were sketches by Anita Nehru. What did they look like? Whose work did they resemble?' Her eyes widened as realization hit home. He told her, 'There's one more place we have to look for answers. One more place to check before we can be sure.' She answered, 'The Redcoat base. In Mexico.'
'We have to be sure that they were the fall guys. If I'm right,' Gordon let go her arm and his eyes grew tight, 'then Evan has been a bigger fool than I thought possible. He's made a deal with the devil and our time is running out.'
'What are you two talking about?' Bly interrupted from his position on the bench seat where one hand held a wad of gauze to a bloody wound.
Gordon warned, 'There's someone pulling the strings in all this. Someone we haven't heard from in a long, long time.'
19. Fly on the Wall
'Danny! Danny, run!'
Too late.
The expanding vortex enveloped Washburn and his team. Trevor heard Danny’s confused voice over the radio, barely audible beneath the moaning, crying maelstrom.
'Wh-what? What is this?'
Stone watched his friend warp and stretch…
'What is this? Oh God, Trevor! Help us!'
…and disappear into Hell…
'What is this place? It hurts! TREVOR! HELP US FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! YOU CAN’T LEAVE US! TREVOR! HELP ME! HELP ME! WHAT ARE THESE THINGS? GET OFF OF ME! GET OFF! OH GOD OHGODOHGOD…'
The vortex collapsed and disappeared, its shriek silenced. The radio frequency cut.
The cold snow of a December afternoon fell fast so as to fill the wide round crater where a part of the Earth had once been.
Another victim of Armageddon with one difference: this one had been sent- ordered — to his doom by Trevor Stone.
I could have waited a while longer; could have observed the gate more. I could have sent in Stonewall's relief force. Why didn't I do that? Did Danny really have to die? Trevor watched the spinning vortex engulf his friend again. He heard the pleading for help once more. And then he saw……Beautiful golden fields surrounded New Winnabow. Beautiful golden fields of tall grass sloping up to meet the woodlands. As dawn rose above New Winnabow, Trevor’s army came from those woods. First a few…then more. Trotting forward at a steady pace neither rushed nor slow.
The mass of K9 Grenadiers swarmed from the forest and into those golden fields. Their paws stamped and flattened the grass. Breath from panting snouts sent clouds of frost into the sky like steam rising from machines.
Killing machines. They came. Not dozens. Not hundreds. More. As they descended the slope, their pace hastened.
Unseen behind them, the will of Trevor Stone. The dogs served as his hand. More personal than his human armies; as if his soul descended upon the peaceful village standing in the way of his campaign to rid his world of alien invaders.
Row upon row upon row pouring across the grassy field. Snarling, charging, growling; the mass of invaders smashed into the town like a tidal surge. Their columns streamed down every passage and every street and through every open door as if they were a deluge of water filling all avenues.
The first group of defending militia did not fire their weapons; they turned to run. The dogs dragged them down from behind, arms and hands and throats torn and ripped and crushed in the jaws of the merciless beasts.
Trevor could feel their fear. He heard their cries for mercy but the beasts knew no mercy; they only knew the commands of their master. He saw fathers torn to shreds in front of their children; mothers gored by the demonic legion.
Still they came, smashing through windows and knocking open doors. Every death another red stain on Trevor Stone's hands. He felt it so vividly he might as well be standing among the horde. The sounds of destruction and the hollers for help; the smell of the morning dew. All very real to him even though he had been hundreds of miles away at the time of the assault.
Trevor saw the truth in the eyes of the dead there; the truth of how far he would go in the name of victory. Those dead eyes stared at him in contempt for the man who called himself a liberator but chose to conquer that day.
That hatred for him stuck in his conscience; the fear the people of New Winnabow had known as the K9 corps ravaged their town took root in Trevor's heart. He saw his face in the mirror of his mind and cringed at what evil lurked there. He saw…
…Nina Forest; but no, not her. The imposter. He saw her bound to a bed by straps tied with his hands. He felt an angry, dark lust explode inside his soul, one part violent and jealous of all he had lost, another desperate to taste even a poor copy of the only woman he loved.
He had taken her but not in passion and with no trace of romance. He had taken her in anger; revenge toward the powers steering his fate.
To pervert the act of making love into something more akin to assault, more possession or abuse, made Trevor feel sick and diseased; unworthy to ever feel love again. It seemed a blasphemy to all he had shared with the real Nina.
And he saw that same alternate Nina cowering in the face of his rage as he projected his battlefield failure on to her because the ego of a dictator allowed no room for self-doubt.
Reel after reel of his miseries, of his failures as a person, of his guilt; re-wound and played over and over again. Not memories, but a reenactment of each horrible moment. Everything very real, from the smoky smell of a smoldering Red Hand campfire inside the room where he found the body of Sheila Evans to the emptiness in his heart-an ache as brutal as any injury-as he told Nina goodbye. Each wound tore repeatedly with no respite, no forgiveness, no chance for redemption. Trevor Stone was in Hell. — Brad Gannon walked through the damp, cramped passageway dimly lit by sporadic glowing globes imbedded in the green walls. As usual, the place felt more like an organic artery than a constructed building. The scent of the sea water seeped through the walls giving the entire place a salty smell, like the inside of a fish factory.
The first time he visited one of The Order's facilities had been in Japan. As he recalled, just prior to the invasion his agent landed the up-and-coming actor a role in a Japanese commercial, the added exposure perfectly timed to coincide with the release of his breakout movie, a summer action-flick. Gannon found himself on the far side of the Pacific in a crowded Tokyo hotel when the bad things came calling.
Suddenly the swarm of press and awe-struck Japanese teenagers disappeared. Suddenly the limousines and translators at his beck and call were nowhere to be found.
He knew something to be horribly wrong but did not realize it to be a global phenomenon until he tuned CNN International on the hotel TV. That's when broadcasters speaking in English clued him in on alien invasion forces and monsters.
Still, it did not seem real until his hotel caught fire and he was chased into the streets with the rest of the tourists. That's when he saw a Leviathan for the first time, moving through downtown. At that moment, Brad Gannon realized the world had become a very different place and he soon came to believe that that new place would belong to Voggoth.
During his days of commercials, soft porn straight-to-DVD flicks, and soap opera fill-ins, Brad Gannon learned that being a successful actor did not mean being a good actor; it meant being in the right place at the right time. It meant surviving things such as auditions, contract negotiations, and studio management changes. He saw talented kids end up working at fast food restaurants and hacks given parts in tent-pole movies. Talent, Gannon saw,
