Kingdom of the Seven (35 page)

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Authors: Jon Land

BOOK: Kingdom of the Seven
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“One thing is certain and the rest is lies,”
he rasped through the saliva frothing from his mouth, quoting the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,
“The Flower that once has blown forever dies.”
Johnny managed to deflect each of the thrusts, but the muscles in his arms were beginning to seize up. When Early mounted a quick lunge forward next, Wareagle was late with his block. The front edge of Early’s support rammed him in the stomach and drove him backward. The weakened wood shattered on impact and the cement flow grabbed Johnny, parting to make a place for him. His hands lost their grasp on his support rod and it clamored to the flattened dirt surface beneath them.
When Early thrust his support savagely forward to shove him all the way into the oozing gray wall, Wareagle twisted sideways. The steel cut the air adjacent to him and sank deep into the wet concrete. Early tried to extract it, and Johnny locked both hands on the rod’s shaft in what he wanted the man-monster to think was simply an effort
to restrain him. Actually he was seeking to gain leverage for his legs. With that leverage gained, he kicked upward, feet scissoring together, and caught Early square in the chest. The man-monster gasped and flew backward.
His steel rod lost to the cement, he lashed out toward the advancing Wareagle with a wild flurry of blows, using both hands and feet that Johnny just managed to stay ahead of. His blocks and deflections came with the same blinding motion that Early’s attacks did.
Wareagle mistimed a block and his cheek exploded in agony. Early went for the same spot again, but Johnny ducked under the blow, which shattered the top portion of another section of forms. Behind Early now, he slammed an elbow in his ribs and then threw all his force against him. Impact drove Early through the remnants of the wood and into the heightening cement, which parted to accept and then engulf him.
Johnny could feel the viscous cement pouring over his arms and face as well, but he held fast to the pressure, holding Earvin Early in the thickening flow. He took a deep breath when it reached his own face, his grip never slackening on the desperately struggling shape lost before him. Wareagle maintained his hold even after the man-monster’s movement stopped and he began to sink. Johnny kept it up until his own lungs could take no more and he had to lurch away in order to clear the tumbling cement from his nose and mouth.
Woozy and dizzy, Wareagle dropped to his knees. But his eyes never left the section of forms where Earvin Early had been entombed. He waited for several moments just to be sure, and then rose to his feet as the monster’s grave began to harden.
 
The rooms on the third sublevel were unfinished, all lacking doors and many having not been wired. McCracken and Karen had finally taken refuge in one at the midway point, equidistant between exit doors on either side of the hall.
“I’ve got to tell you what we found!” Karen insisted, heaving for breath when they finally came to a halt along a corridor in the darkness. “I’ve got to tell you what was up there in the lab!”
“Time for that later, Karen.”
“What’s wrong with
now?”
“Now we get moving again.” He paused. “Back to the first floor and the door where the Indian and I parted company.”
“Why?”
Blaine looked at his watch. “Because that’s where Johnny will be coming back for us.”
 
The lights had just come on again in Harlan Frye’s private office when Major Osborne Vandal reappeared in the doorway. Memories of Vietnam had been awakened in him again, this time the bad ones. Memories of frustration, loss, and ultimately capture. The darkness of the kingdom was too much like that of the prison camp where he had spent seven years of his life. Strangely, his bad hand had begun to throb and stiffen again.
“Sir, the repair crew dispatched to the power station reports some commotion in the area of the supply depot.”
“Commotion … That’s how they described it?”
Before Vandal could respond, his walkie-talkie began to squawk and he raised it to his ear. His eyes widened as he listened intently.
“What is it, Major? … Major? …”
“Suspend all search of the grounds!” Vandal barked into the mouthpiece. “Concentrate all troops back at central. Do you hear me?
Do you hear me?
… Send squads one and three to the Reverend’s office.
Now!”
“Major!” Harlan Frye demanded. “What happened out there?”
The major took a deep swallow of air before he spoke. “Early has been found, sir … .”
 
 
McCracken and Karen’s climb had brought them one level directly beneath the exit door Johnny Wareagle would be returning to when the lighting snapped back on.
“Stay behind me,” he ordered when they turned onto the final staircase.
Blaine ran swiftly up the staircase, holding the Sterling poised before him. Just over half his last clip remained. Karen followed a few steps behind.
“Down!” he screamed when a burst of footsteps stormed their way.
Blaine never stopped, firing the last of his bullets on the move. A half dozen men were cut down in the rush that left him only a single grenade to fight back with.
“Let’s go,” he said to Karen, and tossed the Sterling away.
She didn’t hesitate, trusting his judgment and sidestepping the bodies without a second thought. They reached the ground floor, to be greeted by a barrage from an ambush team stationed just down the corridor. Blaine shoved Karen behind the cover of his body and hurled his last grenade in the direction of the gunfire. They reached the exit door in the wake of the deafening explosion and pressed against its steel. Blaine had bought the two of them some time, but there was no more to be had at any price and nowhere to go in any event.
“Blaine,” Karen Raymond started. “I think I hear some—”
McCracken pushed himself back against the door, hearing it too. He peered out through the glass plate in the exit door that had been shattered by one of the grenade blasts.
And saw the giant John Deere loader steaming their way, its sharp-toothed shovel extended straight out before it.
 
Wareagle slammed the 744E through the wall to the right of the door where he had left McCracken, teeth slicing through the frame effortlessly. The loader’s unique electric downshift allowed him to shift instantly from second to first to attain the traction he needed. Blaine anticipated Wareagle’s strategy in time to yank Karen safely
away from the expected shower of rubble. The shovel continued its neat slice across the body of the main building of the kingdom, Johnny working the wheel to bring the cab up even with the exact spot he expected McCracken to be. For the last stretch the 744E ran half in and half out of the building. Its shovel tore aside everything in its path. Its massive tires rolled over whatever dropped before them. The loader ground to a halt, engine still revving, and Wareagle leaned across the front seat to throw open the door on the passenger side.
Blaine boosted Karen up the ladder and lunged after her as quickly as possible, shoving her rigid frame through the open side door. Bullets trailed them the last stretch of the way, clanging off the steel rungs and drawing dangerously close in the final moments that saw Karen Raymond reach cramped safety behind the operator’s seat, where Wareagle was.
The loader’s windshield exploded, forcing Johnny to duck beneath the dashboard as Blaine closed the passenger door behind him and squeezed into the cab next to the Indian. The interior smelled mustily of damp cement, and Blaine gazed up to see Johnny’s frame encased in a crackling layer of gray, making him look like a statue that had broken free of its bonds.
The passenger-side window exploded into shards as automatic rounds burned into it. Johnny instantly banked the loader to the left, tearing out another huge chunk of the wall as it made its break. Gunfire continued to pepper its frame and tires, to no avail. The 744E pulled away from the building and thumped onto the unpaved street.
“What now, Indian?” Blaine asked, still squeezed next to him in a crouch beside the shot-out passenger-side window.
“We complete our escape.”
With that, Wareagle flipped a switch marked POWER BOOST into the on position. Almost immediately 250 horsepower kicked in, and Johnny shifted from second into third, working the floor pedals madly.
“The twins?” Blaine raised.
Johnny shook his head somberly. “Early,” was the Indian’s only spoken reply.
McCracken felt honest regret. “I assume the favor’s been returned.”
“That circle is complete, Blainey.”
“And the explosives?”
“Early found the charges; I’m sure of it.”
“So how do we get out?”
“I’ll show you.”
 
McCracken saw the dark alcove in the mine wall just before Wareagle barreled the John Deere 744E right into the line of vehicles jammed before it. He had lowered the shovel to slightly above ground level, and it swept them into each other with barely any resistance as it cleared a path for itself. The ride ended when Johnny wedged the shovel’s teeth tight into the far tunnel wall. The result was to place the loader diagonally across the only entrance to the secret tunnel, effectively blocking any other vehicles from entering it in their wake. McCracken watched Johnny strip the ignition wires free, rendering the 744E inoperable until time-consuming repairs were carried out.
“Must be a long walk back to the surface, Indian,” Blaine realized.
“I pulled one of the supply trucks parked in the entrance farther down into the tunnel for us, Blainey.”
McCracken smiled at Johnny, no more amazed than usual. “Then let’s get the hell out of here, Indian.”
The drive up the darkened ramp was broken only by the spread of the truck’s headlights. Blaine had taken the wheel. Johnny’s eyes never left the truck’s rear on the chance that Frye’s guards had somehow managed to follow them into the tunnel. Karen Raymond, breathing somewhat easier, was wedged between them in the cab, far more comfortable than squeezed behind the operator’s station in the John Deere.
The tunnel banked into its steepest rise yet and McCracken saw the blackened end of it opening like a huge mouth. An electronic eye must have triggered the mechanism automatically, saving them the trouble of ramming their way through or tripping the wires.
“I’ve figured out what happened in Beaver Falls,” Karen said, after the truck had thumped onto a hardened dirt roadbed. Their hope was that somewhere up ahead it would join Route 287 through the plains of the Panhandle. “I think I know everything now.”
McCracken turned and looked at her.
“It’s worse than I thought,” she continued, “worse than I could have imagined. Frye’s test subjects weren’t the only ones infected by AIDS in Beaver Falls; the
whole
town was infected!”
McCracken’s gaze tightened.
Karen stole a swift look at Wareagle. “We saw what was left of the town in an isolation ward above the kingdom’s laboratory. There were beds full of residents who’ll be dead in a matter of days, if not hours.”
“Of
AIDS?”
Blaine asked, knowing that ran counter to everything known of the disease.
Karen nodded slowly. “When Frye’s scientists tampered with the disease’s genetic makeup, they laid the foundation for its mutation beyond a strictly blood-bome virus, into one that is water-borne or droplet-spread.”
“As in
air?”
“Air, touching, breathing, mucous membranes—almost anything.”
Blaine slowed the truck. “The AIDS virus being spread like the yearly strain of flu … But it’s not the AIDS virus as we know it now.”
“Not at all. The residents of Beaver Falls didn’t just begin showing signs of AIDS prematurely; they began showing
advanced symptoms
of the disease within a matter of days after being evacuated. Three or four years of immune system breakdown in barely that many days.”
“That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“The Reverend Frye is planning to poison the city of San Antonio’s water supply, Dr. Raymond. And all the people who visit the city in the month or so after are going to leave with the disease in their systems. Infected by drinking the water.”
“His scientists must have used what happened in Beaver Falls to create an extremely concentrated version of his ‘vaccine,’” Karen responded, trying very hard still to sound professional.
Blaine was nodding. “To be introduced through a wastewater
treatment facility in Boerne, which discharges its purified water into the aquifer that provides San Antonio with its drinking supply.”
“Why San Antonio?”
“Because the city’s one of the convention capitals of the country, Doctor. I’m surprised you were never invited to one for research and development types.”
“I think I was, actually. I didn’t go.”
“Plenty of other people do, from every state and plenty of countries. A hundred thousand in the next month. And instead of bringing home presents, they return with a time bomb stuck in their system.”
“If Beaver Falls is an accurate indication, it will take six months for the contagion to begin its spread. After that, everyone the carriers come into contact with become carriers themselves.” She shook her head. “Frye’s followers included. It makes no sense.”
“It does if a large number, even a majority, of those followers can be protected.”
“But there’s no way they—” Karen felt herself grow strangely calm. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Lot 35 … That’s why Frye needed it … .”
“Within six months he may well have figured out your formula, Dr. Raymond.”
“Thereby salvaging the original intent of his plan. He’ll only need to produce enough of Lot 35 to supply the chosen followers of the Seven.” Karen’s mouth sank, her face going dreadfully pale. “My God, I’m a party to what he’s done. I
helped
him.”
“Karen—”
“Wait! There’s something else!” Her mind was working feverishly, churning information both new and old at a desperate clip. “There’s something else. Frank McBride, the man Wayne Denbo found by the roadside, was inside the isolation ward,” she explained. “That means Denbo might have become a carrier, along with everyone else he in turn came into contact with. You see what I’m saying.”
“No.”
“The disease may
already
be spreading. Frye’s divine function may be playing itself out without him doing another damn thing.”
“But you’re not sure.”
“No. It would depend on when McBride actually contracted the disease. It could have been after he had been placed with the others. But if not …”
“Go on, Doctor.”
Karen swallowed hard. “We were around Denbo, too. All of us. We could be infected. We could be carriers. And there could be hundreds more, thousands by now. Ten times that many by tomorrow.”
McCracken remained maddeningly composed, his voice flat and precise. “You’re saying Judgment Day might already be inevitable.”
“No, there’s another way we can stop it,” Karen said, sounding sure, “a way we can reverse the process. Frye’s bogus vaccine works on the genetic level by teaching the body to recognize and effectively imprison HIV cells. But remember, his protein coating was programmed to erode over time. Change that genetic programming and the cells remain trapped.”
“Are you saying you could change it?”
“If not me, someone with more expertise in this specific field. But they’d need a sample.”
“And there’s only one sample we know about for sure, and Frye’s got it.”
Karen nodded. “A sample he plans to release into San Antonio’s water supply.” She recalled the test tube she had found within the Kingdom of the Seven’s lab. “Using a dissolvable test tube.”
“Which means the Indian and I have to do more than just stop Frye from dropping his poison into the wastewater treatment center in Boerne: We’ve also got to come up with this test tube.”
“I’m afraid so.”
McCracken’s expression wavered just a little as he gave the truck more gas. “I’m afraid, too.”
 
 
“You assured us McCracken was dead!” Jessie Will ranted, speaking for all four of the men seated before the Reverend Harlan Frye.
For reasons not yet explained to them, Frye was holding the meeting in his private theater. He addressed his audience standing directly before the screen that had been ripped and torn when McCracken plunged through it.
“I erred and I admit that,” the Reverend conceded. “I saw the tapes of the explosions. I responded with my head instead of my heart because my heart told me that McCracken is somehow blessed. He couldn’t have survived in his world as long as he has if he wasn’t. Only one of equal purpose can defeat him.”
“You mean kill?” Tommy Lee Curtisan elaborated.
Frye looked dismayed by his use of the word. “His previous opponents have made the mistake of attempting to do just that. But in doing so, they place themselves in the world he has mastered. No, defeating him means accepting his presence but believing in the sanctity of our mission over that of his in God’s eyes.”
“Well, God seems to have been about as unable to stop him as we’ve been,” Tommy Lee Curtisan said almost whimsically, behind the slightest of smiles. “We’re beat, Reverend. Now, I’m not laying the blame with you and I’m not saying you’re not worthy. But it’s plain as day that we got to wait a time before we put your plan into effect.”
“And the rest of you,” Harlan Frye raised, “do you echo these words?” He looked at the other three members of the Seven. None of them could meet his gaze. “Your vision has been corrupted, my brothers. You stand to be defeated by something far more powerful than Blaine McCracken: your loss of faith. Don’t you see what’s going on here? The Lord would
never
trust the destiny of His world to anyone whose faith was not absolute. Let yours waver now and you risk losing His grace as well as your place in the kingdom.”
“This isn’t about faith,” said Curtisan. “This is about reality.”
“And all reality is based on our obligation to the Lord. Leave here now if you wish to shirk yours, but do not expect me to cower before mine.” Frye paused and looked each one of them in the eye. “Think of the shape of the world as we evisioned it,” he continued. “Think of your role within it. Are you willing to forsake that now, to concede that you were never worthy to enter this kingdom?”
“McCracken knows where the kingdom is,” Louis W. Kellog reminded. “He will return here or send others in his place. They will destroy everything we have built, everything that is so crucial to the fulfillment of our vision.”
“Perhaps they will,” Frye conceded. “And if we dwell on the material, then we will lose sight of what is truly important: serving Him by fulfilling our destiny.”
“McCracken will be waiting for us in San Antonio, Reverend,” Jessie Will said flatly. “We have entered his kingdom now. Do we dare believe ourselves capable of battling at this level, no matter how many guns and guards accompany us?”
“Indeed we can believe it, brother,” Frye assured them, “but only if we believe our purpose to be more resolute and our resolve to be stronger than his. As soon as we delay or defer, we truly enter his realm where desperation fuels defeat and despair.” He paused and let them see the confidence brimming in his eyes. “But there is a way we can keep McCracken from interfering, while at the same time letting the whole country witness our blessed work, so those who are worthy might understand what they are to be a part of.”
“Whole
country?”
raised Jessie Will.
“Witness?” followed Tommy Lee Curtisan.
“Let me show you,” Frye told them, and stepped away from the screen.
 
“They didn’t make it,” McCracken said upon noting the distant look on Sister Barbara’s face that followed her realization
that Jacob and Rachel had not returned to the Amarillo motel room with the others.
She digested the recounting of all that had transpired and then demanded that McCracken tell her exactly how the twins had died. Blaine deferred to Johnny Wareagle here, who was typically brief in his tale.
“I must go to their father,” Sister Barbara said when he was finished. “He must hear of this from me personally.”
“Spoken like a person who feels responsible for their deaths,” Blaine responded.
“I refused Turgewell’s overtures. I wouldn’t help him destroy the Seven when I clearly should have. And now, because of that, his children are dead. Senselessly. Needlessly.”
“I don’t think you knew them as well as I did, Sister.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does, because they weren’t in your world anymore and hadn’t been for some time; they were in mine. That’s where they wanted to be.”
“But they were merely
children!”
“Raised by Turgewell to be his soldiers, not his heirs. They grew up in an environment of hate and desperation.”
“Your world,” Sister Barbara followed flatly, in what had started as a question.
“It’s what I am, Sister. It’s what the twins were. You didn’t make them that way, and you can’t blame yourself for their deaths.”
“What about the deaths of my followers at the Oasis? Am I to shrug off responsibility for them as well?”
“You couldn’t have known Frye would go that far.”
“Oh, but I did, and have for some time. I thought myself above it. I foolishly believed faith would be enough to hold him at bay, perhaps even defeat him. It never is, is it?”
“Not in my world, Sister.”
“Is there room for vengeance in your world, Mr. McCracken?”
Blaine nodded. “Biblical
and
otherwise.”
“Frye must be stopped.”
“I think he may have provided us with the opportunity,” said Johnny Wareagle suddenly.
“What do you mean, Indian?”
“That.”
Johnny’s single-word response was punctuated by a finger aiming at the muted television screen where a commercial featuring the Reverend Harlan Frye himself had just begun playing.
“I’ll be damned,” muttered McCracken.
 
The commercial had ended by the time Johnny turned up the volume, but they’d seen everything they needed to.
“He’s one bold son of a bitch,” Blaine continued. “I’ll give him that much.”
“And that may be what allows us to destroy him, Blainey,” Wareagle put forth. “We fear Frye because he can convince himself and others that anything he does, no matter how destructive, is God’s will. But that very arrogance leads him to believe he is invincible. He won’t care if we show up in Boerne or not. His plan is meant to take our presence into account.”

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