Kill Switch (6 page)

Prospero came over and bent to touch the picture on the laptop screen. His touch was gentle and on his face was an expression of self-aware pleasure that Greene thought looked beatific. There was text beneath the image, and Prospero read it in a soft voice. “‘Naked, they dress only in their majesty and their mystery.'” He turned to the doctor. “Don't you get it? This isn't me copying what they did. This is me finding other people like me. Other people who have seen the things I've seen. Not just Ernst. Others. André Breton, Louis Aragon, and Philippe Soupault.” He laughed and then rattled off a long list of names. “Paul Éluard, Benjamin Péret, René Crevel, Max Morise, Man Ray, Roger Vitrac, Gala Éluard, Salvador Dalí, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Prévert, Yves Tanguy…”

Greene held a hand up to stop him. “I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to tell me.”

“They saw what I see. They knew it's real. They wrote about it, painted it, told people about it. They knew, Doc. They knew that my world exists. Do you know how much I needed that? To know that I'm not crazy, that this is real?”

Greene said nothing. This was a dangerous moment for the boy and he had to decide if he had reached a new level with Prospero or if the boy had revealed just how far his psychosis ran.

Before he could organize a comment, Prospero snatched up the sketchbook and hugged it to his chest.

“I think I understand now,” he declared. “Those devices I've been building? The ones my dad keeps taking from me and selling to the military? They're nothing. That was just me starting the wrong way. No … no, it was me getting up to speed. But this, this,” he said, thumping his palm against his sketchbook so hard that it seemed he wanted to push the book into his own heart, “this is what I needed to make me stop doubting myself. God, it's like a light went on in my head the way it does in cartoons. Wow. I know, Doc. I really know what I have to do. The writers, they've been dropping clues for years. Lovecraft, Derleth, Howard? All of them, the ones everyone thinks were writing stupid horror stories? They weren't. Oh no. Oh, hell no. They were dropping clues. They were sending up smoke signals, knowing that someone like me would be out there, watching, looking, waiting for contact.”

“Prospero,” said Greene evenly, “I'm going to need you to calm down. Why don't you take a seat and let's do some control breathing together—”

“Shhh, Doc,” said Prospero, “you need to listen now. This is so big. This is so huge my head feels like it opened up on hinges. I can feel the truth in there. I can feel the answers. They're whispering to me. They want me to find them.” He cut Greene an almost conspiratorial look. “You've been a big help. You kicked me in the butt and now I know what I have to do.”

“What is it you think you have to do?” asked Greene carefully.

“I have to find the books. They all hinted about them. Those writers, they weren't writing about fake monster stuff. They were making sure the clues got out there. Most people—the human herd—they think it's all nonsense and junk. But it's not. No. I need to find those books and then I need to get to work building it.”

“Building … what?”

“My God Machine,” said Prospero as if that answer should have been obvious to even the meanest intelligence. Laughter bubbled out of him. “I bet my dad would even help me. He'll have to. He'll want to.”

“What is a God Machine, Prospero?”

The boy walked slowly across the room, still clutching the sketchbook to his chest. He stopped by the window and raised his face to the warm sunlight.

“It's how I'm going to go home,” he said.

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE VINSON MASSIF

THE SENTINEL RANGE OF THE ELLSWORTH MOUNTAINS

ANTARCTICA

AUGUST 19, 10:25
P.M.

I heard Bunny's sharp intake of breath.

I heard Top softly murmur, “God in heaven.”

Then something moved in the darkness. We crouched, weapons ready, barrels following line of sight, fingers lying nervously along the curves of our trigger guards.

Inside the chamber, a dozen yards away, we could hear something. It wasn't footsteps. Not exactly. This was a soft, almost furtive sound. A shift and scrape as if whatever moved in there did not move well. Or was unable to move well.

“NV,” I said very quietly and we all flipped down the night-vision devices on our helmets. The world of snow white and midnight black instantly transformed to an infinitely stranger world of greens and grays.

The thing in the darkness was at the very outside range of total clarity. It moved and swayed with a broken rhythm, obscured by rows of stacked supplies.

“What the fuck…?” breathed Bunny.

The thing moved toward us, a huge, weird shape that was in no way human. Pale and strange, it shuffled steadily toward the open door, but we only caught glimpses of it as it passed behind one stack of crates and then another. The abattoir stink of the place was awful and it seemed to intensify as this creature advanced on us.

“Got to be a polar bear,” whispered Bunny.

“Wrong continent,” said Top.

Their voices were hushed. They were talking because they were scared, and that was weird. These guys were pros, recruited to the DMS from the top SpecOps teams in the country. They don't run off at the mouth to relieve stress. Not them.

Except they were.

“Cut the chatter,” I snapped, and from the way they stiffened I knew that it wasn't my rebuke that hit them—but the realization that they were breaking their own training. Each of them would have fried a junior team member for making that kind of error. So … why had they?

The thing in the darkness was behind the closest set of crates now. In a few seconds it would shuffle into view. I could feel fear dumping about a pint of adrenaline into my bloodstream.

And then the creature moved into our line of sight.

In the glow of the night vision it was green and unnatural, though I knew that it was really white. Not the vital white of an Alaskan polar bear, or the pure white of a gull's breast. No, this was a sickly hue and I knew that even with the NV goggles. This was a pallor that had never been touched by sunlight, even the cold light here at the frozen bottom of the world. This was a mushroom white, a sickly and abandoned paleness that could only have acquired that shade in a place of total darkness. It provoked in me an antagonism born of repugnance and I nearly shot it right there and then.

The creature was as tall as Bunny—six and a half feet or more—with a grotesquely fat body and eyes that were nothing more than useless slits in its hideous face.

I heard a sound. A short, humorless laugh of surprise and disgust. Could have been Top, or Bunny. Or me.

“It's a goddamn
penguin
…” said Bunny, his voice filled with surprise and wonder.

A penguin?

Sure it was.

In a way.

The problem is that it was too big. Way too goddamn big. Massive. Twice the size of the Emperor penguins and bigger than the prehistoric penguins I saw in a diorama at the Smithsonian. The wings were stubby and useless as if it no longer flew even through the water. The beak was pale and translucent; the body was blubbery and awkward. It waddled toward us and we gave ground, though we kept our guns on the thing. Crazy as it sounds, I was scared of it. The sight of it was triggering reactions that were way down in my lizard brain—miles from where rational thought could laugh off instinctive reactions.

The penguin shambled past us through the airlock but then it suddenly stopped at the exterior door. The sunlight was almost gone but what little there was touched its face. The creature turned toward the warmth for a single moment, and then it reeled backward from the light and uttered a terrible sound. It was the kind of strangled shriek of terror you hear only from animals whose throats are not constructed for sound—like rabbits and deer. A scream that is torn from the chest and dragged through the vocal cords in a way so violent and wet that you know it has damaged everything it touched. The penguin careened into the wall as it fled backward from the touch of the dying sunlight. Its screams were terrible.

Even after the blind animal crashed backward into the airlock it continued to scream and scream. I could see black beads of moisture flying from its beak and with sick dread I knew that they were drops of bloody spit from its ruined throat.

“Boss…,” said Bunny, his voice urgent with concern and horror.

“Push it back inside,” yelled Top.

Bunny let his rifle hang from its strap and with a wince of distaste he placed his hands on the animal's back and gave it a short, sharp push toward the airlock, away from the sunlight. The penguin paused, though, at the mouth of the airlock, and immediately began fighting its way backward, screaming into the darkness it had come out of. Bunny shoved again, throwing his massive upper-body strength against the creature's resistance. It lurched forward, but then it turned and stabbed at Bunny with its pale beak. Bunny howled in pain as the razor-sharp beak tore through the knitted wool of his balaclava. Black blood erupted in a line from the corner of Bunny's mouth to his ear.

“Shoot the fucking thing!”
bellowed Bunny as he backpedaled, shielding his eyes from another peck.

Top shoved him out of the way and raised his Glock. There was a single, sharp
crack
! A black hole appeared between the slitted, useless eyes of the penguin and the entire back of its head exploded outward to spray the line of stacked crates. The sheer bulk of the thing kept it upright for a moment, giving the weird impression that the bullet hadn't killed it. Then it leaned slowly sideways and collapsed.

We stood there in a loose circle staring at it.

Bunny said, “What…?”

Just the one word and he let it trail off because clearly we had no more answers than he did.

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE FIRST PULSE

NASCAR SPRINT CUP CHASE GRID

FIVE MONTHS AGO

Sixteen cars roared around the track.

In the stands tens of thousands of fans leapt to their feet in groups as the cars swept around. The race was five minutes old. Every car was still in the game; all of the drama and potential was still ahead. Anything could still happen. And this was the start of the NASCAR Spring Cup series. With each race more of the drivers would be eliminated until that last grueling challenge between the top four. All of that was to come.

This was the first race.

Everyone was wired. The announcer and color commentator were already yelling, calling the moves, talking about the drivers and their cars, their histories, their crashes, their lucky escapes, their courage. Pit crews were in position, each of them ready, and even the most jaded among them filled with nervous energy as they watched the cars accelerate to breakneck speeds.

Even though it was early, vendors were selling beer by the hundred gallon. Hot dogs and chicken wings, chips and pretzels were being devoured by the ton.

It had all started. The race season was on.

Danny Perry, the rising star of the NASCAR world who'd come out of nowhere two years ago to win a record number of races, was there, third back on the inside, driving a Ford Fusion with the decal of a sports drink on the hood and half a dozen other advertisers crowding the doors and roof. The car had a sky blue body, and images from the interior cameras inside the car flashed the masked and helmeted face of the four-wheeled hero onto the screens. The hot money was on him to come in no lower than fourth, and maybe even second place. High enough to insure his place in the rest of the series. Some of the sports reporters were saying that he had the chops to make it all the way to the winning flag at the end of the season. He had more under the hood, they said. He had tricks he hadn't yet used, they said. He had things to prove, they said.

A lot of fans in the stands wore his colors. One group of three hundred people who had bussed in from his hometown of Greenwood had little fans with cutouts of his face on them, and each time his car roared past they waved his own image at him, and then chased him with their screams.

The cars ripped around the track, changing places, fighting each other for position, taking calculated risks, going too fast for mistakes. The interior cameras flashed one face, then another and another, onto the screens. The helmets and fireproof masks showed nothing, but the commentators made those masked faces human with anecdotes and predictions. The crowds knew the faces of their heroes anyway.

Twenty-six minutes in, just as the pack began to stretch out and lose its bee-swarm shape, Danny Perry made his move. He was known for waiting to see how the other drivers were playing it, getting the pulse of the players on the field, and then he'd make a move to take the lead. So far he'd made that play sixteen times, and each time he got the lead early he kept it. As soon as he cut through a gap that didn't look wide enough for a bicycle and shot out in front with an acceleration that lived up to the hype, the crowd went absolutely mad. Even the fans who weren't rooting for Danny leapt to their feet because this was a history-book moment. Danny wasn't racing against anyone who lived on the second or third tier of the sport. He was jousting with kings, and he'd just taken the lead in a move that made a bold damn statement.

Catch me if you can.

If you can.

The whole pace—already insane—rose up as the hunt began in earnest. It was going to be brutal. Everyone knew it.

Which is when it all went to hell.

There was no warning. No bomb. Nothing that indicated an attack. Nothing sinister.

On one side of a scalding moment of raw high-speed entertainment, sixteen stock cars raced at more than 185 miles an hour. Danny Perry had bulled his way to 190.3.