Fringe - the Zodiac Paradox (2 page)

He did as he was ordered, but cheated his step toward the overlook. There was a low log rail edging the parking area, then a thirty-foot drop down an eroding bank to the sand dunes and sawgrass of the small public beach below.

The two undercover cops started shouldering out of the car. For a split second, their attentions were divided. Their guns lost their aim in the shuffle.

Allan jumped.

A lesser man, a weaker man, might have broken his leg falling down that cliff. Or maybe even his neck.

Allan was not a lesser man.

He was in peak physical condition. Strong, powerful, and at the top of his game. Even in his altered state, he maintained perfect balance and presence of mind. As heavy as he was, he could be as graceful as a cat when he needed to be.

The slope wasn’t entirely vertical—more like an eighty-five percent grade, he judged. He went down facing inward, hands crossed in front of his eyes and the steel toe tips of his combat boots digging into the crumbly clay to slow his descent. Still, it was a hard landing, buckling his knees and jarring his brain, and he crouched, gasping in the sawgrass for precious seconds.

His heart pounded unnaturally loud in his ears, Mandelbrot patterns spiraling in the corners of his eyes.

Not very catlike at all,
he thought with irritation.

Above him, he could hear the pigs swearing. The dust kicked up by their frantic feet drifted out over the edge of the drop, transformed into glowing white ectoplasm lit by the dirigible’s searchlight. Then a bewigged head peered over the edge, silhouetted in the luminous cloud.

“Where the hell is he?” one gruff voice called.

“I can’t see a damn thing down there!” the other replied.

Just as Allan had planned. The blinding glare of the searchlight had turned the shadow of the cliff into impenetrable blackness. Within it, he was invisible.

“Come on, Charlie,” the first pig said to the other. “We gotta find a way down.”

Allan rose to his feet as the cop thudded off to the left, heading for the curving railroad-tie stair that led from the overlook to the beach. His knees sent spinning purple and red pinwheels of glowing pain into the night, lighting him up. He froze, suddenly certain that the police would be able to see his every step.

Keep it together. It’s just the acid. They can’t see you.
He was the only one who could see the pain.

He limped to the right, hugging the base of the embankment and heading for cover of the pinewoods on the south edge of the beach. Before he got halfway there, the
basso profundo
rumble of the dirigible’s engines fired up, sending throbbing black pulses through his brain. The police blimp was on the move, edging out over the beach. His sheltering shadow began to narrow.

Then there was no more shadow except for the lurching black shape directly below him. The white beam of light smashed down on his shoulders with the weight of a waterfall, slowing him, trying to crush him to his knees.

“Stop or we’ll shoot!” a distant voice called, faint and nearly lost under the deep hum of the dirigible’s engine.

Allan glanced back the way he had come. The cops had reached the beach and were running toward him, guns out, kicking up the sand with their piggy cloven feet.

There was a loud
crack
, then another. He heard something thump into the sand close to his left.

He picked up his pace, fighting through the pain in his battered knees.

* * *

“There’s something special about this place,” Walter said. “Ever since I was a boy, I always felt this lake was... for lack of a better word,
magical.
That’s why I brought you here, Belly. I wanted you to feel it, too.”

“I...” Bell said, his forehead creasing. “I do. I feel it.”

Walter had been a loner as a kid, singled out as weird and uncool, but not unhappy with his isolation. Social interactions always left him feeling anxious and awkward. He’d never really understood the point of friendship as defined by books and movies, and preferred to spend time alone in the woods or the library. Or here, at Reiden Lake, where his Uncle Henry had a cabin.

When he’d first met Bell, they’d clicked instantly, bonded by their love of organic chemistry, and of chess. But while Walter was grateful for the company, and enjoyed having someone with whom to share his more controversial theories on the use of consciousness-expanding drugs, he never felt like he really understood William.

Bell was charming. He knew what to say to girls and, more importantly, what
not
to say. He knew which tie would go with which shirt. He had a cool car and never got lost. He was Walter’s only real friend, but he still seemed kind of like an alien, or a member of a different species.

Until that night.

That night, with their latest psychotropic formula coursing through their brains, Walter felt closer to Bell than he’d ever felt to anyone. Siamese twin close. The Hollywood cliché—of army buddies so tight they would take bullets for each other—suddenly made perfect sense to Walter.

Not only did Walter feel like he finally, truly understood his friend, but in that moment, he also felt completely understood by Bell. A feeling so monumental and unprecedented that it almost brought him to tears. Never once in his twenty-two years of life had he ever felt that level of understanding from another human being.

Not from family. Not from a woman. Not ever.

It was as if their skulls had become transparent, allowing the secret patterns of their thought processes to sync up in a mirrored burst of neurological fireworks. He looked at Bell, and heard that deep, distinctive voice even though his lips weren’t moving, except for the slightest hint of a Mona Lisa smile.

Unlike the previous blend, this formula seems to induce a profound empathy, bordering on telepathic
.

Still clinging to the rigid guide rails of scientific method, even at the height of his trip, he forced himself to double-check his own slippery perception.

“What did you say?” he asked Bell.

“I said,” Bell replied, his lips moving normally, “That unlike the previous blend, this formula seems to induce a profound empathy...” But he didn’t finish his sentence. Instead he stared toward the lake, a look of awestruck wonder washing over his face.

* * *

Another bullet cracked off of a nearby rock.

“Ten more bodies,” Allan called out over his shoulder. “Ten more victims. Kill me now and you’ll never find them! Think of their families, never knowing what has become of their loved ones!”

It was a lie, of course. Allan
never
hid his work. But the police were fools, and easily manipulated.

“Sir?”

The voice was questioning, its owner desperate to be told what to do by someone in a position of authority. Hopeless without orders, like they all were.

“Awaiting orders, sir.” Another voice, another pig, equally flummoxed. Just like Allan knew they would be.

Pathetic.

“Hold your fire!” This new voice stronger, more cocksure. The boss pig. “Take him alive!”

And then there he was—a fat, pig-snouted silhouette, squealing orders from the cliff top, police lights edging everything with red and blue. Reinforcements had arrived. The bait had been taken.

With the police bullets held momentarily in check, Allan took advantage and broke for the pines at a dead run, keeping to the hard-packed sand and shale near the cliff. Behind him, the cops floundered in the loose sand of the beach, their sty-mates stumbling and squealing as they came stampeding down the steep embankment as if herded by predators.

In twenty strides Allan was under the sheltering shadows of the trees, pushing his way through the scratchy undergrowth. Above, the searchlight shattered into a thousand shining spears stabbing through the interlaced pine boughs like the shafts of light in a religious painting, shining down on the messiah.

He laughed softly to himself. While he was unquestionably superior—even God-like, in his own way—he certainly wasn’t on this earth to save anyone. Quite the opposite, in fact.

More like an Angel of Death.

Now that he was out of their line of sight it would be easy to evade the bumbling porkers and return safely home. By the time he reached the southern edge of the woods and returned to his hidden car, he would be nothing but a ghost, vanished into thin air, just like he always did. Laughing and taunting the flat-footed swine from the safety of the ether.

Behind him he heard his pursuers crashing through the undergrowth like the fat hulking beasts they were. But then there came a new volley of animal sounds, agitated barking, growling and baying that crackled like forks of blue lightning across his vision.

He looked back. Hunched and snouty pig shadows lumbered through the trees behind him, swinging flashlights in hoofed hands as they snorted and oinked to one another in their sub-human speech. But running ahead of them was an entirely different pack of animals. Predators, not prey. Allan could see little but the menacing, low-slung shadows with gaping, slathering maws flashing vicious teeth and lolling tongues. But he knew what they were, and that knowledge was like ice water in his belly.

Dogs.
He hadn’t counted on dogs.

Humans were abysmally stupid, soft, pampered and useless, their ancient instincts atrophied by modern convenience. But hounds, they’d never strayed far from their natural state as hunters, gleefully free from the limitations of morality and civilization. They posed a genuine threat, ugly and amplified to nightmarish proportions by the acid surging though his synapses, and for a terrible moment, Allan found himself nearly paralyzed with fear.

Must think.

Yes, he needed to rely on his superior mental acumen. He might not be strong enough to single-handedly overpower a pack of hunting dogs, but he could easily out-think them.

Water. That was the answer. He could wade into the lake to throw them off the scent.

So he leapt over the mossy hulk of a fallen tree and veered left, heading for the shoreline. The trees and undergrowth grew denser and he had to force his way through. Pine branches and blackberry vines clutched at him like grasping, clawing hands, leaving tingling patterns of sensation on his body that glistened in the corner of his eyes like snail trails.

The trees seemed to be twisting and shifting to block him, deliberately getting in his way, then opening up again behind to let the howling hell hounds through. All of nature was working against him, jealous of his abilities.

Ahead, through the pulsing tree trunks, he saw the glimmer of water.

Almost there.

* * *

Without thinking, Walter turned to see what his hallucinating friend was staring at, expecting to see nothing, or some figment of his own chemically enhanced mind.

What he saw was a small slit in the air above the surface of the lake, approximately six feet from where they sat. About twelve inches long, it pulsed with a strange, shimmering glow around the edges. As he watched, the slit elongated and bulged slowly outward, until it was first the size of a child, and then the size of a tall man. It gaped open, disturbingly wound-like, and dark water began to flow through it like blood, creating strange spiral currents in the surface of the lake.

This wasn’t unprecedented. He’d seen glimpses of these kind of glowing “wounds” during past experiments. But this time he felt sure that Bell could see it, too.

“Tell me what you see, Belly,” he said, whispering without knowing why.

“An opening,” Bell said, staring transfixed at the shimmering slit. “Like a kind of... gateway.”

“Yes,” Walter said. “Yes, that’s it exactly.” He gripped Bell’s arm. “Do you realize what this means? Our minds have become perfectly synchronized! We are sharing the exact same vision. It’s incredible!”

“Incredible,” Bell repeated, although it was difficult for Walter to know if he had actually said that out loud, or just thought it.

Bell rose to his feet and waded into the lake, utterly unmindful of his designer trousers and expensive shoes. Walter never let go of his friend’s arm, wading in beside him without a moment’s hesitation. He barely noticed the chilly water and thick, clinging mud sucking at his own shoes.

“But if it’s a gateway,” Bell whispered. “What’s on the other side?”

Allan battled his way through the last rank of trees then caught himself on the edge of the lake, ready to slip silently into the water. But the bank was undercut. It gave way beneath him and he splashed awkwardly into the water in a shower of dirt and rotten leaves.

The dogs bayed louder, frenzied by his closeness.

He cursed. Betrayed again by spiteful nature. Finding his balance, he started right, hunching into the undercut, knee deep in water with his ankles tearing clinging reeds up from the mud with every step.

There was a boat landing just around the next point—nothing more than a dirt road that went into the lake so weekend sailors could back their boat hitches into the water. There were always a few rowboats and canoes tied off or turned upside down and stored to either side of it. With his strength, they would never be able to catch him if he took one.

Behind him, the dogs reached the bank, snuffling and milling around, reluctant to dive in. The squeals and grunts of their pig masters echoed their confusion, and the piercing beams of their flashlights darted everywhere. Except in his direction.

He laughed and, as silently as he could manage, headed for the closest canoe, only a few yards away. It was floating in the high tide, its tether submerged under the lapping waves. He squatted down in the cold water and reached for the knot, fingers groping blind in the weeds and mud until he found it. The wet rope was swollen, the knot slick and tight. Methodically, he went to work, pulling and teasing it apart.

As he did so, a dancing light on the surface of the water around the tether was mesmerizing. It carved swirling arabesque calligraphies into his retina, a cursive cuneiform that seemed almost decipherable, if only he could concentrate on it long enough. It was trying to tell him something—a story of other worlds, of pathways between realities, of an endless, ever-repeating, never-repeating pattern of possibilities. He thought he heard a clear deep voice, speaking directly into the vibrating cortex of his tripping mind.