Dark Advent Read online

  DARK

  ADVENT

  Brian Hodge

  CEMETERY DANCE Publications

  Baltimore

  v 2015 v

  FIRST DIGITAL EDITION

  ISBN: 978-1-58767-321-4

  Cemetery Dance Publications Edition 2015

  Dark Advent

  Copyright © 1988, 2015 Brian Hodge

  Dust jacket illustration by Vincent Chong

  Dust jacket design by Gail Cross

  Typesetting and book design by Robert Morrish

  All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cemetery Dance Publications

  132-B Industry Lane, Unit 7

  Forest Hill, MD 21050

  Email: [email protected]

  www.cemeterydance.com

  For Fran Giamanco…

  the kind of friend every writer

  should be fortunate enough to have

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The only thing I can conceive of as being more arduous than surviving the events depicted in these pages was having written them in the first place. I have become a debtor nation of one because of the help of the following people:

  Special thanks to my agent, Adele Leone, for coming to my rescue at the perfect time; and to my editor, Wendy McCurdy, for steering the novel and me in directions previously unconsidered.

  Thanks also for helpful contributions and fielding routinely bizarre questions go to Geff Purcell of Salem Computer Systems, Eddie Marks and Don Bond of the Mt. Vernon Fire Department, Keith Backes of Crossroads Hospital, Don Book of Tri-County Electric Co., Sally Gardner of Illinois Power Co., Celeste Speier of the Omni International Hotel – St. Louis, and John McCamy, M.D., Atlanta.

  And for helping keep me with one foot in reality, thanks and love to my parents and family; Doli; B. Daltonians Leda, Carole, and Charlene; Gerald, Bruce, Clark, and Beth; and Robert and Sally McCammon for some well-timed moral support.

  Today the world begins more and more to resemble a ricocheting bullet as it careens from disaster to disaster.

  — Global Conference on the Future

  The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

  — Henry David Thoreau

  FIRST EPOCH

  THE DIVIDING LINES

  June – July 1987

  1

  If there existed one thing that The Courier could not stand, it was watching well-made plans get derailed. Through no fault of his own.

  Lucky he was an adaptable sort of guy.

  The bodies at his feet, bleeding into the mud, were sufficient proof of that.

  He’d been in Cancun for two days, soaking up the sun of the Mexican Caribbean, stalking beaches like talcum powder and water like turquoise. Just waiting for the Libyans. And babysitting the firmly built attaché case in his hotel room. It was quite sturdy, quite shock absorbent, quite secure. You don’t screw around with inferior craftsmanship when you’re hauling around the future of the world.

  Inside? Eighteen small steel canisters, like little thermos bottles, each containing within its reinforced walls a high-impact glass-stoppered tube. Which in turn contained a raw egg suspension nourishing an organism mutated into something far more lethal than what had been the world’s experience with it during the Middle Ages. As well, the case contained numerous bottles of immunization vaccines.

  World terrorism was about to enter the age of chemical and biological warfare, if the Libyans had their way.

  The organism’s development had been overseen by a man back in an underground laboratory in Wyoming. Colonel Clairmont, formerly of the Pentagon and now spearheading something that would make him far more wealthy…a black market armaments operation with reaches the world over. A cop dies in Ireland in a hail of IRA gunfire? Clairmont’s hand is there. A West German businessman is vaporized by a car bomb? Clairmont’s hand is there too. Those pudgy fingers are in numerous pies but leave no fingerprints behind.

  And now his biggest feat yet: selling a home brew plague to buyers who wanted something with even more kick-ass potential than what they could get from their usual Soviet suppliers. It was a sale that Clairmont trusted only to his most experienced, most valued employee.

  Except other people’s mistakes were derailing The Courier’s train. And this did not leave him a happy man. The call from Clairmont himself had come a scant couple hours before the scheduled meeting with three Libyan buyers.

  Abort the sale…stall the bastards, Clairmont’s voice had droned. A lab fuckup…samples you’re carrying are over three times more virulent than we intended…Shaffer botched up the tests on his control group…

  The Courier had his doubts regarding the last bit. Dr. Emmett Shaffer was a genetics engineer and microbiologist of Nobel Prize caliber who had taken sufficient kicks in the teeth from life to feel that the world was full of imbeciles incapable of recognizing his true genius. At least Clairmont had had brains enough to recognize a golden opportunity. A man primed for revenge against the human race was a useful tool in Clairmont’s line of work.

  No, the hypervirulence couldn’t have been mere accident. Shaffer had simply boosted his kill ratios and had been caught with his pants down.

  But no matter. So much the better, in fact. For it opened up all manner of worlds to a guy—an adaptable guy—like The Courier. There were all sorts of lovely ideas harbored within his head, hidden from the world, which even Clairmont had no idea existed. All waiting for the proper moment, when everything would gel and click into place. Like…oh…now, for example.

  Stall the bastards.

  Oh, that he had done. Permanently. For laughs.

  The three of them lay sprawled in the mud at a primitive little site on an eastern stretch of Cancun. The El Rey Ruins, last vestiges of the Mayans of old, were tucked amid sand and earth and palm trees, ponderous gray structures carved from stone. And deserted, devoid of tourists, for this was a rare day in Cancun, when the rain didn’t know it was supposed to stop soon.

  Surely a sign. A blessing. For men were born of water, and blood. Surely rebirth should be no different.

  Dying Libyans in the mud, a grand and glorious sight. Formidable soldiers felled by the smoking Uzi in his hands, a sweet surprise pulled from the temporarily emptied interior of his samples case. A two-second burst of fire that kicked out twenty bullets in a figure eight that sent them tap-dancing toward oblivion. Which chewed up hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—of dollars from their own case and turned it into so much airborne confetti.

  The Courier, over the last few days, had come to realize that he didn’t give a flying purple shit about money. About commissions. About doing the job. Because he was meant for much bigger things.

  The darkness of his closet had told him so.

  All three Libyans down, all three still alive. For the moment. He stepped closer and finished off two of them where they lay, a pair of quick bursts that emptied the Uzi’s magazine and chewed away most of their heads and left ragged stumps of their necks.

  Leaving one still alive. To play with. A toy of flesh and bone and blood. A trinket. A tasty morsel to be savored slowly, teasingly…

  And then crunched between iron jaws.

  The sole survivor’s name was Kadoumi. Clairmont’s intelligence sources had pegged him to be a nephew of Muammar Qaddafi himself. The left side of the man’s face
was a raked growth of pale scar tissue sustained during the bombing raid on Tripoli ordered by Ronald Reagan.

  Kadoumi squirmed painfully through the mud, no doubt trying to reach a pistol inside the jacket of one of his compatriots. He was gutshot, twice, with lesser wounds to the shoulder and upper thigh. Gutshots were invariably fatal when left untreated, but took their own leisurely time to finish you off. Why, a man could linger in agony for hours on end.

  The Courier paused for a moment to pop a fresh magazine into the Uzi. Kadoumi was three feet from armed resistance and closing.

  “Ah ah ahhh,” warned The Courier, and Kadoumi at last looked up at him. To do the Libyan credit, he didn’t show nearly so much pain as fury. A fat lot of good he could do about it, though. He just didn’t have the stomach for it anymore.

  “Tell you what,” said The Courier. “I’d like to suggest that we demonstrate a…oh, what should we call it? A test of faiths, yes. What do you say? Your faith in Islam and my faith in technology. Are you up to that today?”

  Getting no answer, he stepped forward until he was just beyond Kadoumi’s reach, then squatted before him, never breaking eye contact. Slowly, he lifted the Uzi and sighted down into the spot between Kadoumi’s eyes. The Libyan was stretched out, belly-down and bleeding into the mud, propped up on his elbows. He didn’t move, scarcely even seemed to breathe.

  I can wait a loooong tiiiime, thought The Courier, inching the Uzi forward a fraction at a time. Sometimes he grinned broadly. Other times he let the grin slide in favor of a full-face mask of rage barely held in check. Not sure which he preferred, he alternated back and forth.

  Kadoumi’s gaze didn’t waver from the steadily approaching muzzle. He watched it come closer, closer still, until its hot round end pressed into his forehead like a cattle brand. At last his eyes scrunched shut and he shuddered.

  The Courier laughed, delighted, a higher-pitched laugh than one might expect.

  “Nope, no Allah here,” he said, pulling the gun from Kadoumi’s forehead. “Looks like I’m in charge. And, if I want, I can be your savior. You realize that?”

  Very gently, Kadoumi nodded, his eyes glassy. His tongue nervously wet his lips. The man’s composure, his righteous-as-fire Middle Eastern resolve, was slowly trickling away as surely as his blood. East may not meet West, but Death was the great equalizer of both.

  “Here. Take my hand.” The Courier extended, open-palmed, a gesture almost tender in its sudden benevolence. Kadoumi’s hand, smeared with blood and grime, flexed open as more blood dribbled from his lips. The Courier gently held the quaking hand, then smiled. Gently. So gently. “There. That’s better, isn’t it?”

  Kadoumi nodded miserably.

  The Courier let his rage-face come charging back at maximum ferocity, and clenched his hand into a fist. Kadoumi cried out, flopped in the mud, and still The Courier held firm, pressing harder. Harder. Harder. To the breaking point.

  “I don’t look that strong, do I? But I am.” With the barrel of the Uzi he tapped his own temple. “I am because I think I am.” He grinned and bore down harder still, felt the grinding and ultimately the splintering of bones in the hand.

  The Courier stood, leisurely, watching with vague interest as Kadoumi curled into a fetal knot. He licked away a smear of blood streaking his palm.

  “Broken hands can be reset. They can work miracles in the operating room these days. And in labs.” Again, the benevolent smile of the shepherd. “Do you want to go to the hospital? Live to fight another day?”

  Kadoumi groaned and gave what The Courier took to be a nod.

  “Then let’s say a little prayer. Okay? A prayer to me. Listen closely. Repeat after me: Our savior, who art in the jungle…”

  Kadoumi uncurled and began to crawl toward the nearest body again.

  “YOU’RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION!” The Courier screamed, and he kicked the headless body aside, where it splattered into mud and a shallow puddle. “OUR SAVIOR, WHO ART IN THE JUNGLE!”

  “Our savior…who art in…the jungle…” Kadoumi muttered, facedown in the mud and breathing raggedly.

  “That’s better,” The Courier said. “Ummm…be merciful unto me, a sinner…”

  “Be merciful unto me…a sinner…”

  The Courier beamed. “And if thou be so kind…”

  “And if thou be so kind…” Kadoumi raised his face to the rain.

  “Blow my stupid fucking head off. Amen.” The Courier chuckled.

  Kadoumi’s jaw dropped, watery blood streaming down his chin. The Courier grinned and tightened his finger on the Uzi’s trigger and granted the prayer just the same as if it had been completed. A moment later, standing over the three corpses whose Allah had failed them, he let the cleansing rinse of rainwater kiss his face. A new man born of water and blood. A new being.

  “You guys aren’t so tough,” he said, shaking his head. “Just once I’d like to meet a man who doesn’t piss his pants when he looks at death.”

  He retrieved his attaché case from the short pillar it rested on, shook the water from it. Placed the still-smoking Uzi inside. Stepped over the bodies and headed for his rented car. An honest day’s work invariably left him hungry.

  * *

  Back in the neutral zone of his hotel room, he showered long and luxuriantly, washing away the distasteful pall of smoke he could still detect lingering about him. He was a tall, lean man, with a stomach like a washboard. His face was finely boned and strong of countenance, handsome, the beginnings of squint lines etched at the corners of his eyes; too many days of glaring sun. Spilling across his forehead and down to collar level in back was a tousle of silvery-blond hair, striking in a man who looks as if he’s yet to worry about his fortieth birthday.

  What usually drew people back, particularly women, for a second glance, were his eyes. Brighter and bluer than sapphires, bluer and deeper than the Aegean Sea on a clear summer’s day. Eyes alive with secrets, and cunning, eyes that could serve as a magnet and a warning in the same glance.

  You look as good as you feel. And he felt positively immortal.

  Stepping naked from the bath into the outer room, he treated himself to a view of the sunset. It was as spectacular as you would expect of the Caribbean, a blaze of red deepening to violet to navy blue to, ultimately, black. The Courier watched from his hotel room window, the fronds of palm trees wavering just below his vantage point. Preparing the way for a king.

  The night had officially invaded. And the time had come to consult the closet, and the true darkness, for advice. Such a pity that Colonel Clairmont had no advisor this wise, this trusted. To provide answers to all of life’s intricacies, like fruit from a vine, if only one was clever enough to take advantage of it.

  The closet of this hotel was neither deep nor wide, not by any stretch of the imagination. But The Courier traveled light, and so it was nearly empty. So much the better. Fewer distractions for the senses. And more room for pure, unadulterated darkness. Retreating from the window, from the advancing night, The Courier shut himself within its tiny four walls. The dark of night was tainted with moon, stars, civilization. Here, though…here was perfection, and he submerged himself within it.

  For several long moments the years had been stripped away, neat as you please. He wasn’t The Courier anymore. Scratch that…he wasn’t The Courier yet, for these were days before the secret dealings and intrigue had begun. He was but a boy, tall for his age (somewhere within the upper single digits), and strong and healthy and active…though not well liked by his peers. Weird eyes, they said, creepy eyes, and hair like a ghost’s. A boy whose greatest fascination was discovering what made things work. And even better, what made them break down. A boy again, before becoming fatherless at age eleven, when Dad perished in a bizarre auto accident in which his brakes mysteriously failed. Just a boy, who hadn’t yet joined the United States Army, eventually making it into one of
the toughest grades of all, the Rangers. A boy who hadn’t yet learned to kill with the precision of a surgeon, to make intimate friends of weapons. A boy who hadn’t yet been given a Dishonorable Discharge for stubbornly refusing to obey orders, as he increasingly began to harbor his own ideas of how things should be done.

  No, he was but a boy alone in his closet, hearing his despised father’s rationalizations for punishment while his mother begged ineffectually for mercy, for clemency, then gave in to Dad when pleas proved useless. He would be locked in for hours at a stretch (maybe days—time went funny in there) over some silly thing or another. Playing with fire. Tinkering with Dad’s tools when permission would never be granted in the first place. Testing stress factors on the neighbor’s cat with a very large BBQ fork…

  There was always something. And the closet was always waiting after each transgression he hadn’t managed to slip past his parents’ scrutiny, and some that hadn’t even been committed at all. Waiting…black and yawning, ready to steal away breath and life, given half a chance.

  But The Courier had not only been a curious boy; he’d been resourceful as well. And courageous. He beat those terrifying demons of the dark, the ones who rejoiced and laughed as he peed his pants, then shat them. He learned to make the darkness his friend instead of a feared and hated enemy. A palpable ally ready to submit to his will and as comforting as a grandmother’s quilt. A confidant willing to listen to the deepest of concerns and offer heartfelt suggestions, as any friend would do.

  And resourceful boys often grow into resourceful men. Given careful guidance.

  The Courier, naked and pliable inside and out, relaxed within his makeshift womb, listening to the darkness that was always there, always dependably waiting, always the same no matter what corner of the globe he found himself in. Consistency was vital to maintaining an even keel in life.

  He listened, and nodded his head, and knew that this afternoon’s lovely little slaughter had been mere prelude. His work wasn’t over, not by a longshot.