Ted pointed his assault rifle at Dave and said in a surprisingly calm voice, “Where is she?”
John said, “You don’t want to do this, Ted. Because of the … radiation? It’s just, everywhere. We’re all radioactive.”
“Drop the cover. She told me everything.”
She? John wasn’t sure who he was talking about there. Was it Chastity? Maybe she’d come back to help.
Loretta appeared in the doorway to the cell block, yelling her husband’s name, asking him what in the world was happening. Ted ran that direction, shouldered past her, and found Maggie’s cell—the only glass wall that was smeared with the cloudy film from where the larva had been crawling over it. John, Dave, and Amy followed him in, Dave ineffectually telling him to wait, to listen.
Ted told Maggie to hang on, then to no one in particular said, “Open the cell door.”
The agent Dave called Tasker but whose name was actually Pussnado sauntered up and said, “I will not be doing that, and I assure you, I have very good reasons.”
“I wasn’t talking to you.” Ted touched an earpiece and said, “Are you reading me? I need that cell door opened, now.”
The door slid open, the monstrous writhing maggot beyond it squealing and chittering in response. Ted reached down, clutched it to his chest, and shouted commands to his friend to cover their exit.
Dave said, “Mr. Knoll, you need to listen very, very carefully. You take her out that front door, everybody dies. Everything dies. I can’t even explain the degree to which shit will go wrong.”
Now it was Ted’s turn to look confused, which quickly turned to annoyance. He seemed to think the two of them were still playing a part, maybe for NON’s benefit.
In a tone that was only somewhat convincing, he said, “Buddy, you can either stand aside and let me take my daughter outta here, or you can lay dead on the floor while I take my daughter outta here.” Playing along, giving Dave an out.
Dave looked pleadingly at John. What could they do? Ted and his partner were armed to the teeth and apparently ex Special Forces. John had nothing but his car keys in his pocket—he doubted he could kill more than one of them before the other took him down.
Ted brushed past him and moved toward the front entrance of the wellness center, his partner covering the extraction, Loretta right behind them. John, Amy, and Dave watched as the larva passed out of the facility and back into the rain-lashed world.
From behind John, Amy said, “Guys, is this part of what you set up? Over the weekend, I mean?”
John said, “Maybe? Damn it, Dave, you should have let me finish explaining it on your ass.”
But Dave was already moving, running after the dildo launcher John had discarded on the floor. John saw no good ending to Dave trying to fling flaming vibrators at this enraged soldier’s little girl, but he didn’t respond when John told him to forget it.
John turned and chased after Ted, pushing through the front door in time to see Ted’s Impala skid to a stop, spraying rainwater from all four tires.
The passenger side window rolled down.
Korean adult website star Joy Park said, “Get her in! Move! Move!”
Dave ran up behind John with the dildo launcher, looked at Joy, then looked at John, bewildered. John just shook his head.
Ted gently handed the squirming larva to Loretta, who climbed into the back seat with it. Ted told them to get to the safe house, that he would meet them there.
Instead of raining dildo hellfire down upon Ted’s family, Dave said, “Wait,” and told them to pop the trunk. He threw the launcher in and told Ted they may need it. Which was true, but how in the hell they would figure it out in time—if it wasn’t already too late—was anyone’s guess. When Maggie hatched, John figured they’d have a brief moment to register the strange darkness … and then would know nothing at all.
Dave slammed the trunk and the car tore out of the parking lot. Ted—steadfastly ignoring John, Dave, and Amy—stormed back into the building with his soldier companion in tow.
Agents Pussnado and Cocksman were standing there, looking annoyed. John had expected a hundred of those black cloaks to come flying out from various doors to wipe out Ted’s two-man crew, but the building seemed to have emptied. For a moment, John was amused by the thought of them just giving up on their field office at the first sign of trouble, then it occurred to him that NON may very well have given an evacuation order for all of their staff in the facility. Hell, maybe the entire planet. John imagined all of them fleeing to some other dimension, marking this one down as a loss.
Cocksman shifted his weight on his cane and said, “Mr. Knoll, I understand what you think you’re doing, but you need to—”
Ted shot the man in the forehead, spraying blood and brain matter on his partner’s blazer.
Amy gasped.
The man slumped to the ground and Ted said to the female agent, “Lie flat on the floor, put your hands behind your head. You and I are going to have a conversation.”
She obeyed. Ted took her gun from under her jacket and kicked it across the floor. He then slung his assault rifle behind his back and pulled out a black, military-issue knife.
Dave said, “Ted, we should get outta here. Whatever you’re about to do, it’s not worth—”
Ted slapped Dave across the face with his dick, proverbially, via a stern facial expression. To the woman on the floor, he said, “Do you know what I did in Iraq?”
“I do.”
“Say it.”
“You were an interrogator. Among other things.”
“Huh. Not many people got access to those records. How did I know you people would? Point is, I know how to spot a lie. And I got a short, short fuse for liars. You read about that, too, didn’t you? Even though it was kept quiet, that whole incident.”
“I am aware of your … issues.”
Ted nodded. “Good. You know what it’s like, being in a war zone?”
“Mr. Knoll, I can help y—”
“It’s like wakin’ up from a dream. I don’t mean comin’ back home is like that, I mean the war, being in the suck, it’s like wakin’ up. See, because that’s when you figure out your old life—the barbecues and Monday Night Football and trips to Disneyland—that shit was the dream and this is real. Iraq was fucked and getting it unfucked meant killing a certain number of people and if it didn’t get unfucked then they would kill a certain number of us and the future of the world would all depend on who killed who. Simple as that. Same as there’s no woolly mammoths or saber-toothed tigers no more, same as how we’re all fancy monkeys instead of smart dinosaurs. And aaaall that other bullshit, the steak dinners and Christmas mornings and beer commercials, it’s all a dream we’re havin’, something to pass the time until somebody comes and wakes us up to the real world, where either you’re gonna die, or you’re gonna make somebody else die, so you can pass on your way of life to your kids. I’m sayin’ all of this because I think part of what you’re depending on here is me being unwilling to do what I need to do in order to find out what I need to know. So I’m letting you know, from one awake person to another, that the sight of your tears and the sound of your screams won’t melt my heart.”
She said, “Duly noted.”
“Knowing that I can spot a liar, even one with her face pressed to the floor, I ask you—were you, or were you not, about to kill my daughter?”
“We were not about to kill your daughter.”
This, John noted, was 100 percent true. Ted seemed to recognize that fact.
Amy said, “Mr. Knoll, we can actually explain—”
He ignored her, continuing his interrogation. “Do you, or do you not, know where to find the thing that’s taking the children? The Batmantis?”