The Terminals (16 page)

“How did the lieutenant know to come here?” Leica's face contorted with concern.

“I don't know and she won't tell us.”

“And American law enforcement officers are paying the price, aren't they?” Her false sympathy made me want to vomit. “Just as you paid the price on another occasion, didn't you?”

The camera zoomed back in to Handso, focusing on the facial bandages.

“The families deserve answers, ma'am,” he said. “This is America. We don't keep secrets from each other.”

I rolled my eyes, but as ridiculous as Handso's performance might seem, I knew it had worked. Hypocrisy never lacked friends.

“This is Leica Takers reporting for TTV.”

The screen blinked off, leaving the sound of the general clapping softly. “I've had a dozen calls.”

I shrugged.

“That's a lot considering only three people outside of the unit know of … know the reality of our existence. And it's twelve more than I like to get.”

It was the first time I'd noticed the thirty-year-old phone. A push button, but pushing rotary era. This unit ran on a shoe string.

“I missed a bomb. They shouldn't have sent forensics in with the bomb squad. Really sloppy.” What little strength remained in me, I imagined being like the filaments that held the eyeballs. The hooks propped me up and held me, manipulating my limbs.

“That's not the point. You shouldn't have gone inside in the first place. You shouldn't be the public face of this thing. We're secret!”

His anger gave me wind. “The very purpose of my entering alone was to prevent what happened.”

The general shook his head. “That bitch Takers is out for blood, and she can smell you on the rag a country mile.” The general clenched his hands into fists. “But we still have a mission and missing kids.”

I groaned; the kids were probably dead. I'm not sure we had a mission left. Over two days missing, they'd be unconscious by now, or deceased.

His thick fingers lifted a slim file from the desk. “Got another Euth for you, flying in from Vermont, Julie Wilshire.”

I choked.

“I won't …” The words barely made it out.

The general leaned forward.

“What? You won't, what?”

I fumbled for my phone. The general just regarded me while I started the database application.

“I won't let anyone else die for me,” I said.

“She's a dead woman anyways.” The general tossed the file, which opened mid-flight and scattered its pages at my feet.

“So you say.”

“Who says this has anything to do with you?”

Julie Wilshire's name was scrawled across the manila folder, but there was no photo clipped to it.

I shifted my attention back to the phone's screen and entered Morph's username and password. I was prompted to enter the constraints of my search. American, Terminal, All Databases, Gnostic, Military.

No results.

“She's civilian,” the general said.

I glanced up, but the general was picking at his nails. He'd told me it was a Euth.

I deleted the military constraint. Still no results. Feeling somehow vindicated, I typed in her name. A gray silhouette was where a photo should have been, and beneath it:

 

Name: Julie Wilshire

Age: 35

Profession: Nurse

Religion: Theosophist, modern Gnostic

Medical: Requires Coronary Bypass

Notes: Poor credit rating and indebted to collections agencies, Julie Wilshire cannot afford the $75,000 surgery

 

“Thirty-five? She's not terminal,” I said.

“She's going to die of a massive heart attack,” the general said. “Use her.”

“Her condition is treatable, curable even.”

“You fork over the cash,” he said, but then waved off the comment. “It's too late. She's on her way and we need her.”

“What about Charlie?” I asked.

“Charlie's not getting the job done.” The general cracked his knuckles. “If he were military, I'd give him a dishonorable discharge.”

But I didn't see people as expendable, terminal or not. My gut told me that the general's substitute for Charlie bent the rules. I was going to find out how much.

Chapter 25

Charlie braced against the pain,
his scream for Astaphanos echoing in his mind. His groin encrusted with old semen. His belly raw and weeping. He plunged thumbs into his eye sockets as if that might cleanse them of his filth. But his hunger and rage and lust were gone. Only the guilt remained. Broken vows. Broken trust. Human weakness assured. But worse. That which made him repulsive. That which left gnosis hidden. He knew why he hadn't helped Josephine. Why he'd left her to die. His drunkenness was no excuse. His youth was no defense.

Spite. She'd hurt him. Hurt his pride.

Darkness settled over Charlie, a shawl over his mantle of guilt. One moment he'd ascended through a ladder of light; the next, he neither landed nor stopped in any discernible way. The only change was the elimination of all light and the knowledge that he was there. He could no longer feel his toes or his fingers. He was without sensation. He listened for signs of Hillar, but heard nothing. Hillar, it appeared, knew all the names of the Archons and easily stayed ahead. Charlie's only hope was that Hillar had not garnered the meaning of his experiences in the deeps and remained as close to gnosis as Charlie—which was to say, nowhere near. He heard the echoes of Jo's screaming. Never near.

For some minutes nothing happened, and the darkness oppressed, deepening his despondency. Finally, a ripple traveled through the dark. Not light, rather a movement. It was so still and so black that even quiet whispers rustled the darkness. Shrouded in a conspiratorial hush, they grew louder and overlapped. With more than one speaker, at first Charlie couldn't distinguish one from another, but if he concentrated he could pluck out a voice. He hadn't heard it for decades. It was that of his brother.

“Petey?” But the deep remained dark.

Unbidden, the sound of Peter's head as it knocked against the windshield rang out. Traffic shattered around Charlie, who was left untouched amongst crumpled and wretched metal and screams. Eight years old and quaking.

His mother leaned through the darkness and told him that she had never again looked at Charlie without seeing a reflection of Peter, twisted and dead. Charlie's father had hardened to him.

“It should have been Charlie,” he overheard one night, to which he pleaded, “I was only trying to save Puppers.”

Petey's voice dispelled the illusions of memory.

“… guilty of the charge of listening to my brother. When he said,
Puppers!
I
had
to run. He's my big brother, you see? I didn't do nothing wrong except that. Did what I was told.”

Puppers had been his golden retriever, and Charlie remembered the smear of it on the pavement even as he remembered burying his fingers in its soft fur. He felt the fur now, sticky with blood. He stumbled into the darkness toward what he thought was the source of the voice, but the voices grew neither nearer nor more distant.

“And my momma always liked me more than she liked him. That's why he did it. He sent me onto the street. And think of this—who let Puppers off his leash?”

“You let go, Petey, you did,” Charlie said. His mind whirled. Could his brother really be here? He wasn't Gnostic, so did he exist here or was this a manifestation of Charlie's hallucinations? “It doesn't matter who let go. It wasn't your fault. I know it wasn't your fault.”

“I loved him! I loved him.” A new voice.

Charlie whirled, trying to peer into the ink and confirm the source of the call that rose above his brother's. It had sounded like Angelica. Angelica, to whom he'd lectured on Gnosticism; to whom Charlie was a mentor and more. She could be here, in the deeps … if she were dead. The thought pained him more than Petey's voice; since Charlie's rejection by Jo and taking up the cloth, Angelica had been the single friend he had made and kept in his confidence, the only one who knew everything. The only woman he'd allowed himself to love in decades.

“Chuck said I let go, but should I have been holding him? Everybody knows how Puppers could pull, right? I wasn't old enough to be holding on. So
Puppers
, he yelled. And of course I went! I felt my skull cave in.”

Petey's voice lowered until it was indecipherable and finally he quieted.

“I wouldn't have told. Not anyone,” Angelica exclaimed. “Oh, God, why'd they have to do this?”

“Angelica?” Charlie called, out of breath now. “Do what? What did they do?” He remembered Christine being upset when she discovered Angelica knew.

“Stole him from my breast! Cruel son, leaving to a crueler God.”

“Mother,” Charlie whispered and now felt the tears, sliding upon his cheeks. How could
she
be here?

“There was more I wanted to do,” Angelica cried. “In the back of the head. So low. Is this my punishment for love? Is it?”

“Loved me,” Charlie said. But could he ever know for certain? Was Angelica's love, love, or merely the same spiritual bond Charlie'd mistaken for love in Jo?

“My killer son! My killing son! I don't care who knows!”

Angelica moaned and between sobs, said: “Take my veil, take my cross. I … loved … him.”

“You hear that, Chuck?” Petey hollered. “The shards entered my brain, but I wasn't dead yet. I heard you come and say … you said … nothing. I never had a chance at life. Not even to fuck it up like you did.”

“You hear me, Charlie? I loved you. That's my sin.”

“It's no sin, Angelica. It's not!” The sound of wood cracked together and reverberated. A wheel squeaked as it turned. Charlie had never been able to show love back. Not wholly, not when Angelica's feelings might be tainted due to their bonding. Not with what he knew of himself. And Charlie couldn't handle such rejection again if Angelica discovered that truth, that Charlie had used their bond for his selfish desires. Much less learned the darker truth still.

“You threw up,” Petey continued. “All over me, and I wasn't even dead yet.”

“I'm sorry, Petey. I am but …” Charlie held his face. “But it wasn't my fault. I was a child.”

“I died after that, stinking of brains and half-digested tuna sandwich. My sin was following you.”

“Stole my son,” Charlie's mother said. “My sin was trusting you.”

“No, Mother,” Charlie replied and it came out as a snarl. “Your sin was not accepting your role in Pete's death.”

Then there was light.

The squeaking, which continued, faster now, was from the labored turning of rusted pulleys as ropes ran over them. Two hooded figures slowly gathered the rope, and the blade of the guillotine reached its height.

Beneath the blade, Charlie recognized the auburn tresses of Angelica. Stuck in the hole of the lunette, her brown hair hanging.

In the stocks of the second guillotine, Petey lay on his front and struggled to look at his brother, lifting his caved head to stare at him. His hands were free above the copper and wood barrier and moved in the way that Charlie remembered as he spoke.

The two executioners quit hauling on the rope and turned to Charlie, as if giving him the last word. Their gloved hands rested on a handle.

“No one is guilty here,” Charlie said, but he searched for his mother. “Only me!”

The executioners nodded in unison and pulled the release.

The blade seemed to hang an instant. And Charlie did, too, understanding he could only save one, dream or not, real or not, he had to make a choice. He dove forward.

Charlie reached the guillotine as the knife fell. He lunged between the thick pillars of wood to catch the slide of the edge across his bony wrists. But the blade whipped past his hands without pause and lopped through the neck. The head dropped into the wicker basket.

His only reward was the shock in his mother's eyes as she drew off her hood.

“No!” Charlie cried. And with the stubs of his wrists, he tried to pull Angelica's head out, but was only able to turn her face upright.

Pity?
it mouthed.

So sharp and quick was the blade that the pain had not registered immediately but now Charlie yowled into the darkness.

“You chose her! Her!” His mother screeched and drew back the top of the lunette, the blade already lifted to the top crossbar.

A rough hand gripped the nape of Charlie's neck, and he twisted to see his father, grim and unrepentant as he forced Charlie back on to the bed of the bascule, which swung toward the ground so that Charlie stared up at the blade and the lunette locked down over his throat. His Adam's apple kissed against it when he swallowed.

“Killers should burn,” his father said. “But this'll do.”

As his father's Alzheimer's had progressed, he had at times forgotten Charlie's sins. Their visits had alternated between forgetfulness, and the raw shock of seeing the killer in his son for the first time.

Charlie flailed his handless wrists. Blood greasing the wood, he pried the wood upward. He twisted his neck and looked down at Angelica.

“Not pity,” Charlie said. And Angelica smiled back up at him. It wasn't a mocking expression, rather complacent and glad. Charlie stopped thrashing.

“I loved you, too,” he croaked, saying without hesitation, without thought, without guilt or fear. And as the sound of the blade whispered down, warmth filled Charlie, and he knew the love and acceptance that he'd always strove for was at last his.

“Elaios,” he whispered to Angelica.

Over the roar of blood in Charlie's ears, he heard Hillar laughing.

And was gone.

Chapter 26

I wasn't willing to kill
anyone else. Justice was long overdue.

I waited on Charlie's cot until the general left, enduring his final headshake and scoff as he hobbled out of Purgatory and headed for his quarters. I heard the distant click of the door. Charlie's features were sunken; even I couldn't believe he was coming back. My phone buzzed with what at first I suspected was another of Morph's comments from the grave.

But the text read:
I have something you want to see.

It was from Leica Takers. How can people be so wrong? I was the one with something she wanted, although I suppose that was in the message's metadata.

I deleted the text and left Charlie's bedside.

Scattered across the general's desk were a couple dozen prescription drug bottles. I searched them, rattling each, separating the full from the nearly empty.

The bottle of Coumadin was over half-filled and I read the label.
May cause hemorrhage, uncontrolled bleeding, and death.
Perfect. I didn't care how good the staff was downstairs, nothing would save me this time. The anticoagulant took time to take effect, but I could manage a few hours of waiting. Coumadin was a blood thinner commonly used as rat poison, but that didn't dissuade me either. It was fitting. I popped the cap off and dry-swallowed a handful.

The general also had enough benzos to knock out an all-night rave and I thumbed off their caps, dumping the contents into one hand. I'd soon be in a narcotic coma with my wrists opened and no way to stop the bleeding.

My palm was halfway to my mouth when Attila walked in. I hesitated and a couple of the pills ran through my fingers on to the floor.

“Christine?”

Making a split decision, I shoveled the pills between my lips, but had trouble swallowing. I'd used up my saliva for the rat poison. I stood staring at him, trying to swallow as he crossed the room. Attila clutched my jaw in a strong grip. His fingers forced my head down, making it nearly impossible to swallow the pills.

“No, Christine!” Anger laced his tone. “Spit them out!”

He pushed fingers into my cheeks and along my teeth. With my jaw forced open, he shook my head, and I had an image of doing this to my Shepherd, Julian, when he'd swallowed a long shoelace. Pills tumbled out onto the floor in a mix of drool. I elbowed Attila in the stomach and he grunted. When he still wouldn't let go I stamped my heel into his instep and he cried out, flying backwards to hit the one-way mirror.

I swiped my sleeve across my mouth.

“What are you thinking?” he accused.

I just stared at him as he massaged his ribs.

“Remember what Morph said?” he demanded. “Dying for a reason is a good reason to keep living.”

“Those are the general's words. He also likes
life sucks and then you die
,” I replied. “And what reason do I have to keep living, anyway?”

He strode over to the desk and searched amongst the empty pill bottles.

“What did you take?” He bent to study the score of pills on the floor. “Is that it?”

“Not enough,” I said, thinking about the Coumadin. In a few hours, a wrestling match like that might have killed me.

He clutched my shoulders and stared at me with intent, certain eyes. “You can't do this.”

“I'm waiting for my reason.” I glared back.

“For the kids.”

“We're too late.” My voice broke. I'd never voiced my diminishing hope. Doing so sapped what energy I had left.

He waved back at desiccating Charlie. “Then because you might be right.”

“How's that?”

He dropped his chin and his volume. “Before Morph died, she told me that she suspected some of the Euths were manufactured. That she'd go into the database and pull up nothing, then a day later, up would pop a perfect match.”

A thrill shot along my spine, and I remembered Morph's deathbed warning. She had known something was amiss as well. But suspicions weren't worth much.

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I wanted to, but you were on the ledge. And …” He flushed, and I grabbed his wrist. “And I'm not sure I wanted to believe it.”

Attila was thin. Most of the men I'd known were muscular, military, beefy types, and I found his strength surprising.

Releasing him, I brought out the iPhone and connected to the Terminal's database.

“What are you doing?” He shuffled close, so his shoulder rubbed mine.

“With access to the case registry, we can figure this out.” I thumbed the buttons and entered Morph's username and password.

“What was Siam's last name?” I demanded.

“Rattanakosin.”

“You're kidding?” I tried to smile, looking up. “Going to have sore thumbs.”

I held my breath as I punched in the surname and brought up Siam's medical history. When I had it, I turned the screen so he could see. Doctor Siam Rattanakosin, Professor of Egyptology and Archeology at Hart University, was diagnosed on May 23rd. Months before the cult leader committed suicide and left his missive. I frowned. Siam couldn't have been manipulated.

Attila's black eyes still burned with anger and betrayal over the pills. “Morph was wrong? Maybe you're wrong?”

“Charlie was diagnosed three days before Hillar was gunned down,” I added. “That's a big coincidence. I'm sure the general is creating terminals when he needs them.”

“
Before
doesn't help you. If it was before, then it throws that theory out the window. The general can't be manufacturing diagnoses of esoteric religions before he knows he needs them.”

“Not necessarily, not if the general likes to plan ahead. What's the worst that could have happened, having delivered a terminal diagnosis to a monk in the middle of nowhere?”

“Miraculous recovery?” He shrugged. “It probably would have been taken as a sign from God.”

“Not sure if that's true in Charlie's case, but you're right. Nothing would have come of it. Isn't it suspicious that the Euth turned out to be the same expert that headlined on the news? The general hedged his bets.” I pointed the phone toward Purgatory. “Was Siam autopsied?”

“Never. Terminals and Euths are never autopsied; they'd find the euthanizing drugs in their systems.”

That made sense.

“Charlie's still here. He could be autopsied and we'd know for certain if he had pancreatic cancer.”

“We'd have a lot of questions to answer.”

“Who cares?”

Attila glanced at the puddle of pills and back. “I do.
I
don't want to kill myself. I don't want everyone knowing that I can talk to the dead. I'd never be left alone. Here … here I can …” His brow furrowed and he looked away.

“Do more good than harm?” I asked, and he sighed. “How do you know?”

“Not every case results in officers killed, Colonel,” he said. “We've done a lot of good.”

I turned as if slapped. “It's just me, then.”

“I didn't mean …” Attila dropped his arms.

“No, I know.” I ground the pills into the skin of carpet.

“So what do we do?”

“We don't let anyone else die who shouldn't be dying.” My fingernails raked over the iPhone.

“Including you,” he said. “Will you promise me you're not going to try this shit again?”

I'd made that promise to Charlie already, and he'd failed me, causing the deaths of as many people as we were trying to save. No more promises.

“I'm not letting Wilshire die for seventy-five grand.” It was no answer to Attila, but it bought me a few more hours. At least until the Coumadin kicked in.

“Your need to die, Chris …” Attila lifted his hands in exasperation. “Why are you so hard on yourself?”

In the last six months, I'd caused the deaths or injuries of men and women in three separate incidents. Inaction, incompetence, or ignorance. None of them were excusable. I didn't answer.

Attila held aloft his doorknob. “The jury is still out on you.”

“We've had the verdict.” I sniffed, and headed for the door to Purgatory, but he moved to block me.

“Tell me about another soldier in your platoon who died. A freebie.”

The doorknob caught the overhead light and flared when Attila held it up. His arm was like iron as I tried to push it away.

“Take a chance,” Attila said.

I grunted at the firm set to his jaw. But I needed him to lay off and could only see one way to ensure that happened.

“One more,” I replied. “If this last gives me the thumbs down, you'll leave me alone.” Attila nodded and I continued, “Lieutenant Sonya Alphonso. Formerly of New York City,” I said without hesitation.

“Tell me something personal about her, what was she like?”

“Hardcore.” My eyes watered and I blinked them clear. “So proud to be an officer.”

I told him about Sonya, most of it anyways. Sonya came from a poor family. She was fiercely religious. Chewed gum constantly. I bet Attila could find her by following a trail of spearmint and gum wads.

“Sonya Alphonso, Colonel Christine Kurzow wishes to speak with you.” Attila fondled the crystal between his palms.

I shivered with the chill that comes just before a dreaded answer. When the doctor speaks. When a mother takes a midnight call.

At the C-Town grocery, Sonya Alphonso watched her husband and son check out. On the conveyor was a twelve-pack of beer, six bottles of assorted hard alcohol, frozen French fries, pizza, and four bottles of soda—she noted that Smarmy, their cat, was relegated to dry food now. Her boy tugged at his father's sleeve.

“Can we buy some hamburgers, Dad?”

Sonya had always been proud that her son was tallest in his class and now wondered how many inches of height he'd give up for the sudden lapse in nutrition. When home, Sonya had controlled the household finances, pleased when her husband left for work in neat, clean clothes and her son dressed in a way that reflected her own appearance. The man at the checkout had already degenerated into a drunken ass, and at the current rate of consumption, he'd piss away the hundred-thousand-dollar survivor death benefit in a year if he didn't gamble it away sooner.

She'd done everything she could to become a commissioned officer, including some things she wasn't entirely proud of. And just when she'd made it, when
she
could have been the one leading the patrol, she'd taken the blast at waist-height, literally blown away.

“Colonel Kurzow has asked for your forgiveness.”

Sonya whirled on the voice, but there was only a man pushing a shopping cart.

“Kurzow?” she answered, coughing with sudden amusement so that she nearly lost the gum in her mouth. Sonya would give Kurzow something all right, but it sure as hell wouldn't be forgiveness. That bitch had never liked her. Her lips smacked as she chewed a stale wad of gum.

“I'm buying your French fries,” her husband said to her son. “Listen. Momma's gone; things are going to be real tough.”

Her son's whine filled her with longing, a hunger that would never be sated, like the dream of a future for her son.

“I am with Christine Kurzow and she seeks forgiveness for not shooting the child. She's considering suicide in recompense.”

Sonya spat out the gob and drew a deep breath. “You kidding me? How can I forgive her?” Her gaze scanned the dull sadness in her son's eyes, the scruff of her husband's cheeks, and the single silver bar on her lapel to which she would never add another. Kurzow had taken more than her life. She'd taken her family legacy. “Too bad I can't help her do it myself.”

I could tell by the look on Attila's face that the answer hadn't been one he had expected. He sighed and shook his head. “Who could shoot a child?”

“A trained soldier with a gun,” I said.

I hadn't needed to hear Attila say it to know that Sonya would convict me. She had hated me, and I had returned the sentiment. She slept with the other men in our platoon. She used her femininity to obtain what she wanted, anything from a decent meal to a promotion. This in the theater of war where the Army had forbidden hugging and holding hands. Maybe I should have ratted her and the men out, but something had always told me I didn't have the right. Here I was, using her to get Attila off my back. Or was I? Was I really hoping to convince Attila that I truly deserved to die? Or was I trying to convince myself?