Hellboy: The God Machine (10 page)

"Geoffrey--insert the needle!" Absolom commanded.

But the man continued to stare somewhere beyond Absolom, toward the entrance of the barn.

"Geoffrey!" Absolom screamed again, leaving his station, reaching for the cable. "Give it to me."

"We're not alone," Geoffrey said, and at first Absolom did not understand, but then the old man pointed.

Absolom noticed the child first; a little boy no older than five, his eyes like saucers as he stared at them from across the barn. There were others as well, men and women, people that he recognized from his visits to town. Some were carrying torches, and others rifles.

"What is the meaning of this?" he bellowed authoritatively, crossing the barn, feeling his anger on the rise.

A man standing behind the boy slowly raised his weapon, pointing the shotgun directly at Absolom. He stopped short, gazing into the unblinking eye of the barrel.

"See here," he started again. "You do not have the right to come here and--"

"Walter Massie says you've been asking some weird questions about dead bodies," the man replied, speaking for the mob. "Says you asked him how to keep them from rotting." He looked about him with disgust.

Absolom cursed himself for not having been more selective with the people he talked to, but he had needed to plan for the future. Qemu'el had given him a way to create tireless drones from corpses powered by the raw spiritual energies of the deceased, slaves to do the bidding of the god and his high priests.

"Just a bit of research," Absolom explained.

"Then this boy says you folks're doing something funny out here," the man continued. "Inside the barn."

Absolom remembered the boy as one that he had chased away the other day. The child must have seen them at work, building the vessel.

"We thought it might be in our best interests to come on over and check it out," the man said, as his eyes passed over each of the machines the group had built over the last two weeks. "And from the looks of things, I'm glad we did."

Absolom smiled congenially, and spread his hands in front of himself. "We don't mean anybody any harm. We are simply in the process of completing some experiments that..."

"Is that part of your experiments?" the man asked, pointing with his gun.

Absolom turned and was startled to see that the birthing chair was empty. Mary Hudnell was gone. The man was referring to the metal body lying upon the table.

"Yes it is," Absolom said, turning away from the mob to go to the vessel. His eyes darted about the barn, searching for signs of Mary, but she was nowhere to be found. He tried to catch the eyes of the others, but their attentions were riveted on the mob before them.

There was no further purpose to dissembling. Absolom smiled. "You see, using these machines, we're going to attempt to bring our creation to life."

A disquieted murmur went through the crowd.

Absolom stood beside the table, looking down at the vessel. "I know how this must sound to you all. Not much different from when primitive man told his brethren that he was going to create fire, I'd imagine. We're going to bring it to life, and nothing in the world will ever be the same again."

A figure clad all in black, whom Absolom recognized as the church pastor, forced his way through the gathering, a Bible clutched in his hand.

"Blasphemy!" the holy man screamed, raising the black leather book in the air. "Did you hear him, brothers and sisters? They're attempting to create life! It's the Devil's work they do here!"

The crowd began to murmur all the louder, growing agitated by what they did not understand.

"You have nothing to fear from us," Absolom said. He could feel their eyes upon him, and knew that the fact that he was dressed so strangely in preparation for the ritual of transference was not lending credence to his case. "What we do here tonight will benefit all of humanity," he tried to explain, slowly making his way toward them. "Please, listen to me."

He wasn't sure where the shot originated. There was a boom like sudden thunder as the shotgun fired, and an explosion of shrieking pain as he was propelled backward to the floor of the barn.

Then all was chaos.

Absolom heard more gunfire and screams. He watched helplessly as shots tore into the transference machine, shattering the crystal cylinders in a searing flash as the precious energy contained within them was released.

He fought to stand, the pain in his shoulder excruciating, his arm dangling uselessly at his side. The thick, noxious stench of what could only have been kerosene suddenly filled his lungs, followed by the smell of wood burning. The mob had set fire to the place, and a thick black smoke was beginning to fill the confines of the barn. It was as he had feared, those who did not understand their cause, seeking to destroy them.

How could it have gone so wrong so quickly?
he thought as he stumbled through the smoke, hearing the screams of his disciples and trying to find them in the din.
Why has god allowed this to happen?

Squinting through the billowing haze, he could barely make out members of the mob fleeing their handiwork, slamming closed the door of the barn as they escaped into the night. Then he nearly fell over Silas Udell, curled into a tight ball upon the ground.

"Where are the others?" Absolom screamed, reaching down to pull the man to his feet. There was a bleeding gash on his forehead.

"I...I don't know," he stammered, shaking his head from side to side. "When they started shooting...we ran. They're here." He coughed and gasped for breath. "Somewhere in the fire."

Absolom let Silas fall back to the ground and forged ahead through the blinding smoke. He noticed that some of the machines, even though damaged, were still working. He could almost feel the unearthly hum inside the barn, like a hive of bees preparing to swarm.

"Geoffrey!" he croaked, his voice scorched hoarse from the intense heat. "Annabel! Tyler! Where are you?"

Then he saw them through the conflagration, faint shapes upon the ground. He called their names again, but they remained motionless, and he couldn't be sure if they were alive or dead.

Over the hum of the machines and the roar of the fire, he heard what he thought to be his god's voice. "I'm so sorry," he cried, falling to his knees. But the god would have none of it, forcing him to his feet--compelling him onward through the smoke and flames.

The structure of the barn was beginning to give way, the moans and shrieking creaks of the failing beams adding to the symphony of destruction around him. Through eyes filled with tears, Absolom saw an unearthly glow. At first he believed it to be more fire and tried to back away, but the hissing voice of his god ordered him forward.

Absolom found himself standing in front of one of the most intricate of the god machines. It had been built to extract the spirit energies from the ether and store them in the cylindrical power cells. He ought to have fled, but the god compelled him.

A section of roof came down nearby in shower of cinders and burning timber, and the god ordered him closer to the machine. Time was of the essence, the messiah hissed from somewhere inside his skull, but Absolom knew that his god was very far away from them now.

He almost surrendered to despair and pain, then, almost gave in to his body's agony. Absolom pictured Mary Hudnell, her stomach swollen with a life that would have brought much needed change to the world, lying dead somewhere amid the rubble of the burning barn. It was almost more than he could stand, but his god would hear none of it, compelling him to take hold of the batteries--to remove them from inside the machine.

His hands burned as he took hold of the heated canisters. The god told him that if any part of their great plan was to be salvaged, five of the batteries would be a necessity.

Absolom had so many questions, wished for reassurance, but there wasn't any time. In a matter of seconds the barn would be totally consumed in fire. He put all his trust in Qemu'el, carrying the throbbing storage cells away from the machine and into the center of the barn.

There was a shriek of splintering wood, and Absolom looked up to see a charred section of the ceiling plummeting toward him through the smoke. The wooden support struck his head and drove him to the ground, the batteries spilling from his arms and rolling across the floor.

His body had gone completely numb; the only sensation he could feel was the tickle of blood as it ran down his face from his scalp. Absolom tried to stand but found that he was pinned beneath the piece of burning oak.

"So...sorry," he wheezed, the air in the barn so hot that it caused his lungs to shrivel. Absolom Spearz could do nothing more, finally giving in to the pain, succumbing to the blistering heat, and as he lay there, pinned beneath the burning rubble, dying by inches, he could not help but be mesmerized by the sight of the containment cells. They continued to glow, brighter and brighter still, pulsing with an eerie thrum that seemed to match the beat of his dying heart.

Then there was only the light; all the pain had left him, and he floated in a sea of nothingness.

After a time, he asked the void,
"Am I dead?"

His god answered. "It is not yet your time to die."

Absolom Spearz had faith.

All he needed now was patience.

Steve looked about the conference room in awe. If he hadn't already been dead, he would have dropped and gone to Heaven.

I'm at a meeting of the BPRD, can ya stand it?

Besides Hellboy and the hot tomato named Liz, there was a green-skinned fish man who went by the name of Abe and reminded Steve of the deep-sea creatures described in the books he'd read about Atlantis. Then there was his nephew, Tom, and Tom's assistant, Kate Corrigan, as well as some other, less colorful members of the field operations team. It was like a dream come true, and all he'd had to do was die to get here.

Hellboy shifted, gesturing at the ghost. "Hey, Steve, you with us, pal?"

"Sorry, drifted off for a minute, no pun intended." He tried to recall the question they'd just asked him. "I'm not really sure what the Band of Electricizers was up to in that barn. Remember, I was only five at the time, and when things got bad with the shooting and the fire, my mother got me the hell out of there. All I can say is, whatever they were up to, it freaked everybody out big-time."

Hellboy leaned back in his chair, causing it to creak loudly in protest, and placed his hands behind his head. "But you remember seeing some kind of mechanical man on a table. Was it like the one you and Sally were trapped in?"

Steve glanced toward the horribly burned woman. He'd grown quite fond of Sally Spearz since their imprisonment within the spirit battery. He reached out to her, mingling his noncorporeal hand with hers. She smiled, the charred edges of her mouth turning upward.

"Sort of, but there were no corpses involved. It was bigger--fancier, like they took their time to make this one look really special."

"And you think these Electricians..."

"Electricizers," Steve corrected. "The Band of Electricizers."

Hellboy shrugged. "Yeah. Got it. You think they're back, and responsible for the thefts of all these sacred doodads?"

"And the robot zombies," Abe added. "Don't forget them."

"Right, and the robot zombies," Hellboy echoed.

"Yeah, I do think it's them, and so does Sally."

Steve drifted up out of his seat, floating above the table. The ghost wanted to be sure they were paying attention. He didn't want them to think that his story was simply the ramblings of some crazy person. He'd had enough of that when he was still breathing.

"Since that incident when I was five, I was fascinated with the freaky stuff, always the one flipping over the rocks to see what's under them. A lot of weird shit happens in the world every day, as I'm sure you guys know, and when I was alive, I wanted to know about every bit of it."

"After I passed," he continued, "I didn't go on. There was still so much I hadn't seen--hadn't figured out yet. I found myself sort of hanging around, haunting my hometown, visiting friends from time to time, and particularly the farmhouse where the Electricizers bought it. There was just something about that place."

Tommy crossed his legs at the head of the table, looking all official. Steve was so proud of his nephew, of what he had achieved. He remembered those summer vacations they'd spent together and liked to think he'd had a part in the kid's success.

"Was that where you became trapped?" Tommy asked.

"Not at first," Steve explained. "There was some activity going on around the farmhouse, a new family moving in and stuff. Personally I thought it would be good for the place, it could make a family a real nice home, but something had happened to them since the first time I'd seen them--something was off. Even the friggin' dog was off. Different."

The ghost shuddered, remembering how the animal moved strangely about the house, as if unaccustomed to its body.

"They spent a lot of time in the basement, building stuff. At first I really didn't give it much thought, but then the local funeral home started delivering corpses, and needless to say, my curiosity was piqued."

"If the Electroluxes were all burned in the barn fire, then who are these freaks?" Hellboy asked, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.

"I think it
is
them," Steve replied. "I think somehow the Electricizers have come back. They've been reincarnated or possessed this family or something. If you want my two cents I think they're aiming to finish what they started ninety-four years ago--which isn't good, I guarantee you."

The ghost shook his head. "That family, they never stopped. Twenty-four hours a day they were working. I haven't a clue what they were making, crazy-looking machines right out of
Weird Tales.
It's when I seen them putting up this funky map of the region that I got really concerned."

They were all listening to him, even as the story got stranger they were listening. It was a little disconcerting. Most would have called the cops by now. Of course, he was a ghost, and they were all hanging out just shooting the breeze with him. Didn't get much stranger than that. But these weren't your average Joes, this was the BPRD for Pete's sake. They ate weird for breakfast.