“I’ve literally never heard of—”
“All these signs point to Dave only because the thing behind this wants you to go after him. Amy, too, all that stuff about the security cameras—they want us out of the picture, and are using you as a tool.”
The man on the cot nearby whispered something. John leaned close enough to hear the man say, “… kill … me…”
The woman said, “Your loyalty to your friends is admirable. But the day is coming when you are going to have to make a terrible decision. Will you?”
The man on the cot started screaming. Something was writhing in his abdomen, thrashing under the skin, trying to tear its way out. There was a ripping sound, and out from the man’s belly came a hideous creature, some horrific parasite having hatched inside him. It had teeth where its eyes should be and where its teeth should be, more teeth.
John looked around for a weapon and found a nearby flamethrower. He picked it up and unleashed a torrent of fire that consumed parasite and host alike, the man screaming out his gratitude for having been put out of his misery. Soon, other parasites were hatching all around them, one disease-ridden victim after another giving birth to their unholy offspring. John spun the flame thrower in an arc, setting everything in the vicinity ablaze.
The fuel quickly ran out. John tossed the flamethrower aside and picked up Agent Pussnado from where she was cowering on the turf.
“Will I do what has to be done?” he asked, sneering at her. “What do you think? Now let’s get the hell out of here. I’m thinking the Patriots aren’t making the playoffs this year.”
John spotted where the portal had opened at the end of the row. He yanked the woman off her feet and hauled her toward the doorway, a horde of the skittering dog-sized parasites in pursuit. John tossed the agent through the open portal and spun to face the onslaught. He snatched his switchblade from its ankle scabbard and stabbed a thrashing parasite as it launched itself at his face. John’s entire shirt was ripped from his body.
“Just come through and close the door!” screamed Pussnado, from the other side of the portal. “You can’t kill them all! It doesn’t matter!”
John slashed another of the parasites, then another. He glared at the woman over his shoulder and said, “It all matters.”
Me
I found myself back in the parking lot, standing next to John and Amy, facing the two agents and unsure if anything had actually happened. It didn’t feel like we’d moved. The dozen cloaked figures who encircled us each had their strange weapons at the ready. I wondered if we ducked at the right moment if they would all just shoot each other.
John looked around as if confused and said, “Did we, uh, pass?”
The female agent I knew as Tasker said, “If we allow you to leave this place, what will you do?”
I said, “Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. Amy will go to work, I’ll go home and masturbate, John will go to his place, feed his dog, and also masturbate probably. You’ll never hear from us again.”
“You are a practiced, yet unskilled, liar. I know that you will continue to pursue a resolution in this case. We cannot allow you to do that.”
“But you already said you don’t have permission to kill us.”
The male agent, Gibson, said, “It’s believed by our superiors that you are surrounded by a blowback sphere.”
I said, “The last three syllables of that sentence were nonsense to me.”
“They think any attempt to kill you will automatically recoil on us and our organization via some unnatural means. I say it’s bullshit, but it’s above our pay grade.”
Actually, I thought, the people who are nice to us also meet with horrific misfortune. I think it’s a proximity thing.
John said, “What, like we’re protected somehow? Like we’ve got a guardian angel, or a force field?”
Tasker said, “I assure you, the forces shielding you are in no way angelic. If you are protected, it is only so that you can carry out Their will. Strings are pulled to clear the path wherever you go, surely you’ve sensed that.”
I said, “Holy shit, I’d hate to see what my life would look like if I wasn’t getting help.”
“Exactly,” said Tasker. “But, while you cannot be harmed, there are alternatives available to us.” She nodded at one of the cloaks. “Do you know what their weapons do?”
I said, “No, but I’ve always been curious to find out.”
“On their current setting, they simply change your mind. I don’t mean they convince you, I mean they change your mind completely. Forge new, somewhat random connections in your brain. They leave you perfectly healthy, but also completely unaware of who you are, how you got here, or what you’re fighting for. You won’t know your name, you won’t recognize each other. You will be wiped clean, then each transported to separate locations with new identities. You will start your lives over as new people. You will no longer have any urge to interfere with the situation here, but will be otherwise physically and psychologically healthy, and thus should not trigger this supposed dark sphere of protection that surrounds you. The best of both worlds.”
Amy said, “You can’t do that.”
Gibson said, “Hey, babe, it’s better than a bullet.”
“Put us together. Just do that. If you wipe us, put us in the same house, or the same town. Let us find each other again.”
Tasker said, “We can’t do that, for obvious reasons. The goal isn’t to have you spend six months reverse engineering your lives to wind up right back here. The goal is for you to start anew, and never feel the compulsion. Don’t worry, you won’t miss David. You’ll never know he was ever in your life. There’ll be nothing to miss. It’s like when they do surgery on an infant—they don’t bother with anesthesia before they slice into its chest, as they know it will not remember the pain.”
Amy turned to me and said, “I’ll find you. Somehow.”
Tasker said, “No, you will not.”
John said, “This plan is idiotic. Supernatural shit is still going to show up at each of our doorsteps, and when it does we’re going to get on the Internet and research it and you know what we’re going to find? Stories about us. The past will all come rushing back.”
“Those Internet searches will turn up nothing. Where you’re going, those articles do not exist, because those events won’t have happened.”
“Oh,” I said. “When you said we would be relocated, you didn’t mean we’d be dumped off in Arkansas. You meant we’re each going through the door.”
“One at a time. Each to a different world.”
John lit a cigarette and said, “No. You’ll have to kill us.”
“No, I won’t. It’ll be just like waking up from a deep sleep, you won’t feel any desire for revenge or even a faint sadness about what you lost. You will be curious about your amnesia, of course, but when you go searching for your old identity, there will be nothing to discover.”
Amy’s arms were around me.
She said, “David, they can’t do this. They can’t.”
She’ll be happier.
John, now showing genuine alarm, said, “So, you take us out of the picture and the thing in the mine smashes its way out and starts impaling all of humanity on its million barbed penises. What then? Your people have to desperately track us down and beg for our help? Reprogram our brains back the way they were?”
Gibson said, “Getting you out of the picture is our only hope for keeping the entity in the mine contained, asshole.”
I said, “Yeah, I can actually see that.”
Tasker looked at John and said, “You’re considering running, maybe trying to take me hostage. Just remember—we choose where that door goes. You make this hard for us, and you’ll wake up in a world where the sky is black and worms crawl out of your rationed meat. Go easy, and I’ll send you someplace that’s pretty much like this.”