Doomsday Exam [Bureau 13 #2] Page 8

  “Brace yourselves!” George warned, shifting gears.

  In a roar, the van lurched forward with renewed velocity and slammed directly into the big reptile. It went airborne and tumbling away, a stream of glowing vapor spewed from its open mouth, setting fire to a tree and melting a fireplug. On the dashboard, a Geiger counter began to wildly click.

  “Excuse me,” Raul grunted from somewhere within the pile of bodies on the floor. “But is my stomach bothering your elbow?”

  “Sorry,” I said and struggled to my feet, then helped the bruised wizard to stand in the rocking RV.

  Going to the rear window, Steve stared at the receding lizard as it waddling away. “Hey,” he said in wonder. “Was ... wasn't that—”

  “Get used to it, rookie,” Mindy snapped. She hadn't moved an inch during the collision. “You're in the Bureau now.”

  The dark mage was shocked for a moment, then set his jaw. That's the ticket, buddy. It always surprised newcomers to discover that a lot of monster movies were actually footage of Bureau 13 battles. I personally had two hit movies and a TV mini-series to my credit. But novels were what I really wanted. You know, something with class and dignity.

  As we barreled across a destroyed lawn, a mummy stepped out of some bushes and spread its bandaged arms wide as if to catch our speeding van.

  “It's Billy-Bob!” Raul shouted in warning.

  Savagely twisting the steering wheel, George violently careened off the corner of a house, sending out a spray of ceramic tiles. Rebounding off a garage, the van slammed into the ruin of a tank, and then rolled over a sleek sports car. But somehow we managed to avoid the shambling monster.

  “Wow, that guy must be ultra powerful,” Ken remarked in awe.

  “Billy-Bob? Nah, you could kill him with a sharp stick,” Mindy corrected, sitting calmly in her seat.

  “Then why the elaborate evasion?”

  “The wrappings are evil,” Jessica explained. “But not the man inside. That's just some poor truck driver from South Carolina. He ran over the mummy, killing the man wearing the wrappings, so the bandages seized him and took off on a five state rampage of death and destruction.”

  As we crashed through a diner, Ken frowned. “So if we killed Billy-Bob,” he said slowly. “Then the wrappings would just take over somebody else?”

  “Correct.”

  “Why not destroy the wrappings?” Connie asked.

  Cadets! “Gotta take them off the victim first, which we can't do without slaying Billy-Bob. That was why he was in detention, to protect the innocent man inside the killing bandages.”

  “Ah.”

  The students were finally starting to understand that not everybody in the Holding Facility was a monster. Some were victims. We even had a few demonic refugees seeking political asylum. It's a crazy world.

  Launching a rocket from the roof pod, George blew apart a drooling somuloid and shot through an alleyway. In passing, we saw a pair of people waging a private firefight amidst the madness and chaos of the larger battle. One person was a tall muscular man with a bushy moustache and thick sideburns. He was dressed in a garish green checker jacket and was holding the biggest damn pistol I had ever seen in my life. His opponent was a slim man with slick blonde hair, a flapping lab coat and a robotic arm.

  “Freeze, you bozo!” the guy with the moustache bellowed, firing his gigantic pistol a fast three times.

  The scientist-type in the lab coat ducked out of the way. “Eat photons, Delphia!” he screeched insanely, and out lanced a crimson energy beam from the hand of his mechanical arm. The scintillating power ray nicked the jacket of moustache guy and out tumbled a frosty can of beer.

  A split second later, we turned another corner and they were gone.

  “Who the heck were they?” Katrina asked, not sure if she was shocked or amused.

  “Long story,” I sighed. “Tell you later.”

  Nearing the Facility, the houses changed from damaged to burning shells, then flattened timbers trampled in the bloody mud. We were in open country now, but there was nobody moving about. An eerie stillness ruled the landscape.

  Then with a loud thump, something heavy landed on the roof of our van and started clawing at the windows, gray talons chipping the armored plexiglass. Since George was busy, I flipped a switch on the dashboard. In a dull boom, the outer section of the roof blew off the chassis taking a very surprised harpy along with the luggage rack and air conditioner. By the time she hit the ground, we were long gone. Schmuck. Leaping on a roof was the second oldest trick in the book.

  Amid the wreckage on the ground, carnage was rampart, bodies and bloody bits of corpses scattered about everywhere. It was impossible not to run over the grisly goblets of flesh. The only cheering fact was that a lot of the blood was yellow, or green, instead of red, and many of the body parts could never be mistaken for human remains. The Bureau guards had taken their toll, such as it was. Problem was, if each of the monster parts didn't somehow travel to rejoin the rest of the original body, then they would just start to grow a whole new boojum. The tanks and planes had only bought us time, nothing more. And not much of that either, but it would have to be enough.

  Slowing our speed, George carefully maneuvered through the crumbled ruins of the once mighty warehouses. Often he had to go backwards to be able to move ahead again, but we always progressed. Going past the destroyed building, we could see that the insides were oddly empty. Obviously, whatever force powering the defensives was long dissipated.

  “Excuse me, but the response code is not working,” George announced with deceptive calm, one hand typing madly on a miniature keyboard.

  Going to the front seat, I took the keyboard and tried it myself. No response. Same thing with the radio.

  “We'll have to ram our way in,” I decided, taking a seat and strapping on a crash harness. “Raul, polymorph a section of the metal wall into wood.”

  Gamely, the wizard rolled up his sleeves. “Consider it done, kemo sabe.” He gestured and the seamless allotropic steel of the Quonset Hut suddenly was a wide wooden door.

  Smashing through the dilapidated wire fence, we zoomed confidently toward the hut. Then the wall reverted back to metal.

  Frowning in annoyance, Raul leveled his staff and it became wood again, but for a much shorter time before reverting to steel.

  At warp speed we went like a Detroit cannonball across the battlefield, the tall metal wall rising before us like the angry hand of God.

  “Oh, Edwardo!” George sang out, sweat dripping off his brow.

  “Keep going!” I commanded, feeling my stomach knot. “Katrina, Steven, help Raul!”

  Clutching their wands into a triad of unity, the three mages started chanting so fast the words were only a babble. Filling our sight, the towering Quonset Hut flickered into wood, no, metal again. Wood, metal, wood, metal, wood, metal...

  SIX

  ...And the van smashed through the plywood wall, exploding into the Quonset Hut! As the RV screeched to a halt in the cavernous receiving bay, a brick tumbled off our shattered windshield. In the rearview mirror, I watched the metal wall close again. Ulp. A split second either way and the Bureau would have renamed us Team Tunafish Salad.

  “Out!” I barked, throwing open the door. “Standard defensive pattern #19!” That was for the students. My people didn't need to be told such basics.

  The crowd barely managed to assemble when the floor rippled and the giant mechanical arm reached straight for us. At least part of the Facility was still operational. Boldly walking towards the deadly janitor, I fished out my commission booklet and showed my badge.

  “Special Federal Agent Edwardo Alvarez,” I stated nice and loud. “Independent field operative, Bureau 13.”

  The hand slowly halted, then briskly turned towards the rest of the group. One at a time, they each identified themselves. Thankfully, everybody had their booklet.

  Programmed to be suspicious, the janitor seemed loath to accept such an invasion
of agents, but finally it descended into the floor with that same strange watery effect.

  “George and I are on point,” I announced, checking the clip in my Uzi 9mm machine pistol. “Sanders and Mindy cover the rear. The gypsy and Jessica in the middle. One meter spread. Silent and hard.”

  Raising a finger asking for a pause, George stepped into the van for a moment before joining me at the head of the mob.

  “Forget something?” I asked brusquely.

  “Just set the van to detonate,” he answered. “Our people will know better that to bother the vehicle, and an explosion will serve to deter any boojum.”

  I smiled. “Plus let us know they're coming. Good man.”

  Grinning like a poltroon, George stuffed a lollipop into his mouth and snapped the bolt on his M60 to start feeding the linked belt of ammo into the breech mechanism.

  Glancing at my watch, I saw there was twenty minutes to go. Plenty of time. Approaching the wall, I glanced it over carefully.

  “Jess,” I asked.

  My wife placed fingertips to forehead. “Its clear, dear.”

  “Raul?”

  He waved his staff. “Its clear, dear.”

  Everybody laughed, and grinding my teeth I made a mental note to kill him later.

  Stepping forward, I pressed my eye against the viewpiece and placed a hand on the wall plate. There was a click and the wall flipped over on a center pivot, the bottom swinging away as the top lowered, serving to push us into the next cubicle whether we wanted to go or not.

  Blocking the hallway was a simple iron gate, an Armorlite window spanning the wall alongside. It was impossible to see through the sheet of military plastic as it was too heavily streaked with blood. Inserting my finger into the keyhole of the gate, the mechanism took my print, paused, and then unlocked.

  A short tunnel stretched past the gate ending at a huge plastic arch. As I walked through, the scanner rippled with colors to show my aura and alignment. I showed as a normal human, while Jessica was human with a touch of silver. Raul was primarily green, laced with white, a good guy mage. Connie was identical to Jess, and Steve the same as Raul. Somers was green, with rudimentary traces of gray, neutral magic. George was human, but with a faint touch of black, the same as thing Mindy. Ah ha! I always knew those two enjoyed fighting too much. The scanner hummed for a whole minute on Patricia, then gave a golden reading, a true Healer with no offensive abilities.

  Trailing the pack, Ken got an odd reading that I never saw before, pure white. I had to check the chart on the nearby wall for that. Solid white meant that he was fanatically good and totally unmagical. Almost magic resistant. Weird.

  Beyond the scanner, the floor appeared to be solid stone, but I knew better having been here before and having read the brochure. A closer examination showed the tip of a pair of pointed ears sticking from the surface of the quick-granite trap. Taking my Bureau issue pocketcomb, I tossed it forward. A maser beam flashed over the falling object, and the comb landed with a clatter on the hard flooring. Retrieving my comb, I waved the team onward. A key does not always resemble one, and vice versa.

  “I do not understand,” Steve said, skirting around the wiggling ears. “Why isn't this place smashed to bits from the prisoners escaping?”

  Watching the shadows in the corners, Patricia snorted. “The Facility is self-repairing. Heck, its damn near alive.”

  “What do you mean, almost?” Jessica asked softly, hugging herself.

  Shivering slightly, Connie nodded in agreement. In passing, Raul pointed to a crack in the wall that was slowly closing even as we watched. Healing its own wounds. Very neat.

  Ahead was a deceptively plain corridor; concrete floor, metal walls, acoustical tiles ceiling. George stayed to the left, I hugged the right. In actuality, this passage was three hallways combined into a one. I could only assume it worked by mixing technology and magic, or maybe it was all done with smoke and mirrors, I really had no idea. Walking along the corridor, escorted prisoners went to Holding. Strolling along the exact same hallway, Tech Serve scientists arrived at Research, while security officers reached Storage, authorized field agents could go anywhere, and everybody else was dumped into the furnace at the center of the Earth.

  Research was where the Bureau scientists experimented on ways to kill the unkillables. Finding the specific material weakness of a supernatural being was an often painstaking, infuriating and pretty grisly business. Most monsters received damage from wood or silver, but some could only be slain by specific holy relics, a unique word, ritual, disease, reruns of M*A*S*H played backwards, true love, or even old age. Understandably, the frenzied scientists had a private bar and toll-free hot line for 24-hour-a-day psychiatric counseling.

  Storage was where we kept artifacts too dangerous to leave lying around the world, but that we still wanted to have handy in case of an emergency. Some were damned, some alien, and a few were so incredibly holy that only a truly innocent person of the purest spirit could even go near them without being destroyed. Destroyed. That was the term we taught the cadets, because there really was no earthly equivalent of what happened. You could go insane just by watching. It was worse than professional wrestling.

  His Thompson balanced in both hands, Ken gave a tactful cough.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “If the doors are so difficult to gain exit, and the boojums can chew their way through stone and superhard ice, why didn't they just tunnel out the sides of the Facility instead of dashing into the town where we waited with amassed weapons?”

  Sounded like a run-on sentence, but also a good question. Jessica gave the answer. Set in kilometers of concrete merely to keep it steady, the outer walls and bottom of the Facility were a transdimensional energy shield; a solidified version of a forcefield, prismatic dome and psionic death barrier combined. It was absolutely indestructible. End of discussion. Thermonuclear bombs could not even scratch the surface. A space warping gravitational pull of a neutron star would have no effect. A supernova didn't have enough umph to warm a square centimeter.

  Sadly, the Bureau could not take the credit for making this bit of superscience, and if the barrier got damaged we could not fix it, because no human had built the object. If the truth be told, we stole The Cup. It was the first assignment I was ever on, and brother, it was almost my last.

  With impenetrable sides and bottom, the only way in or out of the Facility was the top, and that we could take credit for. At the end of the corridor was the main exit, an odd tunnel that resembled an inverted porcupine and rolled into a tube. But instead of quills, this tunnel was packed with weapons: machine guns, chainsaws, spears, lances, swords, flamethrowers, bazookas, frost wands, laser cannons, microwave beamers, poison gas jets, acid squirters, crossbows, vibro-swords, blowguns, lightning rods and so on, and so forth. Except for a two-foot wide strip of floor down the middle, every inch of the tunnel bristled with deathdealers.

  Personally, I hadn't been able to fathom how the prisoners got past this mother of a gate, but a single glance told the answer. The tunnel was deactivated, the weapons hung limply from the curved wall, dangling and clanging like a jungle of dead metal wind chimes. Mindful of the sharp edges, George and I eased into the curtain of jingling weapons. George was a bit pale, but resolute. He hated tunnels of any sort after a nasty experience in Viet Nam as a teenager.

  Using the tip of her staff, Katrina carefully prodded a barbed javelin. The weapon shattered like Depression glass. “Czar's blood,” she whispered. “What could done this?”

  Interesting, I was noticing that her accent got thicker the more excited she was. An important tip to remember for future poker sessions.

  “Must have been an EMP bomb,” George stated, walking in a smooth line, one boot placed exactly in front of the other as if traveling through a minefield.

  Ducking his head, Steve brushed a nest of drooping machine guns out of his way. “A what kind of bomb?”

  “An electro-magnetic pulse bomb,” George ex
plained, watching everywhere for danger. “A tesla coil accumulator emits a spit charge to generate a split second full spectrum, magnetic field that fries transistors and computer chips.”

  “And that is bad,” said Ken as a question.

  After a pause, George politely agreed. Yes, that was very bad and very high tech. Any electronic equipment controlled by microprocessors or transistors would be rendered useless. But an EM pulse would have no effect on the magical defensives, and the Facility used both.

  I snorted in annoyance. EMP bombs were merely the latest toy of humanity. It seemed to me that the higher the technology, the easier it was to destroy. The only real way to stop a good, old-fashioned, steam locomotive was to drop it off a cliff. Preferably to land on top of another steam locomotive.

  Flinching and dodging, Jessica tried to avoid the hanging ironmongery of doom. “These have been used,” she stated, stooping under a faintly humming vibro-sword. “And more than once.”

  “There have been escapes before,” I admitted honestly.

  “But nothing on the scale of today.”

  “Never.”

  Parting the last of the impotent armaments with our gun barrels, George and I stepped out of the tunnel, moving out of the way of the folks behind in case we needed some combat room. But there was only darkness, deep and silent. Not a sound could be heard, even our own breath seemed to be hushed.

  I don't like this, Jessica sent.

  “Me either. Infra-red,” I ordered, touching a switch on my helmet.

  Illumination returned to my visor, and I could see that my team was standing on a small ledge that jutted from the ebony wall like the hand of a starving beggar. To our left was a sloped walkway that flowed along the curving wall, going down and out of sight into the stygian depths. A pipe railing alongside the walkway offered meager protection from tumbling off the abrupt edge into the nothingness.

  Careful of my balance, I glanced over the railing. Total blackness stretching into infinity. Vertigo seized me for a moment as ghostly echoes drifted upward, distant pinpoints of light flickered in the great abyss resembling dying stars. In actuality, they must have been fires lit by the prisoners to try and see their way to the exit. Torches made from bed linen, perhaps burning hair, or each other.