“I…I was stuck with those bunk guns, Jumper — Listen, bro, I’d have given my life —”
“Bullshit. And you’re making excuses — you could have refused that ordnance,” Goat said, stepping into view. “Even if it meant pissing off the major. But you chose sinfully — your sin was not putting your men ahead of your career. You are the accursed of God…”
“The major was hot on those guns —”
“Sarge would have stuck by you,” Jumper said. “You knew it was a mistake. Then you let them decoy you with that dumb teenager you blew to pieces…”
“Nobody can help any of us,” Portman said, “except Corporal John Grimm here. He can help us by blowing out his brains. That’d make us feel better anyway. Maybe we’d rest then. Because we counted on him, and he blew it…even the stupid guerilla kid, you coulda figured he didn’t know what he was doing, maybe captured him…but you had to end his miserable little life…”
Reaper could bear it no more and burst into roaring, sobbing rage, and he wrenched himself out of the Ark-induced vision, closed his eyes and felt himself falling, falling through the essence of corruption, into oily blackness, to emerge in a spinning tube of liquid colored with colors that weren’t colors and suddenly he was staggering out into the Ark chamber in the compound…back home. But in another way, they were still a long way from home.
Twenty seconds later the room stopped shifting, and Reaper’s gut quieted enough so that he was fairly confident he wouldn’t throw up. At almost the same instant, Sam materialized in the Ark chamber, stepped out of the cylinder into the main room.
She took two steps and stumbled, groaning — he caught her as she fell. Held her in his arms. Her eyes were rolled up in her head and she shuddered, went limp — and again shuddered, went limp, over and over…as she muttered, “Dad…he’s…John’s all…”
“Sam!”
She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them, looked at him. She swallowed. “I hate that thing…Seeing things in there…”
He nodded, helping Sam steady on her feet. “Me too…” But then he thought: Maybe what I saw was just the truth. Sometimes dreams show you the truth…
He looked around; the UAC promo screens had gone quiet, with all but the barest auxiliary power cut off, and it was nearly dark here, only a few of the lights working. It was like a big catacomb to him then, just waiting for the skulls to stack up.
“So what now?” she asked, running a shaking hand over her hair.
He was checking his gun, adjusting the strap — anything to occupy his mind so he didn’t have to think about what he’d just seen, in the Ark…his conversation with the dead.
“Nobody can help any of us,” Portman had said, “except Corporal John Grimm here. He can help us blowing out his brains. That’d make us feel better anyway…”
Reaper closed his eyes. Oh God. Jumper. Let his only friend down…he’d let him die…
Maybe he should just end it now. Kill Sam — do her a favor, keep those things from getting at her. Then he’d kill himself. So that Jumper and the others would have some rest.
It would be the work of a moment. Turn and shoot his sister, then stick the muzzle of the weapon in his mouth, suck metal, pull the trigger…
“John? You okay?”
His fingers tightened on the weapon. “…That’d make us feel better anyway…”
“John?”
He had a lot of combat experience behind him. He knew, on some level, that he was as posttraumatic as they came, right now. Partly because of what’d happened in the rain forest. Not being there for Jumper. Letting him die.
Then — Olduvai. The pressure of worrying about his sister there. Losing Mac, Portman, Goat, Destroyer.
Theoretically it was all on Sarge’s account sheet, it was his responsibility. But Reaper kept thinking maybe he could’ve saved them…After all, what he’d seen in the Ark had been contrived by his mind. He’d superimposed his own nightmares, his own guilt on the quantum field shifting within the Ark…
The feeling of remorse and hopelessness was so strong — hopelessness like the weight of ten miles of ocean over his head…tons of dark cold sea about to crush him. He’d failed, and failure was death in his profession. He was surrounded by horrors. The world was doomed. Doom was like a dark icy cloak settling over his shoulders…it was all so hopeless, they couldn’t possibly…
“John!”
Sam shook him now. Because he was just standing there, fingering his gun, staring.
“I need you, John!”
He’d just let her down. Better if they both died here and now, a flash of pain and it’d be over…
“John — please! Hey — brother, yo!”
Brother. That seemed to call him back. He looked into her eyes — and saw life there, and determination. Intelligence, a range of possibilities…and hope.
He took a deep breath and shook himself.
“Fuck you, Portman,” he muttered. Seeing them in his mind’s eye.
“What?” she said.
“You too, Mac. Yeah — even you, Jumper. The whole fucking bunch of you. I did all I could. Some days, things just go sour…”
She waited, sensing he was working through something.
He wasn’t through with it. But he’d put it back into the dark corners of his skull — he was ready to move into some other dark corners now.
“I’m sorry,” he said huskily, squeezing his sister’s shoulder. “I guess I lost it for a minute…Let’s do this thing.”
Sixteen
“SARGE,” REAPER SAID into his comm, “what’s your position?” No answer. He tried again. “Sarge — do you read?”
A burst of static in his headset. And maybe, from far off in the compound, the distant sound of gunfire, abruptly cutting off.
Then: “I copy, Reaper…”
But Sarge was a little occupied, right now. He and the Kid had just finished killing a full-blown imp. And now he saw someone crawling toward him, from a heap of wreckage — the wreckage of fallen rafters and fallen human beings.
The individual crawling toward him was not obviously turned as yet. He wore the tatters of a uniform; one of his legs was twisted the wrong way.
“Sarge,” Reaper’s voice said, over the comm, “we don’t have to kill everyone. Transmission of the condition is self-selecting.”
Sarge watched the man crawling toward him across the bloody floor of the corridor.
“Help me,” the man begged. His tears made the dried blood on his face run once more. “Help me please…”
The Kid lowered his gun, obviously intent on lending aid. Sarge pulled the Kid back, shook his head.
Sarge leveled his weapon…
“Please…”
…and fired, at close range, so that the man who’d pleaded with him was hurled back into the shadows, his head shattered.
The Kid gaped at that, put up a hand to cover his mouth.
“Roger that, Reaper,” Sarge said calmly. “I’m on my way toward you…” He turned to the Kid — who took a nervous step back from him. Sarge pretended not to notice that. “Clear the rest of this sector,” he ordered the Kid. “Meet me back at the Ark chamber.”
Sarge dropped the exhausted chaingun and went off in his own direction.
The Kid watched for a moment, then turned and hurried off on his mission — only looking back over his shoulder at Sarge once.
At first, the Kid had felt glad to get away from Sarge. But a short ten minutes later, in the echoing gloom — in a corridor that was all too much like the ones on Olduvai — the Kid was wishing Sarge was still with him.