That Nietzsche Thing (16 page)

“All of these things I’ve done, skulking in
the dark, Detective. All this I’ve achieved. But always, in the
burning light of noonday, the humans came.” Cain looked up to the
moon, hovering in the sky above. “Always, the single, fervid eye,
staring down from heaven. He watches us all...always
watches...”

“We can end it tonight,” Vivian growled,
barely audible over the rush of the wind. “We don’t need
him
. We don’t need
them
.” She nodded down off the
edge of the Needle’s roof.

I then realized I’d missing something –
something down on the ground below – cringing for my life so far
away from the precipice of the Needle’s dish. Curiosity begged me
forward, but the barking wind and the slippery roof kept me rooted
to my spot.

“No,” Cain shook his head. “I see providence
stretched out before me, my dear. To slumber and awake to find...an
army prepared for me? It cannot be foolish change but a gift. We
will not squander it. There will be no mistakes this time. We are
the flood this time, my sweet. They shall not drown me again. Those
that have come here to destroy me, they will be taught a bitter
lesson. Tonight or tomorrow. The tide will rise. We will not abate.
We will fill their lungs. The water will rise. Today and the next
day and the next day and the next day. Forever. We will drown this
globe in blood.”

Now, I knew I was missing something important
over the precipice. Something was happening at street level below
me. I couldn’t just cling to the cliff face like a baby bird. I
slowly, delicately climbed to my feet. My boots squeaked ominously
on the wet, angled rooftop. But I staggered slowly until I’d joined
the three, windswept figures at the edge of the dish. In an
uncharacteristic show of charity, Tebor firmly grabbed my wavering
shoulder and held me steady.

I looked down.

Vertigo almost sent me head-over-heels off
the edge, but Tebor’s massive mitt held me firm. My eyes watered in
panic, blurring away the city below me. But as my head swam, the
solid, spinning earth below me began to resolve into view. A crowd
of a thousand – no, ten thousand – had gathered at the base of the
Needle. A swarm of humanity, clogging the streets of the city for
blocks and blocks in all directions.

“Oh my God!” I screamed and lost my footing.
I held onto Tebor’s giant fist as a lifeline. “Who are they?”

“Every Genie in the city,” Vivian said, with
more than a little pride. “When word that Q had returned...”

“You do have an army,” I observed.

“An army greater than any in history,” Cain
said, standing at the very lip of the rooftop, but balancing
without effort in the bucking breeze. “One, two, three million
strong. All my children. All under my commanded. For my blood runs
in their veins. They will obey me. They will obey
you,
” he
said, turning to face me.

“Me?”

“Yes. Every army needs a General.
You,
Detective, shall be mine.”

“I don’t-” I started. But it wasn’t worth
protesting. If Cain commanded me, I obeyed. I was a Genie now, too.
Just like the throng below. “We are the tide,” I said instead,
somehow knowing it was what Cain wanted to hear.

“Yes, the rising tide. And every other city
on Earth shall drown. Each and every vile offspring of my brother
will pay for the 10,000 years of my suffering. This world will
drown in a new flood, and Eden shall rise from the waves.”

Cain was mad. Insane. As much as the
retrovirus in my blood made me love him, I could still see that.
What was Eden to him but death and destruction? He’d feed on the
blood of humanity until no one was left. No one but his kind.
Vampires and Genies, until it was time for the Genies to die.

All he would leave to wander the Earth would
be the walking dead. Eternal, cowering in the dark.

“It’s certainly a long way down.” I stated
the obvious. It was all I could think to say in the face of the
doom of mankind.

“Afraid?” Cain asked, looking at me with a
smirk.

“Yes,” I admitted.

“There’s no need to be afraid, Detective,”
Cain said, stepping out into nothingness. “Fear is our best
ally.”

Cain fell into the darkness, plummeting
toward the earth below. As he fell, he spread his arms, and the
wind seemed to catch him. He arced up, banked, and flew back into
the sky in a blur of speed.

“And now!” I heard the wind call out. “Let
the wild rumpus start!”

Tebor and Vivian each took one of my arms and
jumped off the roof of the Needle.

Chapter 22

We hit the Fed’s battle line like a wave
breaking on the shore. They made their stand at Second and James, a
spot that gave their vehicles room to maneuver, but also allowed me
to concentrate my attack.

I gathered at least three thousand behind me
before I launched my assault, waiting over half an hour, under the
guns of the waiting Feds, to form a phalanx.

All the while they blared orders from
megaphones and bombarded us with teargas. But my Genie army held
firm, unconcerned with their threats or the stinging effects of the
pink gas. We carried no weapons, had no need for them. We were
Cain’s weapons. Our lives were unimportant.

When I felt that I’d gathered together
enough, I charged.

Had the Feds not reinforced their numbers
during the day with a regular army battalion from Fort Lewis, the
battle would have been over in minutes. Instead, behind the riot
shields and water cannons of the riot police, we met Browning
machine guns and Stryker LAV’s.

That first attack at Second and James put an
end to the pretense that the Feds were trying to quell a civil
disturbance. Once my Genies overwhelmed that line of riot cops, we
were officially in an all-out shooting war.

When the machine guns barked to life, Genies
started dying.

It made no difference to me. I just readied
the next wave. I knew their ammunition couldn’t last forever.

And I had all the cannon fodder I’d need.

After less than twenty minutes of fighting,
the Army’s blockade at Second and James collapsed. With it went
what little control over the Genies that I had. I had no means of
commanding my force beyond the range of my voice. Whatever orders I
gave to the grungy, blurry-eyed Genies, they obeyed without
question, but once my forces scattered into the streets of the
city, chasing down what fleeing Feds they could find, I no longer
had any direct control.

So my assault floundered and turned into a
running, gunning door-to-door battle with the splintered Army
ranks. The loss of momentum allowed the Feds to regroup and
counterattack.

By 2 a.m., the tide had turned. I was caught
down on First, as the maneuverable Strykers began to herd random
groups of Genies into a crossfire. They were laying into us with
small arms, tearing us apart, when Tebor came to our rescue. The
air, again, filled with screeching bats.

The swarm filled the sky, blocking out the
street lights and sending the soldiers cowering for the cover of
their armored vehicles. The bats descended on a single point in the
street, gathering together and forming into the outline of a
gargantuan man. There was a split second when the bats seemed to
freeze in mid flap, then Tebor erupted from their cocoon.

He picked up a Stryker by its front fender
and flipped it onto its back. Rifle fire peppered him from the
murder holes of a second Stryker, and in a blur, Tebor sprang
across the road and planted his shoulder square into the armored
car. He knocked it back through the storefront beside the road, and
over onto its side in the rubble of the building.

When the dust had settled, Tebor was the only
figure left standing. He stalked in a slow circle, like a lion
looking for prey. But none dared attack the beast-man.

I pulled myself up out of the dirt and the
blood.

“Thanks,” I said meekly. I knew I was lucky
that Tebor hadn’t torn me in two, along with the Strykers.

“Focus,” Tebor growled. It was the first word
I’d heard him say, and now I knew why. He was almost
unintelligible. “Focus on the Town Hall,” he said, and suddenly
vanished into thin air. A new swarm of bats appeared, as if from a
running faucet, spewing like a tornado in the sky.

I did as instructed. I gathered together the
few stray Genies I could find and sent them to gather more. By
3:30, I had a good force of eight hundred to a thousand
concentrated in Westlake Park.

I was running out of dark. It was only a few
hours before dawn. If there was going to be a last-ditch, Alamo
attempt by the Feds, I wanted it to happen while Cain and the
others were still aboard in town. If the Feds held out until
daybreak...well, they’ll have all day to peck away at the Genies
before nightfall. No, I wanted the battle to be over before they
got that chance.

I began to lead my new army south down
Fourth, heading for the Town Hall and Constantine’s mobile HQ. If I
could destroy that, the war would be over. Seattle would be
mine.

The occupation would finally be over.

The Army, however, had other ideas.

The Abrams TUSK sat, waiting for us just
north of the Central Library. Without ceremony, its turret turned
to welcome are advancing line and belched forth with a hail of AP
fire from its main cannon.

The centimeter tungsten ball bearings tore
into the Genies, decapitating and severing arteries. I was at the
point of the advancing force and only survived by throwing myself
face first to the concrete. The tank’s automated machine gun
started to fire as the main cannon reloaded. Bodies fell as Genies
leapt for cover.

The second blast from the cannon swept the
street clean. What Genies escaped the meat grinder, including
myself, took cover in the hotels at Fourth and Spring.

The tank had us pinned down.

An hour passed slowly into two as the tank
sat in the center of Fourth Avenue. Any movement was quickly
answered by a salvo from the automated turret.

Dawn was rising. I could see it off to the
east whenever I dared raise my head from cover. I tried to send a
runner to get help, but he didn’t make it twenty feet before losing
a leg to the .50 caliber.

All I could do was sit tight.

Just after 5:30, the tank seemed to acquire a
target north, up Fourth. It squealed on its tracks, shifting to a
better position, then its turret angled for a shot. The cannon
fired, and the ground shook. I had no vantage point to see what it
was shooting at, but it seemed to hit something.

The shot was answered by a deafening
thunderclap. The rubble of the old hotel crashed down all around
me. The tank seemed to stagger back, as if hit by an invisible
shock wave. It rolled forward a few feet, then stopped, then rolled
forward again, listing to the right.

It turned ninety degrees and its turret came
swinging about. The turret did a full rotation, the barrel of the
long cannon drooped toward the pavement, followed by muffled
screams of pain. Then silence.

I risked climbing up from behind cover.

The tank sat, still. I stepped out though the
blast hole in the brickwork and took a step toward the tank. Just
as I did, a hatched popped open. I staggered back. But no solider
in battledress emerged. Instead, Vivian pushed up out of the hatch,
throwing out her handbag and slinking her curves out of the
confinement of the tank. She leapt clear, landing in her high heels
on the blacktop and smoothed out her dress.

“How’d you do that?” I asked, as Vivian’s
heels clicked past me, heading back up Fourth.

“Do what?” she paused.

“Get inside that tank?”

“I’m good in tight spots,” she smiled and
continued on up the avenue.

Chapter 23

Even with the tank disabled, we’d make no
more progress that night.

The sun was up, and the Army’s Strykers were
back in control of the streets. I couldn’t gather together more
than a score of Genies. There were so few left. Even totally loyal
to Cain as they were, some had summoned up the willpower to retreat
from the battlefield as the sun rose. After all, they were little
more than target practice for the Army in the daylight. The battle
of Seattle was over for now.

Cain might have awoken to find a ready-made
army at his disposal, but even the most devout followers were no
match for an M1 Abrams.

I went to ground with what few loyal Genies I
could find in the city. We tried to stay out of sight of the
patrols, rest up for the coming evening. There was nothing we could
do in the daylight by stay alive.

Between sprints between blown-out buildings,
I let the bliss of Geneing take control of me. It was better than
sleep, better than sex, better than anything I could have imagined.
Every second I could spare, I let the warmth of it consume me then
shook myself free of its embrace when time came to move.

But it was quickly becoming harder and harder
to do so. Every time I slipped into the Geneing, I became more and
more sure I would never come back. But I knew that Cain was still
depending on me to marshal his attack. He was depending on me to
take the battle to the Rosicrucians who’d staged the occupation of
Seattle, seeking his destruction. Loyalty kept bringing me back to
reality. But loyalty could only carry me so far.

In my Elysium, if I thought of
Where the
Wild Things Are
, I came back to Earth. That was my trigger, my
escape: my favorite book as a child. Funny how Geneing got into my
head.

Past noon, I lay in the destruction of an old
stationary store’s basement stock room and slipped off into
unreality. We’d just lost a particularly persistent Stryker crew
that had cost me three Genies, but I was feeling safe in that
basement. I let the Geneing take over me.