Eden Plague - Latest Edition (2 page)

Cursing himself for not retrieving his own shotgun from his bedroom, Daniel realized he couldn’t expect to penetrate two thicknesses of wall at the corner and do any damage with a pistol. And he wasn’t stepping in front of that door.

But local knowledge is always a huge advantage, and this was his own house. He opened the door to his left into the unfinished section of the basement and slid in silently, pushing the door almost shut behind. Now, immediately to his right, was a single thickness of drywall behind two-by-four studs. No insulation, and on the other side, that bathroom and the shooter.

From point-blank range he unloaded seven rounds through the wall, walking them diagonally left to right and slanting from low to high, knee to chest level. The expanding loads punched through the thin gypsum, leaving thumb-sized holes as they went, and he heard a grunt and the thud of a body falling.

The serpent cheered.

He was moving already, taking cover to his left behind the water heater, and finished firing off the magazine into the tiny bathroom at about calf level.

He reloaded. Waited.

No sounds, but he smelled blood and worse. That was a good sign, in this case. It usually meant death.

The serpent rejoiced.

He glided silently up to look through one of the holes in the drywall. Bright red splash, a jumble of flesh and dark clothing, the stink. He stood back up, weapon held in close to his sternum, pointed forty-five degrees down, still in a shooter’s grip.
None of that aiming skyward Hollywood crap you see on TV.

He moved carefully back through the door, took his left hand off the weapon and pushed at the shattered bathroom door. The shooter’s body blocked it, and as Daniel was pretty sure the man was down and out, he moved to brace himself to shove it open when he heard something behind him.

Clap. Clap.

The serpent coiled, wary.

A slow, sarcastic clap.

Crap
.

Hoping the clapping meant the source held nothing in his hands, Daniel didn’t do anything sudden. He turned around smoothly, weapon still ready but pointed low.

He saw a
suit
. Mid twenties, about five ten, dark hair cut short, straight and expensive, the five-o’clock shadow curse of the swarthy on his face and chin. Daniel thought he looked like Agency.
You know,
he thought,
OGA, the Other Government Agency that everyone likes to talk about in those breathless hushed tones, like they think it’s so cool, like they’re in love with its very existence, they don't even actually use the acronym.
C. I. A
.  He realized it was this man’s cologne he’d smelled, not the dead shooter’s, though that had helped him anyway.

“Hello,
suit
,” Daniel said. “What the f– …what do you want?” He’d promised God to try to curb his vulgarities after all the jams He got him out of, and Daniel was a man that tried to keep his promises. He took a breath. “Why are you in my house, and why did you just make me kill a man?” He hung on to the tension between them, because he could feel the post-kill nausea trying to make itself known, and if he started on that he’d get the shakes and he’d want a drink and he really needed to stay away from that dark hole.

Pharms, he could control.

No, really.

But alcohol was a treacherous sneaky-snaky thing.

“Not a man, but don’t worry about her. She’ll keep.”

Flippant. Cold son of a bitch. The kind that expends people like cartridges, like the one on the floor in there dead.
Then he did a double-take.
She? Dammit, have I just killed a woman? I didn’t have much choice, right? Can’t think about that now. Deal with what’s in front of you.

 “Let’s go upstairs,” the suit said, jauntily.

So they did go up, the intruder first, Daniel’s front sight fixed on his spine, center mass, just out of reach if he suddenly turned and made a grab. They angled right at the top of the stairs, walked through the kitchen, and the suit sat down in the dining room. DJ reached over and pulled the curtains shut, flipped on the light.

The suit took out a silver cigarette case, a matching lighter, and lit one. “Smoke?” He took a deep drag.

“I don’t smoke,” Daniel said automatically.

“Of course you do. You have a display case of Turkish meerschaum pipes right there, and some of them are used. And a humidor with some nice Cohiba. I was tempted to get one.” He gestured toward the case in Daniel’s living room.

“I said I'm not a smoker. Are you a liar?” Daniel asked him.

His eyes widened, baffled by the conversational turn. “No. Not the way you mean.”

“But you’ve lied before?”

“Sure. Most people have.”

“I rest my case.”

He rubbed his eyes, the gesture condescending, like he was dealing with a child. “Okay, I get it,” he sighed theatrically. “Occasional user, no dependencies, right? You quit drinking, quit smoking cigarettes; you’re an exercise junkie now. Nothing but endorphins, meditation, yoga, martial arts, the Quantico Shooting Club, going to church, anything to keep the nightmares and the demons at bay.”

Shows how much he doesn’t know,
Daniel thought,
but that’s good, since it means my little chemical issues are well hidden.

“I’m surprised you don’t have a dog or a cat,” he went on.

“I have a serpent.” Daniel barked laughter, a little too loud, on the edge of control. “And I had a dog. But my ex took him. I didn’t want to separate her dog and mine. But to hell with all that. Start talking.” He sat down, because he was coming down. He really wanted a drink, but he clamped down on that desire.

Daniel rested the gun on the table, still pointed at the other man’s chest, his finger off the trigger but close, very close. The serpent kept trying to wrap around that finger, make him squeeze it.

The suit took another drag, then looked at his cigarette, speculatively.

It occurred to Daniel that the unnamed man had no ashtray, so he got up, took a cereal bowl out of his cupboard and slid it across the dining room table to him. Since he was up anyway, he filled a tall glass with orange juice from the fridge. After violent action, the next best thing to alcohol was sugar. He didn’t get the suit any; he had his smoke.

Daniel sat back down and sipped, feeling the cold sweet run down his insides. It steadied him a bit. He took a deep breath. “Okay, talk.”

The suit smiled, smarmy, superior. “Just like that. The secrets of the universe?”

The serpent coiled. Daniel kicked the suit under the table, hard, somewhere near his left knee.

He convulsed forward, dropping the cigarette and clutching for the pain, and Daniel reached over, put his left hand on the man’s head and mashed his face into the table. With his right he used the magazine extension of the automatic to grind out the burning cigarette. “Now you owe me for a new tablecloth.”

With his weight still on the man’s head, Daniel put the pistol down out of his reach, picked up the still-smoking butt and dropped it in the bowl-ashtray. He scooped up the gun again.

“You can’t play conversation control games with me, you stupid
suit
.” Daniel made that word into an epithet. “I’ve been through every resistance training course, every combat psych and psy-ops and mind-freak exercise, and you are in
my house now
.” He felt violated, and it fueled him and what control he had left drained away like water through a colander of pasta.

The serpent egged him on.

“MY HOUSE!” The snake and the dexedrine seized control, the worm in his hindbrain that he prayed about and tried so hard to keep caged every day since the IED and the brain damage, his nemesis, that God-damned satanic serpent,
forgive me Lord
.
This idiot, this suit, is a child playing with blasting caps and batteries in a toybox full of explosives and he might die, right here, right now, for that ignorance and stupidity.
Daniel was on the edge of a whiteout, and the snake longed for it, longed to throw itself and the body he possessed into that bright hot place where all he had to do was destroy. Annihilate every threat, kill everyone that wasn’t on his side, and
this fool
, the serpent screamed,
IS
NOT
ON
YOUR SIDE.

He wrapped his fingers into the intruder’s hair and dragged him to his feet, moving around the table. Daniel was a hair under six feet, 200 pounds and muscular, but the berserkergang closing in let him shake the smaller man like a rag doll, lifting him onto his toes with one hand. Nose to nose, the muzzle of the XD jammed hard into the man’s solar plexus, Daniel screamed into his face, “I just killed one person, and I
just
.
Might
.
Kill
.
You
.
Too
.
So
.
TALK
!”

Then he threw the man back into the chair almost pushing him over backward, but he caught himself, and Daniel stood over him, shaking. They were both shaking, Daniel with barely-suppressed chemical rage, the cologned man with dawning fear.

Finally afraid. “You can’t kill me,” he said, shuddering.

Wrong thing to say.
Oh, so very, very wrong.

A silent explosion in his head, and the serpent took him, wrapped him up and dragged him under.

Daniel watched his hand move of its own volition, watched himself as he shot the man twice in the chest.

It felt so good.

The serpent writhed in ecstasy.

The man gaped upward, then looked down. Touched the entry wounds. Tried to speak. Slumped and was still.

Crap
.

Elise came conscious wondering what had happened, then knowing but hardly believing it.
This is the guy Jenkins was supposed to recruit?
The softhearted special operator who would help us with a minimum of trouble, who would be grateful, who could be controlled?

Then why do I hurt so damn much?

The first thing that hit her was the smell, blood and body stink mixed with the surreally mundane odors of soap and body gel. A shampoo bottle lay shattered by her arm, its gooey contents a puddle on the shower floor.
Well, might as well make it useful
. She reached over, scooping the stuff onto her hands and then rubbing it into her medium-length auburn hair. Rolling over, she got painfully to her feet.

Her clothes were torn and so was the nylon cloth that covered the heavy Kevlar vest. The bulletproof helmet she had worn showed a couple of scars as well.
Good thing, that saved my life. Eden or not, bullets in the brain tend to be fatal.

Eden
. She laughed to herself.
The one and only, the first. Call me Eve. If they’ll only let me find my Adam. I’d thought it might be Daniel Markis. No chance now.

She reached out, turned on the water in the shower, letting the hot soothing liquid run over her clothed body. It still felt wonderful. She lathered up her hair, then awkwardly used the soap to wash off what she could of the blood and fluids as she waited for Jenkins to make his pitch. 

***

The house was silent as Daniel stood there, and he suddenly felt dizzy, ice cold, drenched in sweat. Numbly he reached over, bumped the thermostat up a couple of degrees, then leaned against the wall, sweating. Listened to the silence. Mostly silence. The serpent still gibbered in his hindbrain. Too many chemicals, he knew. Steroids and painkillers and speed, and they had betrayed him this time.

But he heard something else. A rushing sound, not the forced air of the heating system either. Water. It sounded like the shower in the basement was on. Had a pipe broken? Did one of his rounds damage something?

He reloaded automatically, then retraced his steps back down to the basement.
No way that guy – sorry, that woman  – got up. No way, after the mess I made of her.

The serpent in his head slithered forward again.

He edged around the bottom of the stairs, then glided forward with all the stealth he could muster and slipped back to his position in the unfinished part of the basement, behind the thin wall with its sixteen or so holes. Yes, the shower was running, and something moved within. Several of the rounds had gone right through the tile and now the water was soaking back, drizzling through the holes.

What on God’s green Earth?

He waited, took up a position behind the crack of the door, and waited some more. It took several minutes but finally a figure came out of the shower, out of the bathroom. It looked to him like she had rinsed with her clothes on, to get rid of the blood and filth, but amazingly she was up and walking around. Toweling off. Not fast; she moved haltingly, like an old woman, or a hurt one. She held an exotic-looking weapon by the barrel in one hand, with a Kevlar helmet under the same arm. She had mangled body armor on, too. He could see five or six scars where his rounds had hit the vest and helmet and not penetrated.

So I tagged her, but didn’t kill her after all? But I fired sixteen rounds, and I smelled the stink of the body letting go, which normally only happens at the moment of death. At least some of her legs and arms should be out of commission, but she’s using all of them. One, two, three, four. Yup, all four limbs operating.

Weird.

Daniel stepped out from behind the door while her back was still mostly to him “Freeze, you.”

She dropped the gun and helmet onto his old blue basement rug, held her hands up away from her body. “Don’t shoot, please. It hurts.”

“I bet. Turn around. All the way around, keep turning.”

He inspected her. No visible weapons, and just that vest. Besides that, just torn up slacks and a ragged button-down blouse, with holes and rips in interesting places and still some blood. Angry red wounds on her arms and legs, at least five that he could see. Spreading purple bruises.
Cute, too, about five-six, reddish-brown hair, gorgeous blue eyes, nice curves under all that mess,
he thought.