Dead Wrong

by O. J. Anderson

part 7 of 9

After the initial dogleg, the air shaft becomes a maze of intersecting tunnels. Lucas guides them through it: a couple lefts, a right, then into a large room half filled with wooden crates, there’s light up ahead. A curving stone stairway.

Lucas stops at the base of the steps, turns, opens his mouth like he’s about to be witty. Got a glint in his eye and a one-liner on his mind.

Jack pre-empts the remark with one finger and a sound-bite of his own: “I’ll step on your face.”

The man-wolf swallows. “Uh... I was only going to say that we’re almost there.”

“Right.”

At the top of the stairs is a large, heavy wooden door, shaped like a tombstone. Held in place by wrought iron brackets and big hinges. Jack halts his crew before they hit the door. Sends up a two-man clearing team. Smith and Jones. They hustle up to the door, one on each side, and search for wires, pins, levers, pressure nodes, anything. As they do this, Lucas casually walks up to the door, palms the large handle, and pulls it open. He steps into the lighted hallway. Points his arm down the hallway and tells the men: “This way.” He stands waiting for Jack and his crew.

Before continuing up the steps, Jack flashes a few hand signals at Rivers. He and Lucky peel off from the group. They duck behind a crate and wait.

The hallway doesn’t look much like a castle hallway; this one is more contemporary. The walls are white and lined with really long paintings. There are recessed lighting strips illuminating them. Black and white checkered flooring. No suits of armor, torch lights, medieval weapons, or heraldic crests here.

The paintings are quite bizarre, Jack notices in passing. Mostly animals. Animals with weapons. And animals with weapons behaving like humans. The colors are bold, the lines cartoon-like. To his right, the painting has a white banner held by two unidentifiable beasts. The banner reads: Fraternity. Elsewhere on the same piece is a dog wearing a gas mask and holding a sword. A dove impaled on the sword’s tip.

The banner on the next painting reads: Equality. It depicts children lying in rows of coffins. Human children, with X’s over their eyes. A burning city in the background. More humanized animals, belt-fed machine guns, and esoteric symbols in the foreground.

As the crew nears the great room, more banners in the paintings: Liberty, Peace, Justice. And a theme common to the entire hallway oeuvre: militant animals and dead children. The place has a really creepy ambiance to it. Thick, viscous almost. Jack can feel it on his skin, like after he’s spent the evening frying chicken. Gonna have to think of an extra-special way to destroy this place.

Lucas stops. Turns. Directs the crew to a doorway to his left. His demeanor has changed; doesn’t smile or say anything. Standing straighter. It’s like he’s back on the job now.

Jack has no idea what’s in the room they’re about to enter. Common sense tells him to throw a couple grenades in first, but his sixth sense tells him that won’t be necessary. He stops in the hallway and looks inside. Sees four men, each one distinctly human. Three of them old, seventies at least. One in his thirties, dressed like a servant.

“Please come in,” one of them says.

Jack looks at his crew. Pokes two fingers at his eyes, then at both ends of the hallway. Four men take up security position on each side of the door, facing both ways down the corridor. The rest enter the great room with Jack.

Lucas bows and disappears down the hall.

“Glad you could join us,” the same man says.

“Oh, well, we were in the neighborhood anyway,” Jack says. “You know...” — he thumbs back toward the hallway — “...in the underground shaft not far from here.”

The old man’s smile is unironically obsequious. “Quite,” he says. His suit looks really expensive. Must have cost a couple hundred bucks, Jack thinks.

The great room lives up to its name. It’s huge, with a high cathedral ceiling. Superfluous decor: way more sofas than any one household needs. A fire burning.

The old man says, “I’m Doctor Sheisserman. This is Doctor Temaman... and Doctor Merdeman. Mr. Balthazar will be joining us shortly. Can I offer you gentlemen a drink?”

Jack: “Yeah, we’ll all have strawberry frappes with whole bananas inside. Extra thick.”

Sheisserman looks at Jack like a high school principal about to suspend a freshman for drawing dirty pictures on the chalk board. Can’t discern whether the enigmatic Creed is taking a pisser or not. He says, “I don’t think we have that.”

“Orange Julius?”

Sheisserman, getting annoyed: “Sorry. Why don’t we have a seat.”

“We’ll stand.” He walks across the room to the nearest window. Outside is an old army deuce-and-a-half, black. No driver. The area outside is well lit, but Jack can’t see any light poles or equipment. No fence, but don’t really need one either. Only about a hundred meters from the castle wall to the edge of the cliff. Not a good place for children to play.

“That was an impressive feat of infiltration, Mr...?”

Still looking out the window, Jack tells him, “Creed. But you can call me Jack.”

“Very well, Mr. Creed.” Sheisserman clasps his hands behind his back like he’s about to troop the line at a death row cocktail party. “I once did a bit of mountaineering myself. Back in my youth. Have you ever climbed the Alps?”

“Can’t say that I have. But I did finish the eight-pound Cannon Burger at Dave’s Burger Bunker in Vail. Got my picture on the wall.”

Sheisserman, squinting: “A remarkable achievement, I’m sure.” He finally takes the hint that Jack Creed isn’t much for small talk. So they won’t be getting to know each other. He is silent for a moment before he begins, “This visit of yours has proven to be quite fortuitous, Mr. Creed. My associates and I have been on the market for a group with talents such as yours.”

“There’s a market?”

Sheisserman sighs. “No, there isn’t.”

“I didn’t think so.” Lying just below the gossamer veneer of Jack Creed’s flippancy are the precision gears of the Master Tactician churning out several courses of action, all of them fine tuned for guaranteed success — as is always the case. He plans for the best case scenario, then an alternate for the best case scenario. Then a secondary plan for the alternate. Then a tertiary. Before beginning the sundry plans for the worst case scenarios, he revises the alternate for the best case scenario. All eventualities are planned for. The unforeseen foreseen.

“Why don’t we just get to the point, then.”

“Mm.” Jack’s plans are complete.

“We want you to take part in a contest. Man against manimal.” Sheisserman smiles like he’s got something to be proud of. His manimals. “I propose two challenges to you and your men. The first is a Battle Royale. Arena combat with primitive weapons. A fight to the death in fifteen minutes’ time. The survivors of the battle will then go on to a game of cat and mouse in the lower labyrinth of the castle. Small arms, anything goes. If you win, we let you walk out of here.”

“Right.” Jack has seen this plot before: late night on Channel 23. “So is this before or after dinner?”

The old man shrugs. “No better time than the present.”

Removing a fresh toothpick from his shirt pocket, Jack says, “And you want us to field test your little freak show.”

Dr. Sheisserman does not take kindly to these words. His face twists into an angry scowl, like an invisible set of hands is busy folding his lower intestines into an origami crane. He raises his voice to say, “I would choose my words more carefully if I were you, Mr. Creed.”

“I’m not so sure, Sheisserman...” Where have I heard that name before? The question has been nagging him for the past few minutes. “I think if you were me, you’d be standing here trying to insult a little old man with an inferiority complex and a weird taste in pets. Just like I’m doing now.”

Sheisserman brushes it off. “Well, this freak show just happens to be what the future of this planet has in store. Whether you like it or not. You and your pack of hoodlums may be good enough to fight them off for a short time, but I can guarantee you this: the rest of the riff-raff out there, the chattle, most certainly are not. Not even close.

“The size alone of the manimal army will be staggering. Their capabilities will be nothing short of astounding. Most of those brainless delinquents will cower in fear at the first sight. A good portion won’t even look up from their video games. The few tough guys that do manage to put up a fight will be taken care of handily, I assure you. We will take control swiftly and completely.

“But don’t fret too much, Mr. Creed. Once they submit they’ll still have their little baubles and doo-dads to play with, to keep them busy. At least for a little while anyway; until we need them for... other purposes. So, they won’t all be disposed of. When the World Order comes to fruition and Gollog takes his rightful place on the New Throne, we will need a few of them to function as a servant class.”

Jack’s hardly paying attention, still thinking about the manimal army. A pretty decent, if horrific, idea: a mass-produced army of elite savages with inherent killer instincts, free of conscience. Fully trainable, not to think, but only to do. They will ravage the earth like a horde of locusts.

The old doctor snaps his fingers at the servant. Says, “Darien, show Horus in, would you?” Then to Jack: “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

The human servant leaves through a door at the other end of the great room. He returns a moment later with a beast. Part man, part canine. It’s a truly bizarre sight. Body is mostly human, though the legs are bowed outward a bit. Very muscular, like a bodybuilder. Covered with a thin coat of fine gray fur. It’s face has an elongated snout. It’s growling softly and showing its teeth. Breathing heavily, like it’s ready to fight.

“Mr. Creed, meet Horus.” Sheisserman is smiling again like he holds all the trump cards. “The future. The fusion of man and animal. Complete. Perfected.”

Jack: “Man’s best friend.”

Sheisserman gives him a wan your jokes aren’t going to save you smile. He walks to the dog-man, pats his arm, tells him, “Thank you, Horus. You may go and get ready now.”

Lips quivering over teeth. Salivating. Horus backs toward the door and leaves the great room, all the while staring at Jack.

“The wheels were set in motion a long time ago, Mr. Creed. The pieces of the game are all in the right places now. Our people are in their positions; we have taken over the essential seats of power, the heads of influential corporations, and heads of state. We have our eyes and ears everywhere. The technology is finally in hand. Everything is moving forward now. You cannot stop the long march of the World Order any more than you can stop the rotation of the earth. It’s inevitable.”

After Sheisserman’s whole-world-domination presentation concludes, they both stand silently for a moment. Then, barely above a whisper, almost as if he were apologizing, like it is out of his hands: “It’s going to happen.”

Jack considers that for a moment. Then frowns, shakes his head. “That’s where you’re wrong, Sheisserman.” Spits out his toothpick. “Dead wrong.”

To be continued...

Open Challenge 278...