Bleak History Read online

  Only, the stones in this place could fly around in the air and come back to smash out your damn brains. And all Gulcher wanted was to find a way out of CCA.

  “All this,” Erlich said, in a gravelly voice, “is a waste of time, Forsythe.” He strolled into the room, hands in his pockets, looking around dubiously. “A conference room. Very impressive. You haven't even got coffee here for us? I sure could use a cup of coffee.”

  “Oh, there'll be coffee after, General Erlich, if you still feel like it,” Forsythe said, with a sharklike grin. “This won't take long.”

  Swanson's cynical gaze took in Gulcher. “Don't I know this man's face? I can't place it.”

  “I'll include that in the briefing as soon as the rest of our team gets here for the demonstration.”

  “I don't care what you can demonstrate,” Erlich said, looking exasperated. “We're out of our depth—all of us. You too, Forsythe. This is a work for theologians, not scientists. Newton knew what he was doing.”

  “If I thought it could be controlled,” Swanson put in, his voice nasal, Bostonian, “I would consider it. For a while we thought—maybe. But now—I don't think it's doable. It's like herding cats. Black cats. It's not quantifiable. Whatever it is you think you can demonstrate today is not going to change our minds, Forsythe. It could be spectacular and it wouldn't matter. If we have anything to say*? about it, we're going to shut CCA down.”

  “That is, in fact, why you're here,” Forsythe said. “You see, we need just a little more time—we can't have you take that time away from us.”

  “So you think you can persuade us with a magic trick?” Erlich asked, snorting.

  The door opened and Billy Blunt came in, looking around, with his mouth open, a finger in one nostril. He still wore the BRAINSUCKER T-shirt—and smelled as if he'd never washed it. The two black berets who had escorted him here stood uncertainly in the doorway.

  “You fellas just wait down the hall, in the cafeteria,” Forsythe said.

  “Sir? This kid—”

  “Don't worry.” Forsythe patted the suppressor. “We've got it under control. Go ahead.”

  They closed the door from the outside. Gulcher was glad they were gone. Those little machine guns they carried made him nervous—in their hands. Sure like to get hold of one.

  “Now,” Forsythe said, “let's have a chin-wag. I'll start us off—I have some questions to ask you about the defenses at the Pentagon.”

  “What?” Erlich seemed startled. “Why would you ask us about that? And why would we talk about it here in front of...this odious child and”—he nodded at Gulcher—”and whoever this man is.”

  “Why—I'll need the information later for a smoother transition, when I take over the Pentagon, gentlemen.” Forsythe's grin was now perfectly raffish.

  Erlich and Swanson glanced at one another. “You're out of your mind, Forsythe,” Swanson said.

  “Sounds that way, I know. First—let's squeeze the information out of you. Then—we video one of you killing the other. The video will be mostly for our own study. And for my amusement. I thought we might have you strangle General Erlich.”

  “The devil you say!” Swanson spat, starting for the door.

  Forsythe switched off the suppressor—and nodded to Gulcher. Who spoke a name and reached out.

  And Swanson stopped in his tracks.

  THE SUN WAS HIGH overhead, burning the back of his neck. The shadows were shrunken. And she was near. Bleak could feel it. She was in that building.

  He could still change his mind. He could get up—and walk away from this. That'd be the smart thing to do. Going into the lion's den to rescue Loraine...when he wasn't even sure she wanted to be rescued.

  Bleak grimaced. Coming here to find her had a grating feeling of compulsion about it. Seemed connected to their status as “soul mates.” Not so much in the romantic sense—but in the esoteric sense. Something destined, something he was shaped for at birth. Like astrology but without wiggle room. Compulsion.

  Supposedly, it was his destiny—but going with compulsion went against his grain. One reason he and the army hadn't been a good fit.

  He suspected he was being usedby something. By someone. By “Mike the Light,” and the other spirits of light. Entities who'd had precious little time for him over the years—who'd held aloof. Suddenly he was supposed to do their bidding.

  But you had to serve somebody, as the song said. In the end, you had to choose sides. The smart thing to do wasn't always the wise thing to do.

  And there was something else. He looked inside himself, and finally, he had to admit it: he really, really wanted to see Loraine Sarikosca again. Even if it meant risking his life.

  Bleak sighed—and made up his mind.

  Lying flat in the dry, yellow grass around the black trunks of the dying oaks, Bleak looked over the facility, its fence about sixty feet away. What was the best way to get in?

  He heard a rumble of engine noise approaching, and three soldiers in black berets—two Hispanic and one gangly white one—came riding along the other side of the high, razor-topped steel fence in something like a golf cart, but painted in military camouflage colors. They were all armed, and not with golf clubs.

  Special Forces. Could be alert for Gabriel Bleak. Not good.

  Bleak waited, motionless, till they'd ridden past. He considered the security camera mounted on a pole over the gate. Whirring back and forth, it was aimed along the entrance road. Was probably motion sensitive enough to swivel his way if he got close.

  When he was sure the men in the cart were gone around the corner of the front facility building, he stood up, balling an energy bullet in his right hand, winding up like a pitcher as he ran toward the camera. It was turned away from him just then—he had to hit it before it swiveled back. He fixed his attention on it and threw the energy bullet, a purple-violet meteor that sizzled through the air and struck the camera square. The camera's aluminum cowling blackened; the lens cracked; sparks shed from its wiring; and it stopped moving.

  Bleak smiled, thinking he should really get back onto a softball team. If he survived.

  He walked up to the metal gate in the fence, reached out to transfer explosive energy into its locks...then stopped his hand an inch from the steel mesh. He could sense the electrical power radiating through the metal. And dead birds, two crows and a finch, were lying on the ground nearby.

  Bleak stepped back and thought that, anyway, if he broke the lock, it might well set off an alarm. There was another way.

  He backed up twenty feet and drew energy from the Hidden. He formed the ramp in the air and reified it, made it dear in his mind—which made it more defined in the air.

  And then Bleak ran for the fence. Felt the lift almost immediately, as he ran up the invisible ramp, up, up, and over the fence, jumping down to hit the asphalt on the balls of his feet, as the energy of the ramp drained away behind him.

  He ran toward the nearest door—then saw a camera over it, swiveling toward him. Was there a more discreet way in?

  Bleak dodged left, around a corner—and immediately encountered the three soldiers, about ten yards off, coming back in the cammied “golf cart,” looking bored...till they spotted him.

  He was already forming energy bullets in both hands, and as the guards screeched their little vehicle to a halt, sideways to him, jumping out and swinging their weapons his way, Bleak flung the energy bullets overhand, left and right, forming two more the instant he let go of the first ones.

  The four energy bullets sizzled through the air, right to their marks: the soldiers' guns, and the cart. The men yelled, their hands burnt, and flung the guns away; bullets exploded in the fallen guns and whined along the ground nearby; Bleak's fourth energy bullet striking the cart's electrical engine —it gushed smoke and sparks. That was for show, to keep them confused while he turned, making a stairway in the air with compressed energy, running up it before it was quite fully formed so that he had to create steps ahead of him as he we
nt...up, and onto the roof of the building.

  The soldiers were shouting into communicators, their voices distant from up here as Bleak ran clatteringly across the metal-sheathed roof to the other side—found himself looking down into a courtyard between several buildings. He knelt, took hold of the edge of the roof, lowered himself, and dropped into the empty concrete courtyard, turning to run immediately to the nearest door. An alarm was yipping somewhere.

  He put his hand on the metal over the door's lock, focused energy, and its works burst apart. The door sprang open. He looked through—an empty corridor.

  Loraine. Loraine Sarikosca...

  Picturing her. Extending his senses into the Hidden. His intuitive sensitivity coupled with his esoteric connection to her should be enough to guide him. There—he felt her to the right.

  Bleak ran along the corridor...and stopped dead, seeing Conrad Pflug standing there in front of him at the end of the hall a few strides away. Scribbler. And Bleak knew immediately that this was a ghost.

  That Scribbler was dead.

  A clue to his death was his wrists—both of them ripped open. He thought of stigmata.

  “If you go to her now,” Scribbler said blandly, “we may lose our only allies. There is no time.” He reached out with a finger and wrote in the air, and the letters appeared, backward to Bleak, in red. He was able to read it backward, mentally translating:

  Find the Gulcher and the Blunt and the three generals, behind you.

  Then Scribbler closed his eyes, his face screwing up in pain. “Can't stay...I'm going to the After. Maybe I can just leave a little bit of...” Then he dissolved, shimmering away. Bleak thought— What should I do? Should he be guided by Scribbler...or look for Loraine?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Bleak heard shouting, running footsteps, around the corner ahead—and Loraine was that way. He turned reluctantly back. He would have to trust Scribbler.

  A startling rattle of gunfire behind him—bullets pocked the wall to his left. Then he'd turned right, around a corner. A short corridor, and up ahead it turned left again.

  As he ran, Bleak threw an energy bullet into an overhead light. The bulb shattered from within, and this short stretch of corridor went dark. He turned, threw a larger ball of energy at the floor by the corner where the black berets were rushing up—the floor tiles shattered, the corner edge of the wall blew apart, and the pursuing men yelled and backed up. Bleak closed his eyes, huddling into the darkest spot in the corridor. The alarm was still blaring.

  “Whoa—some kind of grenade!” one of them yelled. “Hold on—we can call unit two to trap him.”

  “That wasn't a damn grenade, man—let's just rush him!”

  Bleak was forming the cocoon of darkness in the corner, under the darkened light. He'd just enclosed himself when the black-beret guards looked around the corner...and saw no one.

  He heard them run past him, clattering down the corridor. He waited a four count, then dropped the cocoon of darkness. He was alone—but it wouldn't last. He started down the corridor, jogging along, the alarm louder with each step—and saw a circuit box near the ceiling, marked ALARM. He sent an energy bullet into it and the alarm shut off. Another twenty paces—and a corridor led left, into a series of locked doors, and right into a structure like a covered bridge to another building.

  Words scribbled themselves luminously on the floor just in front of him:

  Turn right

  A surveillance camera looked down the hallway. If he destroyed it, the feed would go blank— they'd know where he was. He ignored the camera and ran down the wooden-walled passage, through double metal doors into another building. Glanced at the floor...

  Right again then left.

  He hurried right, then left...and heard men shouting behind him. They'd almost found him again. He stopped at a closed door painted a dull green—with Scribbler's red handwriting luminous across it:

  This is it. As the words faded out, Bleak formed an energy bullet in his right hand, opened the door with his left, and stepped through—and time seemed to slow, for a moment, as he took in the crowded conference room.

  He saw four men and a young boy. Three of the men, on Bleak's right, wore military uniforms— all three at a general's rank.

  The man in the white shirt, with the slash-mark eyebrows and short beard, was standing next to the kid, on Bleak's left.

  Gulcher, Bleak thought, intensifying the energy bullet in his hand. This is what Scribbler meant.

  Gulcher and the boy were focused in concentration on the odd tableau in front of him in which one of the generals, a tall man with a craggy face, was strangling the shorter one, who was on his knees, face red and bloating, passively allowing it to happen.

  And the third general was humming tunelessly to himself as he documented the whole thing with a small digital movie camera. His ID badge read FORSYTHE.

  The strangling continued. The man's face was purpling, swelling. Bleak recognized the strangler —General Swanson. One of the Joint Chiefs—strangling another general. Apparently for the amusement of Forsythe—whom Bleak knew, by reputation, as the head of the CCA.

  Forsythe was just lowering the camera, turning to look at Bleak. Who tried to decide what to do with the energy bullet beginning to burn his hand.

  “Ain't this funny,” the chubby kid said, to himself, staring at the two men, the strangler and the strangled. The boy's T-shirt, Bleak noticed, read BRAINSUCKER. The boy's hands were clenching, though there was nothing in them, as if he were doing the strangling himself.

  The kid was controlling the strangler, Bleak guessed. Gulcher was controlling the strangled man.

  Bleak threw the energy bullet instinctively—it exploded with a strobelike flash in the air just in front of the boy and Gulcher. Both of them threw their hands up to protect their eyes, concentration broken.

  General Swanson gave out a cry of relief and outrage, jerking his hands away from the other man. Wasn't the kneeling man General Erlich? From the Joint Chiefs? Erlich collapsed onto the floor, wheezing, clutching at his neck.

  “Whatever's going on here,” Bleak said, “it can't be good. Let's give it a rest, what do you say .”

  He began to form another energy bullet in the hand he held against his right side.

  Forsythe turned, smiling coldly, to Bleak. “I suppose we have enough on video, after all. I can erase the last few seconds. Drake?” He set the camera on the conference table.

  And someone stepped out to press the muzzle of a pistol to the left side of Bleak's neck.

  Bleak realized that he'd unconsciously sensed the man all along, hiding behind the door—but the perverse tableau had held him fascinated. He'd become careless.

  “Bleak!” the man said gleefully. “Remember me? Zweig? From Kabul? It's been a while! Where you been keepin' yourself?”

  “Zweig. Yeah. I remember. Long time,” Bleak said, intensifying the energy bullet in his right hand.

  “Zweig,” Forsythe said. “He's playing with fire again.”

  “You dissolve that little glow-ball in your hand, there, Bleak,” Zweig said, “or I'll pull the trigger. We're talking safety off, finger already squeezin'. Just make that thing go away and don't even breathe deep.”

  Bleak felt the metal chill of the gun muzzle jab harder into his neck. “Now, Bleak!”

  Could he move aside, hit the gun with an energy bullet before Zweig shot him? Not a chance. He closed his fingers, extinguishing the ovoid of violet light, held up his hand to show it was empty.

  General Swanson had taken off his coat, folded it and put it under Erlich's head. “What have you made me do! Oh, Jesus. He's in a bad way.”

  “I...,” Erlich said hoarsely. “I'm still...not getting much air.”

  “His windpipe is crushed. He needs help!” Swanson said.

  “My eyes,” the boy said, blinking, whining. “That flash hurt my eyes.”

  Gulcher, rubbing one eye, was squinting around at the others. Seeming to loathe ever
yone equally.

  “This is not the room I expected you to go to, Bleak,” Forsythe was saying, looking critically at Gulcher and the boy. “Loraine Sarikosca is in another room entirely. But we can make this work. Zweig will escort you to her. Room Thirty-two.”

  Swanson glowered up at Forsythe. “Recording this. You were recording it—going to claim it was surveillance footage? That I went mad and killed Swanson?”

  “Oh, I wouldn't say so, no. The video is for our own research reference. What you call in-house documentation. No, we plan to simply dump your bodies somewhere interestin'.” Forsythe made a dismissive gesture with his hand—a kind of false modesty. “We'll have you destroy yourself after you're done with Erlich. We'll leave evidence suggesting you were driven to murder and suicide by the very forces that we must be free to stop—your death will be proof that CCA is needed! Ingenious? Yes. Forsythe has an ingenious mind. He's a marvelous resource.”

  Bleak noted Forsythe speaking of himself in the third person. He'd suspected from the moment he'd first seen him that the general was under a dark influence; was controlled by an Outsider. He could feel the energy trail, in the Hidden, leading into the After; into the Outside...and into the Wilderness.

  “And we will now conclude our business,” Forsythe said firmly. “If my proxies here have recovered. Gulcher? How are you feeling?” Gulcher just snorted and shook his head.

  “I just want to point something out, gentlemen, if I might,” Bleak said mildly, while looking up at the overhead light. He focused the energy field in the room as he spoke. It was harder to funnel an energy bullet at a target by simply looking at it. But given a little more time. “Sean told me you need me. So if you shoot me through the neck, as Zweig proposes to do if I move, I don't think I'll be of much use to you. I think the gun is a bluff.”