Agents Pussnado and Cocksman were standing there, looking annoyed. John had expected a hundred of those black cloaks to come flying out from various doors to wipe out Ted’s two-man crew, but the building seemed to have emptied. For a moment, John was amused by the thought of them just giving up on their field office at the first sign of trouble, then it occurred to him that NON may very well have given an evacuation order for all of their staff in the facility. Hell, maybe the entire planet. John imagined all of them fleeing to some other dimension, marking this one down as a loss.
Cocksman shifted his weight on his cane and said, “Mr. Knoll, I understand what you think you’re doing, but you need to—”
Ted shot the man in the forehead, spraying blood and brain matter on his partner’s blazer.
Amy gasped.
The man slumped to the ground and Ted said to the female agent, “Lie flat on the floor, put your hands behind your head. You and I are going to have a conversation.”
She obeyed. Ted took her gun from under her jacket and kicked it across the floor. He then slung his assault rifle behind his back and pulled out a black, military-issue knife.
Dave said, “Ted, we should get outta here. Whatever you’re about to do, it’s not worth—”
Ted slapped Dave across the face with his dick, proverbially, via a stern facial expression. To the woman on the floor, he said, “Do you know what I did in Iraq?”
“I do.”
“Say it.”
“You were an interrogator. Among other things.”
“Huh. Not many people got access to those records. How did I know you people would? Point is, I know how to spot a lie. And I got a short, short fuse for liars. You read about that, too, didn’t you? Even though it was kept quiet, that whole incident.”
“I am aware of your … issues.”
Ted nodded. “Good. You know what it’s like, being in a war zone?”
“Mr. Knoll, I can help y—”
“It’s like wakin’ up from a dream. I don’t mean comin’ back home is like that, I mean the war, being in the suck, it’s like wakin’ up. See, because that’s when you figure out your old life—the barbecues and Monday Night Football and trips to Disneyland—that shit was the dream and this is real. Iraq was fucked and getting it unfucked meant killing a certain number of people and if it didn’t get unfucked then they would kill a certain number of us and the future of the world would all depend on who killed who. Simple as that. Same as there’s no woolly mammoths or saber-toothed tigers no more, same as how we’re all fancy monkeys instead of smart dinosaurs. And aaaall that other bullshit, the steak dinners and Christmas mornings and beer commercials, it’s all a dream we’re havin’, something to pass the time until somebody comes and wakes us up to the real world, where either you’re gonna die, or you’re gonna make somebody else die, so you can pass on your way of life to your kids. I’m sayin’ all of this because I think part of what you’re depending on here is me being unwilling to do what I need to do in order to find out what I need to know. So I’m letting you know, from one awake person to another, that the sight of your tears and the sound of your screams won’t melt my heart.”
She said, “Duly noted.”
“Knowing that I can spot a liar, even one with her face pressed to the floor, I ask you—were you, or were you not, about to kill my daughter?”
“We were not about to kill your daughter.”
This, John noted, was 100 percent true. Ted seemed to recognize that fact.
Amy said, “Mr. Knoll, we can actually explain—”
He ignored her, continuing his interrogation. “Do you, or do you not, know where to find the thing that’s taking the children? The Batmantis?”
Pussnado hesitated, then chose her words carefully. “We believe we know where to find the creature that is behind all of this, yes. We believe we know how to kill it.”
Also true.
“Why did you take Maggie?”
Again, she chose her words carefully. “You are aware, Mr. Knoll, that the enemy is a shape-shifter—a being that has perfected camouflage. Examining Maggie was the only reasonable course of action, and there was no way to convey this without alarming her mother.”
Ted stared, trying not to show any change in expression. He swallowed. “And?”
“We found that Maggie had not been replaced by a doppelganger.”
Again, technically true.
Ted nodded. “See? That wasn’t so hard. So, how do we kill it? The thing that’s behind all this?”
“We just finished a device. It’s in the back, in the armory. Take it to the creature’s nest—those three know where it is—and set it off. And when I use the word ‘nest,’ I want you to understand that this nest contains larvae. That is, this creature is about to multiply. At any moment.”
Ted said, “Outstanding. You’re going to take us to the armory.”
He handed John a heavy white plastic zip tie and said, “Bind her hands behind her back, and lift her to her feet.”
John had no idea if the agent was planning an ambush here or if the device she spoke of was even real. He could read the same doubt on Dave’s face. Amy, on the other hand, was just staring at the dead man on the floor. The look on her face said something different:
It’s all falling apart.
Blood-splattered NON agent Josaline Pussnado led them past the cells, through the STAFF ONLY door and through another enormous steel door that she apparently opened with her mind. Inside, among five hundred objects that looked like spare parts for Satan’s robot army, was a ribbed stainless steel box the size of a steamer trunk.
Pussnado said, “It’s inside. Spherical casing, explosively formed penetrators all around the outer shell, at the moment of detonation it will throw waves of molten metal over a hundred yard radius—thermite and sulfur. No remote detonator, you’ve got three minutes on the fuse.”
She nodded to John to open the case, making him wonder if it was booby-trapped. John considered making her open it, but he supposed that would mean untying her hands and for all they knew, the box was full of weird guns she’d whip out at them. John looked for a latch, but found none—there was just a hole at the front of the lid, about big enough to get two fingers into.
The agent said, “You need a special tool to open it. On the lid you’ll see a hole about two inches wide. It leads to a shaft about eight inches deep. You need to insert a rigid object to depress the latch.”
John said, “Don’t worry, I have just the thing …
Me
“Here,” I said, “we’ll use this broomstick I found.”
I unlatched the lid and inside was the bomb—a flat black sphere the size of a basketball, a thick foot-long fuse sticking out of the top. Along the front in white letters was stamped the word BOMB.
Ted yelled for his army buddy, who came and scooped up the device, then jogged off with it.
Ted pointed his gun at Tasker and said, “One last question. If I leave you here, can you guarantee that neither you or your people will come after Maggie?”
She paused, but not out of fear. Steeling her resolve.
“Mr. Knoll, I can guarantee that we will come after her. I’m sorry, but we don’t have a cho—”
He shot her right in the heart.
27. THIS WOMB OF MINE
Outside the front door was waiting a camouflage pickup truck, Ted’s army buddy at the wheel. Ted jogged toward it, making like he was going to leave without saying a word.
John said, “Wait! The woman who was driving your car—who is that? What’s her deal? Or, just, what’s the deal in general?”
“I hope you don’t get offended, buddy, but communication within your chain of command is shit. Joy found me right after I left the cannery, said you sent her. Said Maggie was gonna get taken to this facility and that she had a way into the guard room. Acted like you people had been settin’ it up for a while.” He climbed into the pickup and nodded back toward the bed. “I’ve got the
asses.”
In the bed of the truck were the boxes of silicone butts that had been in my apartment.
I said, “Uh, good.”
“Where’s the nest?”
“The what?”
“The nest of the thing. The Batmantis.”
“Oh. Right. Tell you what, I’ll ride with you, I can show you. Speaking of which, where is, uh, Joy taking your daughter?”
“They’re on the way to meet Marconi at the Walmart. Joy said she’d be safe with him.”
“Oh. Yes. Right. Good.”
I felt a pair of small moons roll off my shoulders.
Marconi will know what to do. And maybe we don’t even need to be there to see it.
If, that is, Maggie doesn’t hijack his brain.
Of course, we had no guarantee Joy was actually taking her there, or that she wasn’t in cahoots with the thing in the mine. Or that Maggie wouldn’t hatch on the way.
The pickup had a back seat; I climbed in and John and Amy ran off toward the Jeep. Ted nodded to the man in the passenger seat—the guy was holding the bomb in his lap like he was bringing home a watermelon from the supermarket—and said, “This here is Philip, everybody calls him Shitbeard.”
“Good to meet you.” He did not have a beard. “We’re going to the pond at Mine’s Eye. It’s where we found Maggie. You’re going to turn up here at the—”
“I know where Mine’s Eye is. Been out there before.”
“You have? When—”
My phone rang. It was Marconi.
I answered, “Yes, Doctor.”
“Mr. Wong, I have received a very frightened little girl, her panicked mother, and a Korean woman who insisted I call you right away.”
“Sure. The young girl and her mother are”—I glanced at Ted—“uh, in a similar situation to Mikey. The Korean woman is adult film star Joy Park, you’re surely familiar with her work. Make sure Maggie gets, uh, treatment. Immediately.”
“Treatment?”
“Yes, we were able to treat Mikey, he’s all good now.”
“He is? In what way?”
“Right, right, I’m in the car with Maggie’s father right now. “
Hesitation.
“I see. Loretta Knoll is here in the room with me, in fact.”
“Remember how Amy and I proposed two possible options? They went with my suggestion, not hers. It worked.”
“I see. Our friends discovered a method, I take it?”
“Yes. You know what, call John, he can fill you in. There’s something in the trunk of Joy’s vehicle, it will require some explaining. Quite a bit, in fact.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, I just want to be clear that you definitely shouldn’t keep her waiting. In a situation like this, every second counts.”
“Are you and Mr. Knoll heading my way?”
“No. We’re on our way to Mine’s Eye. We’re going to finish this.”
Amy
Night had fallen by the time they arrived at Mine’s Eye. The pond had turned into a popular gathering spot; motorcycles were parked along the hilltops and people were prowling around the cabins and the church, searching for the supposedly missing kids. Amy figured there were two ways to look at it: it was bad news that so many people were in contamination range of what the Millibutt was presumably about to do, but it was good news that they were still searching—it meant the kids hadn’t been “found” yet. John parked a ways away from the church—its lot was full—and she wondered how they were going to deal with all the bystanders.
Ted, David, and Ted’s friend jumped out of their truck and Ted pulled out a pair of futuristic binoculars—Amy figured they were night vision—to scope out the pond and the mouth of the collapsed mine, looking for a giant mantis bat monster.
David walked up, pulled her and John out of earshot and muttered, “You talk to Marconi?”
“Yeah.”
“And just to be clear, that is Joy Park, right? We heard people call her that.”
“It appears so?”
Amy said, “Remind me who Joy Park is, again?”
David said, “A porn star we saw on the Internet who we don’t know and who doesn’t live anywhere near here.”
Amy said, “Is that who was living at John’s place?”
John scrunched up his face in thought. “Maybe?”
David said, “I don’t … I mean, is she real? If so, do we even know where she’s from? Or how she could get here? Like, does she actually live in Korea? Does she work for the Millibutt? Is she going to—”
John nudged him to stop talking. Ted was approaching.
David said to him, “See anything down there?”
“No sign of the target, but there’s a gaggle-fuck of bikers wanderin’ around, in the way.”
Amy said, “Do you see any of the missing kids?”
Ted shook his head.
John asked for the binoculars and studied the area below. He gave a start, as if he saw something, but quickly stifled his reaction.
He feigned disinterest and said, “I can’t make out anything. Let’s go down,” in a way that made it clear to Amy that he had seen something, but for some reason couldn’t let Ted in on it. She supposed she’d have to be surprised right alongside him.
So, they headed down the winding path, hunched over in their jackets while cold raindrops popped on their shoulders. Ted and his partner were going to pack up the bomb and bring it down after them—they had needed to get it inside something, as in its present state Amy agreed that it was fairly recognizable as a bomb. On the way down, they passed four guys in biker gear heading up the other way, looking like exhausted, tensed-up coils of rage. Near the bottom was a pair of leather-clad women comforting a third, who was convulsing with sobs.
An entire community, having lost their young. Or so they thought.
If it had been a clearer day and the pool had had time to settle to its usual dazzling shades of blue and green, Amy would have seen right away. But the rain and the gloom meant it wasn’t until they were on the shore that she saw him.
A little boy, lying facedown in the water.
She knew what it was. Of course she knew.
And, still, she ran into the pond, after the drowned or drowning child. Stomping through the chilled water, tossing aside her raincoat. She couldn’t swim. She didn’t care.
David screamed and ran after her. He roughly put an arm around her chest and yanked her back.
“NO! AMY!”
He dragged her back out of the water, frantic, and she saw John looking terrified, keeping his distance on the bank. Not even risking putting a toe into the water, not even to help her and David. That’s how scared he was of what he was seeing in there, what his eyes saw instead of the endangered boy.
John yelled to her, “What do you see?”
She tried to breathe. “A boy,” she gasped. He had black hair, a dark complexion. “We have to get him out of there! We’ll work out what’s happening later but we have to get him out, he’s face-down in the water. He can’t breathe, David.”
John said, “No. Amy. Trust us.”
She said, “What do you see?”
David said, “A mouth.”
“The boy looks like a mouth? How?”
“No. The whole pond. It’s a mouth. The boy, what you’re seeing as the boy, it’s just a lure. Nothing more.”
Amy watched as a few tiny bubbles floated up from the child’s submerged face.
He’s still alive.
Amy said, “What if I want to risk it? If I die trying to save a kid then maybe that’s how I want to go. You see one thing, I see another.”
David said, “Amy, I can’t make this any clearer—that is the point of the trap. Of all this. You’re being played.”
“But it’s my choi—”
At that moment, a man sprinted past them, apparently having run down the hill while they were arguing. It was, of course, Ted.
He flung aside his jacket, ripped off his sh
irt, and dove into the water.
John and David both yelled warnings at him, but even if he could hear them, he had no reason to listen. Even if they could convince Ted the boy was bait, that wouldn’t justify letting him drown. Why couldn’t they see that?
Then came the sound of more footsteps stomping toward them from behind—three of the bikers, shouting for everyone to follow, to call an ambulance.
Ted dragged the boy out of the water and started giving him mouth-to-mouth. David’s eyes went wide, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
The boy sputtered and sucked in breath and came to life. Ted almost wept with joy. So did Amy.
John muttered to David, “Call Marconi.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, the police had pushed most of the civilians back up the hill. The three of them were in front of the church. Nearby, a Hispanic man and woman were babbling and crying and hugging the rescued boy, who sat draped with a blanket on the back bumper of an ambulance. The father was wearing a soaked denim vest with biker patches on the back; he and a street cop were alternately comforting the child and peppering him with questions.
David kept dialing his phone, over and over—trying to get Dr. Marconi. He’d never gotten an answer and was growing more alarmed by the second.
John said, “Look, even if the Maggie situation has gone south, it hasn’t gone too south or else we wouldn’t still be sitting here, right? Maybe he’s just, uh, busy with it.”
From behind them came a voice, saying, “Looks like you geniuses are three for three on finding these kids. How about that.”
It was Detective Bowman.
John said, “Got almost three hundred bucks to show for it. Is the kid talking?”
“He is.”
David said, “Is he saying a bunch of weird, creepy nonsense?”
“No, that’s Spanish he’s speaking. It’s a foreign language, you see.”
“What did he say? Did he say how he wound up in the pond?”
“He said he swam out.”
“Out … to the pond? From where?”
“From inside the mine, through a tunnel, full of water. He said he was taken inside a ‘cave,’ along with the others. He said all of them are in there, nine other kids. Said it was getting hard to breathe, that they’re running out of air. Said he got desperate and dove down into a little pool on the floor of the mine and this is where he popped out.”