Ground Zero (The X-Files) (26 page)

Reluctantly, she tapped Kamida’s shoulder, trying to get him to accompany her, but the blind man shook his head.

“Let me stay out here for a while longer,” Ryan Kamida said.

“I will be fine.”

Miriel looked uneasy about leaving him there alone, until Scully stepped forward. “We’ll stay with him for a few minutes, Miriel. You wanted me to talk to him, remember?”

Understanding came to Miriel’s eyes, and she nodded before following Bear Dooley and the seamen into the control blockhouse.

On the beach Kamida dug his scarred fingers 234

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into the sand, smelling the coral and the water and the spray. He tilted his head up to the greenish-black hurricane clouds. He breathed through his mouth and closed his blind eyes as he sat back, clenching his fists and gritting his teeth.

“Mr. Kamida,” Scully said, “Miriel said you might have something to tell us…a terrible story about yourself? She thought we ought to know.”

The blind man turned a scarred face toward her, fixing his unseeing gaze to a point directly between Mulder and Scully.

“You hope to find answers,” he said.

“Do you have any?” Mulder said. “At the moment, we’re not even sure which questions we should be asking.”

“You shouldn’t be asking questions,” Kamida said. “You shouldn’t be here at all. You are innocent bystanders who could become casualties of war.”

Scully said, “Miriel told me that something happened to you, something terrible. Please tell us the story. Is it about how you were blinded and burned?”

His chin twitched downward just a fraction, as if in an unconscious nod. Sitting on the beach with the waves crashing against the reef line out beyond the lagoon, Ryan Kamida spoke with the voice of a ghost in the wind.

“I was born here on Enika—as were all of my people, a small tribe. We lived here…although legends tell us we came from other islands on a long pilgrimage. We found this island and we stayed. It was our place. It was peaceful.”

“But Enika Atoll is uninhabited,” Scully said.

“Yes,” Kamida answered. “Yes, now it is uninhabited—but forty years ago it was our home, when the United States was walking tall, striding across

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the world, proud in its new status as a superpower. You had atomic weapons in your pocket, and you were still flushed with pride over your victory in World War II.

“But your first atomic bombs weren’t big enough, so you had to build fusion bombs, hydrogen bombs, thermonuclear warheads. And in building such bombs you had to test them in places where no one would notice…places such as Enika Atoll, the home of my childhood.”

Scully said, “I know the islanders on Bikini and Eniwetok were displaced to other homelands when the atolls were evacuated for nuclear tests. Is that what happened to your people?”

Kamida shook his head. “The government did not bother with that. I was only a young boy, probably about ten. I have since learned that the name of the test was Sawtooth.

“I had grown up here ‘primitive and uneducated,’ some might say, while others would call it ‘idyllic,’ an existence in paradise with fine weather and a warm climate, with breadfruit, coconuts, taro, and yams growing in abundance, with all the fish and shellfish we could possibly want given to us by the sea.

“I was young—small and wiry and strong. In the reef rocks around my island there were many caves, small outcroppings and hollows that, had they been underwater, would have been the homes of moray eels and octopuses. But aboveground they provided openings for me to worm my body through, to go down into tidepools and mysterious mazes…half-submerged treasure houses where I could find mussels and conch shells and abalone.

“My parents would wait above with my older sisters and my uncles as I wriggled down into the

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reef caves to search for delicacies.” Kamida’s rough face wore a half-smile. “I remember it so clearly—memories are all I’ve been able to see for most of my life.”

A blast of wind curled around the coral uplift that sheltered the blockhouse, and slapped down at them. Scully rocked back to keep her balance; Mulder grasped her shoulder. Ryan Kamida didn’t seem to notice the gust at all.

“We knew the strange Navy ships had been cruising around our island, long metal monstrosities, bristling with spines. The sailors had landed in their white uniforms, but we hid in the jungles, thinking they were invaders from some other island. If they were trying to locate and evacuate the inhabitants of Enika, they did not search very hard. We were afraid of them, but also curious. We didn’t know why they had placed strange machines on our island, unusual structures with amazing blinking substations and other devices. It was magic to us. Evil magic.”

He picked up a fistful of the wet sand, letting it trickle through his scarred fingers.

“I remember that day. Many of my cousins had gone to inspect the device the soldiers had left behind…others watched the destroyers pull away. But I had my day’s work to do. My father insisted that the water level was perfect for me to find special treasures in the caves, and so I crawled deep down into the winding passages, carrying only my small knife and a net in which to store the shells that I found.

“I had secured a large abalone, enough for an entire meal, I thought, and a few other shells. When I crawled back out of the cave, my father waited for me, standing out in the sunlight. I could see him towering above the opening of the cave. I held up

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the net that contained the shells. He bent down to take it from me so that I could climb out of the cave. I looked into his eyes. They were cast into shadow as he leaned toward me….”

Kamida paused. His voice caught.

“And then the sky turned
white
, a burning white, a blaze of heat, so hot and so fast that it wiped everything clean, blasted every molecule of color from the world. The last thing my eyes ever saw was my father’s silhouette, fuzzy around the edges where I could see right through his skin. For the barest fraction of a second, I could clearly make out the skeleton inside his body as the radiation poured through him—until the rest of the shockwave blew him to ashes. And then the light engulfed me as well.”

Scully stared at him, wide-eyed, her hand to her mouth.

“Somehow, I survived,” Kamida continued. “The shockwave was immense, but I tumbled back down into the caves even as the nuclear detonation flattened my island. The water inside the caves boiled and blasted upward like a geyser. My skin was cooked as if I were a roasting pig.

“A long time later I found myself alive and outside of the caves. Much of the reef overhead had been vaporized. I had been spared, though it was no blessing. No blessing at all.

“I felt my way along the hot steaming rock. I found the lagoon, but it was still boiling hot, scalding my legs…which were already too burned to feel any more pain. I walked and waded out to sea, unable to see anything. Still I continued, sloshing farther and farther from the island….

“They say I made it two miles before I was picked up.”

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“Picked up?” Mulder asked. “Who picked you up?”

“Navy ship,” Kamida said. “Sailors, men assigned to observe the Sawtooth test. They didn’t know what to do with me. After their immense technological victory, my survival must have been quite an embarrassment to them.”

Kamida stared deeply into his memories for a moment, his eyes too blind to see the present.

“After I recovered, they placed me in the care of an orphanage in Honolulu. They changed all the records, and I survived. Oh yes, I survived—and in later years I made a name for myself. I became lucky. I was talented in business. I have become a wealthy man over the past forty years.

“You’ll find no record of the Sawtooth nuclear test, or of my people now annihilated, or even of me, the lone survivor of a test the government would prefer to forget.”

“But if there’s no record and you were such a young boy,”

Scully said, “how did you get all this information? How can you remember and be sure of the details?”

Kamida directed his blind gaze at her in a way that so unnerved her, she looked away in embarrassment. His hollow voice sent a shudder down her spine. “Because I have been reminded time and again.”

Mulder leaned closer. “How were you reminded?”

“They told me,” he said. “The spirits of my people. They come and speak to me. They tell me not to forget them or my own past.”

Scully sighed and looked at Mulder, but he ignored her.

“In other words, your people were annihilated in this secret atomic bomb test, and because you’re the only survivor, you can speak to their spirits?”

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Scully stood up, ready to leave the man to his delusions.

“Come on. We should get inside the shelter.”

“Agent Mulder,” Kamida said, though Scully couldn’t remember ever having introduced him. “The atomic flash blinded me in an instant, but it also
boosted
me somehow. My eyes no longer function, but I can see and hear other things. I am linked to the brooding ghosts that remain with me, like afterimages from that blast.”

Mulder’s eyebrows shot up, and Scully looked at him, amazed to see her partner believing this tale.

“Think of it, my friend,” Kamida said to Mulder—the blind man seemed to know intuitively who was most likely to swallow his story. “For four decades, they have been gathering energy. Their screams have finally reached a peak—to deafen those who brought this upon them, and those who would willingly do it again.”

“Wait a minute,” Mulder said, intrigued, “are you suggesting that the sheer suddenness and high energy of an atomic blast somehow added power to the souls of those people destroyed in it? Made them different from your ordinary, run-of-the-mill ghosts?”

“I am no scientist,” Kamida said. “Perhaps the spirits of an entire annihilated people have greater powers than those killed in a more common fashion. Absolute atomic genocide. They do seem to have a greater awareness. They can sense connections, they know who is involved in the development of such weapons—and they also understand that this Bright Anvil test is a very frightening step down a treacherous path for the entire world.” He smiled to himself. “Perhaps the spirits of my people are protectors of the human race.”

Scully caught the meaning of his words. “Do 240

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you mean to say that these ghosts have been killing nuclear weapons researchers and other people who had a connection to the atomic bomb?”

“Agent Scully,” Kamida said, “I will confess that I bear some responsibility for the death of Dr. Emil Gregory. I had hoped that removing him would bring this test to a halt. But I was wrong. It was too simplistic. Out of spite I also directed the annihilation of an old man in New Mexico who was in some way linked to the first Trinity Test that unleashed nuclear weapons upon the world. So many of the others are already dead from time and illness. His was the first name I could find.

“I was also responsible for the death of a Department of Energy executive, a woman behind the funding for the Bright Anvil project. Without her support, this test could not have taken place.

“But I waited too long. I have held the ghosts in check for too many months, too many years…and now they’re growing restless, striking even at those I have not designated—those they believe are in some way a threat to our island.”

Scully thought of the radiation-burned missileers in their underground control bunker, the photos Mulder had showed her.

“Their attention expands. They grow very restless. But in a few hours they will fulfill their destiny and protect this island again.”

“Why are you telling us all this?” Mulder asked. “Confessing to murder isn’t something people do lightly.”

The storm’s growl grew to a persistent roar. Scully touched Kamida’s elbow, raising him to his feet. “It’s not safe to be out here. We need to get inside—all of us.”

“Safe!” Kamida laughed. “Safety is a luxury none of us can afford now. I’m telling you this,

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Agent Mulder, just so you have the answers because you are a curious man—but none of us will get out of this alive.” He cocked his head to stare up into the storm, as if calling to something.

He spoke in a mystical whisper. “At last the wave of fire will reach the shore of death.”

242

THIRTY-FOUR

Enika Atoll

Saturday, 4:11 A.M.

As howling darkness engulfed the island, Scully and the others huddled inside the shelter of the supposedly indestructible concrete-sandbag walls of the blockhouse. Bear Dooley paced the control chamber that smelled of dust, new solder and lubricants, chalky concrete, and freshsawed wood. Jury-rigged lightbulbs hung from the support beams overhead, shedding uneven light. Dooley triplechecked every diagnostic system on the equipment racks, then went through the entire routine again. He flashed repeated suspicious glances at Ryan Kamida and the three Japanese fishermen, who sat at an analysis table that had been cleared of all papers and reports. Dooley pointed his thick finger at the fidgeting fishermen. “Don’t touch anything,” he said. “Just stay there and keep your hands to yourselves.”

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He looked sourly at Miriel Bremen, as if accusing her of poor judgment for insisting that a blind man and three fishermen accompany her to the blockhouse rather than just staying aboard the
Dallas
. Miriel ignored him. She stood rigid, scanning the instrument racks and diagnostic panels, as if reluctant to move forward for a closer inspection. Dooley studied the big round dial of the watch strapped to his wrist. “It’s 4:15,” he announced. “Only one hour to go.”

Victor Ogilvy nervously hung up the portable phone set at his station. “Hey, Bear—I just got a communication from Captain Ives. He says the storm surges are already at their maximum projected levels. Wind-wall velocity just topped a hundred miles an hour, and the storm isn’t due to peak for another fifty minutes.”