The Terminals (9 page)

The wild flapping of bone-bats grew riotous.

Charlie frowned and cupped the crystal in his palm. Hillar peered at it with a quizzical smile.

“You're following me,” he said. “And this …” Hillar squinted and rubbed at his chin. “This allows you to talk with someone …”

Charlie curled about, dropped to a knee, and pulled the trigger of his gun. Runes exploded with light and three bone-bats dissolved into dust.

“We're all just trying to reach the other side,” Charlie stated.

“You first,” Hillar said.

Charlie bit his lip, resting the shotgun barrel over the crook of his arm. “Sure, but you tell me the location of the bus filled with children.”

“Ah.” Hillar nodded, eyes drifting back to crystal. “This is why you've come.”

“The location of the kids,” Charlie repeated, “And I'll tell you the Archon's name.”

“Deal.” Hillar smiled and held out a hand of twisting serpents. “I won't be needing them any longer.”

“First,” Charlie added, taking a step back. “You tell me first.”

Hillar harrumphed and narrowed his eyes at Charlie. “I tell you, and then you give me the Archon's name.”

“Agreed, but only after I've confirmed the kids are safe.”

Passage through one deep was a fool's trade; if this Archon didn't stop Hillar, then the next surely would.

The snakes hissed and wriggled as Hillar shook Charlie's hand.

Chapter 14

I was halfway through the
door, Attila shouting at my back.

“Iowa—don't think I'm not jealous!” he called after, his good-natured tease tailing me as I plunged into the general's office.

“General,” I said, before realizing that the soldier was comatose. “I see you're at ease.”

The general's face was buried in a James Rollins's novel on the desk. His limp fingers rested on a bottle of Jack Daniels like a lover's hand over a sleeping thigh.

“Or perhaps in full retreat,” I muttered and flipped open the file on Hillar to find the number of the FBI agent assigned to the Hillar the Killer case, Agent Volt. I dialed, shaking my head at the general as he failed to rouse and headed toward my cell. Since meeting Charlie, I thought of my quarters as my cell.

“Hello, Agent Volt?”

“How did you find this number?”

I blinked at the snarky response. “I got it from our case file. My name is Colonel Christine Kurzow and I'm with the U.S. Army.”

“Colonel Kurzow.” He tested the words.

I needed to relax my jaw to speak. “That's right, a Lieutenant Colonel.” I paused in the hallway, my voice echoing. With his full attention, I relayed Charlie's intel and then held the phone an inch from my ear as he fired a barrage of questions.

“How I received the intel is on a need-to-know.” I nodded to the silence—acquiescence or choking rage, I wondered. “Marshall your field troops with the requisite emergency vehicles. The children will require medical support.”

“Is this …” he began. I moved the phone away, but I could still hear, “… is this the U.S. Army telling me how to do my job?”

I frowned. “No, I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job.” I lifted my eyes to the ceiling. “Call me back when you have an address that matches our description.” I hung up before he could respond, and I strode down the hall, my pants snapping with each step and my boots thudding officiously as I headed toward my room. I wasn't telling him; I was ordering him.

Over the short distance to my cell, I already flagged and had to acknowledge that I wasn't at fighting strength. I stumbled through the door, grabbed the gun belt from the closet and slipped out of my civilian clothes and back into bulkier cargo pants and jacket. When I reached for my body armor, I paused. There hadn't been blanks in the gun I had shoved into my mouth a couple days ago. What possible reason could I have to wear body armor? My fingers traced the seam of one of the pockets that held a ceramic plate.

“Huh,” I said and left it on the floor of the closet.

I marched past the five other cells. The general's, Morph's, another reserved for Attila but unused, and two empty quarters. I reflected on what I did know about the unit. That each terminal had a bunk in the hospital, either within Purgatory or outside it. Some retained old apartments in the city, but many weren't even from New York, they'd come here to die and would wait here until their mission came. They didn't even know what they were waiting for, solely responding to final orders and the lure of free medical care.

Until their orders came down, most of the men and women awaiting death played pinochle and blackjack. And they didn't question the steady disappearance of their comrades. In a palliative unit, death came as no surprise. Roughly a third of the official terminals were on life support, ammo ready to be loaded into the right-sized barrel. Attila explained the difficulty of these, said their consciousnesses disassociated while on life support. And they were unreliable and usually difficult to reach.

At any one time, a few, like Morph and me, were handlers. Typically younger, active despite terminal diagnoses, and trusted. We lived on the opposite side of the three-inch steel door unlocked via the retinal scan.

It wasn't much information. With the demand of such secrecy, I saw little check and balance to the general's power. Attila was the obvious lynch pin, but even he seemed to be under the general's thumb.

The heavy door to the unit clicked shut and the three gray-haired veterans lifted their heads from their cards and, seeing an officer, struggled to stand.

“At ease, soldiers,” I said, too late. Once on their way to attention, they inevitably finished.

As always, Francis was eating some delicacy he wanted to try before he died. Every meal was his last meal, and today the air smelled of clove, garam masala, and chilies. The Styrofoam container rested on the body of another patient over whom they played.

Sundarshan's blue eyes lowered to my chest and I shook my head.

“At ease doesn't mean stare at my tits.”

He chortled. “Give us a moment here, you should socialize a bit, eh?”

“Halfway dead and still looking for action,” Arthur said.

I paused on my way through, light-headed with hunger. I dialed the pilot and confirmed the chopper wouldn't be hot for a few more minutes.

“All right, if you don't mind sharing.” I picked up a piece of Francis's lamb and realized how hungry I was.

“No such thing as half-dead,” Francis stated after finishing a bite. “You're either one or the other, no in-between.”

“Remember Schrödinger's cat,” Arthur replied.

“Whattdya call Gupta?” Sundarshan asked, pointing at the body they played on and taking a good look at everyone else's cards while he was at it. “Gupta went comatose three nights ago and life support can keep him alive indefinitely.”

Sikh. There weren't many of them in the Army at present; beards and turbans hadn't been allowed for decades. I could see why the Terminals wanted him.

“Gupta's already dead,” Francis replied quietly as if Gupta's specter might hear.

“And yet he lives,” I said.

“If you ask me, they're holding him back,” Arthur said quietly. Morph had said he was a sound resource for religious issues. “Sikhs believe in reincarnation, so what is life support except prison, or slavery?”

“He's in the box, like the cat,” Francis mused. “Simultaneously dead and alive.”

I hadn't been around Arthur long enough to know for certain, but the look in his eyes appeared hard and determined.

“What is it you wanted, Sundarshan?” I asked. Curry burned in my stomach.

He looked up from his cards. “Now that you've gone over to the other side, Colonel, I have a bone to pick with your unit and it's not just that Attila cheats at cards and steals all our money. I can handle that,” Sundarshan said. “But if you don't find me a mission, I will die without leaving this base.”

I wondered how much they knew and ate another piece of lamb, wishing Francis had ordered some yoghurt or naan to cool the building heat in my mouth.

“No one entering through that door comes back out, not unless it's in a body bag, or as one of you people,” Sundarshan added.

“You worried about your samsara?” I asked, trying out a new word Attila had taught me.

“What do you know of rebirth?” Sundarshan challenged.

“Only that it doesn't happen,” I said.

“We Hindus believe that our souls are like monkey children. We can be carried along by our mothers, but we must hold on tight to travel with them. You Christians are like kittens, trusting in your mother to carry you wherever you need to go.”

“I'm an atheist,” I said. “I don't believe in any of this.” I was about to say something more, but cut myself off. I'd never had fierce beliefs either way, not publicly in any case, and I was out of my depth. “Keep your hands off the nurses, Sundarshan,” I ordered.

He winked. “Saving myself for someone special, Colonel.”

“Hold on there, sweetpea,” Francis said, eyeing me suspiciously. “For those of us about to die this is an important topic.”

“Sweetpea?” I glared at him harshly enough that he forgot his
I'm-dying-anyways-so-who-gives-a-fuck
attitude and had the decency to blush.

“Excuse me, ma'am, but something tells me you've got a question.”

I looked down at Gupta, whom we were, quite possibly, torturing on the basis that there was an afterlife of some sort. In a minute I'd be on my way to a location a dead guy coughed up. I qualified as a need-to-know.

“Is it possible that an afterlife exists solely because people believe in it?” I asked.

Sundarshan sniggered, but Francis did not. He rubbed at his grizzly chin. “Well, everything after death would be an illusion then.”

“But wouldn't some energy need to persist for the illusion to be sustained?” Arthur asked.

“I suppose, but what I mean is that the illusion would be personalized and not the construct of communal belief.” Francis flipped the lid on a Styrofoam takeout tray and paused in the discussion, staring longingly at another mound of lamb. Finally he looked back to me. “A killer could condemn himself to hell if he believed in it, but it would be whatever version of hell he believed in.”

“What if he didn't?” I asked. “What if he believed he was righteous while doing his evil?”

“Exactly my point.” He chewed and then continued. “Wouldn't be the first time a killer got off scot-free.”

“But then the people you met in heaven would be illusions too, right?” I added and checked my watch.

“How's that?”

“Well, say you needed information from someone and you asked them in hell and they told you; the answers would be all made-up.”

“Subconscious memories, maybe. Jungian collective unconscious, perhaps. But you're talking crazy.”

“I know … sorry to disturb your game.” I left, feeling their surprise at my abrupt change in manner. I would know soon enough if Charlie's information were good or not.

“Be sure to tell me what it's like when you get to hell, eh?” Sundarshan said to Francis.

“You'll be first if I've a say in it,” Francis countered.

“By the look of her, she might beat us to the punch.”

“Damn shame.”

I strode through the lounge and into the hall of hospital rooms, leaving their banter behind. I crossed the palliative unit, where in each of the ten rooms were four beds, most filled with a skeletal form. It smelled of cleanser, and the only sounds were whispers, gurgles and the pump of ventilators. A nurse paused in a doorway and stared as I passed. He wore a nametag with his photo on it. His face was wan under the fluorescent lights, but he sported a neck as thick as any soldier I'd known.

Due to the high level of security required by the Terminals, the unit abutted the locked psychiatric wing. I hit the stairwell at a jog and took the three flights of stairs too quickly, needing to draw long breaths with my head between my knees at the top.

I kicked open the door to the flash of landing lights. The hospital had two helicopters. A black Astar used by the Terminals and an S-76 Sikorsky MEDEVAC currently out on mission. The smaller Astar idled, three blades unmoving, but as I punched through the exit and light spilled on to the landing pad, the engine whined to a shrill pitch and rotors began to turn slowly. They accelerated until my ears beat with the noise. I covered them with the palms of my hands and, instinctively hunching, ran for the open cockpit. The co-pilot seat of the helicopter was missing, replaced by a gurney. I settled into one of the three rear seats amidst drapes of tubing and shut the door, muffling the noise.

Lights strobed over the tarmac as the helicopter lifted. I managed to slide a headset over my ears, easing the unit carefully over the still tender and itchy burns.

“Pat,” I greeted the pilot, who gave a quick salute as he navigated the skyscrapers and headed west.

“Attila called the location in, sir. Two hour flying time.” Pat indicated the gurney. “If I may be so bold … you could get some sleep.”

“Do I look that bad?” I asked.

“Worse.”

I ran a hand through my hair and my fingers faced a little too much resistance. It had been days since I'd washed it, and I'd managed to snag no more than three hours sleep a night unless I counted passing out. But I hadn't slept well in a month, not without a pharmacy of pills. I was running on fumes, and when I shut my eyes my mind swam. Little remained that I could do, and we were on our way. I slumped onto the gurney, ignored the knowing smile of the pilot, and tried to sleep. An image of Gupta strapped to a hospital bed, feet sticking out the end of the bed sheet, came to me. His eyes were open and he stared through the ceiling.

“You abuse my soul,” he said.

And then I woke with the change in engine noise, and with the distant horizon threatening a gray dawn.

“I'll need to refuel,” Pat said as I eased onto an elbow and rubbed sleep from my eyes.

It took a moment to remember where I was. I'd gone so deep into sleep that I wasn't even certain I could call it that. A vision perhaps, but not rest, certainly not rest. My burn always itched more upon waking, and I noted the smear of fluid I left on the gurney sheet. I was tired of oozing. There were ointments and creams I was supposed to be applying to the burn, but that shit was for someone who wanted to clean up after the party. I swallowed hard and nodded at Pat.

“FBI's at the target,” he said. “Kept your headset turned off.”

I flushed, about to take him to task for not letting me do my job, and then sighed. “Thanks, I needed the sleep.”

Below, police cars collected to surround one half of a large warehouse, which abutted a second smaller warehouse. Around the perimeter were long dark shapes and great rolls that reflected dully with each flash of the helicopter lights.

“It's a steel mill—gone under in the economy.”

It made sense; Charlie had described an abandoned double warehouse with a large concrete basin at the back. But looking down, I saw more. Dead jobs, broken families, frozen machines—only bones remained. I pointed to a bare area before the mill and in the full shine of police headlights.