looked inside. “Good morning, again, General. Visitors!”
General North’s eyes stared. His chest did not move. Wylie knew it at once: Al North was dead.
TWENTY
DECEMBER 20
THE GOOD SOLDIER
GENERAL AL NORTH HAD NEVER experienced pain like this. Although he had seen torture in Lebanon-men getting phosphorus splinters jammed under their fingernails and lit—he did not think for a moment that their pain, as awful as it was, approached this.
He was screaming, he knew that objectively, as if from a distance, but he also knew that no sound was coming out. He’d come into this strange place—a parallel universe, he had come eventually to realize—faithful to his orders, to carry out an assassination. He’d never expected to be asked to do such a thing, but this was war and we were desperate and the military and intelligence communities were in chaos, so, yes, he got why he had been called upon, and he resolved to do his duty.
Something is wrong!
He lay listening to the voices overhead. The man he had been sent to kill had proved to be a tiger, and his son was just as ferocious. Very frankly, they had overpowered Al, who was not a small man, and had excellent personal combat skills. He had not expected an adversary ready, willing, and able to gouge out eyes with his bare hands, or a child who would pick up a damn handgun the size of an anvil and just literally blow a grown man’s guts out. A child!
They’re not the enemy!
What was that? It was like part of his mind was yelling at him from behind a closed door. He had to get the hell up and get back out there, because those folks needed killing and they were still walking around. He was going to do them all. Massacre them, the women, too. Kill them all.
Don’t!
Yeah, that’s great, disobey a lawful order transmitted to you in person by your commanding officer, who also happened to be the acting commander in chief. He did not like Tom Samson, never had. The president had made a grave mistake giving him his appointment. But this was wartime and they’d just about had it, and under such circumstances you have no choice but to trust your superior officer.
You trust your own soul!
That voice—it was saying something. “Soldier,” perhaps. “Soldier, you’re dying,” that’s what it was saying.
He had not completed his mission and he had to get out of this hole and do the damn deed!
He fought to rise, could not. He closed his working eye, took a breath, then pressed downward with both hands. Rivers of agony swept up and down his arms and through his bubbling chest. His head went light. He fell back. His heart was thundering. Below the waist, no sensation at all.
He’d seen others in the house, he’d seen a Hummer come up.
It was them. THEM!
It had been some kind of an enemy unit, he could see that, but even they had taken a hell of a beating from these people. The mother cut up some of their exotic weaponry with a damned axe, and the little girl—what, seven, eight—stood there watching and laughing. “Mommy’s killin’ a big spider.” Tough sonembitches.
That was an outrider and outriders belong to the enemy, soldier, and you are working for them, and you need to FACE THIS!
The trapdoor was opened again. Light swamped his eye for a moment. Then he saw a silhouette.
“This man isn’t dead! This man is breathing!”
Another head appeared, disappeared. “Fuckaroo, he’s right.”
The woman’s voice: “Kill him!”
“You can’t do that, Brooke! I gotta call EMS, I gotta try to save his life. And—Kee-rist, you got a man all shot to hell in your crawl space, so nobody leaves. Got that? Nobody leaves!”
“It was self-defense, he attacked us.”
“I know that, but I got procedures, buddy. This is serious.”
“He’s from our universe,” another voice said.
General North listened to them up there, murmuring together. Those bastards had figured out how to get through a gateway, and they were gonna mess this whole operation up.
You’re not sad about that! You’re glad! It’s good, it’s a triumph, for God’s sakes, listen to your soul!
His mind cast about, trying to find a way to carry out his orders. There had to be one, there always was.
There were guns upstairs, plenty of them. But down here there was nothing, only dirt. His own gun was long gone. So, did he have anything else that might cause damage? Belt—sure, but he wasn’t going to be able to garrote anybody. Pins on his medals, big deal. Teeth. He could bite, maybe damn hard. So there was that. He could bite through one of their cheeks. And clutch with his left hand. He tested it. Yes.
So he needed them to pull him out. He’d take it from there.
He waited. Nothing. No more voices that he could hear. Stomping that faded, then faint shouts. They were looking at whatever the intelligence unit had done.
So they’d called EMS and now that was done, they were showing the cop the rest of the damage around the house. Not good. He needed them to pull him up before some EMS bunch showed up to spirit him away.
He took a breath, deep as he could, and let his pain possess him. He knew how to manage pain, and he’d been doing that, but now it was time to change his approach. As he let out the breath, he made himself scream.
It worked amazingly well. Damned well. He took another breath, did it again. The sound was odd, a lost, bansheelike howl, and it caused the river of pain to start flowing again.
It also caused the trap door to open. “EMS’ll be along directly,” the new voice said.
Then that other voice again, somehow gentler, thinner, “He’s from our world and he’s evil, you have to let us—”
“I don’t have to let you do one damn thing, Doctor Winters! This man is shot, he is here, and what you have to do is let me do my job.”
“He’s a criminal in our world. Wearing a military uniform but working for the enemy. He belongs to us.”
“Don’t you push me,” Matt said.
“Hey, guys, knock it off,” Wylie responded. “Martin, you’ve got gumption, after all.”
“We need to take that man back with us,” Martin insisted.
“Sounds like you need to take the whole damn Marine Corps.”
“We had a Marine Corps, too, did you know that? And they are gone. Gone! The military was done in the first wave. Worldwide. Done. So unless we can stop the seraph, they are coming here tout de suite.”
“Matt—”
“Fellas, I’m gonna show my piece here in a second, and I do hate to do that.”
“Did you know that you have an equivalent in our universe? Who is also a lifelong friend of mine, just like you are of Wylie’s? His name is Bobby. He’s disappeared and we think he’s wandering—alive but without a soul.”
“And you will be, too,” Trevor added, “if they come here. Wandering with your soul locked up just like Wylie has seen—or worse, you’ll be like that man down there, so twisted and turned around that he works for the enemy and thinks he’s working for his own kind. You’ll be just like that, and possibly within days.”
“Look, this shooting is the most serious thing to happen in this town in my entire career.”
“You should see the one my mommy shot. It looked like a big spider and when she blasted it, it sent out hot stuff that smelled like when you burn bacon.”
Listen to them! They’re your friends.
He sucked another breath, howled another howl.
“Let us take him back,” Trevor pleaded. “Let us find out what we need to know.”
