There was no long, fraught car ride back to New Orleans. They boarded a gray chopper at the base in a clearing that looked to have been hacked out of the wilderness at some point in the last week. It was obvious that the trunks of the saplings at the edge of the clearing were freshly sheared off. A driver shuttled them by Hummer from the compound where Dave and CPO Allen had been waiting over to the helipad, a ten-minute drive on an unpaved road through thick forest. Rain fell heavily enough to obscure the track here and there, but the driver didn’t slow down. He seemed to know the way, and Heath ordered him to go as quickly as he thought was safe and then some.
“The story is coming out,” he said as the Humvee slid around a long bend in the road. Allen meanwhile kept nudging Dave to spill the crazy beans. “Bill O’Reilly was mouthing off about Greenpeace a little earlier. Calling them whack jobs because one of their kids got on Facebook with a story about a military cover-up out on your rig. A bioweapon gone wrong. O’Reilly smacked them hard. He’s gonna look pretty foolish by the end of today.”
“Yeah, but Greenpeace doesn’t need Bill O’Reilly to help them look foolish,” Dave said.
“My daughter’s in Greenpeace,” Heath said without elaborating, and that shut the conversation down for a while.
Dave could hear the engine and the rotor thump well before they entered the clearing. Another half dozen or more SEALs were already embarked, seated in the rear cabin. Allen greeted them all with his middle finger and a boyish grin. He didn’t bother introducing Dave over the roar of the engines, directing him to a berth at the back of the cabin. Heath took a seat up front with the pilot. Maybe he was even qualified to fly this thing. That tin leg didn’t seem to hold him back otherwise.
When they were securely buckled in, Dave asked Allen how he had gotten into the SEAL business. It was a thin effort at diverting the chief from the course he seemed set on of getting Dave to come clean to Heath about the full extent of his craziness. Surprisingly, it worked, giving him time to think about how he was going to explain to the navy officer what a fucking nut bag he’d thrown his lot in with. Well, it worked for now, at least. Even Allen didn’t expect him to shout over the roar of the chopper.
“Dude,” Allen said, looking almost wistful even as he raised his voice. “I was a lifeguard in high school. Surf patrol, you know. I volunteered for that—it was an awesome way to meet babes—but I picked up some paid work at a community center pool, too. Some old dude there talked me into competing in the Lifeguard Olympics. Our company did that every year, you know, for morale and so on. Anyway, my senior year we won. I wasn’t doing much else with myself. Steve, the same dude, talked me into going to see a recruiter. The army guys treated me like dirt, but the navy was cool, showed me some videos, and I was hooked. Went on to SEAL training, and here I am.”
“Lifeguard Olympics?” Dave asked, nearly shouting now. “You mean like Baywatch?”
“Sorta.” Allen grinned, the first time he’d done so all day. “It was cake compared to BUD/S.”
The takeoff put Dave back in the moment just a day earlier, an eternity ago, when J2 had tormented him about his hangover. No trace of the headache or nausea remained, and he realized for the first time that it, too, had vanished when he’d clubbed the Hunn to death. There was a chance he’d slept it off at the hospital and woken up groggy with sedatives. But probably not. He’d probably burned every molecule of alcohol in his body the same way he’d torched an inhuman amount of cooked meat and chocolate bars since. Be interesting to get his hands on a bottle and see whether he could neck it without any ill effect. Or a doobie.
Or even a line.
Oh, yeah. The chance would be a fine thing.
The grim faces of the men around him, all of them hidden behind combat goggles, did not inspire any confidence that he had fallen in among wayward party animals. Not when they were on the government’s clock, anyway. Some of them hadn’t shaved in weeks, a stark contrast to the marines and regular sailors he’d seen on the base. In fact, Dave thought they were a pretty rank-looking bunch, but in the way that you might expect an Old Testament prophet to be all rank and stringy and totally uptight about his very particular brand of shit.
Then he looked at his own camouflage trousers and oddly fitting T-shirt and figured he’d keep his fashion tips to himself. A few of these characters looked like they wouldn’t be opposed to the idea of shooting old Dave in the head and tossing him out of the chopper. How many of them knew what had happened to their pirate buddies? How many blamed him? Probably all of them from the vibe he was getting.
Really not feeling the love for our man Dave from this crowd.
The roar of the engines and the thump of the rotors made any prolonged conversation pointless, and he got to wondering what these guys had been told about the situation they were flying into. Old Navy had surprised him so far with his no-bullshit policy. Most likely Heath had given them all the information he could gather, including the results of the morning’s “tests” on Dave. A couple of the SEALs were checking him out, obviously unimpressed and deeply skeptical. Also, there was the media. Without a phone—his old iPhone had gone astray—or ready access to a screen of any kind, Dave hadn’t caught up with the outside world since catching a glimpse of the cable news at the start of the day. Apart from the Greenpeace kid Heath had mentioned, maybe, and some public relations douche bag at BP hinting human error might be to blame for the disaster—Dave’s error, let’s be clear—there had been no indication of the Longreach story taking any weird detours away from agreed realities. How long could it be, though? Not soon enough for Dave. He really didn’t want to be the one standing next to Heath or Obama or whoever when they did their “Orcs Attack!” press conference.
It was too loud in the helicopter to ask Allen about any of it or to tell Heath anything about his earlier discussion with the chief and the uncharted depths of the knowledge about the Horde that he seemed to possess now. The SEALs were plugged into some sort of tactical network through complicated headsets. Allen would occasionally push a button on his earpiece and talk into the tiny boom mike just off to the side of his mouth. But nobody had offered Dave anything like that, and when he’d asked, Allen had shouted back that there was no point.
“You’re not trained for it, man. We got troop net and command net on this. We can’t have anyone getting on yapping away. Bad enough when you get the wrong brass on the net. It’ll mess everything up; trust me.”
Okay. That was cool. Dave wouldn’t allow an outsider to come onto his rig and start dicking around, either. But it meant that for the moment he was cut off, cocooned within the early evening darkness and the roar of the helicopter. There was little room to spare in the cabin because of the SEALs’ equipment and in one or two cases the sheer size of the men. Two door gunners manned a couple of Gatling guns. Dave was totally sure they were definitely Gatling guns, like right out of the movies. He kept himself tucked up tightly on his little fold-down seat, looking out of the open door as the forest slipped under their wheels.
The stormy weather had cleared as the sun set, and only a few thin strands of cloud obscured the first gleaming stars and a bright three-quarter moon that glistened on the rivers and streams and the bayou below. Lights stood out here and there, singly and clustered in small settlements. The towns grew larger as they flew south, and New Orleans loomed on the horizon as a dome of light. The chopper swung around to the southeast, just perceptibly, to avoid overflying the city. Dave could see flashes of sheet lightning out over the water, and then he realized that some of the flashes were on the ground inside the city. As they drew closer, he was certain he could see fires within the greater metro area.
“What’s that?” he shouted to Allen, pointing at the flickering light source.
The SEAL consulted his comm gear and called back, “Nothing. Just a little riot. Gang fight or something. There’s been some gunfire, so we’re jagging east to avoid it. Be embarrassing getting shot in the tush over our own turf.”
“Yo,” said one of the SEALs, pointing at the tiny light show. “Murder city nights.”
It was an in-joke or reference worth a few appreciative nods and fist bumps from his friends but lost on Dave.
He gave Allen a thumbs-up to signal that he understood before fetching another protein bar from one of the cargo pockets of his pants. He could sense himself getting peckish again and wanted to eat something, anything, before the wracking gut cramps doubled him over. Ha! Scored, he thought as he recognized an Eat Smart Choc Peanut Caramel Crunch. He knew this one from the vending machines at the depot. As far as tasteless protein slabs went, it wasn’t too shabby. Not as gooey and sticky on the teeth as some other bars and sporting just the right amount of crunch. Like a chocolate Rice Krispy, he thought as he reduced it to a memory in a couple of bites, following up with a gel tube that he found he could easily read in the dark. A PowerBar Gel Double Latte, it tasted no worse than the instant coffee at work, and with the Eat Smart bar it eased his emerging hunger pangs, tamping them down nicely.
The SEALs were all packing four-eyed night vision goggles, which again he had not been given, but again he didn’t much care. As Dave took the time to look around the cabin, he found that deepening nightfall didn’t really handicap him. The color washed out of his surroundings, but he was able to make out even fine details in a clear monochrome gray. Something new, he thought. He’d been putting off seeing an eye doctor about his worsening eyesight, an inability to refocus from long to short distances. Hadn’t even been able to admit to himself his eyes were going after he bought a magnifying glass to keep at his apartment. It wasn’t for reading small print, of course. No. It was for burning bugs and toy soldiers when the boys came for an access visit. Which, of course, they never did. Now he could read the small print on the gel tube in the dark of the chopper cabin.
In normal circumstances Dave would have been bringing the awesome the last two days. He’d kicked some ass, dodged a hangover, destroyed the buffet, dropped a little weight, and gotten in an epic gym session. He was by any measure fucking crushing it. But his stomach fluttered with nerves as he read the label on the gel packet:
110 calories
Total carb 27 g
Sugars 10 g
Sodium 200 mg
All in tiny little letters he’d have been unable to read not long ago even at high noon in direct sunlight. The hammering thud of the rotors fed vibrations up through the soles of his boots into his butt and guts. He absentmindedly ate another bar, mostly for something to occupy him.
He’d had a couple of skin cancers off last year. Side of his neck and just behind one ear. More occupational hazards given how much time he spent in the sun. His barber spotted the small lesions on the back of his head. Dave had been watching the sore on his neck that never went away, just under his left ear, watching it the way you would watch a strange dog standing astride your path with its hackles up. He knew it was probably bad, but if he didn’t go to the doctor and the doctor didn’t confirm that … well, he was sweet.
The basal cell carcinoma had been diagnosed during his annual physical, and BP’s own doctor had cut it out in the surgery that day, all the while cursing him for an idiot for letting it go so long.
The sense of creeping dread that he’d swallowed hard every time he woke up and looked at that small red sore that never healed? Yeah. That. Right now. Raised to the power of what the fuck was happening to him?
“Damn.”
The unfamiliar voice of one of Allen’s comrades shook him out of the reverie. One of the SEALs was pointing off toward where a genuine light and magic show flared and sputtered in a blacked-out section of the outer burbs.
“What’s that?” someone asked.
“Looks like the Central City projects,” replied a voice with a distinct Cajun lilt. “Mebbe Calliope or Magnolia. Same old same old.”
“Looks like fucking Helmand at that time of the month,” said a monster of a man called Igor. Sporting an Amish-style beard on steroids, the man had biceps the size of bowling balls. Of all the men on the chopper, Dave figured this guy was the one who could give him a run for his money on the weight bench.
“Damn. That’s tracer fire,” he heard Allen call out.
A couple of voices chorused together:
“For illuminating targets. And destroying personnel.”
Another in-joke, he gathered.
Before he could crane around far enough to see, the chopper’s flight path took them beyond the point where he could get a good angle. He sat back, cupped his hands over his mouth, and called out to Allen, “What was all that? Sounded serious.”
The SEAL didn’t seem to think so.
“Drugs, for sure. Seen worse in Florida. Flown over honest to God street wars in Mexico that’d put that side show out of business,” he said, jerking his thumb back in the direction of the city.
The cabin settled down again, and soon enough they’d crossed the coast and were flying out over the barrier islands, heading south for the Longreach.
Some of the SEALs dozed on the flight out, but unlike his last trip to the platform, Dave stayed awake the whole way. He topped up the tank with another protein bar and sipped some Gatorade from his CamelBak, but otherwise he was alone with his thoughts.
They weren’t pleasant.
He thought that if all that had happened was a garden-variety fire and explosion on the rig, he’d have been better off. He’d have dealt. He told himself that if there had been some extreme but rational explanation for the things that crawled up the pylons or the drill, something like his theory about cracking open an ancient ecosphere, he could have dealt with that, too. In good time.
But there was nothing on God’s green earth that explained what had happened to him personally. Not the sudden Super Friends status update or the utterly alien memories that seemed to come with them. Memories of long eons lived …
In the UnderRealms.
Yeah. That shit. Knowledge of a world he’d never even imagined before. A world of Hunn and Gnarrl. Of minions and Thresh. Of the Grande Horde and the Low Queens and …
He shook his head.
It did not help to think about that stuff. About what it might mean. It was like stories of murdered kids, pedophiles, people with basketball-size tumors growing out of their nut sacks, and those special kinds of retards who liked to run lawn mowers over puppies.
You might see that sort of thing in the paper, but if you were smart, you let your eyes move quickly over it to the nearest convenient sports story. You didn’t want that poison inside your skull. It was like the images of that poor little bastard in the Prius. The look in his eyes just before all that fast-moving metal fell on him.
Better to look away.
Dave stretched back as best he could and ignored the vibration of the airframe as he leaned his head against the thin cushioning. He thought about his own boys, Toby and Jack. He still hadn’t had a chance to catch up with them yet, and he was starting to feel guilty about that. That was a bad sign. He knew from experience that he was a slow starter on guilt trips, and if he was feeling it only now, he was probably too late. Annie would have them out of school for a few days. He knew how that went, too. She’d cut them off sugar and gluten. Not that they’d ever tested positive for a gluten allergy. She just thought everyone should eat less gluten. She’d shut down the TV set and unplug the net and take the boys completely offline, reading bedtime stories to them about how everyone was different and that was okay. Making them watch the gay episodes of Glee, which seemed to be all of them as best Dave could tell. Oh, and there’d be no adventures with trampolines and tree houses for his boys, either, not so long as Anxious Annie had them in lockdown. And lockdown was her usual response to any Dave-related problems, even though this one totally wasn’t his fault. But he wasn’t there to explain that to them, was he? And for once, maybe, he had to admit, she might be right to pack them in Nerf.
“Whatcha thinkin’, Dave?” Allen shouted over the rotor noise.
“I’m thinking my ex-wife has told my kids that I probably blew up the Longreach by drunk driving a train into it.”
Allen mocked up a look of profound disbelief. “Yeah? Looked to me like you were thinking about the very serious talk you’ll be having with Captain Heath just as soon as we land.”
“Oh, yeah. That, too,” he shouted back.
He’d be on the platform tonight and most of tomorrow, at a guess, but he was sure Heath would let him get in touch with the boys when they’d done whatever it was that needed doing out there. Fucked if he knew what he was gonna tell them, though.
Lies, probably. He was good at that.