Agents of the Demiurge (17 page)

They paused at the entrance to a large room
with stairs leading up in various directions. Hess raced ahead with
the functional members of their group, leaving Erik and Ingrid
behind. “Told you there was a twelfth.”

“You were right,” Ingrid said.

“Did you get the names of any of our
guards?”

“No.” Ingrid's voice trembled.

“Oh, get over it already, cupcake. We're
gonna get out of here, then I'm gonna go guard hunting. Right after
I look up dear ol Simone. The good times are coming back. For me,
of course. The Church people might disagree once I get started on
them.”

Erik licked his lips. “It's been forever
since I've done spicy torture. If you combine menthol and
capsaicin, you can trick the body's heat and cold receptors into
firing at the same time. The sensation is
excruciating
. See,
the only time both hot and cold senses fire together is when
serious burning or frost-biting is happening. The brain interprets
the combination as a big ol emergency. What I like best is so
little damage is done that you can keep working for days on a
person. Just abrade a patch of skin with sandpaper, apply spicy
torture potion liberally, and observe.”

Gunshots interrupted him. Erik glanced
around, then took another bite of belly fat. He maneuvered it to
the back of his throat and swallowed, then overrode the resultant
urge to vomit by sheer force of will. “Tortured a group once with
filth. Chained them in a pit and dumped sewage on them. Was fun at
first, but not very productive. Most of them died of hypothermia.
One died of an infection. Last guy begged to die so he wouldn't
have to hang out with decomposing corpses. Kinda a failed
experiment. Live and learn, right?”

San ran back to collect and chaperone them to
the main staircase, giving terse orders for them to avoid getting
too close to the smaller stairs to each side. Erik followed as
quickly as possible, pleasantly surprised that his body appeared
stronger after the short rest.

Then came the stairs. San had to haul both of
her charges up the steps, which left her huffing nearly as much as
them. Gunfire sounded from up ahead. As they hugged the walls of
the corridor for the minimal cover found there, Erik ran through
what he remembered of the compound's layout from the day he had
been transported.

The main corridor they stood in stretched
between the stairs leading down to the lower level and the lobby.
Outside the glass doors of the lobby was the parking lot. Erik
squinted down the hall. There were a shit ton of flashing lights
outside.

“Erik! Does the phone have reception
yet?”

He pulled the device from the pocket of his
borrowed pants. “No.”

“That's unfortunate. So here's the plan,”
Hess said. “San, Jerome, Drake, and Ingrid are going to run into
the lobby with guns blazing. I follow right behind and take out
anyone lurking in the corners. Erik, you are going to guard our
rears. Everyone kill as many people as you can and try not to
die.”

“Screw that,” Drake said. “Use the last pipe
bomb.”

“I'm saving it.”

“For what? Don't you see the cops out there?
We're screwed, Hess. Jerome needs to end the world before they
string us up.”

Hess shook his head. “We haven't lost until
we've lost, Drake. We are going to take the lobby. Then we are
going to toss a pipe bomb at the police cordon. That will give us
some space. Then we set off the nuke. If it doesn't fizzle, then we
use the distraction to get to the motorcycles we stashed. That's
what we're going to do. Now let's do it.”

Erik watched the others storm into the lobby.
Drake pushed a protesting Ingrid before him as a human shield,
firing wildly at the soldiers behind the reception desk. Jerome
went at his side, thin arms thrown into the air with the recoil of
each trigger pull. San jogged in the opposite direction, an insane
bounce in her step.

A cacophony of gunfire erupted. Hess hefted a
rifled to his shoulder and stepped into the room. He paused, put
his cheek to the stock of his rifle, and fired twice. Then he
pivoted and repeated the procedure. Time and again, Hess turned,
acquired a target, shot, and turned again. There was no rush, only
inhumanly efficient movement.

The pounding of boots on steps brought Erik
back to his task of guarding the rear approach. He brought his
handgun up and blew the face off the first man to appear in his
line of sight. The next one got it in the chest. Target number
three got lucky and managed to tumble back down the steps without
injury.

From the direction of the lobby, the shooting
stopped. Erik glanced over his shoulder, trying to determine who
had finished whom. From the direction of the steps, another wave of
soldiers appeared.

Erik took out three this time. The others
retreated, but not before putting a piece of metal in his shoulder.
He glanced back again, then spun and raised his weapon at the
figure silhouetted at the entry to the lobby.

“Come on,” Hess said.

Erik stumbled into a semi-jog until he
reached the lobby. Bodies lay where they had fallen in pools of
red. Most were Church soldiers. He did a quick assessment. Only
Hess and Jerome had survived.

“Do you have reception now?”

Erik pulled out the phone again. There was a
single bar of reception. He dialed one and put the phone to his
ear. Hess watched expectantly. Seconds ticked by. Then a flat beep
sounded. The phone display now showed zero bars of reception.
“Dropped call,” he said.

“We'll try again outside.” Hess directed
Jerome to guard their rear, then pulled free a pipe bomb. He handed
a remote control to Erik. “Twist the wheel when I tell you, then
run out and get behind one of the colonnades. Make the call as soon
as you're in place.”

He took the control offered to him. Hess
pulled open the door and threw the pipe like a javelin, sending it
into the front ranks of first responders. Before Hess could give
the order, Erik spun the knob. A satisfying blast sounded, clearing
its blast radius and sending everyone else dodging for cover.

Erik ran through the door and made it to the
nearest column. Hess joined him. The phone once more showed a
single bar. Erik punched the keys and put it to his ear. The sound
of speed dialing greeted him, followed by ringing.

He glanced around wildly. Where was he
supposed to watch for the explosion? “Where's the bomb?”

“On the bluff.” Hess pointed ahead. “Ground
zero is my house.”

The phone continued to ring at his ear.

“Please don't fizzle,” Hess whispered.

Light washed over them, bright as a camera
flash to the eyes and as warming as the noonday sun. “It's brighter
than it should be,” Hess said.

Erik jumped out from behind the column and
struck a dramatic pose. “BOOM, MOTHERFUCKERS!”

A split second later, the shock wave killed
everyone present.

Escape was
almost simple following the detonation. Anyone who might have
attempted to stop them either lay motionless in death or had fled
in the grip of unreasoning panic, no doubt convinced the Demiurge
had chosen to smite the people. All six Observers walked free of
the Church headquarters, resisted only by terrain rearranged by the
explosion and continuing structural collapses.

Their disintegrated clothing proved their
greatest inconvenience. While their bodies reformed unharmed, their
coverings had a more mundane nature and hung on them in threads
where it hung on them at all. They scavenged clothing from corpses
farther from the epicenter and strutted free of the
destruction.

In the immediate aftermath of the explosion,
following their resurrections, Erik had slapped Hess heartily on
the back and proclaimed everything forgiven. More, he promised that
if the two of them ever had another disagreement, his magnanimity
could always be purchased for the modest price of one doomsday
weapon.

Jerome shepherded Ingrid along, sickly waif
leading emaciated man to his emancipation. Drake and Erik pointed
out interesting sights with glee, fascinated by twisted skyscrapers
in the distance and split pavement and gushing water mains and hot
rain falling from the expanding cap of the mushroom cloud. Due to
the unexpected ferocity of their nuke and the resultant destruction
of the storage space hosting their getaway motorcycles, Hess lead
them in the direction of the garage on foot.

Fortunately, the garage had survived the
devastation of the city. The damage suffered by their base of
operations was limited in scope to fried electronics and shattered
windows. They filed inside and collapsed onto the second-hand
furniture.

Jerome stirred first, rising to collect
unworn clothing and blankets from the office room. Hess noticed her
hand linger against that of Drake when she passed him a bundle. He
rolled his eyes, then glanced to the window. He saw only half-light
unsuitable for estimating time there. “What time is it? Elza should
be back by now.”

San sat up. “Her car was parked at the end of
the block when we got here, so she made it back. Is there any sign
that she's been inside?”

“If she made it back already, then why isn't
she here?” Hess went first to the door to verify Elza's car was not
on the street. Back inside, he noticed that her bags were gone.
Moving more quickly now, he searched the garage until he found a
note penned in her hand on the rickety card table they had used for
their feast the previous evening.

My Dearest Hess,

I wish I could say the right words to return our
relationship to normal. Failing that, I wish I could persuade you
to pretend everything is normal. Because I am unable to do either
of those things, our future together is guaranteed to hold nothing
but bitterness – and I do not want that for us.

The love between us has burned hot for longer than
the shelf life of most civilizations. It was real, Hess, every
moment of it. I know your nature makes it impossible for you to
understand how I could value our time together and yet still choose
to end our lives. I also know that my decision to walk away will be
something you cannot reconcile with my most ardent professions.
Nevertheless, I will try.

From a tent deep within a frozen wilderness to an
anonymous village nestled within fields of Taro to innumerable
instances stretched across our very own portion of eternity, I have
loved you. I loved you before I had the strength to say the words.
I loved you in helpless desperation when I believed our dalliance
treason against the Creator. I loved you enough to help you raise
orphans and found charitable organizations and introduce non-native
technologies and take over the known world and even build a nuclear
weapon.

I love your unflinching dedication to doing the
right thing. I love your unending empathy for creatures whose pain
is largely self-inflicted. I love your grand visions for a better
world. I love how you are always fully present within the moment. I
love how you take charge of circumstances which would cause anyone
else to surrender. I love how you transform me from a cold,
intellectual bitch into someone worth knowing.

Our love is more enduring than anything that has
come before and anything likely to come after. It is more real than
entire worlds – 144 have ceased to exist while we have persevered.
But all things come to an end. Nothing lasts forever. Eventually
our love would meet a trial it could not overcome.

I prefer to end our love at high tide, while it
still is real, while we regret not a single moment of our time
together. For the duration of this world, I will yearn for your
presence, your conversation, your touch, for you. I have chosen to
believe that you yearn for me in return. To me, this mutual
yearning is far preferable to caustic arguments undermining our
history.

I know this letter has been hard to read, and trust
me, it was every bit as hard to write. Our love yet endures. It
will end soon, when we cease to exist, but it will end in its
glory.

With all my love,

Elza

Hess placed the letter back on the table,
arranging it identical to the way he had found it. When Jerome
approached, Hess shook his head. He tried to respond to the
question on her face, but his throat refused to pass sound. The
dawning realization on every face in the room brought the reality
home, each expression of shock driving the fiery nail deeper into
his soul.

No one interrupted the awkward silence until
someone noticed Erik's absence. Jerome and Drake and Ingrid and San
went about their business, eating and sleeping and packing bags and
debating whether or not Erik would return.

Hess spent the hours in a twilight existence,
re-reading a letter already imprinted upon his perfect memory. His
thoughts moved at a glacial pace, frozen into virtual immobility.
For most of that time, he reclined on a bed in the garage's office,
the one he had last used in the company of Elza.

His memory ran a slide show on loop depicting
Elza in all one hundred and forty-five bodies. They had all been
his favorite in their time, simply by virtue of the fact that they
had been the vessel to bring his woman back to him. The tensions of
the present world had prevented their usual banter so that he never
had the opportunity to tell Elza that her current form was his
favorite. Now he would never get that chance. More, he could never
mean those words now. Because this was the body that had walked
away from him.

Within hours, San departed in a flurry of
witty goodbyes. She broke form only for Hess. For him, she kissed
his cheek and whispered words of commiseration. Then San was gone
and the garage grew even quieter, even emptier.