Bzrk Apocalypse (26 page)

you’d want to see. Look! It’s starting. Look at him staring around,

trying to figure out where the bugs are.” Then she sighed happily.

“Plus, I suppose I like an audience. Genius unappreciated and all that.

Get ready. This is going to be epic. It’s one thing to show people they

can’t rely on their politicians and famous brains and all; it’s another

thing altogether to say even God can’t stop what’s coming. This will

scare the hell out of people.”

His Holiness the Pope stood with the benign expression the world

had come to expect and love. It was a sort of half smile, eyes crinkled,

hands folded in front of him.

He was bored to tears. He was often bored by these ceremonial

events. Although at least this was out of doors, under a partly cloudy

sky just brightening to the richer blue of early afternoon from the

bright blue of morning.

The Pope sometimes walked in the streets of Rome in disguise.

He disliked the fishbowl in which he was kept, always surrounded,

always watched. If he was to lead the Church, then he must know its

people.

Once he had gone out disguised as a priest. That had ended badly,

with tourists recognizing him and crowding around him, twenty,

fifty, two hundred people, a mob within seconds. His security detail

had had to practically lift him and carry him through the crowd to a

waiting SUV.

Then he became more creative: a toupee, jeans, and an “I heart

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Rome” T-shirt. He was followed on these excursions by Swiss Guards

in plainclothes. He had negotiated with them to keep their distance.

And they had agreed to stay at least a hundred feet away.

He was considering such a trip for the evening. What a joy it

would be to find a cramped table in some little osteria, drink wine

and eat antipasto, pasta, and perhaps a nice piece of fish. Watch regu-

lar people. Eavesdrop on their conversations.

Then, what? A limoncello in lieu of dessert? A walk by the river?

Or succumb to the lure of the beautiful array at some well-tended

gelato stand?

It might be his last excursion for a while. The world was going

mad. He had been shown the footage of the British prince, the poor

young man. Drugs, most likely. But contacts with intelligence agencies

around the world suggested that suspicion was growing that some-

thing connected it with the self-murder of the American president,

the Nobel massacre, the Brazilian president and vice president—per-

haps the earlier attack on the UN in New York and even the bizarre

tragedy in Hong Kong.

If it was terrorists of some sort, no one seemed to know who they

were or what they wanted.

The Pope frowned, realized he was being watched by many eyes,

and relaxed into his blankly beatific expression.

Yes, just as soon as he got through today’s event, a
tableau vivant

of the manger scene. It was a group of Italian children, specially cho-

sen, prepared, and rehearsed. The production was done with some of

the biggest names in Italian theater, with costumes from great fash-

ion designers. There would be music.

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MICHAEL GRANT

The Holy Father had managed to get it moved to the morning on

the theory that he needed his rest in the afternoon. In fact, he needed

to be back at the Vatican in plenty of time to slip out for dinner in the

evening.

A small lie. He would confess it and be absolved.

He hoped the presentation was wrapping up. He didn’t want to

sneak a peek at the printed program or it might betray impatience.

But if memory served, this was the last song, which would be followed

by applause, then kind words for the child actors and singers and the

adult organizers.

And then, he was out. Done by the afternoon. They’d promised

him that.

Perhaps a nice piece of cod. He liked cod when it was not over-

done.

Yes, the final chorus! Applause from the thousands, maybe tens

of thousands of people in the square. Time to applaud, time to enlarge

the benign smile, time to . . .

The Pope blinked.

Then he frowned.

What was that? What was he seeing? Some sort of . . . It looked

like an insect, a bizarre insect. He was seeing it, but . . . but it was

nowhere around him.

He looked around, puzzled and a little concerned. No one else

seemed to see anything unusual.

And now . . . Now another vision. Like a movie screen lit up

inside his head, like two of them, really, and both of them showing

fantastic insects.

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BZRK APOCALYPSE

The one insect, he could see its face . . . He could . . . He was hal-

lucinating. Clearly, he was hallucinating. Was it a stroke? He dreaded

a stroke; his father had died at age fifty-four of a stroke.

The insect face . . . It . . .

“It’s me,” he said in his native Spanish.

Then, as quickly as it opened, one of the windows in his head

closed. Gone.

“Ah!” he cried out. “Ah!”

He sank to his knees, and now everyone was looking at him, now

the TV cameras and the phone cameras all swiveled toward him, as

he cried, “Oh, oh, oh!”

The Pope began to laugh. He began to laugh and laugh and then

he was screaming, he knew he was screaming, though he felt no pain.

He screamed and tore at his vestments.

The world was swirling colors, all zooming crazily around him,

faces suddenly coming into focus, distorted, demonic faces.

Only when he grabbed an elderly woman’s walker and began

attacking the children with it did anyone try to stop him.

In the end he was hauled away by Rome police and his own plain-

clothes Swiss Guards.

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TWENTY-ONE

The sense of approaching doom was rising now. The country was

scared. The world was scared. Glances were shielded. Heads were

lowered. Shoulders hunched. Jaws tight. Voices too high or too low,

too loud or whispering like a scared child.

Not as scared yet as it should be, no, not yet. But when people

figured it out, the true panic would begin.

The Twins had pulled the trigger on massed preprogrammed

attacks: Burnofsky had seen the footage of Stern. There would be

more of that. Benjamin was in the driver’s seat increasingly, and Ben-

jamin would have his apocalypse.

But that was nothing compared to what Lear was doing.

“Of course it’s Lear!” Burnofsky cried aloud, as though someone

was arguing with him, as though he was fighting someone to make

them understand.

Lear. What a clever, clever fellow he had turned out to be. Burnof-

sky saw it all now, saw the games, saw the ultimate destructive power

that flowed from Grey McLure’s little lifesaving creatures.

Poor old Grey. They’d been friends, he and Burnofsky. The last

friend Burnofsky had had. Poor old Grey, who had gotten his panties

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BZRK APOCALYPSE

all in a twist when he learned Burnofsky was weaponizing nanobots

for the Armstrongs. A lovely idealist, old Grey. A good man who just

wanted to save his sick, dying wife.

Had he ever realized the destructive potential in his creatures?

Had he even an inkling of what they could do in the wrong hands?

Fucking idealists. They were ever so useful to those with evil

minds.

It was all coming down, Burnofsky thought. And when it did, the

Twins were going to kill him. Kill him or rewire him.

That second thing made his stomach turn. He had endured it

once, was still enduring it. But like many traumas, the threat of a

repeat performance was even worse. He could
not
be used this way;

he couldn’t be turned into some computer made of meat, rewrite,

delete, up-arrow, down-arrow, parentheses, backslash. . . .

He had in some way accepted the first wiring as a sort of penance.

He was a sinner, a terrible sinner, and he had deserved the punish-

ment of having his mind crudely twisted this way and that. But not

again. Not again. He had paid. Paid enough.

Not again.

Death? Death was nothing. Death was relief of pain.

That’s what he had told himself while sitting in his grim apart-

ment with a gun in his mouth. He had lacked the courage to do it. But

he would die before he would let them treat him like nothing. Like

nothing
.

“I paid,” he told the camera he knew was watching him. His lip

curled into a vicious sneer. “I
paid
!”

His mind went inevitably to Carla, and the sickening result of

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MICHAEL GRANT

that thought, the excitement, the pleasure of it. And with it the awful

need to hurt himself.

He lit a cigarette. He watched the end burn a bright orange. The

smoke curling, teasing the end of his nose, making his watery eyes

water still more. Not tears, though. Not tears.

The Pope—that would push the Twins over the edge. They would

have to realize that they were no longer the masterminds, just two

more suckers playing Lear’s game. And then? Benjamin wouldn’t

stand for it, oh, no. Lear would not take Benjamin’s G
ötterdämmer-

ung
from him. Benjamin would lose it, lash out, and at last unleash

the gray goo.

He would use Burnofsky for that. Yes, of course. Burnofsky would

serve the Twins one last time and destroy the world before Lear could

do it.

It was funny, really—despite the way his eyes watered— it was

funny, funny to think that in the end it would not be a race between

destruction and salvation for humanity, but a race between two dif-

ferent lunatics, Benjamin and Lear, both bent on annihilation.

Well. Maybe not two.

Nanobots were
his
creation, not Benjamin’s. Poor old Grey had

died in a fiery crash, lucky bastard, and his creations had become

Lear’s. But Burnofsky still lived. Would go on living, probably, until

the Twins decided they had squeezed the last from him.

“They’re mine,” he muttered, looking at a schematic of a nanobot.

“I deserve a fucking prize. Hah! I deserve the fucking Nobel, hah!”

Well, that was over, wasn’t it. Lear had sort of killed that whole thing,

hadn’t he?

There was a bottle in the desk of one of his assistants. He had seen

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it, but he’d never said anything about it. It wasn’t his job to preach

abstinence.

“It’s all coming down, anyway,” he muttered. “Twist me this way,

twist me that way; in the end it’s all death.”

He watched the thoughts in his own mind, tracked them like the

scientist he was. Not so easy, really, to predict the outcome of wiring,

eh, Nijinsky? Poor dumb Bug Man had learned that when the presi-

dent went off the rails. Not so easy.

Five minutes later the alcohol was raw in his throat and warm in

his belly.

“I paid,” he said. And hurt himself again with a deep, deep swig.

“Hah!” Burnofsky said. “Fuck it. Fuck it all.”

His phone lay on the desk. He blinked at it. The icon for messages

showed a three.

No one texted Burnofsky. In fact, he couldn’t recall the last time

he’d had a text.

He almost didn’t look, but even carried off on a happy wave of

blessed alcohol, he was still a servant to his own curiosity.

It’s Bug. Bad shit happening. Crazy bitch I think is Lear. Going to

kill me and the whole damn world.

Then:

Are u there? Talk to me! I’m not playing.

Then:

Fuck! Do NOT call back. I’m using her phone. Can’t wait. I’ll try

again later.

Burnofsky stared at the messages. His first thought:
Anthony’s

alive still? The Twins must be slipping.

And then,
Jesus, he’s fallen in with Lear?
And that made him

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MICHAEL GRANT

laugh. Of
course
Anthony would end up back in some kind of world

of shit. Of course he would.

And then he saw the words
bitch
and
her
.

Okay,
he told himself, tamping down his excitement.
Bitch
could be slang for anyone, male or female. And the difference between
he

and
her
could be a simple mistyped letter.

Going to kill me and the whole damned world.

The Golden Hall in Stockholm. The Brazilians. That actress. The

prince. The Pope. Even that slimy prick Nijinsky, of whose death he

had at last learned.

“Yes, biot madness,” Burnofsky said. He gave himself a deep

swig, feeling the savage joy of destruction, and the subtler pleasure

of having his theory, his educated guess, ratified. He felt as if he was

vibrating from the rush of discovery, the way he had when he used to

make breakthroughs in the lab.

He could call the phone number back. Who would answer? Bug

Man? Or Lear?

“Biot madness. Jesus Christ,” he said, voice an indecipherable

slur. “BZRK. It’s a joke. It’s a goddamned joke. ” Then, pushing him-

self back from his desk, shaking his head, he whispered, “Ah, no, not

a joke: a game.”

With trembling fingers he hit the call-back button.