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Authors: Jon Land

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BOOK: Kingdom of the Seven
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Before she could respond, he had steadied himself with knees bent and shoulders squared forward. Karen heard the bullets burst from his gun as she approached the fence. She didn’t think of climbing it, she thought of
leaping
it to generate the momentum she needed to carry her. She landed just a few feet from the top, and a single hoist was all it took to get her prone body over the top. Karen hit the ground on the other side hard, was stumbling back to her feet when the bearded man came over the fence with an effortlessness that defied understanding. He hit the ground moving and grabbed her on the way.
“Don’t look back!” he ordered. “Just run!”
He led her up and over a hill, then down a light slope toward a side road that intersected with the freeway.
“They’re coming!” she noted desperately.
The words were barely out of her mouth when a car running without its headlights pulled up before them. The passenger-side window slid down.
“You’re early, Blainey,” said the huge shape of an Indian from the driver’s seat.
 
 
McCracken shoved the woman into the backseat ahead of him. “That’s because I ended up with her instead of what I came to Van Dyne to get.”
“Van Dyne has surprises for everyone,” she said, having recovered her breath.
“Spoken from experience, it sounds to me,” responded Blaine as he slammed the door behind him.
“Bitter experience,” she sighed.
“Doesn’t surprise me in the least,” he said. The car thumped back onto the road, and Johnny Wareagle screeched away into the night.
The woman suddenly lurched forward in her seat. “I’ve got to meet them!”
“Meet
who
?” Blaine demanded.
“No one in pursuit,” Wareagle announced when the car neared the freeway.
“Take a right,” Blaine said, looking away briefly from the woman.
“No!” she insisted. “Left!
Please!
I’ve
got
to meet them!”
Wareagle’s eyes found McCracken’s in the rearview mirror.
“Make that a left, Indian.”
Earvin Early was invisible. Even if he hadn’t arrived at the trailer park in the cover of dark, no one would have seen him. Even if someone had happened upon him in his hiding place back in the woods, they would not have seen him. So long as he stayed still and concentrated hard enough, he was invisible.
There had been no trace of the woman in the hours since he had arrived. Early had never met her, of course, but he could imagine her scent, and sniffing the air told him she was not here.
It didn’t matter. The Reverend Harlan Frye’s orders had been clear to him in this case. If the woman could not be found, he was to go after her two boys the motorcycle gang was guarding. That way the woman would have no choice but to concede. To save her children, she would do anything. They would already be dead, of course, but she wouldn’t know that.
Invisible, Earvin Early hung back and watched over the scene. He studied the placement of the gang members and
the weapons they carried with them, weapons that would be useless against him. He charted the position of all the trailer homes the bikers resided in. An old lame one with a ponytail, an eye patch, and a face that looked like tanned leather seemed to be in charge. Early saw him several times, walking with a pair of pit bulls by his side and a shotgun slung over his shoulder as he moved about, checking the security he had set up. Once when the old leader was patrolling, the door to one of the trailers opened and a young face peered briefly out.
Earvin Early had found his targets.
He measured everything off in his head. The armed bikers were well spaced and positioned to watch for intrusions at all vantage points within the park. Early understood now why the Reverend had needed him. They would never expect to be attacked by a single man, never mind one they could look at and not see until he materialized before them.
The first biker he reached after emerging from the woods several hours later when the time was right was the biggest and most alert, accounting for Early’s choice. Early came at him from the rear, his footsteps not even ruffling the soft ground underfoot. The man didn’t so much as turn. Early swallowed his head in two massive hands and jerked it hard. The snap was loud but quick. The man crumpled and Early caught him before he hit the ground and hauled him behind some cover.
The next closest biker watching the perimeter was fifteen yards away, smoking a cigarette. Early sniffed the air and could tell it was a Marlboro. He approached from the side this time, the rear blocked by a trailer. The man turned at the last moment, tried to bring his gun round. But he had to discard the Marlboro first, and the delay proved fatal. Early stripped the rifle out of his grasp and smashed the stock into his mouth before he could scream. The man’s teeth shattered and his eyes bulged with pain and shock. Early continued to shove the rifle butt down the man’s throat. The biker’s cheeks stretched obscenely and his breath was choked off. There was a loud crack and
he went limp. His eyes weren’t moving anymore. Early shoved him beneath the trailer.
The next two were huddled together. Early smelled the strong aroma of beer on them. One burped. The other rested his shotgun against a tree and stretched, yawning loudly.
“Shit,” he exhaled, “shit on this night …”
He brought his arms down and reached back for his shotgun to find it was gone, fallen probably.
The biker was feeling about on the dark ground, attempting to retrieve it, when a huge, stumplike hand closed on his wrist and yanked. The last thing the biker felt was another hand closing on the back of his head and slamming him forward. A mushing sound followed as his face was driven through the tree bark.
“What the fu—”
The second biker had lunged round the big tree to see his friend wedged there, face a flattened, bleeding mess incised into the bark.
“Hey!” he called. “Somebody!”
Earvin Early swung the shotgun toward the second biker’s head. The biker never saw the blow coming, even when he turned toward it. The stock cracked his skull wide open upon impact and sprayed blood and brains into the air. The first of those responding to his call got there just as the second biker was falling into a portion of what used to compose the contents of his skull.
“Jesus,” the first one on the scene muttered, “Jesus …”
Another pair were not far behind. Earvin Early waited until all three were standing in a group, easily within his killing range. Then he drew the knife. The knife was old; the knife was rusted. But the knife was his chosen instrument and he whirled into the center of the group, letting himself become visible.
Most had time to see nothing, though, as the knife slashed and cut, ripped and tore. Not a single shot was fired in defense or retaliation. The men died puzzled by the shapeless thing that had killed them, not really sure of what was happening.
When he was finished, Earvin Early headed for the trailer where he had spotted one of the boys earlier. It sat three down the row, sixty feet away. The lame old man who was the leader could still be a nuisance. There might be others nearby who could cause problems, as well, if he got too noisy in his work.
But Earvin Early was confident about his abilities to work quickly and quietly. The trailer was just up ahead, and its contents belonged to him.
 
Karen Raymond had begun her tale tentatively while the big Indian drove, waiting for a disbelieving scowl to appear on Blaine McCracken’s face. Instead, though, his eyes encouraged her to keep going, clearly astonished by her words but accepting them.
“So first they go all out to kill you,” he concluded before she had quite finished, “and then they decide you’ve got something they want.”
Karen nodded. “Because they couldn’t get Lot 35 any other way. None of the computers they pilfered contained all of the information they needed. Collating what they stole would have taken months. I made sure of that.”
“Then, even though Van Dyne had their own vaccine, they suddenly needed yours.”
“I told you, because theirs didn’t work. Something went wrong; in the testing stage, by all indications,” she said, explaining Freddy Levinger’s discovery that all data had ceased as of Sunday.
“Tell me more about this test group.”
“Heterogeneous in virtually all respects. One hundred eighty in number, an unusually low number for this kind of test. They were all placed in a single town; also unusual, if not unheard-of.”
“Not a good idea from a secrecy and security standpoint either,” Blaine noted.
“The town’s isolated nature in the Arizona desert allowed Van Dyne to pull that part off,” Karen explained.
McCracken felt a chill pass through him. Johnny Wareagle stole a glance back his way.
“Arizona
desert
?”
“Yes, a town called—”
“Beaver Falls,” Blaine completed for her.
Karen’s mouth dropped. “How did you know? How
could
you know?”
“I think it’s time you heard my story, Doctor.”
 
Papa Jack came down the trailer’s steps awkwardly, sawed-off shotgun held in a single hand.
“What the fuck,” he muttered to himself in a voice that sounded like he spoke between chomps on gravel. Both hands now gripped the sawed-off.
A huge shape spun out before him, charging. Papa Jack emptied both barrels. The force of the twin blasts knocked him backward and nearly toppled him. He was sure he had scored a hit and was looking for the body when something grabbed him from the side. He felt fingers wrap tight around his face and squeeze mightily at his temples. Papa Jack gasped, struggled back. He tried to scream, and the breath he drew for the effort brought an awful smell of rot and death that nearly made him gag.
The stench got heavier still, and then Papa Jack felt nothing.
 
Earvin Early released the old man’s crushed skull and discarded his limp frame before moving for the door to the trailer. His work was almost at its end now. The two boys would be inside. They belonged to him. He had never Freed a child before and wondered how it would feel. They would thank him if they knew everything of the world; if they understood. They didn’t, of course, but that didn’t matter.
“A simple child
That lightly draws its breath
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?”
Early finished quoting Wordsworth softly to himself and reached up for the doorknob. It gave easily. He pushed the door inward, ready to spring after it.
And the dogs lunged upon him. A rank stream of brown fur and flashing teeth pushed him hard off the steps and snapped for his flesh.
 
“Judgment Day,” McCracken started, after a brief pause.
“What about it?”
“That’s what drew the Indian and me into this. We’re following the trail of someone we believe is committed to making it happen.”
“But you knew about Beaver Falls. That trail led you to Van Dyne.”
“Because they’re both connected somehow to what Frye’s got planned.”
“
Harlan
Frye?”
“Apparently you’ve heard of him.”
“I don’t know anyone who hasn’t. Like him or not, he’s always in the news, and he’s a terrifying bastard to everyone except the extreme religious right.”
“I think you’re starting to see my point.”
Karen shivered, the car suddenly seeming very cold. “But where could Van Dyne possibly fit into his plans?”
“My guess, Dr. Raymond, is the answer to that has got plenty to do with their AIDS vaccine. Discovery’s been conveniently sealed up tight by government types who figure they’ve got a pretty big stake in the outcome.”
“But they don’t know something went wrong with the test group.”
“And neither Frye nor Van Dyne is about to tell them.”
“Then that’s all we have to do!”
Blaine shook his head. “Forget it, Doctor. You can bet we were already the enemy in Washington’s mind even before we trashed Van Dyne’s complex tonight. The bad guys will have everything turned all inside out. Believe me, I’ve been here before.”
“And Washington won’t help us until we turn them right again.”
Blaine nodded. “Call it the government’s rules of engagement, or at least certain parts of the government you probably never could have imagined existed until tonight.”
“Parts you must be quite familiar with.”
“All too familiar.”
“Then you’re saying we’re on our own.”
“Don’t forget the Indian, Doctor. Between us, we make a pretty good team, and with you on our side, we might just get lucky and come up with something that changes Washington’s mind.”
“Like what?”
“Can’t tell you that. Can tell you where we might find it.”
“Beaver Falls,” Karen realized.
“There you go.”
 
Early made it to the woods, despite the excruciating pain from the bites and wounds inflicted by the dogs. He’d killed or crippled them all, but not before they’d taken their toll. His left arm hung bloody and limp where the shoulder had been mangled. His right forearm, used for defense, was marked with bite gouges that oozed thick blood. He’d killed two dogs that wouldn’t let go and then had to pry their jaws open to free what they’d left of his flesh. When he wiped the pools of blood away, he could see the teeth patterns briefly before the blood covered the marks again. His legs were torn and sliced, his face ripped up horribly, especially on the right. The eye on that side was already half-closed, and a wide, pulsing gash stretched across his neck, little more than a hair’s distance from his jugular.
This kind of pain was a new sensation to Earvin Early; he had seldom felt it in his new life since being rescued by the Reverend Harlan Frye. But he welcomed it for giving him something to take from this night to remind him of his failure.
“Nothing begins and nothing ends
That is not paid with moan;
For we are born in other’s pain,
And perish in our own.”
Early mumbled the words through the blood frothing from his mouth. His upper lip had been split in two and hung grotesquely over his lower one. Early coughed more blood out, but he didn’t intend to perish as Francis Thompson suggested in the last line of her poem. He intended to grow stronger, to will his body to heal itself so he might venture out once more.
After the woman.
After her children.
After anyone who stood in his way.
 
“Something’s wrong,” Karen said, as soon as Johnny pulled into the gas station and eased the car toward the three bikers parked in the far left corner.
BOOK: Kingdom of the Seven
3.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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