American Nocturne Page 28

  “You… need a doctor,” Cassie said, breaking the silence.

  The man’s eyes bounced up, as if he had forgotten the two of them were in the room.

  “You know nothing,” he said. “I was the chosen one. I had fought for the right. Killed for it. No one was going to deny it to me. They all agreed it was to be me.”

  He managed to get to his feet, keeping his right arm pressed against his body, crooked at the elbow. The bones clicked like a primitive tribal instrument keeping time with his movements. Adam could see the carpals loosening, gaps forming between the knuckles, necrotic strands of ligament straining to hold a connection.

  With his left hand, the man picked up the gun, pointed it at Adam, and pulled the trigger. The report echoed throughout the room as the bullet blasted into the field. It dropped in an arc, bouncing off the console and rattling to a stop near Adam’s feet.

  The man erupted in a fit of rage, slamming the butt of the gun against the table again and again and again. Then he abruptly stopped. His face grew pensive. He stepped toward the gauzy field and looked it over like a mime examining an invisible box. When he was through, he backed off and stared at Adam. His cheeks sunk once more into a smile.

  “It appears that fool Andrews made his own choice,” the man said, his artificially flat tone suggesting it was all he could do not to laugh and keep on laughing. “Now you can enjoy making yours.”

  For a moment, Adam thought the man was going to fling himself at the transparent divide separating them, hurtling his body through so his skeleton could pierce Adam’s jugular, mindlessly carrying out its owner’s last wish before crumbling noisily to the floor. But the man merely smiled one last time, glanced at the object on the platform, then left, the click-click-clicking of his right hand audible until the inner door to the lab swung shut.

  “What a psycho!” Cassie said, exhaling a loud breath. “We could have been killed! Who was that? What was that all about? What’s going on, Adam?”

  “I’m not sure,” Adam said. “I don’t know any more than you do.”

  Cassie looked through the field toward the door on the far side. When she spoke, her voice was a bit softer than before, though it took her several attempts before any words came out. “How are we going to get out of here?”

  Adam said nothing. After several seconds of deliberation, he stepped up to the console again. The readings were normal. There was nothing in the system to explain the field. Using the on-screen menu, he shut-off the power. The background hum lowered gradually in pitch as the coils surrounding the laser powered down. Within a few heartbeats, Prometheus was silent.

  The field dividing the room appeared unchanged.

  “Your sat-phone!” Cassie said, grabbing Adam’s arm.

  “It won’t work in here. The room’s way too shielded.” He retrieved it from his pocket anyway. He handed it to her without checking it.

  “Somebody will come looking for us,” Cassie said after examining the phone. “We’ll just sit here and wait.”

  “Yeah,” Adam said. But he wasn’t so sure. It might be a day or two before someone noticed they were missing. And who knew how long before anybody looked for them at the lab.

  For lack of an attractive alternative, they sat on the floor and waited.

  “What do you think he meant, about choosing us?”

  “I don’t know,” Adam said. His attention was focused on the bullet that lay on the floor nearby.

  “You don’t think Professor Andrews set this up, do you?”

  Adam did not respond. He continued to stare at the bullet. Something in his mind began chipping away at something else. He glanced at the field, then back at the bullet.

  “What are you thinking?” Cassie asked.

  Still silent, Adam stood, picking up the bullet. He studied the field again, remembering how the man had scrutinized it. Right before his expression had changed.

  “What is it?” Cassie asked, her voice betraying more than a hint of impatience.

  Adam looked at her, acknowledging her with a half-smile, then turned back to face the field. He tossed the bullet at it.

  It disappeared in mid-arc, never landing on the other side.

  “It dissolved it!” Cassie said, rising to her feet.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I think it went through.”

  “Went through? Went through what?”

  Adam heard the man’s words in his head. “The gate,” he said. “It went through the gate.” He turned to face her. “And we’re supposed to, too.”

  “You can’t be serious! You saw what it did to his hand!”

  “That was from the other side. I’m guessing this only works one way.”

  “You’re crazy! I’m not walking into that!”

  “Cassie, it’s like you said. I think the professor set this up. I don’t have a clue why, but the settings he programmed were very precise. He arranged it so this, whatever it is, this gate would face the console… no—” Adam scattered a few glances around the room. “He arranged it so the console would be on the far side of it.”

  Cassie stared at him, her eyes wandering over his face. “You’re not really planning on trying to walk through that, are you?”

  “Look, Cass – I don’t want to scare you, but I think it could be days before someone comes looking for us here. I live alone. How long before your roommate calls someone? Honestly.”

  Cassie did not answer. Adam thought he noticed her shoulders slump a bit as she considered the question.

  “We have no food or water. No car is in the lot. I’m just saying, I’m not sure we have many options.”

  “But this thing could just, you know, fizzle out or something. We should wait and see what happens.”

  Adam nodded. “We could do that. But, there’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “There are no vents on this side of the room.”

  “So?”

  “So… there are no vents on this side of the room.”

  Cassie’s eyes widened in sudden understanding. She looked at the field, then around the room. “How long?” she asked, swallowing.

  “I don’t know. Hours. Maybe less.”

  Cassie moved closer to the field, examining it like a sale item, then stepped back.

  “You first,” she said. The smile on her lips wasn’t shared by her eyes.

  * * *

  Adam heard the plink of the bullet as he stepped through, and saw it bounce and roll in front of him at the same time he realized Cassie was right next to him, having matched him step for step.

  “I thought you were supposed to wait,” Adam said.

  “I did!” Cassie said. “I waited for more than an hour!”

  They were standing in an open space. It had the feel of an enormous room, but Adam could see no walls or ceiling. Nothing as far as the eye could focus, nothing but a stone floor, polished smooth, expanding in all directions.

  “Where are we?” Cassie asked.

  “I have no idea,” Adam said.

  He turned to look behind them. There was no sign of the field. Nothing to indicate how they had arrived where they stood. There was light, but Adam could not locate any possible source.

  “There’s something moving over there,” Cassie said, pointing to a spot over his shoulder.

  Adam scanned the distance until he noticed movement. Something indiscernible was approaching. As it drew closer, he saw that it was moving fast. Eventually he could make out the figure of a man.

  A flat platform stopped within feet of them. A man stood on it, eyeing them with no particular expression. His head was cleanly shaven, and he wore a simple cloth robe. His hands were hidden behind oversized sleeves, the cuffs pressed together in front of him.

  “There are two of you,” the man said.

  “What is this place?” Adam said.

  “I am to be the Interpreter,” the man said, ignoring the question.

/>   “Interpreter for who? Where are we?” Adam said.

  “I am to be the Interpreter,” the man repeated. “You will accompany me.”

  The man in the robe gestured to the platform. Adam and Cassie looked at one another then stepped up to join him.

  “What’s your name?” Adam asked.

  “I do not have a name. I am to be the Interpreter.”

  “Where are we?”

  “I am to be the Interpreter

  “Yes,” Adam said. “I got that much.”

  The platform began to move, accelerating rapidly. Adam was amazed at what he didn’t feel. There was no lurching or sensation of being pulled in the opposite direction, nothing to suggest the laws of inertia applied. It was a good thing, too, Adam thought, because there were no rails or posts to grab a hold of.

  “Where are we?” Cassie asked again.

  The man’s expression was still blank, but Adam thought he could sense some anxiety at the question, some uncertainty as to whether he should answer. It was as if the man knew what a question was, but had never been in a position to answer one.

  “This is the Temple of the Elder Ones,” the man said after a prolonged pause.

  “Where are you taking us?” Cassie asked.

  “I am to be—”

  “The Interpreter,” Adam interrupted. “Yes. That much, we know.”

  The platform approached an enormous set of doors that opened in a slow, deliberate manner, barely parting enough for the craft to glide through.

  A musky, gamey smell hung in the air, a ripeness that managed to suggest both sex and death. Cassie grabbed Adam’s hand and latched onto his arm, squeezing. Adam instinctively reached across her body, gripping her shoulder, as if he could shield her from what they saw. The platform was cruising almost ten feet off the ground, and below them were people, thousands of them, serried in neat rows, prostrate and naked. Wandering among them were creatures so bizarre Adam wouldn’t have presumed them living were they not moving. The closest association his mind could make was a colony of slugs, huge, squirming slugs, with multiple eye-stalks and appendages that sported three or four tentacle-like protuberances at the ends.

  Some of the creatures were moving between the people, running their ophidian limbs over bodies as they meandered. Others seemed focused on various individuals, using those same limbs more intently, probing and exploring. The touching and caressing was delicate, tender, almost ritualistic in its pace, possessive in its quivering eagerness. Some had progressed beyond this stage, these creatures having overwhelmed the objects of their attention, enveloping their bodies, mounting themselves carefully. Jiggling, pulsating mounds of gelatinous organisms could be seen everywhere, writhing in what seemed like pleasure, human arms and legs protruding from beneath them. An occasional face was visible, staring out into oblivion, the muscles of its cheeks and mouth tensed in inscrutable expressions of pain and release.

  None of the people seemed to offer any resistance. The sounds of human suffering, a collective murmur of involuntary groans and stifled yelps, were subdued and carried no sense of alarm or urgency.

  The platform passed near one of the creatures. The thing was pulling itself away from where a woman had been pinned beneath it, leaving a trail of slimy pus in its wake. The woman’s arms and legs and head remained in place, her limbs spread obscenely. Nothing of her that had been covered by the creature was left.

  Cassie buried her face against Adam’s shoulder. He pressed his lips against the top of her head, smelled the fragrance of her hair. His mind was all but paralyzed, trying and failing to understand what he had seen. He patted Cassie’s hair and kissed her crown. He did not know why it came to him now, but he realized he had used her, and with a nauseating shame he regretted it.

  Another set of doors appeared and parted. The platform slowed once it passed through, and Adam saw a huge staircase descending into a vast stone courtyard. People dressed in identical robes were chiseling away at a gargantuan block of marble nearby. Dozens of them manned multiple layers of scaffolding, seemingly oblivious to one another as they labored in silence. Adam could make out a leg, vaguely canine, taking form in the rock. The pattern of etching on the leg suggested scales.

  Adam heard Cassie start to speak, but the platform vaulted upward, accelerating into the sky and cutting off her words. They tightened their grip on one another, but Adam realized that just as before there was no sensation of g-force, no feeling of ascension. Other than the dizzying visual of the ground falling away, they may as well have been standing on solid earth.

  Earth. Adam surveyed the expanse of land spreading below him as they ascended. One of the clamorous thoughts rioting in his head had been whether they had somehow left the planet, passing through the stuff of movies, some kind of interplanetary portal or wormhole. But looking out over the landscape he saw remnants of buildings, brick and steel and wood, and copses of oaks and pines. Huge swaths of land had been cleared, and colossal structures stretched skyward from many of them, windowless obelisks that erupted into multiple spires as they penetrated the clouds. As edifices they seemed alien, the product of some surreal vision of a distant world. More troubling was how their gargantuan presence also seemed appropriate, as natural as a mountain range or a canyon in a desert landscape.

  The platform abruptly stopped its ascent and darted forward. One of those enormous structures loomed ahead of them, and Adam almost gasped in awe of its size as they approached. A passageway of some kind became visible in the distance, and the platform shot into it before stopping. Adam could not understand how they were not catapulted forward at the rapid deceleration, but before he could brace himself, they were completely stationary, barely two feet off the floor of the tower they had entered.

  Adam rubbed his eyes, but the scene did not change. Before them stood a creature of leviathan-like proportions. Its body was cone-shaped, perhaps a dozen feet tall, swaying gently from side to side. Its skin shimmered with an oleaginous iridescence. Adam was reminded of the creatures he had seen below, the ones doing God-knows-what to those people, but this being was definitely different. Its exterior was ridged and scaled, it possessed a pair of thin, smooth scorpion’s claws extending from two of its four tubular limbs. Another appendage terminated into four tentacle-like suckers, while the fourth seemed more like a neck, what may have passed for a head at its end, a semi-prolate orb with multiple eyes.

  The thing’s body pulsed and undulated in the manner of a jellyfish as the orb with eyes stretched forward and lowered itself to inspect the new arrivals.

  The man who had escorted them had turned away from the creature the moment the craft had entered the room. He was facing Adam and Cassie, his head slightly bowed, saying nothing. Adam sensed what was expected of him from the weight of the man’s silence. Cassie trembled as he started to move. He gave her a reassuring glance and stepped onto the floor first, keeping a hold of her hand. The man stepped off after them.

  The creature made a sound. It was a mixture of hissing and bubbling. Adam detected several distinctive changes in pitch.

  The man kept his back to the creature, his head held low as if standing erect would bring grave consequences.

  “Which of you is the one?” the man said.

  “What?” Adam said.

  “Which of you is the one. I must know.”

  Adam and Cassie exchanged looks. Adam’s eyes moved over to the creature.

  “I don’t understand,” Adam said.

  “I must know which of you is the one.”

  Adam recalled what the man at the lab had said. He had been looking directly at Adam when he said it.

  “I am,” Adam said, stiffening his back.

  Cassie tightened her grip on Adam’s hand as the man dropped to his knee in front of him. The man lifted his hand and pointed a finger at Adam’s chest, holding it there.

  The thing extended its tentacled appendage toward them, long, tubular fingers whipping and waving, coiling and uncoiling. One of the fin
gers whipped forward and coiled around Cassie’s waist. Her eyes widened as she looked to Adam, squeezing his knuckles harder than they had ever been squeezed. Then she was yanked away, her hand jerking out of his with an audible snap.

  “No!” Adam yelled. He leaped forward, pushing aside the man in the robe, only to find his throat wedged between a set of claws. They pinched with just enough effort to immobilize him, unmoving, immune to his punches and wild blows.

  Cassie was suspended in mid-air, kicking and twisting as the orb drew close. Two other tentacles from the appendage ripped her clothing off, first her blouse and pants, then her bra and panties. One of the tentacles ran itself over the bare flesh of her breasts, kneading them, another wrapped around her thigh. A third extended a trumpet-shaped organ and slathered it across her vagina, disappearing briefly as it entered her. Cassie’s screams produced no echoes, as if her cries were swallowed by the room as soon as they left her body.

  The creature produced another series of noises, more watery hissing and popping, and two human-like things appeared from one of the dark recesses in a distant corner of the room. Naked and loping, they moved quickly on muscular legs. They were the size and shape of men, but their skin was a slick silvery color, hairless with scales and bumps. They had small lumps for noses and lipless gashes instead of mouths. The giant creature lowered Cassie into their grasp, and they retreated as suddenly as they had appeared. Adam’s last glimpse of Cassie was of her hand, reaching toward him as she disappeared into shadow. Reaching, he insisted to himself, not pointing.

  Adam felt the pincher ease its grip, but it did not release him. He strained to look over at the robed man, who remained crouched with his back to the creature, his position unchanged.

  “Where are they taking her!” Adam said. The man did not respond. He merely continued to stare at the floor.

  “Answer me, damn you! Where are they taking her?”

  The man’s voice was tremulous and tentative when he spoke. “She was found to be a suitable offering. She will be part of tonight’s communion.”