Run (35 page)

Its engines hummed as it plummeted quickly through the opening in Loston’s sky, which sealed behind the ship, leaving no trace of the craft’s point of entrance.

Adam sat in the cockpit, next to the Controller who piloted the vessel.  Both watched the nav-scopes intently.  The ship had no windows whatsoever.  Windows allowed too much of the deadly ultraviolet and gamma rays that pervaded the world of their time to enter the craft, damaging both equipment and personnel.

"Where to, sir?" asked the pilot.

"Resurrection," answered Adam.  The name of the mine sent an icy insect scurrying over the nape of his neck, cold feet of dread tracking pinpricks of fear over his spine. 

Resurrection follows death, he thought.  Who will die tonight? 

Unbidden, the answer also came to his mind:

All of us
.

***

Malachi followed the deepening red of the tracker.  The going was slow, for he had no way of knowing which of the offshoots were tunnels, which were rooms and which were dead ends.  He had to follow the tracker, and in the catacomb of the mine system, their prey could be five feet away but impossible to find, standing on the other side of a thick rock wall that didn’t connect to their tunnel for miles.

Malachi hoped such wasn’t the case. 

He wanted to find them.  He would kill John immediately, of course.  Fran was the prize.  Deirdre and Jenna would want to kill her instantly as well, but Malachi hoped to keep her alive.  He had plans for her, beyond mere death.  He said a silent prayer:

Please, God, let her live.  Give her to me.

A warm feeling spread through his soul as his body felt the answer.  Peace overcame him and he knew what they would do: find the two, spray their hiding place with bullets.  He had a deep conviction that they would kill John and somehow miss Fran, leaving her alive.  He knew it was God speaking back to him, answering His most faithful servant. 

God was giving him Fran.

And Malachi planned to keep the gift for a time.

She had to die, of course.  That was the true endgame and the only thing standing between him and Heaven.  But Heaven had waited for so long, he thought, that surely it would not begrudge him a few hours or days of time with her.  She would scream beneath him, and he would spend himself on her. 

When she died, so would they all, and Malachi intended to go out with a bang. 

***

John and Fran slept on one cot.  It was really too small for both of them, but neither had been willing to separate after the closeness they felt following their shared revelations.  They lay so near to one another that each could feel the other’s heart beat, could feel the other’s breath. 

They were exhausted, and slept deeply.  Even so, John sat up suddenly, yanked from the depths of fatigue back into sudden wakefulness.  He recognized the sudden transition as a defensive response he had come to rely on in Iraq.  It meant that his subconscious, ever active even while the rest of him was near-comatose, had picked up on something important.  Perhaps dangerous.

Had he heard something?  He didn’t think so.  The single light source in the room was still burning, and John found its low wattage glow distracting.  He got up and turned off the switch in order to be able to concentrate more fully on his environment, on the tell tale sounds of approaching enemies, if any were nearby.  After a moment in the pure blackness of the underground world, he was forced to admit he could discern nothing out of the ordinary, and so lay back down again.  He kept the light off, knowing that it would permit Fran to sleep deeper and be more rested.  Nevertheless, a moment later the complete darkness became too much for him.  He turned on the flashlight he had confiscated from the mine entrance and rolled it under the bed, so that only a dim glow emerged.

Fran pulled even closer against him.  He smiled and kissed her hair.

Then slept again.

***

Malachi stopped as they approached a doorway and the jewel in his hand abruptly red-shifted, turning almost crimson.  Light shined through the entrance to the nearby room.  They had passed several such lit chambers, evidently on some timer or just permanently illuminated for some reason, but Malachi knew that this time the light must signal habitation.  Their prizes were beyond the doorway.

He put the jewel back in his pocket, then signaled to Deirdre and Jenna.  They nodded, and he held up three fingers, counting down.

Two.

One.

They jumped into the doorway, firing everything they had into the room.  He heard Jenna screaming as they each emptied their weapons into the room.  Deirdre was silent in the deafening thunder, hardly blinking as she expended the clip in her Uzi.

Nothing in the room could possibly survive the maelstrom, but Malachi
knew
that they would find Fran alive.  God had promised it.  She would be his, to serve him and pleasure him in the final agonizing hours of her existence.  But John would be dead.

Sure enough, Fran and John stood before them, and just as he had foreseen, their shots took John apart while leaving Fran unscathed.  Blood splashed everywhere as John took round after round to the arms, legs, chest, and head.  Fran screamed in terror and fear, covering her eyes with her hands as John fell at her feet.

Jenna and Deirdre stopped firing beside him, but Malachi continued shooting, emptying his weapon into the room, into John's body where it curled on the floor behind him.  Fran wept and cried and sank to her knees in supplication, holding out her hands for mercy.  But mercy would not find her here, not in the darkness below the earth. 

John was dead, and Fran would soon follow. 

DOM#67A

LOSTON, COLORADO

AD 1999

10:10 AM TUESDAY

***ALERT MODE***

His last shot spent, Malachi had the delicious sensation of pure victory.  Godly triumph welled through him, marred only by the fact that he felt Deirdre and Jenna gazing at him quizzically.  He glanced at them, incensed that they were stealing precious moments of his victory. 

"What are you doing?" asked Jenna.

He frowned and prepared to deliver a scathing reply, one that would bring this woman to her knees next to Fran, but before he could do so he realized that the room was empty.  John and Fran were nowhere before them, in spite of the fact that he had clearly seen John die mere seconds ago, leaving only a whimpering, broken woman on her knees beside him.

Malachi blinked rapidly, surprise registering on his face as he comprehended that what he had seen was not real.  It was a vision, and it would
become
real, as sure as there was a God.  But it had not happened.  Not yet.  Fran and John would fall soon, but Malachi and his two remaining helpers had not yet killed them. 

Rather than explain all this to the women, who continued to look at him strangely, Malachi looked again at the tracker.  Still bright red.  Fran had to be here.

He scanned the small room for side exits, trying to spot a way she and John could have escaped.  There were none. 

"Where are they?" asked Deirdre.  She appeared shocked for the first time.  Malachi knew how she felt.  The tracker had signaled that they were within mere feet.  Had signaled that this was where they were.

Unless....

"Oh, no," he said, and cursed.

"What?" asked Jenna.

He repocketed the jewel.  "Fran's beacon transmits her location to a satellite, which then interprets the data and resends it to a receiver in the tracker.  But the tracker doesn't have a proximity meter for Fran herself."

"What does that mean?" asked Deirdre.  She was still looking at him with a bit of dismay, as though observing a bug.  Malachi decided that, win or lose, Deirdre would not be coming home with them.  She was too self-assured, and not enough afraid of him to be a truly strict adherent of the way of God.

Still, he answered, "It means that the tracker doesn't really track
Fran
.  It tracks a latitude and longitude transmitted to it by the satellite.  So we're probably right on top of Fran, but she and John must be on a different level.  We picked them up laterally but can’t find them vertically.  We’ll have to split up and search each level.  They’re somewhere right below us."

He left the room, heading back to the main shaft.  There had to be an elevator somewhere nearby.  They would find it and then find John and Fran.  It was destiny, and it was his promise from God.  They might have to tear the mountain apart looking for their prey, but Malachi would not be stopped.  Not now.

***

The room remained as it had before the three entered it.  The small addition of bullets meant nothing to the vast and ancient stone of the mountain.  A few more bits of iron and lead and steel were nothing to it.  They would be absorbed into its rocky self over the years, and would eventually become one with it, joined as truly and as firmly as if they had been born in the walls, rather than hurled there by the force of exploding gases pushing them through weapon muzzles. 

Still, with the bullets had come noise.  And with the noise the mountain sighed.  A few small pebbles dislodged from where they had remained for eons, tumbling to the floor of the room.

A shower of dirt followed.  It made hardly any noise, being merely a small shift, as ethereal as a whisper in a desert. 

But whispers could quickly become shouts.

The mountain trembled, on the verge of movement.

Then quieted.

For the moment.

DOM#67A

LOSTON, COLORADO

AD 1999

10:12 AM TUESDAY

***ALERT MODE***

"How long until we get there?" asked Adam.

"Not long," answered the pilot.  He checked a screen.

"Let me know when we reach the mines," said Adam.

"Why the mines?" asked the pilot.

"The metal there blocks our homing device," answered Adam.  "We’ll have to be right on top of them, in the mine system itself, before we can find them."  He motioned to a stone inset in one of the circuitry boards of the ship, a stone that was the mirror of one Malachi had taken when he defected.  It was a dull green, signaling that Fran's beacon was not being picked up.

"Would John know that?" asked the pilot.  "Would he know to get into the mine to avoid us?"

"Yes," answered Adam.  "Not consciously, of course.  But, like Fran, our John is so much more than he realizes, and his subconscious would send him there just as surely as a salmon would swim upstream to spawn."

***

Malachi, Jenna, and Deirdre descended through the shaft on the cage-like lift.  Deirdre looked up and smiled.  Malachi followed her gaze and saw the icy spears that hung over them, glistening like pointed crystal turrets, extending from a castle that was hopelessly inverted.  He did not smile, however, unmoved by the crystalline structure above.  Beauty to him was not found in ice.  It was found in fire, and pain.

He brought the elevator to a halt at the next level down and motioned for Jenna to get off.

"Is your com-link charged?" he asked.  She nodded.  "Good.  Signal me if you find anything.  Kill them if you can, but get us if you need help." 

Jenna nodded, and the Malachi thumbed the button again, dropping himself and Deirdre further down the shaft. 

Another few levels, and he let Deirdre off.  She took a few steps away, and Malachi continued his descent, dropping further until the darkness swallowed up Deirdre's light.

He was alone.

***

"Here we are," said the pilot.

Adam felt a soft thump as the ship set down.

In seconds he was outside, standing before Resurrection Mine with the Recovery team: ten men and women who were heavily armed and armored.  Like the Cleanup Crew had been in the plane that took Fran from LAX to Denver, these men and women were Controllers.  However, they were not here to turn back the clocks.  No, these people were here to get Fran - and John, if possible - before Malachi did. 

They all checked their instruments and weapons one last time.  Adam did the same, checking to see if his pulse-gun was charged.  He was grateful that Malachi did not have access to such advanced weaponry.  Over the years, too many Controllers had defected to join Malachi and others of his ilk.  They had taken with them numerous gadgets and technological devices to aid them in their quest for the complete eradication of humanity, but luckily had not been able to steal many weapons. 

What arms they did manage to smuggle out with them were generally small, and soon lost their charges, becoming nothing more than interesting conversation pieces.  That meant that the Controllers would be better armed than Malachi and his adherents, who were forced to steal weapons while going from time to time looking for people to kill.  Malachi's team would probably have rifles and shotguns, maybe even automatic weaponry, but they wouldn't have any pulse-shots or cathode arrays, thank goodness.

Adam led his team into the open mineshaft as the dropjet took off behind them.  It would hide itself in the mountains nearby, the pilot waiting for Adam’s pickup signal.

They entered the shaft, and began splitting up, shearing off in ones and twos.  Adam knew some of them might get lost, but they couldn’t afford to go slowly.  This race would go to the quick.  Because there would only be one victor, and the rest would only earn death.

***

One of the Recovery team, a woman whose high cheekbones and dark skin bespoke a native American heritage, stumbled in the darkness.  Esther had a light, as did they all, but it was woefully inadequate to illuminate her every footstep.  Plus, she dimmed it periodically so as not to give away her position to any of Malachi's people that were down here. 

Fanatics, or Fans, some of the Controllers called Malachi and his insane army, and Esther knew the name was apt.  Completely dedicated to their mission, single-minded in their pursuit of humanity's end, and zealous in their belief that God was with them, they were dangerous men and women.  Esther knew they would fight to the death - and in some cases beyond death - to win their battles, and so she turned off the light every few feet and walked in blackness in order to confuse any Fans who might be hiding down here.