Project Cain (35 page)

Ox looked at Castillo with excited eyes.

Castillo said no. Said I was done. No more.

He said: Those monsters will never harm you again.

I needed to let Castillo know I was ready. That I wasn’t a victim. I wasn’t afraid of monsters anymore. I was “Extreme for Life.” I didn’t think he’d get that skate park mantra the way I’d hoped. I’m not sure how well it was really working for me, either.

So instead I quoted a line from
The Odyssey
. Something Odysseus’s son says to him right before that huge battle at the end.

In short, the quote meant I could handle it.

Castillo obviously knew the line. Took it pretty hard, in fact. He, like, cried and stuff.

I told him I wasn’t gonna hide anymore from the monsters.

No, Castillo agreed, looking up. We’re not.

I asked about the dark man, but I called him a “thing.”

I killed him, Castillo said. But . . .

But there’s more, I said, and pictured rows of liquid-filled tanks.

He admitted this was true and asked how I knew.

I explained I just did and that I kinda thought they were looking for me even now.

I said: And I think they’re getting close.

C
     astillo’s plan-number-one of taking care of things himself and leaving me safely behind was done. There was no more “safely behind.” DSTI and the government knew where I was and they were coming for me. They knew because the “dark men” knew, and I could literally feel them looking for me.

So plan-number-two became to not get caught in the open but maybe fight it out there at Ox’s place.

The “Good Guys”

Castillo and Ox and a handful of Ox’s pals. Who were all pretty hard-core rogue prepper/survivalist types. Hated the federal government. Most of them were vets like Ox and Castillo. One was just a guy who was angry about some “New World Order.” He told me I was just a pawn in all of that now. There were four of them. McLaughlin. Wilke. Rosfeld. Some other guy. Added up, they had more guns than God.

The “Bad Guys”

Castillo predicted his government boss, Colonel Stanforth, would send a couple of Special Forces–trained mercenaries (like Castillo) and a group of agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. And probably a bunch of local cops. Small-town sheriffs and such. Castillo figured the locals would be brought in to make a mess of things and make the cover-up even easier. Afterward, Castillo said, the press would simply report that the ATF had conducted a raid on terrorists or right-wing extremists. No one would ever know what really had happened.

Also. The dark men. Castillo agreed with me that there’d been several.

DSTI didn’t make just ONE of
anything
.

So they’d be coming also.

For me.

•  •  •

There were, like, a hundred acres at Ox’s place. Wooded. Uninhabited. Middle of nowhere up on some mountain somewhere in South Dakota. There were half a dozen different trailers and sheds spread among the trees. Solar panels, generators. Kitchens, storage. Paddocks for livestock, chicken coops, a small dog kennel. Barns for a couple of horses. Underground bunkers for when the bombs or sun flares ever started falling someday. Ox and his pals had spent all sorts of money and time on this stuff.

And they were pretty damn serious about two things: (1) bad days were coming, and (2) they were gonna survive.

Everyone now knew Part 1 was true.

They spent all day planning what would happen when the Bad Guys found us again.

Still, I got the feeling not even Castillo was so sure about Part 2.

•  •  •

All that whole day, Castillo and Ox and the other guys prepared.

A lot of it involved explosives. Mines and stuff.

Consequently I was asked to stay in my room.

A room surrounded by concrete that was a hundred feet below the ground.

They took turns guarding my door.

I tried to sleep. To heal.

All that whole day, I could feel the dark men in my head.

Listening for me. For my blood.

All that whole day, I could feel them getting ever closer.

I closed my eyes.

Come and get me, I said to the dark.

C
astillo had been in the military since he was eighteen years old.

He told me that the key to every successful operation was the same and quite simple: Everyone just had to do the job they’d been given.

I didn’t have to think about the traps and tricks and escapes and whatnot.

I only had one job: stay near Castillo.

And IF something happened to Castillo, stay near Ox.

And IF something happened to Ox, it wouldn’t matter.

•  •  •

Ox had these special suits we wore that would help conceal our body temperature. Standard US Army stuff he’d bought from some German company. Apparently this was a good thing because all the guns that’d be aimed at us would have thermal imaging. We also had gas masks.

Castillo told me to expect smoke grenades or worse. And again to just stay close.

I wasn’t walking so good yet. One of Ox’s guys had stitched up my
feet in a couple of places from when Ted cut them looking for the nonexistent transmitter. They were still pretty swollen and sore. And I was still sore. Everywhere. Muscles and tendons I didn’t even know about a week before. I still felt half-dead.

But even half-dead I was ready to end all of this as much as Castillo was. My father was
all
-dead, killed by something he’d made at DSTI years before. (Ironic, yes. And sad too.)

And now those same things, this same organization, was coming for us.

It WAS gonna end soon one way or the other.

The gas mask felt funny on my face. I could hardly see a thing through the bug-eyed lenses. It didn’t help any that my glasses had been smashed back at Winter Quarters.

We were stuck in this long ditch that ran along the front of one of the concrete buildings.

I could hardly stand, but I was doing my job—Castillo was next to me. The other guys were in their spots. On roofs, in the woods. In the next trench.

We waited like that for hours.

I started to get really cold around eleven at night. And understood exactly what that meant. They were close. I told Castillo, and each passing hour, the cold got deeper and deeper inside me.

I could feel other thoughts poking around my own. Like tiny fingers moving and scratching under my skin. Bubbling though my blood.

I sat down at Castillo’s feet. Tired. So very tired.

I could picture them clearly moving through the woods. The trees and bushes blurring by as shadows. Unnatural speed. Drifting . . .

It was probably two in the morning.

I sprang awake. Like an electric shock, a blast of cold had detonated up and down my spine. I thought my eyes were gonna burst out.

I thought I was gonna die.

Castillo, I said. They’re here.

About ten seconds later guns started shooting.

Let me tell you, it was loud as shit.

Just like Castillo had said war was.

•  •  •

So all these guns shooting. I don’t even know from where.

People shouting directions at each other over these walkie-talkie things. Smoke bombs flying. I honestly had/have no idea what was happening. The whole thing was a total blur of noise and smoke and getting dragged around and people shouting.

Castillo kept lifting me and pulling me this way and that, then shoving me down again. I just kept trying to do my one job. It wasn’t easy. My thoughts were just as confused as all the crap going on around me.

I could swear I saw something jumping past us from the smoke, scaling the wall of the building behind us.

I mean a man. A dark man. And I literally just watched him shinny up.

I reached for Castillo, but he was shooting his rifle and yelling at Ox about something.

One of Ox’s guys was above us with a sniper rifle or something.

I stumbled back against the trench to support myself. My head was suddenly so light. Could hardly stand.

I suddenly imagined slitting a man’s throat. It was terrible. But all the same and all of a sudden I could see that knife going in and the blood and everything. My head filled with such terrible thoughts.

I grabbed out for Castillo. Tried to warn him . . .

Of what, I had no idea. I just . . . I don’t know. I could see it like it was happening.

Then it started raining. Felt it hit my shoulders and back.

I looked up.

My goggles splattered with huge drops.

Of red rain.

•  •  •

I could visualize two men above me. One dying. The other, a shadow.

I held my hands in front of my face. They were now speckled with blood. I reached out again for Castillo, tried telling him what was going on above us. But the words came out jumbled, confused. It was like trying to talk in a nightmare.

Castillo stared in confusion.

The drops of blood just kept raining down on us. The next drops hit him.

He finally looked up, and I found the courage to look with him.

Above us the wall was dripping blood. An arm dangled off the rooftop. Braced by the elbow, the wrist and fingers sagging and lifeless.

The blood dribbled steadily from the dangling hand.

Then the arm slid backward. Something slowly dragging the body back from the edge.

Castillo gave some kind of signal and everything kinda exploded.

•  •  •

I mean the woods and ground were shaking and everything. The boom, a long series of quick and succeeding detonations, lit the woods like it was noon. A hundred detonations, I figure, each following hard on the last.

All through this total chaos Castillo acted like nothing was going on. Like he was walking into the kitchen to get something to drink. He just dragged me back into the underground bunker. My feet hardly touched the ground.

We followed this long narrow hallway down into the ground where some of the living quarters and storage rooms were. Ox and one other guy came with us.

I didn’t know Castillo’s true intentions yet.

I didn’t know that he wanted the dark man to follow us.

That I was bait.

•  •  •

We were all at the end of the hall. Me and Castillo on one side and Ox and this guy McLaughlin on the other. McLaughlin had a flamethrower. I mean, these guys!

All three of them had special night-vision sights and stuff.

I, however, couldn’t see a thing.

I could
feel
it, though. That cold. Just when I thought I was used to it, it’d grabbed hold again. I let it sink in a bit. Tried to focus. Listened. If it could hear blood . . . If this thing could hear MY blood, maybe I could hear its.

I had this image of it moving down the hall toward us, and I told Castillo. He checked. Said it was “nothing,” trying to assure me (and himself also, I think).

Getting closer. Crouched in the dark, listening for the blood pumping though my veins. Blood they’d partly used to give this thing life. My whole body was shaking again. I was practically having a seizure there in the dark. I wasn’t even looking down the hall, but I saw it just the same. Feet away from us.

I tried calling out again to Castillo for, like, the third time. To warn him.

He just told me there was nothing there again. To hush, to wait—

I wouldn’t quit. I told him:
It’s right there.

There must have been something in the way I said it. Something that suggested these were my last words, maybe.

Because next thing I know, the whole hallway burst into flame.

The guy with the flamethrower just torched everything in front of us.

I heard screaming now. I heard blood boiling.

•  •  •

The thing was on fire, screaming in agony as it slammed into the concrete wall and then crumpled to the ground, twitching and flailing. The fire burning it lit up the whole hall.

Its mind somehow in mine, its thoughts my thoughts. Thoughts of rage and hatred and fire.
Get out of my head!
I screamed, but not out loud.