Resurrection House (20 page)

Charlie wondered what it looked like, seeing EM fields and sensing life energy like a shark. If Fordren’s device could grant sight to a blind child then a man like General Brenner might move mountains to make it happen. The question was whether he and Brenner were working toward the same goal.

Uncertainty, complication. Charlie hated them.

Life was simpler when you just did your job and had no one to worry over, no weaknesses to undermine you. He liked it that way, living like a ghost.
But then Brenner has something more to fight for, doesn’t he,
Charlie thought and wondered how that changed a man.

He led them downward for almost two minutes, descending into a pale, green luminescence that filled the lower passage. A patchwork glow rose from the myriad tiny lights and dials on the coffin stacks of equipment that lined the walls in shadowy rows. Charlie thought he saw small, crackling lines of electricity coursing through the light, but when he looked head-on, they vanished like phantom fireflies.

They had to be underwater now. Charlie could almost feel the pressure of the sea weighing down on them, an icy void that had been home to nature’s most perfect predator for more than 400 million years. Barely changed in all that time, sharks—Great Whites in particular—were life idealized, organisms that marked the evolutionary pinnacle for survival of the species: Kill, eat, reproduce, do it again.

“Extending the complex underground and into the ocean wasn’t cheap,” Fordren said as they surveyed the area. “So it’s cramped down here. The corridor leads to the main lab and the surgery. It ends at the airlock for the tube.”

“Airlock?” said Brenner.

“A precaution, in case the tube was ever damaged.”

“There’s no other way out?” Charlie said.

“There’s only the elevator or the stairs.”

“The submersible you mentioned?”

“Strapped to the deck of our research ship, docked a quarter-mile west of here.”

“Then if they’re down here, they’re cornered, and that’ll make them mean,” said Charlie. “Keep that in mind.”

The lower level extended several hundred feet further underground and undersea, all of it cluttered with equipment and compact work stations, a windowless artery clogged with the detritus of research. Behind its walls the backup generators hummed like the nasal breathing of a sleeping giant. Eventually the passage hit a dead end, just as Fordren had predicted. The brassy tang of blood wafted through the air. The lab door was closed tight; the door to the surgery gaped wide. Between them stood the airlock, clamped shut like a locked jaw.

“Just a second,” Fordren said. He approached the lab door and pulled a ring of keys from his pocket.

Charlie put a hand on the scientist’s wrist and stopped him. “Next door first,” he said.

That’s where they found the source of the ripe stench. Charlie probed the surgery with his light, unflinching at the carnage it exposed. Fordren started to scream, a sound he choked down as he gagged and fought against vomiting. Brenner peered in and swore under his breath. There were five bodies laid out on the floor, men and women, all dismembered to various degrees, clothing shredded, their torsos torn open, and their innards drawn out and strewn together in a red and purple slick across the tile. Charlie raised his light and surveyed the far corners of the room.

“How many were there on your team altogether, Doctor?” he asked.

“There were—,” Fordren coughed, almost threw up again, “—there were twelve of us.”

“Well, including you, ten of them are now accounted for,” Charlie said, using his flashlight to highlight two more gutted bodies and a woman’s legs stacked against the opposite wall.

There was no sign of anyone living. Two stainless steel operating tables gleamed in the flashlight beam, and on a countertop the razor edges and elegant curves of surgical equipment glinted.
Tools to cure disease, tools to change a man into something more,
thought Charlie.
Tools to kill as efficiently as heal.
He crossed the surgery to a bank of supply closets, skimmed the contents through the glass doors, and located the sedatives Doctor Fordren had named. He scooped up the ampoules and half a dozen plastic-sealed hypodermics, then picked a path back to the door and handed the drugs to Fordren, who slid them into his pockets.

“Time to check the lab,” said Brenner.

Fordren, pale and sweating, opened his mouth to object. Charlie saw the terror churning in the man’s eyes. He wanted to run, and Charlie couldn’t blame him. He massaged the leaden ball of his own fear, easing it deep into the recesses of his mind, keeping it only close enough to surface level to fuel his survival instinct. He left it to Brenner to coax the scientist along. The general did so using his command voice and flashing Fordren the stare that had compelled other men in other times and places to leap into the face of death at his order. It proved no less effective on the scientist. Fordren popped the key into the keyhole and unlocked the laboratory.

Inside a lone man sat hunched over a computer keyboard, his neck craned upright so he could stare at a bank of monitors. His lips trembled and he muttered a continuous string of nonsense syllables. The red and orange streaks of the tie-dyed T-shirt he wore beneath his lab coat blended into a loud blur in the glow of the console. He looked up as the men entered.

“Cranston?” said Fordren.

“Something’s wrong with him,” Charlie said.

“Look at his eyes. He’s terrified,” said Brenner. “I’ve seen others like him. Cracked under the stress. Probably locked himself in here when the killing started, and then he lost it.”

“Cranston,” Fordren said. “Are you all right?”

“Forget it,” said Brenner. “Three months in a psych hospital, a suitcase full of pills, and then you might get an answer out of him.”

“He’s a brilliant cybernetics technician,” Fordren said. “Very high strung, though.”

Cranston’s fingers rattled over the keyboard, tapping without pause, typing and retyping the same word over and over again. It scrolled up the blue and white face of the desktop monitor, a flickering line of letters rising beyond the edge of the glass and into infinity, a code waiting to be cracked: “Kau-ahu.”

“What’s that mean?” said Brenner.

“Rings a bell, but I can’t place it,” Fordren said.

“What’s all that on the other displays?”

Fordren eyed the array of screens. “It’s…the anomaly, and—oh, my God! It’s huge. It’s got to be a mile across now. This is off the charts. And it’s right off shore.”

“What is it?” Brenner said. “Submarines? Mines?”

Fordren scowled. “No. You can tell by the EM-signature it’s a living organism. Or maybe it’s a vast school of huge living organisms. Cranston, how did you stop the sensors overloading? Cranston?”

Fordren gripped Cranston by the shoulders and spun him around in his chair. The technician yelped and slapped Fordren’s hands away. He twisted back to his work, picking up his pace at the keyboard. His body bobbed like a scarecrow in the wind. The clacking plastic sounded like a whipping rain.

“Guess he’s not in the mood for show and tell,” Charlie said. “That’s all being recorded, right?”

“Yes,” said Fordren.

“Then it’ll be here when we get back from checking the tube.”

Now Brenner led them. He spun the heavy wheel mounted at the center of the airlock door until it clanged, and then he pulled it open into the hallway. The three men stepped into the compact chamber and sealed it shut behind them. A handprint streaked in blood marked one wall, a glossy omen almost black in the pale of their flashlights.

“It’s a safe bet they at least came this way,” Charlie said, and then noticing Fordren shiver, changed the subject. “Do we have to wait for the pressure to equalize?”

“No,” Fordren replied. “We’re barely a hundred feet deep. The airlock was only designed to keep water out of the facility.”

“All right, then.” Brenner opened the door to the tube. “Here goes.”

Amber illumination spilled from miniature emergency lights mounted along the length of the glass and steel cylinder. Brenner and Charlie inched forward into it, blinking as their eyes adjusted to the subtle gloom. From an intercom near the door came the steady click-clack of Cranston at the keyboard and the unflappable murmur of his babbling. The tube—ten feet in diameter and with a steel walkway erected three feet above its lower curve—stretched sixty feet into the sea, an artificial protrusion probing waters black as char. Charlie could barely discern between the curve of the clear walls and the sea. Shapes floated through the murk. Swimmers and drifters. Ropy fronds whipping in slow motion. Amorphous bubbles curled in conch shell fractals; shadows danced through ghostly rays of light escaping through the glass.

Charlie spied the white bellies of the sharks he’d seen from the beach. Six of them roved in circles inside their submerged cage, but there were many more outside the mesh. All Great Whites. They darted through the haze like living missiles. Their dead eyes absorbed the weak glow of the emergency lights from the tube, and their mouths hung casually askew to bare intricate rows of razor teeth. For a chilling moment Charlie experienced a premonition of the glass cracking and shattering, the water flooding in, washing him away toward some unknown abyss, a shunt waiting to feed an insatiable, primal hunger.

Predators,
he thought,
and prey.

The Glock felt like a toy in his clammy hand.

“Wild animals, don’t forget,” he said. “Predators kill to feed or to protect their home and young. Great Whites have been known to break off after attacking humans because they don’t like the taste, but no animal gives up when it’s driven, when it’s hunted.”

“Enough with the Discovery Channel bullshit,” Brenner said.

Noise from the far end of the tube jerked the two men back to attention; they leveled their weapons and waited. A figure approached, shambling through the half-light, and followed by two others. The three missing soldiers. Each one wore a silver and black headpiece like a set of earphones wrapped around the back of their skulls. A hazy red and green aura surrounded them like a failing mist passing across colored fog lights. Streaks of blood painted their hands and faces. Their fatigues were sodden with it. The two men in the rear dragged the torso of a dead woman between them, each one gripping a wrist.

“Kau-ahu hungers,” said the lead soldier. “Have you come to pay tribute? All living things owe tribute to Kau-ahu.”

“Stand down!” Charlie shouted, alarmed at the sudden nervousness in his voice. For just a moment it had seemed that the darkness outside the tube had deepened, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off the soldiers long enough to be certain. “Do not take another step.”

Brenner edged forward. “Major Nance, is that you? Tamora? Pinto? Have you men forgotten your orders?”

“Sir?” Nance said.

“You are to stand down, all three of you,” said Brenner. “Drop that body and get down on your knees. Now!”

“Kau-ahu hungers,” the two men behind Nance said together.

“Sir,” said Nance. “Have you come to offer Kau-ahu tribute?”

“Soldier, I gave you an order!” Brenner shouted.

Fordren lurched into the tube and pushed his way between Charlie and Brenner. “Yes! Yes, we’ve come to pay tribute. What does Kau-ahu require?”

“Back off, Doctor,” Brenner said, shoving the scientist back. “We’ll handle this.”

“You don’t understand,” Fordren said, as he shifted behind Brenner. “I knew I recalled the name Kau-ahu. I’ve seen it in my readings. In Hawaiian lore Kau-ahu is a shark god. Native Hawaiians called sharks Aumakua and believed they were guardians of the sea, but Kau-ahu was a fierce shark king. An angry, violent god. General, is one of the men you assigned me for the test from Hawaii?”

Brenner squinted. “Private Tamora.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” said Tamora.

“Well, whatever that thing out there is, he’s given it a name,” said Fordren. “He thinks the anomaly is a god, part of legends he probably learned as a child, and he’s muddled it all together.”

“Kau-ahu hungers,” the three soldiers repeated, slightly out of step with each other.

Nance crept forward. “Kau-ahu’s emptiness is great. He desires the thinking things to fill him. He watches many worlds and is grateful for those who have shown him this world is not barren as the vicious swimmers suggested.”

“Do you mean the sharks?” Brenner said.

“Kau-ahu sees them, touches them,” said Nance. “But they are hollow. He craves the meat of the upper minds he did not think dwelled here. He is starved for it.”

A Great White, nearly twenty feet long, coursed by above the tube. Nance turned his head in an arc, watching it. Tamora and Pinto mimicked him, their faces twitching, eyelids fluttering. After the shark vanished into the cloudy water, the three soldiers seemed fixated on something else in the darkness, visible only to them.

“Did you consider, Doctor,” Charlie said, “what might happen to their perception of reality once you gave them a sixth sense derived from one of the world’s greatest predators?”

“Yes, of course. That was the whole point of the experiment,” Fordren said.

“I don’t mean their perception of the physical world. I mean their psyches, their consciences. Do you think a Great White feels guilt when it uses its sixth sense to help it devour a seal or snack on a surfer? Did it occur to you that changing how these men experience the world would change how they relate to it?”