Opposing Force: Book 01 - The God Particle (38 page)

"You have been so very good to me, my dear. I have enjoyed our experiences together," he said to the skeletal woman and ran his hand lovingly across her cheek. "I have made you beautiful, have I not? You were never beautiful before—but I gave you this gift."

Gant found it hard to believe that anyone could consider the frail, broken woman "beautiful." Perhaps once, sure. But what stood there in that lab was only an echo of what had once been a woman. She—like Jolly—was less than alive, but not mercifully dead.

"Oh yes, my love," she said as she closed her eyes and rested her hand upon his.

Gant realized that this was the first time he had seen Briggs—the entity—talk to or treat any of his followers as anything other than servants or tools.

Briggs’s left hand found the back of her wiry hair, and while he moved in what appeared to be a compassionate fashion, Major Gant felt an uneasiness in the room, like watching a barometer fall as an omen of foul weather.

"So many … things …" the entity told her, "we shared so much."

It sounded to Gant as if Ruthie moaned or purred, but it came across as forced, a lie to stroke his ego.

"I know I hurt you from time to time," Briggs said with little concern in his tone.

"All wonderful," she responded.

"Do you remember back in the beginning?"

Briggs's voice remained soothing but Gant felt his muscles tense as he clearly sensed a storm about to break.

"Do you remember what you said to me, that first time?"

Gant was conscious of movement from behind, from the double doors of the lab.

Ruthie did not answer. She held her head tilted up with her eyes closed, still clasping his right hand as it stroked her cheek.

"You said 'never.' Do you remember?"

The master’s tone lost any semblance of soothing and took on a sharp, nasty edge. The creature’s hand tighten on her hair and yanked her head back. For a moment Gant feared Briggs planned to bite into her throat like a vampire.

Ruthie's hands floundered at her sides. She tried to smile, but a grimace of pain kept overtaking that smile.

"You said, 'NEVER.'"

The doors to the lab opened. First one, then two, then three of the horrible children came in, their teeth chattering, their posture bent over so that their long fingernails nearly dragged on the floor.

Briggs’s voice became angered—not louder, but stronger and cruel.

"You said, ‘never,’ you stuck-up bitch."

Ruthie squirmed. When she spoke her words sounded nearly human, a voice buried under two decades of submission, brutality, and terror.

"No … I did everything. I did everything you asked."

"Yes, you did," Briggs clenched his teeth and glared at her. "Open your eyes and look at me."

Ruthie complied.

Gant stepped forward. Jolly matched his step and raised the gun, and while he warned the major off, the way his teeth bared through his open gums made it seem like the monster welcomed confrontation.

"You did everything. You did everything, every way. You were mine, whenever and however I wanted. And you loved it too, didn’t you?"

"No—please don’t …"

"Begging again, Ruthie?" Briggs snarled. "I thought you said never. I thought I wasn’t good enough for you."

"I’ll do anything," she said, forcing herself to caress his hand again.

"Everything you like … all those things …"

"Why would I want that now?" the thing in Briggs's body asked. "Soon I’ll take any woman on the planet. I'll call them and they will come running to me. What would I want with you? I’m throwing you away, Ruthie. I’m throwing YOU away." 
 
Briggs jammed his lips onto hers in kiss that shared more in common with a bite. Then as he pulled away he ripped her shirt, exposing sagging, worn breasts on an emaciated body.

"Children, kiss your mother goodnight."

And the mob took her. Claws, ragged teeth, dug into the woman who had given them birth. Her upper body disappeared into the center of the trio. Gant saw only her legs, kicking and slapping the ground with little strength. Blood splashed out from the slaughter and streamed across the concrete.

Jolly just stood there, and while Gant figured the creature probably did not even realize what had happened, his exhales sounded like a soft, insane chuckle as one demon enjoyed the sport of others.

"You told me, ‘never,’" Briggs said again.

The creatures dragged her away. Her legs still kicked, a little, and Gant saw her fingers clench and unclench, but whatever life remained in the research assistant named Ruthie was quickly draining away.

Briggs watched Ruthie’s body disappear out through the double doors with his eyes bulging and a thin smirk on his face making an expression Gant translated as some kind of perverse satisfaction; a petty child settling a score.

Then the entity that inhabited what had once been a leading human scientist turned and locked eyes with the soldier. Calmly, casually, the thing told Thom: "Time to go."

"Well, then, I suppose this is the end of the road for me."

He did not want to die, particularly not at the hands—claws—of the children. But he could not defend himself. Hell, he could barely stand on his bad knee, and his left arm would be useless in a fight.

However, the entity said, "Not quite, Major. You’re coming too. We have to make way for your friend, Captain Campion. He’ll be here any minute and we don’t want to disturb his work."

Jolly kept an eye on Major Gant but also found and pushed the bag holding the V.A.A.D. batteries to the center of the room, just in front of the cloth covering the ancient radio.

If there is actually still a radio under there,
Gant thought.

Once the big guy had taken care of that particular task, he motioned the barrel of the MP5 at Gant and then toward the exit. The major understood perfectly, and although a bolt of pain shot up his leg, he walked in that direction, careful not to slip over the trails of blood leading out the door. He could not discern which of the trails belonged to Twiste's body; all the blood had sort of merged together into one wide track.

"Why don’t you just go without me. I don’t think I’m going to be able to climb all those stairs, anyhow."

"Don’t worry, Major. You won’t have to. Now keep moving."

Gant pushed open the double doors and led the three up the hall under the glow of track lighting to the four-way intersection where he and Twiste had paused several hours ago. There he heard the entity's kids feasting on Ruthie's corpse, but they did their nasty business behind the door marked for biohazard disposal. He recalled seeing several sets of ghastly fingers poking out from there during the trip in.

Thom lamented his injuries—if it were only his shoulder or only his knee, he might have been in a position to get that gun from Jolly. Perhaps to shoot the entity, perhaps to shoot himself. But with both injuries he knew he simply would stumble and fall. Not even worth the effort.

"Around the corner, Major, and straight on," Briggs commanded from behind. Thom did as instructed, entering the passage where the spinning siren lights sent flashes of yellow and red. It seemed like forever ago that he and his friend had come through this way, passing the observation windows that looked in on dead scientists.

Eventually they exited the Red Lab section, working their way into the antechamber with the plastic chairs, the phony plants, the security counter, and the CONTAINMENT sign that, once again, filled the area with its glow.

At this point, Briggs pointed them along a different path, no longer tracing Gant and Twiste's journey in. The passage they walked grew darker, and Gant wondered what kind of dead-end the entity had in mind until Briggs's voice commanded, "stop."

Major Gant glanced around, his eyes struggling to adjust to the lack of light. He saw something set in the wall: an elevator.

At that instant it seemed to Major Gant as if the entire complex exploded in front of him. A brilliant flash of light erupted as if the sun engulfed the corridor. His arm rose instinctively and shielded his eyes but he could not shut them tight enough to keep out the light.

With the light came a mechanical, churning noise vibrating along the walls and turning the silence of the dungeon into a cacophony of sound.

"Ah, right on time," Briggs’s voice commented.

Thom slowly lowered his arm, then cautiously opened his eyes.

No explosion. No sun. No super-flash of any sort.

Just hall lights. Yet it had been so long since he had seen normal lighting that the fluorescents were like brilliant spotlights overpowering his retina.

The noise also seemed to his ears much more powerful than in reality. He heard the elevator motor coming to life. Yet in the still silence it had seemed a boom.

"What is this?" Gant gasped.

"And so I said, let there be light," Briggs smirked. "They are rolling out the red carpet for me. Like I said, it’s time to go."
 

"So what do we do now?" Corporal Sanchez asked Colonel Thunder.

The two stood outside of the main building on the surface. Liz desperately needed a cigarette but fought off the urge. Sanchez desperately needed direction. Both felt some fresh air might help them better judge the situation.

Liz glanced away from the building. Through the trees she could barely make out spots of color that she knew was a helicopter resting on the landing pad.

Well, we could bug the fuck out and head for the hills to wait for Armageddon
.

Somehow she did not think that was what Sanchez wanted to hear.

He asked, "Who can stop this? Is there someone in Washington who can override the general?"

Thunder chuckled. "Override General Harold Borman? Are you kidding? The guy wrote the book on unconventional enemies. He made Red Rock what it is. All he has to say is that you and I are under the influence of whatever is down there and we’d be locked up, or get a bullet in the noggin."

"His face, man," Sanchez recounted their confrontation with Borman. "He was not even there. He was some sort of mannequin or something."

Thunder put a hand on his shoulder and told him, "Yeah, and you lied right to his face. You should’ve dragged him out of there, not me."

"You think?" Sammy was genuinely apologetic. "I don't think he would have cooperated. I thought it was best just to get us out of there."

Again Liz reminded herself that last week this kid had shot to death another colonel.

"This is totally whack," Sanchez said.

Thunder paused and managed a smile.

"Totally whack? What the hell is that?"

Sanchez looked over at her. He was confused and upset and not in the mood for sarcasm. Hell, he probably would not recognize sarcasm if it bit him on the ass, at least not at that moment.

"Okay, look," she said. "We’ve got to handle this, you and I. Who can help us?"

"The chain of command," Sanchez stumbled. "Who’s on top of the general?"

"Forget that," she told him again. "That isn't going to happen. About the only shot there is, is to try and contact Gant's boss at his base—that was a General Friez, I believe. But Borman is his superior officer, so the Pentagon will not let him jump on anything fast and he's probably all the way back in California, where Archangel is based. But this isn’t just a military operation, is it?"

Sanchez failed to grasp her meaning..

"The Tall Company," she explained. "This is their baby, too."

"So?"

"So that Vsalov, he’s down there. Honestly, he strikes me as slime but he's scientist-slime so maybe he'll listen. If we make him see what’s going on, maybe he can stop it."

"Okay, but …" Sanchez started.

"But what?"

"But what if he’s like the general?"

Liz considered, then asked, "Do you know how to fly a helicopter?"

That threw him for a loop.

"What?"

"Never mind. Let’s go."

—

Captain Campion led Wells and Galati along the hall until they were stopped by a series of sounds: gurgling, munching, and snorts. He held up his fist and his comrades dropped into a "hold" position, on one knee and quiet.

The captain communicated with his team with hand signals: an open palm, a thumb to his chest, two fingers walking on air, two fingers pointing at his eyes.

They nodded in understanding and waited as Campion crept forward to a bend in the hall. It was dark—everything was dark down there—but there were some emergency lights on and his eyes had adjusted enough that he could see around the corner.

He was on one end of a four-way intersection. Straight ahead across a perpendicular passage was slightly ajar door with a biohazard symbol and the word "disposal" written underneath. The sounds came from that room.

A few paces closer, another corridor illuminated by red track lighting led to the main lab; the target area.

The V.A.A.D. must be activated in the laboratory!