The Ninth Dominion (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (36 page)

After all that had transpired in the past few minutes, no one chose to doubt her. The next moment saw fresh panic overcome the lodge’s inhabitants. Mad rushes were launched on every door. Screens were punched out and became emergency exit routes. The ranger pushed his way toward her.

“Who the fuck are—”

“Propane,” Hedda told him. “He opened the propane tanks in the kitchen.”

“I don’t smell propane.”

“Because it’s collecting
underneath
the building. He crawled under, do you hear me? He crawled under and worked the lines outside. If he comes back here and ignites it, there won’t be a building left.”

A mixture of fear and uncertainty filled the ranger’s face. “How come you know so much?”

“I came here to stop him.”

“Jesus Christ, I don’t even know if we had everyone in here.”

“Just help me get everyone out.”

Garth Seckle emerged horrified from the woods in the back of the southern cluster of cabins. The vantage point allowed him a clear enough view of the lodge to see it was being evacuated, his would-be victims slipping from his grasp.

It couldn’t be true! It couldn’t!

They scattered in all directions into the night, gone from the central gathering point where he had planned to finish them off. Seckle bellowed with rage as he rushed across the open area between the cabins. He pulled a grenade from his belt and yanked the pin out, each motion searing him with fresh agony. The reality of his failure brought the pain of his wounds beyond the point of denial. But the blast could help ease the pain, vanquish it even if enough of his victims were caught in the explosion. He was still running when he lobbed the grenade long and straight for the lodge, the seconds counted in his mind. It thumped to the ground and then rolled on beneath the building’s underside.

Garth Seckle dove to the ground and covered his already scorched head.

The lodge exploded in a massive fireball, the loosed propane catching all at once. The flames leapt outward, the storm’s fury unable to douse them. Shards of wood flew everywhere, and for a moment Tiny Tim let himself think the night had been salvaged. But the intensity of blast had forced the vast majority of the debris straight upward. He listened for screams of pain and death, but heard not a single one. He gazed at the flaming carcass of the lodge, and all he felt was empty and beaten. Beaten by both the Ferryman and the woman.

With Kimberlain left behind in the woods, only she could have evacuated the lodge.

But he could make her pay for that. Seckle had one submachine gun left, an Uzi, and he leveled it before him. Most of the resort guests were fleeing toward the waterfront. If Hedda’s son was among them, he would die there.

Tiny Tim counted his remaining grenades and threw himself into a rush.

“My God,” Kimberlain muttered as he helped Hedda to her feet in the flaming shadow of the lodge. “You got them out. Jesus, you got them out.”

She nodded halfheartedly. “But Tiny Tim’s still loose. Somewhere.”

The sounds of panic rose up through the night from the direction of the waterfront. “He likes that sound,” Kimberlain told her. “That’s where he’ll go.”

The Ferryman had seen the explosion when he was halfway between the woods and the lodge. Instinctively he dropped to the ground and covered his head with his arms. Dread anticipation drove him forward into the clearing where he found Hedda.

“They’ll box themselves in down there,” Hedda warned. “No place else to run from him.”

“No place for him to run this time, either. I’ll cut down to the lake through the woods. Either I’ll run into Seckle, or I’ll be waiting when he gets there.”

“While I approach from the rear after you,” Hedda followed.

“A cross fire,” Kimberlain acknowledged, steadying his twelve-gauge. “Let’s go.”

The number of those who had stupidly gathered in the confined space of the waterfront surprised Tiny Tim. Several had climbed into rowboats or canoes, even kayaks and smaller playaks, to make their escape. But most simply huddled in small groups, figuring with the lodge blown up this night of terror must be over.

How wrong they were. Seckle still had five hand grenades and three clips for his Uzi just to demonstrate that. He knew he had to salvage something if this night was to be embraced again. He wanted to lie in his field, staring wide-eyed at the stars, and relive this visit. With nothing to relive, the very essence of his life was gone. He had to accomplish something to savor.

Tiny Tim pulled the pin from one of his grenades with his teeth and drew his arm backward. In the instant it started in motion, a loud report burned his ears and a segment of the tree nearest him exploded. A second blast struck him in the chest and blew him backward, some of the shotgun pellets penetrating flesh where his Kevlar had already been shredded. The grenade he’d been palming slipped from his grip and rolled slightly down the hill.

“Down! Everybody down!” he heard a booming voice cry out. Seckle took cover behind a tree at the start of the woods just before the explosion shook the beach.

The explosion sent the victims he had missed scurrying in all directions again. A young boy dashed near, not seeing him, pausing to catch his breath. Whimpering, sobbing. Alone.

Might this be? … Could this be? …

Close enough. Tiny Tim reached out and snared him in a bear-claw hand. Seckle let him scream and keep screaming, Uzi pressed against his head.

“Kimberlain!” he yelled through burned, bleeding lips. “I’ve got him, Kimberlain!”

Hedda watched it all transpire from Seckle’s left flank, forty feet away with the boy between the monster and her. Was it her son? She couldn’t see well enough to tell; she couldn’t have been sure even if she could have seen him up close. With a decent rifle, even pistol, she could take Seckle out, but not with a shotgun. No chance.

“Where are you, Kimberlain? Come out, or I’ll kill him! Kimberlain!”

Parents covered their children along the sandy beach at the water’s edge. Others were crouched behind the cover of boats or shrubs. Cries of fear mixed with the chirping of crickets.

Hedda steadied her shotgun. Was this what Tiny Tim wanted her to do? A second boy lost to her bullet. Her son this time, maybe her son …

“
Kimberlain!
”

The Ferryman emerged from the woods on Tiny Tim’s other flank, shotgun held before him.

“Drop it or I kill him!”

Kimberlain dropped the shotgun at his feet. Tiny Tim smiled at him through his charred and blackened face. The left side was raw and blistered, making him seem even more grotesque.

Hedda slid out of the woods and crept along the tree line.

Seckle moved the gun away from the boy’s head and started it toward Kimberlain.

“Good,” he said hoarsely. “Good.”

As Tiny Tim brought the Uzi in line with the Ferryman’s face, Hedda dashed forward. She grasped the boy and yanked him from Seckle’s hold in the same instant he spun toward her. She covered the boy with her body as they both hit the ground. A volley of gunshots found her ears just ahead of the burst of pain exploding through her spine. The pain became pins and needles, and she gasped, heaving for breath.

Kimberlain dove for his shotgun and rolled, firing in the same motion. The pellets grazed Tiny Tim’s side and he twisted away screaming, another shotgun blast barely missing him as he charged back into the woods leading up from the waterfront.

He had shot the woman, but Kimberlain was on his trail. He was running through the woods now, the uphill grade paining him. Branches scraped at his face, but Seckle felt nothing. He emerged in an open grove where wood benches had been laid out in circular fashion around a camp fire. Above him up a slight rise was the southern cluster of cabins, and beyond that the deep woods and escape.

Kimberlain had stopped over Hedda only briefly. He eased her onto her back, and blood instantly began to soak out of her wounds into the ground. Then he helped the boy whose life she had saved to his feet. The boy was standing limply, shock having overtaken him. An old couple rushed forward in their nightclothes and took the boy in their arms—his grandparents, obviously.

“Thank God,” they muttered. “Thank God, thank God… .”

They were starting to speak to him when Kimberlain knelt down next to Hedda. Her face was ghastly pale. Her lips trembled. Her eyes were dying.

“I saved him,” she moaned, “didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

Kimberlain saw her try to smile. Then her eyes reached up and held his.

“Get Seckle, Ferryman. Get him.”

“Don’t worry,” Kimberlain promised, but Hedda’s eyes had already locked open and sightless. He lowered his hand to close them and then bounded to his feet, rage filling him.

Wop-wop-wop-wop-wop …

The Ferryman was halfway up one of the dirt roads leading up from the waterfront when he heard the sound. He recognized it instantly and gazed up. Out of the darkness, a single floodlight over the lake broke the storm’s control of the night.

Kimberlain caught sight of Seckle’s massive shape struggling up the hill to the southern rim of cabins just as the helicopter began to descend. Its backdraft tore the ground out from under his feet before he could pull the trigger. Instantly automatic fire sprayed his way from within the chopper and chewed up the earth around him. Kimberlain waited until the helicopter banked into a rise again before breaking into a fresh sprint in Tiny Tim’s path. But another barrage traced his movements, and only a leap behind one of the cabins prevented him from being shot.

By the time he crept around the cabin’s front, the chopper was hovering over Garth Seckle. A rope ladder had already been lowered, and someone was gesturing for the monster to take it.

Kimberlain had four shells left, and he fired them all in the time it took Tiny Tim to grasp the rope and be lifted away. The storm, though, swallowed his shells, as the helicopter cut its floodlight and disappeared into the blackness.

The Ninth Dominion
TD-13

Saturday, August 22; 9:00
A.M
.

Chapter 36

“IT’S A PLEASURE
to meet you at last, Winston.”

Peet sat in the center of the small, locked room. All the furniture had been removed prior to his being escorted into it. The room was empty, barren. The only evidence it had ever been occupied showed in the discolored patches on the floor where furniture had once been.

“We still haven’t met, Leeds,” Peet said without gazing at the camera over the door.

“Our spirits have. Years ago, perhaps even long, long before.”

“You should have left me alone.”

“As the Ferryman should have. Alas, we were engaged in a battle for your very soul. And I won.”

“I own my soul.”

“But you cast it with my lot. You would have chosen death, unless you truly wanted to be here by my side.”

“To join you, you think?”

“To merely be as you are. And that, my friend, is with me. I do not seek to change you, Winston. I want you with me in your true light as we embark on a special mission to create a world you were born to live in.”

“The ninth dominion …”

“Yes,” Leeds said, surprise lacing his voice. “I see Kimberlain shared his discoveries with you.”

“He will be coming, Leeds.”

“I am expecting him. I thought you would want the pleasure of arranging his demise. A fitting finish to the circle, don’t you think? So that a new one may begin.”

“There is only one circle, Leeds, and it is continuous. To live is to be born not once, but every minute. Death happens only when birth stops.”

“And it is time for you to be bom again.”

“In here?”

“Not at all.”

Peet heard a click, and then the door before him began to open.

“I knew you’d be going to ground,” Kimberlain told Captain Seven as he took the last few steps down into what might have been a massive gopher hole in the middle of rural Connecticut. “But I didn’t realize you’d be doing it literally.”

Captain Seven was there waiting for him at the bottom of the entry tunnel.

“It ain’t much,” he said as they stepped into a neat, square room. “And I don’t even call it home. Can’t even smoke my dope because the ventilation ain’t adequate. This hasn’t been easy, let me tell you.”

“I was about to compliment you on the architecture,” the Ferryman told him.

“Gaw ’head. Only thing worthwhile I stole from the gooks. Those fucking tunnels they had built underneath the whole country were masterpieces of construction. Even frags wouldn’t shake the walls sometimes. Made a detailed study one day and brought the plans back with me.” Captain Seven tapped his skull. “Up here. Lucky thing, too, since we might be spending considerable time here in the future.” He lowered his voice. “Sorry about the way things turned out in Pennsylvania.”

“Glad you finally became reachable again.”

The captain had taken off as soon as the news of the attack on Lauren Talley and the alleged perpetrator reached him. He knew it could only mean that anyone close to Kimberlain was getting squeezed, and if Leeds could find Peet, Seven’s railroad cars wouldn’t elude the madman long.

“How’s Talley?” Kimberlain asked him.

“Surviving, like the rest of us. Maybe a little better.”

“That’s something.”

“You want to tell me more about Pennsylvania?”

“Later.”

It still hurt Kimberlain too much to relive what had happened at the Towanda Family Resort. Hedda—his sister—was dead, but somehow he felt that was what she wanted. In at last discovering her true self, she had found there was nothing left to go back to. The existence of a son she could never know underscored the bleakness and futility. Getting her life back so quickly was like living the worst of it all over again. No way she could see it getting better. No way it could. At first he thought she believed the boy whose life she had saved in the end at the resort’s waterfront was indeed her son’s. On the way to Captain Seven’s, though, he realized she knew it wasn’t and didn’t care. It might as well have been, because he was a stranger to her as well. It made no difference. That’s what she had come to grips with, but the pain of it all must have hurt her as much as the bullets that had punctured her spine.