get his attention, moving her hands through the air in parallel curves, and he sees that she's making a shape. It takes him a second or two to get it, but then he does.
A mushroom cloud.
“Another bomb?” he asks, his voice hushed, and she nods. “A nuke?”
She half-shakes her head, twists her mouth. Not quite.
“A dirty bomb?”
She holds up a finger. And then four more. Tom exhales heavily. “Jesus.”
Poisoned ground and water. The badlands. There had been a lot of hazmat suits. He had assumed they were in case they ran into Pale Horse. Now he wonders.
He's glad Dexter is back on the other side of the fence.
It's twilight when they start to drive again. He had expected that they might stop for the night, and perhaps eventually they will, but they drive on through the darkening world, and while Tom had dozed before, now he can't still his mind. He's seen so much darkness here, so much death, and yet it had somehow escaped him, the idea that he might encounter something worse. He glances at Mike in the dimness, and something flashes in Mike's eyes, lighting the pupils for an instant in yellow-gold, like an animal's. Tom shivers.
Eventually the movement of the car overrides his racing thoughts and he must be deep in a doze when they stop again, but it jolts him up and out, because the stop is abrupt, the brakes squealing and the humvee in front of them suddenly looming huge and headight-bright in the windshield. Tom opens his eyes wide, looking around, dull and confused even as he feels his deeper instincts waking up and engaging.
“Fucking hell,” mutters one of the soldiers in front, and the radio crackles, but there's still no clue as to why they've stopped. Tom is about to break what feels like some kind of implicit rule and ask, when Florence grabs at his shoulder and he turns instinctively, looking out her window.
Palely lit in the glow of the headlights is a deer. Tom thinks it's a deer. He's pretty sure. But it's a deer gone horribly wrong, blinking at them with bulbous, milky eyes, its snout open and raw and showing the nasal passages. Its fur is patchy and rough as if eaten away by some kind of mange, its body skeletal, and its legs are grotesquely long and spindly, and Tom isn't sure how they're even supporting its weight. It wobbles slightly, its tongue lolling from where its cheeks should be, and then it turns and lopes off into the darkness, its tail up and white and pure in the midst of everything else.
“What was wrong it with?” Tom whispers. “What the fuck was wrong with it?”
Mike shakes his head mutely and Tom turns to him, mouth open, numb with horror. He's never seen anything like that before.
“Mike...”
“It's the badlands,” Mike says simply, his voice flat, and turns away again. “Don't worry. It won't live that long.”
When they stop again, half of the Guardsmen set up a perimeter, and the three of them are among those permitted to sleep. But Tom doesn't sleep. He lies awake on the cold ground and stares up into the darkness, the moon staring back like a single blind, milky eye.
* * *
The next day they start early, though no one has to rouse Tom. He sits up, blinking, gathers up his bedroll and in ten minutes he's back in the humvee, staring out the window. He's eaten, at least, just a packet of dry rations, tasting like wood chips, but it's something, and it's so like the chow he's used to from years before that it's almost comforting.
He needs comfort. The world outside the car is beginning to change. It's changed already, only the night before, in the darkness, he hadn't seen it. The trees are still there, but they're twisted, stunted and gnarled, and more and more they look burned. Besides them, there's only the grass, miles and miles of it, dry and colorless and if it were summer it would look ready to burst into flame. Since the deer they've seen no animals, and he's grateful for that.
There's no sign of life anywhere. Not until they stop in the late morning for a meal and a piss, and a few yards off the side of the road there's a house. Intact. No sign of destruction, no fire. Tom stares at it for a short time, glances over at the Guardsman closest to him.
“Is anyone gonna care if I check it out?”
The man looks placidly back at him and shrugs. Tom looks around, catches sight of Waters. It shouldn't take him too far. But he has to see. Mike and Florence are with another group, scarfing down cold rations. If he goes quickly they might not notice that he's gone at all. Normally he would want them to come with him. But now, for reasons he doesn't fully understand, he wants to go alone.
The house is intact. He hadn't realized how strange that is until now.
The boards of the porch creak as he walks up onto it, and when he tries the front door it's open. The foyer is silent, eerie, the stairs leading up to the second floor are cast in shadow and the silence coming down the staircase like cold air feels even thicker and more oppressive. He glances through the doorway on his right; a living room, couch and chairs and glass coffee table, all covered with a thick layer of dust, all untouched. Not even looted.
He feels a shiver of disquiet run through him and steps through the door to his left, into the dining room. A small table, simple wood, a checked tablecloth. Four places set, four chairs. Four plates, covered with the crusted and mummified remains of a shared meal. The glasses are cloudy with long-evaporated liquid. There's nothing left to rot. Whatever could have did so a long time ago.
He takes a step backward and stops dead when his boot comes into contact with something that feels like neither floor or furniture, something that snaps dryly. He turns. The remains of a dog, what looks like it had been a border collie, scraps of faded black and white fur still clinging to the bones. It had been lying here by the table, maybe waiting for scraps, and something had happened. Something.
There's a rustle at one of the windows, a pane broken out, and he looks up and sees a crow sitting there, staring back at him with beady black eyes. It has three legs, the two normal enough but for where the left one branches into another limb, single-clawed, twisted and useless and dangling at its side. It hops to the right, caws a raspy cry. It turns its head and its beak is weirdly notched at the side, as if it had started to grow in another direction before changing its mind.
Tom turns and walks out of the house. He finds Mike, settles down beside him, unable to look at him. He stares down at his hands.
“This wasn't a dirty bomb, was it.” It's not a question. “It was something worse.”
Mike finishes chewing the last of his food and then for a time he's silent. Tom is about to get up, walk away again, maybe get back in the car and just sit and wait for this to all get moving again, when Mike finally speaks.
“It started out as a dirty bomb.” He shakes his head slightly. “Turned into something else. It was a bug. It didn't pan out in the code like they expected.” He looks at Tom and smile wryly. “Ten minutes later the suitcase nuke in New York City went off. They got that one right, anyway.”
“Oh.” Tom looks up at the house, the ghost house, not even the bodies of the inhabitants left to show they'd been there. He feels absurdly like crying. “Are we safe? Like... can we be here?”
Mike shrugs. “As long as you don't eat or drink anything. The air... the air is probably okay.” He smiles coldly. “And even if it's not... you think it makes a whole lot of difference at this point?”
Tom doesn't answer that. It's something that all three of them know, but he feels sure somehow that the others don't. Whether it had been too soon before their departure to get the word out that a vaccine is impossible... or whether Santiago has simply chosen to keep the information to himself. Who knows.
And that truly doesn't matter.
They get back into the humvees and drive away, and Tom looks up at the mirror and watches the house until it vanishes over the horizon and is gone.
* * *
It's early afternoon when they stop again, and Tom is puzzled. It's too soon for another break, and the land around them is still dead and featureless, with fire scars here and there in the grass, blackened and burned away to the ground, still bare where new growth should have covered it a long time ago. Mike steps out of the humvee and Tom follows, looking around, wondering, Florence behind him. Ahead of them, by the lead vehicle, most of the Guardsmen have already gathered around Waters.
“Okay, it's just two klicks that way.” And he nods off to what Tom had assumed was another small stand of trees, but now that he's close it's clearly bigger, even a small forest, extending far off the road. “We move out, we stay close and quiet. All we know is that he's there. We don't know anything about what's waiting for us. So go soft, and stop the second you get to anything that doesn't look right.”
As the other Guardsmen start to head off towards the trees, Waters sees them, beckons them closer, glares at them when they reach him. “You go too,” he says. “We're not giving you weapons, so stick close to someone who has one. And watch your asses.”
“Really,” Mike says, and he looks darkly amused. “Whatever you say. Major.”
Waters shoots him a poisonous look but Mike is already striding away. Tom shrugs, gives Waters a thin smile and follows. He can't say that part of him doesn't enjoy Mike's needling. A little. As long as he's not the target.
A few minutes of dry, scrubby grass and then they're in among the trees, the tops low and tangled, and even though there's not a single leaf to be seen, it's darker here, as though the meager sunlight still can't filter its way down through the boughs. Tom looks around them, his hands suddenly feeling alarmingly empty with no gun to grip, and he catches Florence and Mike fidgeting in similar ways. Ahead of them he can see olive green, moving slowly through the trees, guns drawn and held at the ready. But the three of them are behind, far behind, and Mike doesn't seem terribly interested in catching up.
Tom hisses softly to catch his attention, wincing when a twig under his boot snaps loudly.
“Shouldn't we do what he said? Join up with someone who's actually armed?” He doesn't like Waters, he'll be the first person to admit that, but the truth is that it had sounded like at least a halfway decent idea. But Mike is shaking his head.
“We hang back, circle around the side, get in front of them. Stay close to me.”
Tom stares at him. “But he just said... Pinocchio, I don't really wanna die out here. I know how I make it look sometimes, but...”
Mike snorts a soft laugh. “We won't die, you fuckin' pussy.” He nods to Florence and starts to move to the side, stepping softly as he can, though everything around them is so dead and dry that it almost crackles at the touch of a breath. “I know this guy. We worked together for a while.”
“Elliot?” Tom remembers the narrow mouth, the thin, ungenerous face. “And you're sure he's here.”
“I'm sure.” Mike pauses and looks around, cocks his head, and Tom gets the sense that he's listening for something, before he moves on again. “This is where he always wanted to go. Creepy little motherfucker.”
“The badlands?”
“He wanted to study the bomb's effects on animals.” Mike's mouth twists wryly. “He woulda been shit outta luck with people. None of them left.”
Tom feels something twist in his gut. The empty chairs, the meals half-eaten. The way the chairs had been pulled back, as if to make space for a person to sit in them, only there was no one at all. “Why not?”
Mike shrugs. “Just how it worked out. No one totally understands it.”
Tom goes silent again. There are questions he wants to ask. How far south and west does it extend? What's happened to all the cities beyond this point, all the people? Is Colorado poisoned? Utah? Nevada? California?
He thinks about California and his throat tightens, until he pushes the thought away and he can breathe again.
He can still hear the Guardsmen moving off a few yards through the trees, but the sound here is strangled, twisted and turned through the dead wood until he's not entirely sure what direction anything is coming to him from. It would be easy to get lost in a wood like this, with any clearing or break in the treeline long since vanished, but Mike moves ahead with an intent and a confidence that Tom finds hard to believe. Unless Mike's been here before. Unless he's been exactly here.
He doesn't see the dead squirrel until he almost walks into it.
A tiny head, dried skin and patchy fur stretched over a rodent skull, its mouth wide and gaping as if in pain and its eyes long since plucked out or rotted away. It's dangling in front of him by its tail and he finds himself face to grisly face with it before he entirely knows what's happening. For a moment he stands absolutely still, feeling adrenaline pound through his body, and then he gulps once, twice, hard, and steps back, looking around for Mike and Florence. And then he sees the others.
The low branches of the trees are full of them, the dessicated carcasses of creatures hanging like some kind of grotesque fruit. Tom swallows again, fighting back an entirely irrational and powerful panic. “Mike,” he whispers, looks ahead and Mike has stopped, turned, staring at him with mild irritation.
“Come the fuck on, GI. You're slowing us up.”
“What's with the menagerie?” Tom whispers, once he's managed to get his legs working and he's close again.
“Told you he was a creepy little motherfucker,” Mike says, and chuckles softly. “Seriously, I dunno. It could be a warning, him trying to scare people away. Or it could be part of his research.”
“Some research,” Tom mutters, and Mike chuckles again.
“What's the matter, Pollyanna? Not your kinda Christmas ornaments?” But Tom looks ahead and Florence is walking exactly as she had back in the city, with her shoulders hunched, her body radiating discomfort. It's the death, Tom realizes. The deadness of everything. Really, the two places are far too similar.
Even without the dead animals on the trees.
Off to the right, Tom hears a soft grunt and a curse, though how far away it is hard to tell. But it's to the right, he's almost sure... and a little behind. Mike looks up and smiles, though it's tight and humorless. “Good,” he murmurs. “We got a few minutes on 'em.” He glances back at Tom. “Pick up the pace. I need more time.”
The animals hanging from the trees grow more numerous. Crows, squirrels, foxes with their red fur faded and bedraggled. Here and there an opossum. Gradually the horror fades, and it's replaced by a deep, ridiculous melancholy. They're sad little things, most of them with more of the strange mutations he's seen, extra and useless legs, blind eyes, where the eyes remain at all, oversized heads and jaws with snaggled, crooked teeth. Tom sighs, fighting back another shiver, and he understands even better why Florence walks with her shoulders hunched, as if fighting the force of a wind that only she can feel.
But then she isn't walking anymore, and neither is Mike, and Tom stares down at what they're bent over, Mike pushing aside some twigs and ancient, dried leaves.
It's a hatch, set into the ground, metal with a handle and what looks like a keypad at one end. Mike tugs once at the handle, fruitlessly, and then drops into a crouch, glancing behind them, rubbing his jaw.
“You need a code?” Tom asks quietly, wondering how long it'll take for the Guardsmen to find them. But Mike looks up and smiles. “I know the code.” And his hand moves over the keys, with no more hesitation than he'd showed in leading them here, and there's a soft hissing sound. Mike takes hold of the handle again, and this time the hatch opens as easily as if it had never been locked. Tom peers into it.
It's a long hole leading down, down past the point where he can make it out, with rungs set into one side. Very faintly, some inestimable distance down, he thinks he can see the glow of a light.
Mike nods. “C'mon. Quick, before they find it.”
The rungs are slippery but they move down onto them, and Mike pulls the hatch shut behind them. Tom is expecting them to be cast back into total blackness, but now he can definitely see a light at the bottom, though it's still impossible to judge the distance with any precision. “How the hell did you find this place?” he whispers, looking up at Mike's boots descending towards him.
“We built this place,” Mike says softly, and Tom feels no surprise at all. “It was supposed to be a research station. But it kinda never happened.”
“Why not?”
“Lotta reasons. Santiago started cutting budgets for research that didn't directly have to do with weaponry. Pale Rider being a bust didn't help any.” Mike looks down and Tom sees his eyes glittering in the dim light. “Not that many people even remember this place is here.”
“But he did.” Tom swallows. “And you did.” He pauses. The light is getting closer. “Will they know the code?”
“Hope not. But I think we gotta assume they will. Or they can hack it. Hurry it up down there.”
They reach the bottom after what seems like another short eternity, and Tom can feel the tension in his legs as he steps off the rungs, looking around. Ahead of them stretches a long, whitewashed tunnel, lit by dim overhead fluorescents. Tom feels Mike prod him gently in the back and he starts to walk.
It seems longer than it is, and at the end of it there's a door. Metal, like the hatch, and also with a keypad. Tom is waiting for Mike to reach out, tap in some other code, but Mike shakes his head and glances back at Florence. “Can't. I mean, I could. But he knows we're here.” He smiles thinly. “Wouldn't be polite to just barge in there.” He reaches up and pounds hard on the door, sending great echoing booms of sound through the tunnel and through the door into unknown chambers beyond. There's a pause, a long one, and Mike is just raising his fist to pound again when the door swings open, surprisingly fast for how large it is and how heavy it must be, and a man is looking back at them with a warily expectant expression on his thin face. The glasses, the narrow mouth and the brown, mussed hair. Tom's only seen him once, not even in person, but it's clear who it is.
“Colonel.” The man takes a step back, but there's nothing nervous about the movement. His stance is of a man who clearly knows he's on his own ground. “You brought friends. I wasn't expecting that.”
“Hi, Greg,” Mike says, amiably. “Can we come in? We kinda need to talk.”
-13-
“I didn't expect to see you at all, I have to say,” says Elliot, straightening some papers on the low table in the middle of the room. It's a wide chamber with a low ceiling and sloping walls, a cot in the corner, a hotplate on a table, one wall lined with shelves, in turn lined with canned goods. Pots and pans. Bookshelves. Three monitors and a tangled pile of computer equipment, and a small TV showing multiple camera angles, one of them displaying the four of them. Another narrow tunnel, leading off into other chambers that can't be seen. “They said you were dead.”
Mike shrugs and smiles faintly. “You believed them?”
Elliot snorts. “Not for a minute. But that was the... eh... official party line.” He takes a seat by the table, folding his hands in his lap. He's wearing a pair of jeans, worn but clean, a flannel shirt. Still the same thin glasses, which he pushes higher on his nose before his hands join in his lap again. “I'm relieved. You inspired a few of us, leaving like you did. It's good to see you didn't come to some, eh, unfortunate end.”
“And what happened to the others?”
Elliot shrugs and shakes his head. “Who knows? It wasn't as though we left in a group. We were... scattered. Disorganized. None of us thought to oppose Santiago in any way, it was just a case of wanting to be... out. Gone. Away from him.” He smiles and looks around the chamber. “This seemed like it was far away enough.”
“But it's not,” Tom says, speaking for the first time. He takes a cautious step forward. “They're up there, looking for this place.”
“I know.” Elliot nods, seeming entirely unconcerned. “And they will find it. Eventually.” He cocks his head, curious, looking at Florence where she stands close to the door, right hand holding her left arm, looking around as though she's waiting for something to leap out and bite her. “What is she?”
Mike's eyes narrow. “She's Florence. You don't need to know anything else.”
“She's very quiet, isn't she? My dear.” Elliot holds out a hand to her, smiling again. “You don't have to be so afraid. Nothing down here will harm you.”
“She's not afraid,” Tom says, a little tightly. Somehow it feels like an insult that he has to push back. “Maybe she just doesn't like it.”
Elliot half shrugs. “She can suit herself. Now. Colonel, why don't you tell me what brings you out here.” He leans forward over the table and folds his hands together. “Because you don't expect me to believe that this is just a little social call.”
“It's not.” Mike takes a seat opposite, turning the chair around and leaning over the back with a kind of exaggerated casualness. “Pale Horse, Elliot.”
Elliot's eyes go very slightly wider. He seems to catch himself, face carefully composed and placid, but Tom sees it. A glance at Mike and he's sure he's seen it too. Elliot clears his throat lightly. “What about it?”
“Come on.” Mike leans a little further forward. “It's just us here, Greg. For now. You know they don't get it, they're just fucking grunts. They're not gonna appreciate the scope of what we worked on. But I get it. You know I do. What else do you know?”
“It didn't work,” Elliot says flatly. “It didn't work and we locked it up and no one ever touched it again.”
“No one?” Mike smiles, calm and a little bemused. “Really. So you don't know anything about what's going on...” He waves a hand vaguely at the ceiling. “Up there.”
“I don't. Why, what's going on up there?”
Mike gets up. He does it hard and abruptly, shoving the chair into the table with considerable force, and in spite of his carefully composed exterior Elliot jumps. “We don't have time for this,” Mike says, leaning forward over the table again, and his voice is still level and calm. “They're coming for you, they're gonna be here soon, and once they have you we both know you're not gonna give them anything. But you can give me something. You got a chance here to balance the scales a little. Don't fucking blow it, Greg.”
Elliot looks back at him for what feels like a long time. A chime sounds, faint, pleasant, and all of them except Elliot look up and towards the ceiling, instinctive. None of them have to be told what it means.
“Why should I tell you?” Something in Elliot's face has changed. It's harder, thinner, his mouth even more narrow, and while there's still a determined calmness about him, all the pleasant aspect of before has faded entirely. “What would you do with it? It's not like it'll even help, Colonel, you know that. We couldn't ever stop it. It's like a dragon. It'll eat the world.”
“You know,” Tom murmurs, and it's just what they've all been sure of. Transparent as anything could be. He steps up behind Mike, close, hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“I have a sample.”
“From a victim?” Mike shakes his head. “So do we. Big fuckin' deal.”
“No, you don't understand.” Elliot smiles grimly. Another chime, louder and somehow more insistent, and when Tom glances at the TV screen he sees Guardsmen in the tunnel outside. “I have a sample.”
Tom feels his mouth go dry. Behind him, Florence inhales lightly. Tom looks on the table, and Mike's knuckles are white. “Who?” Mike whispers. “Who gave it to you?”
Elliot opens his mouth and then there's a third chime, this one both loud and grating, and Tom feels it sending shivers down his spine, like nails on a chalkboard. “They're coming through,” Elliot says, sounding strangely distant. “I swore I wouldn't go back. I swore...” He looks up at Mike and laughs. “They're just going to kill me anyway.”
“Greg. Who?”
“It doesn't matter.” Elliot leans back in his chair and slips his hands into his pockets. “You know we're all dead anyway. You knew it the second we made the damn thing.”
“Greg, so help me Jesus...”
The door swings open. Guardmen spill into the room, a few of them dropping to their knees, guns out and held and ready to fire. Tom turns to look at them in a kind of daze and he sees that all of them are wearing respirator masks. Mike whirls, holds out his hands and yells “No!” And then several things happen at once and Tom somehow seems to see all of them, a whirl of images so confused and fused that it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, or what order they happen in, or whether they happen in any order at all. Thick smoke billows into the room, the lights flicker, the chime is sounding low and loud and threatening. The TV screen goes dark. Elliot pulls his hand out of his pocket and through the smoke and the flickering light there's a glitter of something thin and sharp. Florence is crumpling to her knees, her hand over her mouth and nose. Mike is leaning heavily on the table, coughing so hard he's almost retching. But Elliot isn't coughing. Tom can somehow see him clearly, and Elliot is meeting his gaze, calm and clear, and through the chaos and the noise Tom can hear him when he speaks.
“There's nothing here to save.”
He lifts the glittering thing in his hands—a medical syringe tipped with a needle—and slides it easily into the side of his own neck. There's a blur in the smoke as Mike reaches for him and then a flicker, a swell of light and nothing at all. All the air seems to squeeze itself out of Tom's lungs and he stumbles and goes down, the floor very cool under his cheek. All the lights might go out or it might just be him losing consciousness, and either way he doesn't suppose it matters very much. Like the man said.
There's nothing here to save.
Fandom: Harsh Realm
Rating: NC-17 for language, violence, and explicit adult situations
Wordcount: 60,155
Summary: Three years after his entry into the Realm, Tom Hobbes finds his stagnant day-to-day existence disrupted by the worst threat he's ever faced--and the entire Realm faces it as well.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
-11-
“Is that box secure?”
McDonald looks at Mike as if he's being jerked out of a dream, eyes wide and startled. “It's... yeah, it is.”
“Unbreakable?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Mike lifts a hand to his face, rubbing it over his jaw, eyes falling closed for a few seconds. “Okay. We should be fine. But no one else should handle it unless they're suited up. At least gloves and a mask.”
McDonald frowns, even through the fear twisting his face. “I don't need you to lecture me on safety regulations, Pinocchio. This is my lab.”
“This isn't a goddamn pissing contest. Look, fine, whatever. But that thing. That thing is just fucking...” Mike points a finger at the sample and it's trembling very slightly. Something in the room has changed, something fundamental in the atmosphere. There had been so much hope. It's not worth anything, Tom thinks, wishing he was close enough to the wall to sag back against it. Not worth anything at all.
“We should go.” Mike turns, shaking his head, and as he faces them Tom sees how utterly pale he is. Maybe he'd been hoping too much. Maybe they all had. It was supposed to work. Something to overturn the idea that the infected are better off shot on the spot.
Kiana.
“You go,” Tom says. “I'm going back to see her again.”
Mike turns on him, face dark and incredulous. “Why the fuck?”
“Because I need to.” Tom stares back at him. In a sick way he's grateful for all this. Last night feels entirely meaningless now. “She's dying, Mike. Isn't that reason enough?”
Mike looks at him for a few seconds, mouth working slightly, and finally he huffs out an exasperated sigh and turns back to the door again. “Fine. Just be outside and ready with the rest of us.”
Florence touches Mike's arm, inclines her head towards Tom. I'm with him. Mike holds her gaze, then shakes his head and sighs again. The door hisses open and they follow him out. Behind them Tom hears the girl muttering to herself.
“Just different enough. Oh Jesus. Jesus Christ.”
* * *
The Guardsman seems mildly surprised to see them again, but he steps back to give them space, and in a few seconds he's retreated into the background again, and Tom only has eyes for the thin girl behind the glass, staring dully back at him. He feels Florence beside him, and in a vague way he's grateful for her. In another sense she doesn't really matter. He would be here regardless.
“Couldn't get enough, huh.” Kiana muffles a cough behind her fist, wiping it on her smock. It leaves a thin red stain behind. “Fine with me. I got nothing but time, asshole.”
“We just ran your sample,” Tom says. He's not sure what else to say. He's not sure if she'll even know what he's talking about. But something in her eyes flashes and she seems to sit up a little straighter.
“Yeah? And?”
Tom drops his eyes and for a moment or two he isn't sure he's going to be able to answer. Though he owes her an answer. He owes her that if nothing else. He didn't take her from her home, he didn't slaughter her family, and he didn't make them sick to begin with, but he's here, he's sleeping in Santiago's bed and eating his food and he might just as easily be wearing the same uniform as the man behind him.
He's always tried to be a good soldier. He's always tried. We are all guilty. There's no one innocent who carries a gun.
“It didn't work,” he says softly. “It's not... it just didn't work.”
“Oh.” The faint light in her face dies abruptly and she looks down at her knees. But the rage seems to have died out of her as well. There's not a truce between them, Tom wouldn't assume it, but at least hostilities are on a kind of hold.
Though he would have almost preferred it. They'd told her they could use her to help people. Mike had told her. They must have told her that they could save her with her own blood. And it's not true. And she sees it, without him having to say any more.
She reaches up, tugs at the tight curls of her hair with no real object. “So what's gonna happen to all the people?”
“I don't know.” Tom's vision blurs and he looks away, blinking a little. She's so small, so young. Somewhere, he has a child of his own who he's never seen, never held. Kiana is just a child and there's no one to hold her now.
“They're gonna die.” She says it flatly, in a way that invites no argument or contradiction, as if Tom would be prepared to offer her any. She nods at Florence, standing a little behind him. “Why doesn't she talk?”
Tom glances back at her, as if looking for some clue to a response, a clue that isn't there and never has been. “She just doesn't. She never has.”
“She's one of those women, isn't she? The healer women.” Kiana stands, tottering slightly, and takes a step towards the transparent wall. “Why doesn't she do something?” Her voice is rising. “Why doesn't she fucking help me?”
“She can't...” Tom whispers, but it feels like a sorry excuse and the words die on his lips. He can't see Florence but somehow he doesn't need to. He can feel her, like she's inside his head, and it's almost overpowering.
“Why the hell can't she?” Kiana leans against the glass and coughs, and a thin line of blood slips down her chin. Her nose is bleeding. Her eyes are red, redder then even when he'd last seen her. “I just wanted...” She makes a quiet sobbing noise and slips down to the floor, one hand on the glass. “This wasn't supposed to happen.”
No, it wasn't. Nothing he has or knows or can say is equal to this. “I'm sorry,” he whispers again, and hates himself for the words.
“Sir.” He turns and the Guardsman is beside him, reaching out to touch his shoulder. “I think maybe you should get the lady out of here.” He turns further and stares. He hadn't heard her, of course he hadn't, why would he? But Florence is slumped against the wall, arms wrapped around her middle, crying so hard that she's shaking. He's never seen her cry like that. He's never seen her cry at all.
“Florence... hey.” He reaches for her and she collapses against him, face burrowing into his shoulder. The man is right; he has to get her out of here. Way out of here. She should never have been here to begin with.
“Thank you,” he manages to say to the Guardsman as he helps the two of them out, and when he glances back Kiana is still on the floor, palm flat against the glass as if seeking to touch someone who isn't there.
* * *
He manages to get her out of containment and then they both go down together, onto the floor with the oppressive whiteness of the hallway all around them. The light is too bright so he closes his eyes and holds her, and after a time he feels her beginning to still.
“You didn't have to come,” he says softly, his hand moving slowly and aimlessly over her back. “You don't have to do that to yourself.”
She pulls back and looks at him, her face red and tear-streaked, but her eyes are still hard and clear, and her expression is clear as well. Yes, I did. You did.
He doesn't know what to say to that, so he doesn't say anything at all. His hand keeps moving and he settles back against the wall. “I don't know what's going to happen now.”
She shakes her head slowly, but for once he's not sure if she's agreeing or trying to deny something. But he doesn't think she would know. For all her power, she never claimed to read the future.
Except in one place.
“You think I'm special,” he says, hesitant, and after a few seconds, also hesitant, she nods. “Why?”
She reaches out and lays her hand against his chest, over his heart, and then moves up, her palm cool against his brow. Your heart. Your mind.
“I'm not special,” he says, and he's said it so many times over the years, to crowds, to individuals, to himself. “I'm just a man. People think I'm more than that, I'm just gonna let them down in the end.” And for a while it had been a means to an end. But he still remembers the shooting. The screams. The burning tents and buildings.
Florence shakes her head again, cupping his cheek in her hand. She was there. She knows. He doesn't know how she can still believe. He takes her wrist but he doesn't pull her hand away. He wonders what someone would think, to find them here together, half sprawled on the floor and more than a little tangled.
He doesn't care what they'd think. Very soon, it might not matter anymore what anyone thinks about anything. What will it be like, when all the minds creating this world go dark and silent? What will it look like to watch a world fade and vanish, line by line and character by character?
If we should live so long.
“Come on,” he says, slowly getting to his feet and reaching down to offer her a hand. She takes it and rises, slow as well but graceful in that way she always is, and when she gets her boots under her she looks steadier. Almost normal again.
But he can see the collapse still threatening under her surface. They can't stay here much longer.
“We should go,” he says, looking back down the hall towards their exit. “We should... get packed, I guess.” Though he's not sure what he has to pack. It's not like he's even unpacked to begin with. This place has never felt like a home or a place to settle. He's starting to realize how much he's itching to move on.
Even through the fear of what they might find.
* * *
“Hitchins.” He meets the man in the hallway outside his room, and Hitchins looks up sharply at the sound of his voice, flushing bright and immediately. Maybe he'd been heading for Mike's room. Maybe not. Tom is discovering that he doesn't particularly care.
“I—Hobbes. Hi.” He takes a step back and rubs the back of his neck with one hand, looking about as uncomfortable as Tom has ever seen anyone. “You're heading out this afternoon, right?”
Tom nods. It's hard to hear Hitchins's voice, now, and not think about what he sounds like when he's coming. Like a goddamn train wreck, Tom thinks, but that isn't really right. Not exactly. “In a couple hours. Look, Hitchins...” He doesn't have the patience for awkwardness and even if he did he's far too tired for it. “I got a dog in there. Dexter. Is there any way you can feed him while I'm gone? Take him outside now and then?”
“Oh.” Hitchins blushes again, and Tom's worried for a moment that he might say no, but then he's nodding, red but nodding. “Yeah, I can do that.”
“Thanks.” Tom nods towards his door. “I gotta...”
“Yeah. Hobbes.” And he stops Tom with his hand on the door handle. “I'm...” And then he shakes his head. “Sorry. Never mind.”
Sorry I was a porn movie soundtrack in your room last night, Tom thinks, and somehow he almost laughs. “Okay, Hitchins. Okay.”
* * *
When he finally steps outside with Florence behind him, there's already a small crowd waiting, ten or twelve men in their olive green uniforms, red berets bright in the thin sun. There's three humvees parked at the base of the steps, and though it's clearly a military operation, Tom is reminded absurdly of a school day trip. Now everyone find a partner and hold hands.
His gaze flicks to Mike, leaning against one of the vehicles with his old clothes on and a pack over his shoulder, and flicks away again. He and Florence are also dressed in the clothes they'd brought. It's a feeling of returning, of being unable to take along what they'd been given. It doesn't feel like his, doesn't even feel exactly real, like if he took it past the fence it might turn to ash and blow away.
And wouldn't that be embarrassing.
He steps forward, hitching his own pack higher on his shoulder, and draws up beside Mike. “So how're they letting us do this, anyway? They didn't take the chips out.”
Mike shrugs. “Tech these days, they can just reprogram them remotely.” He nods to Waters, standing a few yards away and talking to two other soldiers, and his face twists sourly. “They gave him a thing. Like a portable tracker. As long as we stay close to him...” He sighs and looks away again. “I'd like to get close, all right,” he mutters. “Foot-up-his-ass close.”
Tom regards him carefully. There's something that he's seeing here, and he's been seeing it since they got here. “You really don't like him. I mean, really. Like you knew him from before.” He looks back at Waters and thinks about Sarajevo, about the roar of the bombers and the trembling of the two of them, huddled together and waiting for impact, and just before the bombs fell Tom whispered to him that everything would be okay.
Things change.
“Yeah, well.” Mike smirks faintly and shrugs again. “He was a little kiss-ass who always wanted my job. Hope he's fucking happy now.”
“Yeah,” Tom says, looking down at his boots. Part of him wants to forgive. Part of him. Another part of him, a part he hadn't even known existed until this place, wants to knock Waters onto the ground and stand on his throat and watch his face turn purple. “Me too.”
“All right!” Waters steps away from the small circle of Guardsmen and raises his voice. “Listen up. We move out in five. You've all been apprised of the situation. You know your jobs. We get out there, we get this guy and we get back in one piece.” He takes a step towards the lead humvee. “Let's roll!”
The three of them are piled into the back of the middle vehicle, but not before Tom glances behind them and sees white plastic bundles being loaded into the trunk. He glances at Mike questioningly.
“Hazmat suits,” Mike says simply, and looks out the window.
Tom closes his eyes. So it's real, now.
-12-
He holds his breath when they pass through the fence, and he remembers when he was a boy, holding his breath to pass a graveyard. Holding his breath so no ghosts could enter his body. In his mind, those ghosts had never had the power to make him bleed.
Long before they reach the fence they've left the more thickly populated areas behind and as the road unfolds in front of them the land passing becomes long stretches of open field, dotted with copses of naked trees. On one level it's jarring, after so many days and nights of gleaming towers and pavement. On another, it's like coming home, and once the fence is far behind them he lets out a sigh and feels something deep inside him begin to relax.
Relax. That should be funny. He might not have believed it, a week ago.
“So how far are we going?” he asks quietly, following Mike's gaze out the window. Mike shrugs.
“A ways. Probably gonna take about a day.” He pauses and glances at Florence, and it might not mean anything, and then again it might. “We're going west.”
He remembers. The badlands. “Is that bad?”
“I dunno.” Mike looks out the window again, broken fenceposts whipping by into a blur. “Maybe. We'll see.”
Tom sits back, leans his head against the seat and closes his eyes, tries to sleep. Tiredness is such a constant state by now that he notices it when he doesn't feel it far more than when he does. But this feels like an even deeper kind of weary, the kind that works its way into his bones and seems to scoop out the marrow, leaving him hollow and tottering. Being outside the fence is a relief. It's also the only real relief he has now.
He's sitting next to Mike, pressed against him by the cramped space of the humvee, their knees and hips touching. Close quarters is something new and it shouldn't even be worth remarking on. He should be able to lean his head on Mike's shoulder and sleep if he needs to.
But he doesn't.
We should talk. What about? They'd been drunk, both of them. It's amazing he even remembers it. Drunk, tired, missing Sophie, and he hadn't even meant to. Accident, completely. Maybe Mike doesn't remember, anyway.
He sure as hell doesn't seem to care.
Mike has fallen into and out of a lot of beds since he's known him and maybe that's all this was, all Hitchins was, just a quick drunken grope and then meaning nothing the next day.
But he can't get away from Mike's face. The mortification. The utter oh, shit look of him. It had almost been funny. If he'd been watching from outside he might have laughed. His own face. The initial confusion. He's never kissed a man. He never thought it would feel quite like that. He's not sure what he'd imagined it would feel like.
People are just more complicated than that.
He opens one eye a slit and the wall of a house passes in the window, just the wall and nothing else, the edges of it blacked with fire. He thinks he sees a shape huddled in the grass beside it. He might have imagined it. He closes his eyes again and the wall is gone, as gone as the house is. After a while the hum of the engine and the murmur of conversation from the front seat is gone as well, and then everything else follows. The line between waking and dreaming is thinner and thinner these days. Just another fence to pass through as though it weren't even there.
* * *
They stop to eat dinner by the side of the road, men setting up portable stoves and cracking open packets of rations, heating things in small pots. Tom stands dully in the center of it all, looking around and wondering how this can feel so familiar and so strange both at once. He's not really a soldier anymore. What's a soldier without an army?
“You should eat,” Mike says from behind him and a little way to the side. “Won't get too many chances for a while.”
“I'm not hungry.” He looks off to the left; Florence, leaning against one of the cars with her arms over her bent knees. She's not eating either.
Mike rolls his eyes and steps away again. “Fine. Just gonna kick your ass later, if you start gnawing on my arm.”
Tom smiles thinly. “Too bad I left the mutt at home, right?”
Mike looks back at him, expression mildly surprised. “Hey, yeah, you did. How's he gonna eat?”
Tom shrugs. “Hitchins is feeding him.” Casual, very casual, and yet he finds himself watching Mike's face closely. Not sure what he's looking for. Something. Mike's eyes narrow just a touch.
“Is he.” Something that might be in the same ballpark as a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth before it lets go again. “Huh. Okay.” And he turns without another word, crouches down with a group of Guard, engaging with them in clipped, one-word statements. But Tom catches a glance from him, a strange little smile.
He doesn't like discomfort when he's not sure where it's coming from.
He moves over to Florence, sits down beside her and watches the sun sinking behind the trees, the light still greasy and colorless, just as it had been. She doesn't look at him immediately, and when she does she looks tired, as though she hadn't slept in all their time in the city. Perhaps she hadn't. It's not like he really has any way of knowing.
“What can you tell me about the west?”
She looks at him a little more directly, her eyes widening just a touch. Her expression is unusually hard to read, not because she's holding anything back, but because what's passing over her face is a flurry of things, so fast and so flickering that it's difficult to pin any of them down. Finally she looks down again and shrugs, giving him a faint, wry smile.
You know I can't tell you much of anything.
“I know.” He returns the smile, briefly, and leans back again, hands on his knees. The land all around them feels very big, very open. They haven't seen another person since they set out. “Just... the way Pinocchio and Santiago were talking about it...”
He doesn't turn his head again but he can feel her looking at him, and finally she touches his forearm to get his attention, moving her hands through the air in parallel curves, and he sees that she's making a shape. It takes him a second or two to get it, but then he does.
A mushroom cloud.
“Another bomb?” he asks, his voice hushed, and she nods. “A nuke?”
She half-shakes her head, twists her mouth. Not quite.
“A dirty bomb?”
She holds up a finger. And then four more. Tom exhales heavily. “Jesus.”
Poisoned ground and water. The badlands. There had been a lot of hazmat suits. He had assumed they were in case they ran into Pale Horse. Now he wonders.
He's glad Dexter is back on the other side of the fence.
It's twilight when they start to drive again. He had expected that they might stop for the night, and perhaps eventually they will, but they drive on through the darkening world, and while Tom had dozed before, now he can't still his mind. He's seen so much darkness here, so much death, and yet it had somehow escaped him, the idea that he might encounter something worse. He glances at Mike in the dimness, and something flashes in Mike's eyes, lighting the pupils for an instant in yellow-gold, like an animal's. Tom shivers.
Eventually the movement of the car overrides his racing thoughts and he must be deep in a doze when they stop again, but it jolts him up and out, because the stop is abrupt, the brakes squealing and the humvee in front of them suddenly looming huge and headight-bright in the windshield. Tom opens his eyes wide, looking around, dull and confused even as he feels his deeper instincts waking up and engaging.
“Fucking hell,” mutters one of the soldiers in front, and the radio crackles, but there's still no clue as to why they've stopped. Tom is about to break what feels like some kind of implicit rule and ask, when Florence grabs at his shoulder and he turns instinctively, looking out her window.
Palely lit in the glow of the headlights is a deer. Tom thinks it's a deer. He's pretty sure. But it's a deer gone horribly wrong, blinking at them with bulbous, milky eyes, its snout open and raw and showing the nasal passages. Its fur is patchy and rough as if eaten away by some kind of mange, its body skeletal, and its legs are grotesquely long and spindly, and Tom isn't sure how they're even supporting its weight. It wobbles slightly, its tongue lolling from where its cheeks should be, and then it turns and lopes off into the darkness, its tail up and white and pure in the midst of everything else.
“What was wrong it with?” Tom whispers. “What the fuck was wrong with it?”
Mike shakes his head mutely and Tom turns to him, mouth open, numb with horror. He's never seen anything like that before.
“Mike...”
“It's the badlands,” Mike says simply, his voice flat, and turns away again. “Don't worry. It won't live that long.”
When they stop again, half of the Guardsmen set up a perimeter, and the three of them are among those permitted to sleep. But Tom doesn't sleep. He lies awake on the cold ground and stares up into the darkness, the moon staring back like a single blind, milky eye.
* * *
The next day they start early, though no one has to rouse Tom. He sits up, blinking, gathers up his bedroll and in ten minutes he's back in the humvee, staring out the window. He's eaten, at least, just a packet of dry rations, tasting like wood chips, but it's something, and it's so like the chow he's used to from years before that it's almost comforting.
He needs comfort. The world outside the car is beginning to change. It's changed already, only the night before, in the darkness, he hadn't seen it. The trees are still there, but they're twisted, stunted and gnarled, and more and more they look burned. Besides them, there's only the grass, miles and miles of it, dry and colorless and if it were summer it would look ready to burst into flame. Since the deer they've seen no animals, and he's grateful for that.
There's no sign of life anywhere. Not until they stop in the late morning for a meal and a piss, and a few yards off the side of the road there's a house. Intact. No sign of destruction, no fire. Tom stares at it for a short time, glances over at the Guardsman closest to him.
“Is anyone gonna care if I check it out?”
The man looks placidly back at him and shrugs. Tom looks around, catches sight of Waters. It shouldn't take him too far. But he has to see. Mike and Florence are with another group, scarfing down cold rations. If he goes quickly they might not notice that he's gone at all. Normally he would want them to come with him. But now, for reasons he doesn't fully understand, he wants to go alone.
The house is intact. He hadn't realized how strange that is until now.
The boards of the porch creak as he walks up onto it, and when he tries the front door it's open. The foyer is silent, eerie, the stairs leading up to the second floor are cast in shadow and the silence coming down the staircase like cold air feels even thicker and more oppressive. He glances through the doorway on his right; a living room, couch and chairs and glass coffee table, all covered with a thick layer of dust, all untouched. Not even looted.
He feels a shiver of disquiet run through him and steps through the door to his left, into the dining room. A small table, simple wood, a checked tablecloth. Four places set, four chairs. Four plates, covered with the crusted and mummified remains of a shared meal. The glasses are cloudy with long-evaporated liquid. There's nothing left to rot. Whatever could have did so a long time ago.
He takes a step backward and stops dead when his boot comes into contact with something that feels like neither floor or furniture, something that snaps dryly. He turns. The remains of a dog, what looks like it had been a border collie, scraps of faded black and white fur still clinging to the bones. It had been lying here by the table, maybe waiting for scraps, and something had happened. Something.
There's a rustle at one of the windows, a pane broken out, and he looks up and sees a crow sitting there, staring back at him with beady black eyes. It has three legs, the two normal enough but for where the left one branches into another limb, single-clawed, twisted and useless and dangling at its side. It hops to the right, caws a raspy cry. It turns its head and its beak is weirdly notched at the side, as if it had started to grow in another direction before changing its mind.
Tom turns and walks out of the house. He finds Mike, settles down beside him, unable to look at him. He stares down at his hands.
“This wasn't a dirty bomb, was it.” It's not a question. “It was something worse.”
Mike finishes chewing the last of his food and then for a time he's silent. Tom is about to get up, walk away again, maybe get back in the car and just sit and wait for this to all get moving again, when Mike finally speaks.
“It started out as a dirty bomb.” He shakes his head slightly. “Turned into something else. It was a bug. It didn't pan out in the code like they expected.” He looks at Tom and smile wryly. “Ten minutes later the suitcase nuke in New York City went off. They got that one right, anyway.”
“Oh.” Tom looks up at the house, the ghost house, not even the bodies of the inhabitants left to show they'd been there. He feels absurdly like crying. “Are we safe? Like... can we be here?”
Mike shrugs. “As long as you don't eat or drink anything. The air... the air is probably okay.” He smiles coldly. “And even if it's not... you think it makes a whole lot of difference at this point?”
Tom doesn't answer that. It's something that all three of them know, but he feels sure somehow that the others don't. Whether it had been too soon before their departure to get the word out that a vaccine is impossible... or whether Santiago has simply chosen to keep the information to himself. Who knows.
And that truly doesn't matter.
They get back into the humvees and drive away, and Tom looks up at the mirror and watches the house until it vanishes over the horizon and is gone.
* * *
It's early afternoon when they stop again, and Tom is puzzled. It's too soon for another break, and the land around them is still dead and featureless, with fire scars here and there in the grass, blackened and burned away to the ground, still bare where new growth should have covered it a long time ago. Mike steps out of the humvee and Tom follows, looking around, wondering, Florence behind him. Ahead of them, by the lead vehicle, most of the Guardsmen have already gathered around Waters.
“Okay, it's just two klicks that way.” And he nods off to what Tom had assumed was another small stand of trees, but now that he's close it's clearly bigger, even a small forest, extending far off the road. “We move out, we stay close and quiet. All we know is that he's there. We don't know anything about what's waiting for us. So go soft, and stop the second you get to anything that doesn't look right.”
As the other Guardsmen start to head off towards the trees, Waters sees them, beckons them closer, glares at them when they reach him. “You go too,” he says. “We're not giving you weapons, so stick close to someone who has one. And watch your asses.”
“Really,” Mike says, and he looks darkly amused. “Whatever you say. Major.”
Waters shoots him a poisonous look but Mike is already striding away. Tom shrugs, gives Waters a thin smile and follows. He can't say that part of him doesn't enjoy Mike's needling. A little. As long as he's not the target.
A few minutes of dry, scrubby grass and then they're in among the trees, the tops low and tangled, and even though there's not a single leaf to be seen, it's darker here, as though the meager sunlight still can't filter its way down through the boughs. Tom looks around them, his hands suddenly feeling alarmingly empty with no gun to grip, and he catches Florence and Mike fidgeting in similar ways. Ahead of them he can see olive green, moving slowly through the trees, guns drawn and held at the ready. But the three of them are behind, far behind, and Mike doesn't seem terribly interested in catching up.
Tom hisses softly to catch his attention, wincing when a twig under his boot snaps loudly.
“Shouldn't we do what he said? Join up with someone who's actually armed?” He doesn't like Waters, he'll be the first person to admit that, but the truth is that it had sounded like at least a halfway decent idea. But Mike is shaking his head.
“We hang back, circle around the side, get in front of them. Stay close to me.”
Tom stares at him. “But he just said... Pinocchio, I don't really wanna die out here. I know how I make it look sometimes, but...”
Mike snorts a soft laugh. “We won't die, you fuckin' pussy.” He nods to Florence and starts to move to the side, stepping softly as he can, though everything around them is so dead and dry that it almost crackles at the touch of a breath. “I know this guy. We worked together for a while.”
“Elliot?” Tom remembers the narrow mouth, the thin, ungenerous face. “And you're sure he's here.”
“I'm sure.” Mike pauses and looks around, cocks his head, and Tom gets the sense that he's listening for something, before he moves on again. “This is where he always wanted to go. Creepy little motherfucker.”
“The badlands?”
“He wanted to study the bomb's effects on animals.” Mike's mouth twists wryly. “He woulda been shit outta luck with people. None of them left.”
Tom feels something twist in his gut. The empty chairs, the meals half-eaten. The way the chairs had been pulled back, as if to make space for a person to sit in them, only there was no one at all. “Why not?”
Mike shrugs. “Just how it worked out. No one totally understands it.”
Tom goes silent again. There are questions he wants to ask. How far south and west does it extend? What's happened to all the cities beyond this point, all the people? Is Colorado poisoned? Utah? Nevada? California?
He thinks about California and his throat tightens, until he pushes the thought away and he can breathe again.
He can still hear the Guardsmen moving off a few yards through the trees, but the sound here is strangled, twisted and turned through the dead wood until he's not entirely sure what direction anything is coming to him from. It would be easy to get lost in a wood like this, with any clearing or break in the treeline long since vanished, but Mike moves ahead with an intent and a confidence that Tom finds hard to believe. Unless Mike's been here before. Unless he's been exactly here.
He doesn't see the dead squirrel until he almost walks into it.
A tiny head, dried skin and patchy fur stretched over a rodent skull, its mouth wide and gaping as if in pain and its eyes long since plucked out or rotted away. It's dangling in front of him by its tail and he finds himself face to grisly face with it before he entirely knows what's happening. For a moment he stands absolutely still, feeling adrenaline pound through his body, and then he gulps once, twice, hard, and steps back, looking around for Mike and Florence. And then he sees the others.
The low branches of the trees are full of them, the dessicated carcasses of creatures hanging like some kind of grotesque fruit. Tom swallows again, fighting back an entirely irrational and powerful panic. “Mike,” he whispers, looks ahead and Mike has stopped, turned, staring at him with mild irritation.
“Come the fuck on, GI. You're slowing us up.”
“What's with the menagerie?” Tom whispers, once he's managed to get his legs working and he's close again.
“Told you he was a creepy little motherfucker,” Mike says, and chuckles softly. “Seriously, I dunno. It could be a warning, him trying to scare people away. Or it could be part of his research.”
“Some research,” Tom mutters, and Mike chuckles again.
“What's the matter, Pollyanna? Not your kinda Christmas ornaments?” But Tom looks ahead and Florence is walking exactly as she had back in the city, with her shoulders hunched, her body radiating discomfort. It's the death, Tom realizes. The deadness of everything. Really, the two places are far too similar.
Even without the dead animals on the trees.
Off to the right, Tom hears a soft grunt and a curse, though how far away it is hard to tell. But it's to the right, he's almost sure... and a little behind. Mike looks up and smiles, though it's tight and humorless. “Good,” he murmurs. “We got a few minutes on 'em.” He glances back at Tom. “Pick up the pace. I need more time.”
The animals hanging from the trees grow more numerous. Crows, squirrels, foxes with their red fur faded and bedraggled. Here and there an opossum. Gradually the horror fades, and it's replaced by a deep, ridiculous melancholy. They're sad little things, most of them with more of the strange mutations he's seen, extra and useless legs, blind eyes, where the eyes remain at all, oversized heads and jaws with snaggled, crooked teeth. Tom sighs, fighting back another shiver, and he understands even better why Florence walks with her shoulders hunched, as if fighting the force of a wind that only she can feel.
But then she isn't walking anymore, and neither is Mike, and Tom stares down at what they're bent over, Mike pushing aside some twigs and ancient, dried leaves.
It's a hatch, set into the ground, metal with a handle and what looks like a keypad at one end. Mike tugs once at the handle, fruitlessly, and then drops into a crouch, glancing behind them, rubbing his jaw.
“You need a code?” Tom asks quietly, wondering how long it'll take for the Guardsmen to find them. But Mike looks up and smiles. “I know the code.” And his hand moves over the keys, with no more hesitation than he'd showed in leading them here, and there's a soft hissing sound. Mike takes hold of the handle again, and this time the hatch opens as easily as if it had never been locked. Tom peers into it.
It's a long hole leading down, down past the point where he can make it out, with rungs set into one side. Very faintly, some inestimable distance down, he thinks he can see the glow of a light.
Mike nods. “C'mon. Quick, before they find it.”
The rungs are slippery but they move down onto them, and Mike pulls the hatch shut behind them. Tom is expecting them to be cast back into total blackness, but now he can definitely see a light at the bottom, though it's still impossible to judge the distance with any precision. “How the hell did you find this place?” he whispers, looking up at Mike's boots descending towards him.
“We built this place,” Mike says softly, and Tom feels no surprise at all. “It was supposed to be a research station. But it kinda never happened.”
“Why not?”
“Lotta reasons. Santiago started cutting budgets for research that didn't directly have to do with weaponry. Pale Rider being a bust didn't help any.” Mike looks down and Tom sees his eyes glittering in the dim light. “Not that many people even remember this place is here.”
“But he did.” Tom swallows. “And you did.” He pauses. The light is getting closer. “Will they know the code?”
“Hope not. But I think we gotta assume they will. Or they can hack it. Hurry it up down there.”
They reach the bottom after what seems like another short eternity, and Tom can feel the tension in his legs as he steps off the rungs, looking around. Ahead of them stretches a long, whitewashed tunnel, lit by dim overhead fluorescents. Tom feels Mike prod him gently in the back and he starts to walk.
It seems longer than it is, and at the end of it there's a door. Metal, like the hatch, and also with a keypad. Tom is waiting for Mike to reach out, tap in some other code, but Mike shakes his head and glances back at Florence. “Can't. I mean, I could. But he knows we're here.” He smiles thinly. “Wouldn't be polite to just barge in there.” He reaches up and pounds hard on the door, sending great echoing booms of sound through the tunnel and through the door into unknown chambers beyond. There's a pause, a long one, and Mike is just raising his fist to pound again when the door swings open, surprisingly fast for how large it is and how heavy it must be, and a man is looking back at them with a warily expectant expression on his thin face. The glasses, the narrow mouth and the brown, mussed hair. Tom's only seen him once, not even in person, but it's clear who it is.
“Colonel.” The man takes a step back, but there's nothing nervous about the movement. His stance is of a man who clearly knows he's on his own ground. “You brought friends. I wasn't expecting that.”
“Hi, Greg,” Mike says, amiably. “Can we come in? We kinda need to talk.”
-13-
“I didn't expect to see you at all, I have to say,” says Elliot, straightening some papers on the low table in the middle of the room. It's a wide chamber with a low ceiling and sloping walls, a cot in the corner, a hotplate on a table, one wall lined with shelves, in turn lined with canned goods. Pots and pans. Bookshelves. Three monitors and a tangled pile of computer equipment, and a small TV showing multiple camera angles, one of them displaying the four of them. Another narrow tunnel, leading off into other chambers that can't be seen. “They said you were dead.”
Mike shrugs and smiles faintly. “You believed them?”
Elliot snorts. “Not for a minute. But that was the... eh... official party line.” He takes a seat by the table, folding his hands in his lap. He's wearing a pair of jeans, worn but clean, a flannel shirt. Still the same thin glasses, which he pushes higher on his nose before his hands join in his lap again. “I'm relieved. You inspired a few of us, leaving like you did. It's good to see you didn't come to some, eh, unfortunate end.”
“And what happened to the others?”
Elliot shrugs and shakes his head. “Who knows? It wasn't as though we left in a group. We were... scattered. Disorganized. None of us thought to oppose Santiago in any way, it was just a case of wanting to be... out. Gone. Away from him.” He smiles and looks around the chamber. “This seemed like it was far away enough.”
“But it's not,” Tom says, speaking for the first time. He takes a cautious step forward. “They're up there, looking for this place.”
“I know.” Elliot nods, seeming entirely unconcerned. “And they will find it. Eventually.” He cocks his head, curious, looking at Florence where she stands close to the door, right hand holding her left arm, looking around as though she's waiting for something to leap out and bite her. “What is she?”
Mike's eyes narrow. “She's Florence. You don't need to know anything else.”
“She's very quiet, isn't she? My dear.” Elliot holds out a hand to her, smiling again. “You don't have to be so afraid. Nothing down here will harm you.”
“She's not afraid,” Tom says, a little tightly. Somehow it feels like an insult that he has to push back. “Maybe she just doesn't like it.”
Elliot half shrugs. “She can suit herself. Now. Colonel, why don't you tell me what brings you out here.” He leans forward over the table and folds his hands together. “Because you don't expect me to believe that this is just a little social call.”
“It's not.” Mike takes a seat opposite, turning the chair around and leaning over the back with a kind of exaggerated casualness. “Pale Horse, Elliot.”
Elliot's eyes go very slightly wider. He seems to catch himself, face carefully composed and placid, but Tom sees it. A glance at Mike and he's sure he's seen it too. Elliot clears his throat lightly. “What about it?”
“Come on.” Mike leans a little further forward. “It's just us here, Greg. For now. You know they don't get it, they're just fucking grunts. They're not gonna appreciate the scope of what we worked on. But I get it. You know I do. What else do you know?”
“It didn't work,” Elliot says flatly. “It didn't work and we locked it up and no one ever touched it again.”
“No one?” Mike smiles, calm and a little bemused. “Really. So you don't know anything about what's going on...” He waves a hand vaguely at the ceiling. “Up there.”
“I don't. Why, what's going on up there?”
Mike gets up. He does it hard and abruptly, shoving the chair into the table with considerable force, and in spite of his carefully composed exterior Elliot jumps. “We don't have time for this,” Mike says, leaning forward over the table again, and his voice is still level and calm. “They're coming for you, they're gonna be here soon, and once they have you we both know you're not gonna give them anything. But you can give me something. You got a chance here to balance the scales a little. Don't fucking blow it, Greg.”
Elliot looks back at him for what feels like a long time. A chime sounds, faint, pleasant, and all of them except Elliot look up and towards the ceiling, instinctive. None of them have to be told what it means.
“Why should I tell you?” Something in Elliot's face has changed. It's harder, thinner, his mouth even more narrow, and while there's still a determined calmness about him, all the pleasant aspect of before has faded entirely. “What would you do with it? It's not like it'll even help, Colonel, you know that. We couldn't ever stop it. It's like a dragon. It'll eat the world.”
“You know,” Tom murmurs, and it's just what they've all been sure of. Transparent as anything could be. He steps up behind Mike, close, hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“I have a sample.”
“From a victim?” Mike shakes his head. “So do we. Big fuckin' deal.”
“No, you don't understand.” Elliot smiles grimly. Another chime, louder and somehow more insistent, and when Tom glances at the TV screen he sees Guardsmen in the tunnel outside. “I have a sample.”
Tom feels his mouth go dry. Behind him, Florence inhales lightly. Tom looks on the table, and Mike's knuckles are white. “Who?” Mike whispers. “Who gave it to you?”
Elliot opens his mouth and then there's a third chime, this one both loud and grating, and Tom feels it sending shivers down his spine, like nails on a chalkboard. “They're coming through,” Elliot says, sounding strangely distant. “I swore I wouldn't go back. I swore...” He looks up at Mike and laughs. “They're just going to kill me anyway.”
“Greg. Who?”
“It doesn't matter.” Elliot leans back in his chair and slips his hands into his pockets. “You know we're all dead anyway. You knew it the second we made the damn thing.”
“Greg, so help me Jesus...”
The door swings open. Guardmen spill into the room, a few of them dropping to their knees, guns out and held and ready to fire. Tom turns to look at them in a kind of daze and he sees that all of them are wearing respirator masks. Mike whirls, holds out his hands and yells “No!” And then several things happen at once and Tom somehow seems to see all of them, a whirl of images so confused and fused that it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, or what order they happen in, or whether they happen in any order at all. Thick smoke billows into the room, the lights flicker, the chime is sounding low and loud and threatening. The TV screen goes dark. Elliot pulls his hand out of his pocket and through the smoke and the flickering light there's a glitter of something thin and sharp. Florence is crumpling to her knees, her hand over her mouth and nose. Mike is leaning heavily on the table, coughing so hard he's almost retching. But Elliot isn't coughing. Tom can somehow see him clearly, and Elliot is meeting his gaze, calm and clear, and through the chaos and the noise Tom can hear him when he speaks.
“There's nothing here to save.”
He lifts the glittering thing in his hands—a medical syringe tipped with a needle—and slides it easily into the side of his own neck. There's a blur in the smoke as Mike reaches for him and then a flicker, a swell of light and nothing at all. All the air seems to squeeze itself out of Tom's lungs and he stumbles and goes down, the floor very cool under his cheek. All the lights might go out or it might just be him losing consciousness, and either way he doesn't suppose it matters very much. Like the man said.
There's nothing here to save.
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Date: 2009-02-16 06:07 am (UTC)JESUS you're fucking good. *STARES*