Grim Reaper: End of Days
Steve Alten
Based on a story by Steve Alten and Nick Nunziata
Published by Variance, Smashwords Edition
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Table of Contents
© 2010 Steve Alten. All rights reserved. Smashwords Edition
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information e-mail all inquiries to:
tpauschulte@variancepublishing.com
Published by Variance (USA)
www.variancepublishing.com
Visit Steve Alten on the World Wide Web at:
http://www.stevealten.com
You may also e-mail Steve at meg82159@aol.com
Cover Design by Erik Hollander, www.hollanderdesignlabs.com
Interior Artwork by John Toledo
Interior Design by Stanley Tremblay
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated with love, to my teachers
Eliyahu Jian, Yaacov Bourla
&
Chaim Solomon
Steve Alten thrillers:
MEG series
MEG: A Novel Of Deep
Terror
The Trench
MEG: Primal Waters
MEG: Hell’s Aquarium
MEG: Night Stalkers (forthcoming)
DOMAIN 2012 doomsday series
DOMAIN
RESURRECTION
PHOBOS (forthcoming)
GOLIATH
The LOCH
The
SHELL GAME
Grim Reaper: End of Days and all Steve Alten novels are part of Adopt-An-Author, a free secondary school reading program (grades 7 thru 12) that entices even the most reluctant teen readers to read. AAA offers free curriculum materials, tests, projects, classroom posters, and direct contact between our authors and students via e-mail, newsletters, classroom visits, and in-class calls.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is with great pride and appreciation that I acknowledge those who contributed to the completion of GRIM REAPER: End of Days.
The concept for this series began five years ago during brainstorming sessions with my friend and fellow writer Nick Nunziata. After a three-day excursion in Manhattan, where we “walked in the shoes” of our characters, we pieced together a beat sheet that would eventually become a script. Although the screenplay was solid, I think we both instinctively knew there was a far deeper story to be told. Sixteen months later, I began penning the novel you are now reading, not realizing it would be a two-year journey, one I could not have completed without Nick’s insights and creativity. GRIM REAPER remains our creation.
My heartfelt appreciation goes out to the great people at Variance Publishing: to my friend and owner Tim Schulte, his assistant Stanley Tremblay, and to my copy editors, Bob and Sara Schwager. My gratitude and appreciation to my editor, Lou Aronica at the Fiction Studio (laronica@fictionstudio.com) whose advice was spot-on; and to my literary agent, Danny Baror of Baror International, for his continued friendship and dedication. Thanks as well to his tireless assistant, Heather Baror.
Special thanks to Erik Hollander (www.HollanderDesignLab.com) for his amazing cover art, and to artist John Toledo, who must have channeled the late great Gustave Dore in creating the original interior drawings. Thanks as well to publicist Lissy Peace at Lissy Peace and Associates, along with reader/editors Barbara Becker and Michael McLaughlin.
My extreme gratitude to two individuals who define the word “patriot.” First, to attorney Barry Kissin, who continues to battle the windmills of injustice as he attempts to protect humanity by exposing a covert US biowarfare program that threatens us all. Second, to Captain Kevin Lasagna, an eighteen-year veteran whose experience training soldiers helped lend authenticity to the military passages included in the hero’s journey. In Kevin’s honor, and on behalf of all my fans in the military I offer this: The themes in this story may be interpreted as antiwar, but they are not anti-soldier. As such, I have not hesitated to bring up the darker side of issues that we need to bring into the light . . . for everyone’s sake.
A very heartfelt thanks to my Kabbalah teachers, Eliyahu Jian, Yaacov Bourla, and Chaim Solomon, along with the entire Berg Family; Rav Philip S. Berg, his wife, Karen, and their sons Yehuda and Michael, who succeeded in mainstreaming a four-thousand-year-old ancient wisdom and whose books and teachings so profoundly influenced my life, my writing, and the characters in this book. Finally, to my soul mate, Kim, our children, and my parents, for their love and tolerance of the long hours involved in my writing career.
—Steve Alten
www.SteveAlten.com
Author's Note
On May 5, 2009, at approximately 8:15 p.m. on a Tuesday night, I was vegging on the couch, recovering from a daylong writing session of Grim Reaper, resting up for a midnight edit. My six-year-old son was asleep in my bed; my fifteen-year-old daughter was at a neighbor’s house being tutored.
I had been working on the novel you now hold in your hands for two long years, doing extensive research while coming to embrace a newfound sense of spirituality. With only two more weeks of writing anticipated, I felt excited to be in the home stretch of a book that contained a message I honestly believed could change people’s lives.
What I had no way of knowing was that, within a span of minutes, reality would come crashing in, bringing me dangerously close to the very story I was writing.
Less than five miles away, my wife and soul mate had just entered a health-food store located in a strip mall close to our home. As she spoke to a clerk about her merchandise, two armed men wearing hoods and ski masks entered the store. One of the men aimed his gun at my wife’s head . . .
Bad things happen to good people every day. Tragedies befall families. We search for meaning, we question God. Our faith is tested. Two years earlier, I had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at the age of forty-seven. No family history. I never blamed God; I simply thanked Him for not making it something far worse. There are so many people suffering in this world . . . how could I ever feel sorry for myself?
That night as I sat on the couch pondering my hero’s fate, my wife was being held hostage, her arms and legs bound with duct tape as two men committed an act of evil that placed her life in their hands. After stealing her purse, jewelry, and the contents of the store safe, the armed robbers left. The police arrived. My wife called me, sobbing hysterically. Thankfully, no one in the store was hurt.
It was a bad night, but of course it could have been far worse.
This book is about good and evil, the choices we make, and why we are here. It draws wisdom from a two-thousand-year-old text that literally decodes the Old Testament, providing scientific explanations about existence and spirituality without the burden of religious dogma. My wife had involved me in these studies a year earlier, setting me off on my own spiritual journey. The information revealed to me in books and lectures provided answers to questions about life and death that were as simple as they were astounding, yet so clear that I instinctively knew it to be true. It also became clear to me that Grim Reaper was intended to be something far more than just a thriller. And yet, had the events of that fateful Tuesday night turned out differently, you might not be reading this book.
I’d like to think differently. I’d like to believe that my faith would remain unshaken had my wife been murdered and that, eventually, I would have finished the book in the light it was intended. Then again, I could just as easily have grown angry and torched the manuscript in a fit of rage, having learned nothing from my studies, or my own hero’s journey through Hell.
Thankfully, my wife came out of it all right, and I was spared the test of grief. After a brief respite, Grim Reaper was completed—my own spiritual journey having taken on a new sense of purpose.
How should I interpret the events of May 5, 2009? Did God intervene? Did my wife’s faith keep her safe? Were we simply lucky? Was the incident intended as a reward or punishment for some past deed? I have learned that cause and effect is made deliberately confusing to ensure free will; otherwise, we’d all be animals performing for our master.
But, who knows—perhaps one day the man who held a gun to my soul mate’s head will pick up this novel and garner the spiritual tools he needs to transform his own life.
That would be nice.
Either way, I’m grateful to have you reading the book. I sincerely hope it brings Light and understanding into your life, as writing it has done for me.
—Steve Alten, Ed.D.
“The earth was also corrupted before God and the earth was full of violence. God looked upon the earth and saw it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, ‘The end of all flesh is come before Me for the earth is filled with violence because of them. And behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’”
—Genesis
"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."
—Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno
(Ancient Iraq)
His left arm had been hurting since he had awoken. It began as a dull pain, birthed deep within the shoulder he habitually slept on every night, his right arm always reserved for cradling his wife. But as he pressed his palms against the thick wall of cedar in the bowels of a swaying darkness, his left biceps began to throb.
The surly old man ignored it, but then he ignored most things. It was easier with age. Not so with youth. Pride had railed against the indiscretions of the masses; the more he had spoken out, the more he was beaten. Still, there were worse things than physical pain. Words cut deeper than any wound.
The Voice had beckoned in his misery. It had promised a soul mate. Children. A covenant was struck. The outcast was no longer lonely.
Surrounded by darkness and evil, the righteous man had cleaved to the nourishing Light. When the stain of corruption spread, he moved his family into the wilderness. But the Voice grew weary of the wickedness and sexual immoralities. And when the Voice told him of his task, he committed himself and his sons without question.
He could never ignore the Voice.
But as the years turned to decades and the scorn of the men of renown plotted against his household, the man’s certainty waned, not because he didn’t trust the Voice, but because he grew to despise the defiled ones whose ego-driven sins had so overwhelmingly changed the course of his own life, forecasting the End of Days.
Time and task stole his youth. His sons labored with him, married, and started their own families. He toiled on, forgoing comfort for devotion. Middle age bled into terminal weariness. As old age nestled within his bones, the memory of his covenant waned and his patience with the Voice gradually darkened to tolerance and at times resentment. What he never realized was that he was being tested, that his lack of compassion for the wicked had tainted his own soul, forever sealing his enemies’ fate . . . and his own.
It began in the grayness of a heavy winter’s morning. Icy rain. Unrelenting. After two days, the rivers overflowed. After a fortnight, the valley submerged.
The deluge made servants of the affluent and anchors of their gold. The suddenly homeless fled to higher ground. They demanded access into his vessel, but the old man said no. As the days passed, they offered to share their ill-gotten wealth. When the sea rose to meet the horizon, they pleaded.
The old man still refused. After a lifetime of humiliation and suffering, it was far too late for any reconciliation.
They threatened his sanctuary with fire, sealing their own fate. The mountainside erupted. The molten earth set the waters to boil. In the dark confines of his sanctuary, he listened to the tortured cries of the condemned . . . his satisfaction overcome by guilt. Taxed with the burden, he anointed himself the true victim; in doing so, he mentally excused himself from any accountability associated with the chaos, thereby discounting his own inaction and any transformation he might have had to bear.
Time passed. The Earth was baptized. He busied himself with daily worship. Maintained the livestock. His soul remained restless and tainted.
The candle flickered as it approached, its light partially veiled by the particles of barnyard dust churning in the air. His soul mate’s face appeared, her inflection chiding. “And why is my husband hiding in the stables?”
He struggled to ignore the burning sensation radiating down his left forearm into his fingers. “Lower your voice, he might hear you.”
“Who might hear me? The Blessed One?”
“The Angel of Death. Come closer . . . mind the flame. Press your ear to the cedar, then tell me if he is near.”
Apprehensive but curious, she knelt by the wall and listened.
The middle deck was at water level, the boat rolling gently beneath them, and she could hear the sea beating against the vessel’s creaking hull. For a long moment she waited, the heat within the suffocating enclosure causing her to perspire.
And then she felt it . . . a cold presence that filtered into her frail bones, obliterating the warmth. The animals sensed it, too. The horses grew agitated. The cattle herded themselves into an adjoining pen.
Then, more terrifying—a faint scratching sound—the supernal being’s metal scythe testing the wood.
Unnerved, the old woman leapt to her feet, dropping the candle in the process. Flame met hay, the conflagration rising from the sparks like a hellish demon.
Stripping off his robe, the old man attempted to smother the beast, his feeble efforts only causing it to multiply.
Regaining her composure, his wife hurried to a trough, dipped a clay pot in the water, then doused the fire into submission. Steam rose from the ash, dispersing through the hold. Woodsmoke weighted the air.
The elderly woman embraced her naked husband in the darkness, their rapid pulses beating in sync. “Why is death stalking us?”
“Blood pressure’s dropping, sixty over forty. Hurry up with that brachial artery, I need to administer Dobutrex before we lose him.”
The old man babbled, confused by the strange voices suddenly sharing his head.
His wife grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him back into the moment. “Why is death stalking us?”
He pushed her hand from his throbbing left shoulder, the pain magnifying in its intensity. “Man’s negativity has summoned the Angel of Darkness . . . he stalks the earth unbridled. Fear not, for as long as we remain hidden from sight, he cannot harm us.”
“Your arm . . . is something wrong?”
“You sure this was an IED? Look at the skin hanging below the remains of his elbow; the flesh has melted.”
The old man pulled away from his wife and moaned, his left arm suddenly radiating in scorching heat.
“Artery’s closed, start the Dobutrex. Okay, where’s the damn bone saw?”
“I think Rosen was using it to carve his brisket.”
“What is it?”
He cries out in agony, the blood rushing from his weathered face. “The flesh . . . it’s dripping off the bone!”
“How’s his BP?”
“Ninety over sixty.”
“Did you burn your arm in the fire?”
“No. It began hurting before the roosters arose to rant at the day.”
“Tell me what to do. How can I help?”
“Fetch me a cutting tool.”
“You’re scaring me. Let me find our son—”
“No time . . . ahh!”
“Let’s get another unit of blood in him before we take the arm. Nurse, be an angel and hold up that X-ray. I want to amputate right here, just below the insertion on the biceps tendon.”
The surly old man collapsed. His wife knelt beside him in the swaying darkness, the scratching sounds growing louder. “Speak to me! Please, my love . . . wake up!”
“Doctor, he’s awake.”
The soldier opened his eyes to bright lights and masked strangers wrapped in surgical gowns. The pain was blinding, his left arm ravaged meat, the agony competing with the pounding ache in his damaged skull.
The anesthetic washed cool his nerve endings. The panic smothered, he closed his eyes, drowning in sleep.
From across the Baghdad surgical suite, the Grim Reaper stared at the soiled American soldier like an old friend . . . waiting.
PART 1
Darkness
"Evil does not exist, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of heat. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."
– Albert Einstein
7:12 a.m.
Somewhere in the cul-de-sac, the grayness of morning is violated by the hydraulics of a garbage truck. A dog responds from a screened-in patio. A school bus negotiates the loop with an emissions-belching growl, transporting campers to the local YMCA.
In the house with no kids at the end of the block, the woman with the candy-apple red hair snores softly against a down pillow. Her subconscious refuses to be disturbed by the awakening neighborhood. Her bladder tingles, still she lingers in sleep.
Mary Klipot clings to the dream the way a non-swimmer clings to a capsized boat in tempest seas.
In her dream, the emptiness is gone. In her dream, her father is not a nameless John, and her drug-addicted mother feels the remorse of abandonment. In her dream, there is a home and a warm bed. Chocolate chip cookies and good night kisses that do not taste of tobacco. The air is lilac-sweet and the walls a cheery white. There are private bathrooms and showers and teachers who are not nuns. There is no soundproof room on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, no leather straps and holy water splashes, and certainly no Father Santaromita.
In her dream, Mary is not special.
Special Mary. The orphan with the high I.Q. Smart, yet dangerous. Satan is the tiny voice in your head that says torch the cat, it’ll be fun. Jump off the ledge, you can survive. God is missing in these moments. The brakes on a runaway truck. The doctor with the cold stethoscope gives it a name—temporal lobe epilepsy, and offers a prescription.
Father Santaromita knows better. The weekly exorcisms last until her eighth birthday.
She takes the medication. The bridled I.Q. pays dividends. Parochial-school honors. A college scholarship. Degrees in microbiology from Emory and Johns Hopkins. The future looks golden.
Of course, there are “other” challenges. Parties and coeds. Beer and drugs. The introverted redhead with the steely hazel eyes might be trailer-trash cute, but she doesn’t put out. Special Mary is branded Virgin Mary. Abstinence labels her an outcast. Come on, Mary. Only the good die young. Mary dies a hundred deaths. She works two jobs so she can afford her own apartment.
Isolation is easier.
Straight A’s open doors, lab work offers salvation. Mary has talent. The Defense Department sets up an interview. Fort Detrick needs her. Good pay and government benefits. The research is challenging. After a few years, she’ll be assigned to a Level-4 containment lab where she can work with some of the most dangerous biological substances on the planet.
The little voice agrees. Mary takes the job. The career shall define a life less lived.
In time, the dreams change.
The discovery had been unearthed in Montpellier. The archaeological team in charge of the dig required the services of a microbiologist experienced in working with exotic agents.
Montpellier is located six miles from the Mediterranean Sea. It is a town steeped in history and tradition, haunted by a nightmare shared by the entire Eurasian continent.
The archaeological dig was a mass grave—a communal pit that dated back to 1348. Six-and-a-half centuries had stripped away organs and flesh, leaving behind an entanglement of bones. Three thousand men, women, and children. The bodies had been discarded in haste by their tortured loved ones whose grief was rendered secondary to their own terrifying fear.
Plague: the Black Death.
The Great Mortality.
Three hundred people a day had perished in London. Six hundred a day in Venice. It had ravaged Montpellier, killing off 90 percent of the townspeople. In only a few short years, the Black Death had reduced the continent’s population from 80 million people to 30 million—all in an era where transportation was limited to horse and foot.
How had it killed so effectively? How had it spread so fast?
In charge of the excavation was Didier Raoult, a professor of medicine at the Mediterranean University in Marseilles. Raoult discovered that pulp tissue found inside the remains of plague victims’ teeth, preserved in many of the unearthed skulls, could yield DNA evidence that would, for the first time, unlock the mystery.
Mary set to work. The culprit was Yersinia pestis—bubonic plague. A pestilence delivered from Hell. Extreme pain. High fever, chills, and welts. Followed by swelling of the bulbous—black golf-ball-sized protrusions that appeared on the victims’ necks and groins. In due course, the infected internal organs failed, often bleeding out.
A thirteenth-century nursery rhyme provided vivid clues as to how quickly the Black Death had spread: Ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies, at-shoo, at-shoo, we all fall down. One sneeze, and plague infected a household, eventually the entire village, wiping out its unsuspecting prey within days.
Impressed with her work, Didier Raoult presented Mary with a parting gift—a copy of a recently discovered unpublished memoir, written during the Great Plague by the Pope’s personal surgeon, Guy de Chauliac. Translated from its original French, the diary detailed the Great Mortality’s near eradication of the human species during the years 1346 through 1348.
Mary returned to Fort Detrick with de Chauliac’s journal and samples of the 666-year-old killer. The Department of Defense was intrigued. The DoD claimed they wanted protection for American soldiers in case of a biological attack. Thirty-one-year-old Mary Louise Klipot was promoted and placed in charge of the new project, dubbed Scythe.
Within a year, the CIA took over funding and Scythe disappeared off the books.
Mary awakens before the alarm sounds. Her belly gurgles. Her blood pressure drops. She barely makes it to the toilet in time.
Mary has been sick for a week. Andrew assured her it was just the flu. Andrew Bradosky was her lab tech. Thirty-nine. Boyishly charming and easy on the eyes. She had selected him from a pool of workers not because he was qualified but because she could read him. Even his attempts to foster a social relationship outside the lab were calculated toward promotion. The trip to Cancún last April was a welcome diversion, granted only after he acknowledged her rules of celibacy. Mary was saving herself for marriage. Andrew had no interest in marriage, but he did make good eye candy.
Mary dresses quickly. Cotton scrubs simplified her wardrobe choices. Loose-fitting clothing made for better choices in a BSL-4 suite and the environmental suit she wore for hours at a time.
Toast and jam were all her upset stomach could tolerate. This morning she would see the department physician. Not that she wanted to go. But she was sick, and standard operating procedure when working with exotic agents required routine checkups. Driving to work, she assured herself that it was probably just the flu. Andrew could be right. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
She hated waiting. Why were patients always relegated to antiseptic exam rooms with paper-lined cushioned tables and old issues of Golf Digest? And these exam gowns . . . had she ever worn one that actually fit? Did she have to be reminded that she needed to lose weight? She vowed to hit the gym after work, then quickly dismissed the notion. She had far too much work to do, and Andrew as usual was behind on his duties. She considered bringing in a new technician, but worried about the innuendo.
The door opened and Roy Katzin entered, the physician’s expression too upbeat to conceal bad news. “So. We’ve run the gamut of tests using the most sophisticated machines taxpayer money can buy, and we think we’ve nailed down the source of your symptoms.”
“I already know, it’s the flu. Dr. Gagnon had it a few weeks ago and—”
“Mary, it’s not the flu. You’re pregnant.”
“All sickness comes from anger.”
—Eliyahu Jian
The dashboard clock that had clung to 7:56 a.m. had somehow leapfrogged to 8:03 a.m. in the blink of time it had taken the intense brunette driving the Dodge minivan to negotiate her way across a minefield of moving traffic on the southbound lanes of the Major Deegan Expressway.
Now officially late, she managed to wedge herself in the right lane behind the carbon-monoxide-spewing ass end of a Greyhound bus. The gods of rush hour mocked her, vehicle after vehicle passing her on the left. Engaging the only available tool in her arsenal, she struck the steering wheel with both palms, the long blast of horn intended to rattle the nerves of the steel cow grazing in front of her.
Instead, the hold music on the hands-free cell phone animated into a Zen-like male voice bearing a rhythmically sweet Hindu accent that greeted her with, “Good morning. Thank you for holding. May I ask who I am speaking to?”
“Leigh Nelson.”
“Thank you Mrs. Nelson. For security purposes, may I have your mother’s maiden name?”
“Deem.”
8:06 a.m.
“Thank you for that information. And how may I help you today?”
“How may you help me? Your freakin’ bank put a freakin’ hold on my freakin’ husband’s last deposit, causing eight of my checks to bounce, for which you then charged me $35 per check, severely overdrafting my account, and now I’m freaking out!”
“I am sorry this happened.”
“No you’re not.”
8:11 a.m.
“I see your husband’s check was deposited on the fourth.”
She inches over to the right shoulder beyond the carbon-stained, vision-impairing Greyhound bus. The FDR South exit ramp remained a hundred yards ahead, the narrow shoulder lane all that separated her trapped vehicle from liberating freedom. She contemplated the opportunity like Cool Hand Luke working on a chain gang.
Shakin’ it here, boss.
She accelerated through the opening, only to be cut off by a black Lexus whose driver shared the same idea. Brakes! Horn! Middle finger!
“The check will clear on Tuesday.”
“Tuesday’s bullshit. Since when do you put a week’s hold on a General Motors deposit?”
“I am sorry for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, this is a new bank policy on all out-of-state checks.”
“Listen to me. My husband just lost his job. His unemployment won’t kick in for another four weeks. At least refund the bounced-check fees.”
“Again, I am sorry, but I cannot change bank policy.”
Now Luke, seems to me what we got here is a failure to communicate.
“I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry the government bailed your asses out with $800 billion of our tax money!”
“Would you like to speak to my supervisor?”
“Sure! Which part of freakin’ India does he live in?”
9:17 a.m.
The Dodge minivan crawled past construction traffic on East 25th Street. Turned into the staff lot of the Veterans Administration hospital. Parked in a spot at an angle sure to annoy the owner of the car on the right.
The brunette wrenched the rearview mirror sideways. Rushed mascara through the lashes of her gray-blue eyes. Dabbed makeup on her pug nose. Smeared a fresh coat of a neutral lipstick over her thick lips. Stole a quick glance at the clock, then grabbed her leather briefcase from the toddler’s car seat and hustled out of the minivan to the emergency entrance, praying she will not cross paths with the hospital administrator.
Double doors slid open, greeting her with cooled air tainted with the scent of the sick. The waiting area was standing room only. Coughs and crutches and crying infants diverted by The Today Show, broadcast on wall-mounted flat screens, secured to cinder block by steel cable.
She looked away, moving past admittance desks and attitudes. Halfway down the main corridor, she paused to slip on her white lab coat, attracting the attention of a tall Indian man in his early forties. He fought to catch his breath. “Please . . . how do I get to ICU?”
His torn expression quelled her urge to vent, his appearance assuring her he is not the bank employee she spoke with earlier. Perspiration-stained dress shirt. Bow tie. Right pant leg coiffed with a rubber band. An academic visiting a sick colleague. Probably rode over from campus on his bicycle. “Follow the corridor to the left. Take the elevators up to the seventh floor.”
“Thank you.”
“Dr. Nelson!”
Jonathan Clark’s voice caused her to jump.
“Late again? Let me guess . . . traffic backup in New Jersey? No wait, today’s Monday. Mondays are child-rearing conflicts.”
“I don’t have child-rearing conflicts, sir. I have two adorable children, the younger is autistic. This morning she decided to paint the cat with oatmeal. Doug’s interviewing for a job, my babysitter called out sick from Wildwood and—”
“Dr. Nelson, you are familiar with my philosophy regarding excuses. There’s never been a successful person who needed one, and—?”
Her blood pressure ticked up a notch. “There’s never been a failure who lacked one.”
“I’m docking you half a day’s pay. Now get to work, and don’t forget—we have a staff meeting at six.”
Pick your battles, Luke. “Yes, boss.”
Leigh Nelson escaped down the hall to her office. Tossed her briefcase on top of a file cabinet and collapsed into the creaky wooden chair perpetually teetering on its off-center base, her blood pressure set on broil.
Mondays at the VA were mental bear traps. Mondays made her yearn for her tomboy days back on her grandfather’s pig farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia.
It had been a challenging summer. The Veterans Administration’s New York Harbor Healthcare System consisted of three campuses—in Brooklyn, Queens, and her own Manhattan East Side. In an attempt to save what amounted to pocket change, Congress had decided they could only afford two prosthetic treatment centers. This despite two ongoing wars and yet another surge. A million dollars per fighting soldier, pennies to treat his wounds. Had Washington gone insane? Were these people living in the real world?
Certainly not in her world.
Longer hours, same pay. Soldier on, Nelson. Suck it up and repeat the mantra: Be glad you still have a job.
Leigh Nelson hated Mondays.
Twenty minutes, a dozen e-mails, and half a leftover donut later, and she was ready to sift through the patient files stacked on her desk. She was barely through the second folder when Geoff Payne entered her office.
“Morning, Pouty Lips. Heard you got caught on the last train to Clarksville.”
“I’m busy, Geoff. State your business.”
The director of admissions handed her a personnel file. “New arrival from Germany. Patrick Shepherd, sergeant, United States Marines, age thirty-four. Another IED amputee, only this poor schmuck actually picked the device up in his hand when it went off. Complete removal of the left arm just below the biceps insertion. Add to that bruising and swelling at the base of his brain, a collapsed left lung, three broken ribs, and a dislocated collarbone. He’s still suffering from bouts of vertigo, headaches, and severe memory lapses.”
“Post-traumatic stress?”
“Bad as it gets. His psychosocial diagnosis is in the file. He’s not responding to anti-depression meds, and he’s refused counseling. His doctors in Germany had him on round-the-clock suicide watch.”
Leigh opened the folder. She glanced at the PTSD evaluation, then read the patient’s military history aloud. “Four deployments: Al-Qaim, Haditha, Fallujah, and Ramadi, plus a stint at Abu Ghraib. Christ, this one took a tour of Hell. Has he been fitted for a prosthetic?”
“Not yet. Read his personal history, you’ll find it especially interesting.”
She scanned the paragraph. “Really? He played professional baseball?”
“Pitched for the Red Sox.”
“Well, then, take your time ordering the prosthetic.”
Geoff smiled. “We got off lucky. This kid would have been a Yankee killer. First year up, he’s a rookie sensation, eight months later he’s in Iraq.”
“He was that good?”
“He was a star in the making. I remember reading about him in Sports Illustrated. Boston drafted him as a low-round pick in ’98, no one gave him a shot at sticking around. Three years later, he’s dominating hitters in Single A. The Sox lost one of their starters, and suddenly the kid’s pitching in the majors.”
“He jumped from Single A to the majors in one season? Damn.”
“The rookie had ice water in his veins. Fans nicknamed him the Boston Strangler. First game up he pitches a two-hitter against the Yanks, that made him a cult hero with Red Sox Nation. Second game he goes nine innings and gives up one unearned run before the Sox lost the game in the tenth. His rematch with the Yankees was penciled in for mid-September, only 9/11 happened. By the time the season resumed, he was gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“He flaked out. Left the Sox and enlisted in the Marine Corps . . . crazy schmuck.”
“The bio says he’s married with a daughter. Where’s his family now?”
“She left him. He won’t talk about it, but a few of the vets remember hearing rumors. They say his wife took the kid and split after he enlisted. She was probably pissed off, who could blame her. Instead of being married to a future multimillionaire and sports celebrity, she’s stuck raising her little girl alone, surviving on an enlisted man’s pay grade. Sad really, but we see it all the time. Relationships and deployments have never made for a good marriage.”
“Wait . . . he hasn’t seen his family since the war began?”
“Again, he won’t talk about it. Maybe it’s for the best. After all this guy’s been through, I wouldn’t want to be sleeping next to him when he starts dreaming about combat. Remember what Stansbury did to his old lady?”
“God, don’t remind me. Where’s the sergeant now?”
“Finishing up his physical. Want to meet him?”
“Assign him to Ward 27, I’ll catch up with him later.”
Intensive Care Unit
Seventh floor
The room smelled. Bedpans and ammonia. Disease and death. A way station to the grave.
Pankaj Patel stood by the foot of the ICU bed, staring at the elderly man’s face. Cancer and chemotherapy had combined to drain the life force from his mentor’s physical being. His face was pale and gaunt. Skin hung from his bones. The eye sockets were brown and sunken.
“Jerrod, I am so sorry. I was in India with my family. I came as soon as I heard.”
Jerrod Mahurin opened his eyes, the sight of his protégé stirring him into consciousness. “No . . . not there! Stand by my side, Pankaj . . . quickly.”
Patel moved to the left side of the professor’s bed. “What is it? Did you see something?”
The elderly man closed his eyes, gathering his last reserves of strength. “The Angel of Death waits for my soul at the foot of the bed. You were too close. Very dangerous.”
Unnerved, Patel turned to look back at the empty space. “You saw him? The Angel of Death?”
“No time.” Jerrod reached out to his protégé with his left hand, the pale flesh baby soft, marked by a minefield of telltale bruises from a dozen IV drips. “You’ve been an exceptional student, my son, but there is far more to this sliver of physicality we call life. Everything you see is but an illusion, our journey a test, and we are failing miserably. The imbalance is tipping the scales to favor evil over good, darkness over the Light. Politics, greed, the capitalism of warfare. And yet everything we have stood against are merely symptoms. What drives a man to act immorally? To rape a woman? Sodomize a child? How can one human being commit murder, or order the deaths of tens of thousands . . . even millions of innocent people without a single spark of conscience? To find the real answers, you need to focus on the root cause of the disease.”
The elderly man closed his eyes, pausing to swallow a lump of mucus. “There is a direct cause-and-effect relationship in play, a relationship between the negative force and the levels of violence and greed that have once more risen to plague humankind. Man continues to be seduced by the immediate gratification of his ego, moving us farther away from God’s Light. Mankind’s collective actions have summoned the Angel of Death, and with it, the End of Days.”
The blood beneath Patel’s skin vasodilated, leaving goose bumps. “The End of Days? The conflict in the Middle East . . . will it lead to World War III? A nuclear holocaust? Jerrod?”
The dying man reopened his eyes. “Symptoms,” he coughed. The smell lingered.
Searching an untouched breakfast tray, Patel spooned an ice chip, placing it in his teacher’s mouth. “Perhaps you should rest.”
“In a moment.” Jerrod Mahurin swallowed the offering, watching his protégé through the open slits of his feverish eyes. “The End of Days is a supernal event, Pankaj, orchestrated by the Creator Himself. Mankind . . . is moving away from God’s Light. The Creator will not allow the physical world to be eradicated by those drawing strength from the darkness. As with Sodom and Gomorrah, as with the Great Flood, He will wipe out humanity before the wicked destroy His creation, and the terminating event, whatever it may be, shall happen soon.”
“My God.” Patel’s thoughts turned to his wife, Manisha, and their daughter, Dawn.
“This is important. After I pass on, a man of great wisdom will seek you out. I’ve selected you.”
“Selected me? For what?”
“My replacement. A secret society . . . nine men hoping to bring balance.”
“Nine men? What am I required to do?”
A diseased breath wheezed softly from Jerrod Mahurin’s mouth like a deflating bellows, the smell stale and harsh.
Pankaj Patel recoiled. “Jerrod, these men . . . can they prevent the End of Days? Jerrod?” Reaching for another ice chip, the pupil placed it gingerly on his teacher’s tongue.
Water dribbled from the open slit of the elderly man’s mouth.
A moment passed, the silence broken by the steady beep of the flatlining cardiac monitor.
Dr. Jerrod Mahurin, Europe’s foremost authority on psychopathic behavior, was dead.
Ward 27
Leigh Nelson entered Ward 27, one of a dozen areas her colleagues referred to as a “fishbowl of suffering.” Here, everything was on display, the carnage, the emotional wreckage, the ugly side of warfare that no one outside the hospital wanted to be reminded of.
Although there were only fourteen amputees treated during the entire first Gulf War, the second Bush administration’s invasion was a far different story. Tens of thousands of American soldiers had lost limbs since the 2003 occupation, their long-term care overwhelming an already overburdened health-care system, their anguish purposely kept from the public eye. And still the war raged on.
It takes a special breed of health-care professional to work day after day in a combat amputee ward. Bombs leave the human body ravaged by burn marks and shrapnel wounds. The pain can be excruciating, the surgeries seemingly endless. Depression runs rampant. Many wounded vets are in their twenties, some in their teens. Coping with the life-altering loss of a limb can be devastating on the victim, his family, and the caregiver.
As bad as it was during the day, it was always far worse at night.
Leigh stopped by the first bed on her right, occupied by Justin Freitas. The corpsman, barely nineteen, had lost both eyes and hands ten weeks earlier while attempting to defuse a bomb.
“Hey, Dr. Nelson. How’d I know it was you?”
“You smelled my perfume.”
“I did! I smelled your perfume. Hey, Doc, I dropped the remote to the television, can you hand it to me?”
“Justin, we talked about this yesterday.”
“Doc, I think maybe you’re the one that’s blind. I have hands, I can feel them.”
“No, baby doll. It’s the nerve endings, they’re confusing your brain.”
“Doc, I can feel them!”
“I know.” Nelson fought tears. “We’re going to get you new hands, Justin. A few more surgeries, and—”
“No . . . no more surgery. I don’t want any more surgery! I don’t want pincers! I want my hands! How can I hold my little girl without hands? How can I touch my wife?”
The anger ignited like a flashpoint. Dr. Nelson barely had time to signal for help before she was forced to wrestle with her patient, fighting to prevent him from bashing the stubs of his bandaged forearms against the aluminum bed rails.
An orderly rushed over, helping her to pin Justin Freitas’s arms down with Velcro strips long enough for her to inject a sedative into his IV drip, delivering him into an anaesthetized delirium.
Stalling to catch her breath, Dr. Nelson made notes on his chart. Sixteen more amputees lay in wait in this ward. The first ward of eight.
Every ward had its gatekeeper, a combat veteran who knew the pulse of his fellow soldiers. In Ward 27 it was Master Sergeant Rocky Allen Trett. Wounded by a rocket-propelled grenade eight months earlier, the double-leg amputee was sitting up in bed, waiting to greet her.
“Morning, Pouty Lips, you’re late. The little one giving you a rough time at home?”
“What’s the term you like to use? It’s been . . . challenging. You seem in good spirits.”
“Mona came by with the kids.”
“Okay, don’t tell me . . . the boys are Dustin and Logan, your daughter is Molly.”
“Megan. Blue eyes, just like yours. Great kids. Can’t wait to go home. Listen, I know I promised not to ask—”
“I called our prosthetist again this morning. He promised me no later than mid-September.”
“Mid-September.” Rocky struggled to hide his disappointment. After a few moments he regained his composure, pointing across the aisle. “Keep an eye on Swickle. He was bawling his eyes out earlier. Wife handed him divorce papers for breakfast. Says she can’t deal with having a gimp for a husband.”
“Lovely. Rocky, what about the new guy . . . Shepherd?”
Rocky shook his head. “Forget the prosthetist; that boy needs a shrink.”
“Baby doll, we all need a shrink.” She kissed him on the forehead, returned his smile, then proceeded to bed station 17, one of several areas that had been curtained off for privacy. “Sergeant Shepherd, my name is Dr. Nelson, and I’m your—”
She pulled back the curtain.
The bed was empty.
The Manhattan sky was awash in blue. A steady breeze coming from the East River kept the scent of soot to a minimum. Rows of industrial air conditioners hummed nearby, the mechanical groan of their rotating fans reverberating the roof’s asphalt turf. The sound of traffic joined in the serenade seven stories below, the horn frequency increasing ever so slightly as lunch hour rapidly approached.
The VA hospital’s helopad was empty, the medevac chopper on a run.
The lanky man in the gray sweatpants and white tee shirt walked barefoot along the eight-inch-wide concrete ledge surrounding the rooftop helopad. Long brown hair flopped with the breeze, his features and faraway look reminiscent of those of Jim Morrison, the late lead singer of the Doors. The soldier shared the artist’s restless soul, imprisoned in a tomb of flesh.
His left hand felt like he had dipped his arm elbow deep in lava. The pain was excruciating, driving him to the edge of madness. There’s no arm there, you asshole. It’s phantom pain . . . just like your existence.
Patrick Ryan Shepherd closed his eyes, the one-armed man beckoning the sounds and scents of the urban jungle to flow into the hole in his memory—
—flushing out images from a long-lost past . . .
The breeze is steady, the sky awash in blue. The stickball bat is gripped firmly in the boy’s balled-up fists.
Patrick is eleven years old, the youngest kid in the game. Brooklyn is made up of ethnically divided neighborhoods, and this area of Bensonhurst is predominantly Italian.
Patrick is Irish, the runt of the litter.
An outsider pretending he belongs.
It is Saturday. Saturday’s have a different feel than Sundays. Sundays are more somber. Sundays are dress pants and church. Young Patrick hates church, but his grandmother makes him go.
Sandra Kay Shepherd is disabled, having fallen from a ladder at work. The sixty-one-year-old is also an insulin-dependent diabetic. Twelve years earlier, Sandra’s second husband walked out on Patrick’s grandmother with no explanation.
Patrick’s mother died of breast cancer when he was seven. Patrick’s father is in jail, serving the fourth year of a twenty-five-year sentence for DUI manslaughter.
Two outs, the bases are loaded, only there are no bases. First and third are parked cars. Second base is a manhole cover. Home plate is a pizza box.
Young Patrick lives for these moments. In these moments, he is no longer the runt. He is no longer different. In these moments, Patrick can be the hero.
Michael Pasquale is on the mound pitching. The thirteen-year-old has already been embarrassed twice by the younger mick. The Italian throws the first pitch at Patrick’s head.
Patrick is ready. He steps back and wallops the rubber pimple ball with the broomstick, the base hit whizzing past the pitcher’s left ear. The bounding shot skids beneath several parked cars before disappearing from sight.
“Sewer ball! Ground rule double. Go fetch, German Shepherd.”
“Don’t you mean Irish Shepherd?”
Patrick moans as the older boys escort him to the concrete crevasse. The rules of stickball are simple: He who hits it retrieves it.
Two boys lift the manhole cover, unleashing a vomit-inducing smell. The liquid muck is five feet down, and Gary Doroshow, who normally brings the metal rake, is away with his parents at Coney Island.
“Down you go, Shepherd.”
“Are you sure it went down there? I can’t even see it.”
“You calling me a liar?”
“Get your mick ass down in that hole.”
Patrick descends, rung by rung, the collar of his tee shirt pulled high over his nose against the overpowering stench of liquid shit.
The blue sky suddenly disappears, the manhole cover clunking in place.
“Hey!”
The muffled sound of laughter causes Patrick’s heart to race.
“Hey! Let me out!” He presses his shoulder to the cast-iron cover, unable to budge it beneath Michael Pasquale’s weight. To his right is a sliver of opening between the curb and street. He tries to squeeze out, only to be met by kicking sneakers.
“Let me out! Help! Grandma, help!”
He gags, then vomits his breakfast into the muck.
Sweat pours from his face. He feels dizzy. “Let me out, let me out!”
Panic sets in, he can’t breathe. Adrenaline turns his shoulders into battering rams, and he attacks the manhole cover, the force of his blows momentarily knocking Michael Pasquale off kilter. The resistance is quickly doubled by the weight of a second boy.
He feels faint. He feels small and scared. Cancer has stolen his mother, alcohol his father. Sport is the glue that has held him together, his athletic prowess leveling life’s playing field. As the laughter grows and the last ounce of dignity leaves his body, he loosens his grip on the metal ladder rung, intent on filling his emptiness with the muck’s drowning embrace.
Then he hears a girl’s voice, firm and demanding. Backed by an older male presence.
The sneakers move off.
The manhole cover is lifted.
Patrick Shepherd looks up into the blue August sky at his angel.
She appears to be his age, only far more mature. Wavy blond hair, long and silky. Green eyes peer down at him below the bangs. “Well? You gonna stay down there all day?”
Patrick climbs out of the sewer and into the light, helped out by a man in shirtsleeves and a maroon tie. His gray wool sport coat is flung over one shoulder. “No offense, son, but you need to find yourself some new friends.”
“They’re not . . . my friends.” Patrick coughs, trying to disguise the sob.
“By the way, that was a nice hit . . . the way you kept your wrists back. Try to lay off the pitches out of the strike zone.”
“That’s as good as they pitch me. If it’s over the plate, I can take it deep, only we lose too many balls. Really though, I’m a pitcher, only they don’t like me to pitch either–”
“–’cause you’re so good, huh?” The girl smirks.
“What’s your name, son?”
“Patrick Ryan Shepherd.”
“Well, Patrick Ryan Shepherd, we’re just on our way home from synagogue, then we’re headed over to Roosevelt High to watch the baseball team scrimmage. Why don’t you grab your glove and meet us there. Maybe I’ll let you toss batting practice.”
“Batting practice? Wait . . . are you the new baseball coach?”
“Morrie Segal. This is my daughter—”
“—no, don’t get near me, you stink. Go home and shower, Shep.”
“Shep?”
“That’s your new nickname. Dad lets me name all the ballplayers. Now go, before I change your name to Stinky Pete.”
Coach Segal winks, then leads his daughter away.
The sky is awash in blue, the August day glorious—
—the day life changed for Patrick Shepherd . . . the day he fell in love.
The man with no left arm opened his eyes. The phantom pain had subsided, replaced by something far worse.
It had been eleven years since he last kissed the only woman he has ever loved, eleven long years since he held her in his arms, or watched her play with their toddler daughter. The absence wrenched his heart, the organ a dam about to burst, releasing a swollen river of frustration and anger.
Patrick Shepherd loathed his existence. Every thought was poison, every decision of the last eleven years cursed. By day he suffered the humiliation of a victim, at night he became the villain, his actions in battles past replayed in heart-wrenching, skull-rattling, nerve-shattering nightmares of human violence, the reality of which no horror movie could ever capture on film. And yet, as much as he despised himself, Patrick hated God even more, for it was his accursed Maker, his eternal guardian of indifference, that arrived like a thief in the night and excised the memory of Shep’s family from his brain, leaving in its place an empty hole. Try as he might, Patrick could not fill the void, and the frustration he felt—the sheer anger—is far too much for one man to bear.
His bare toes gripped the concrete ledge. A strange sense of calmness washed over his being like a soothing tide. Patrick looked up one last time at the clear blue August sky. Unleashed a primordial, guttural scream, announcing his death, and—
No.
He froze, balancing precariously on one foot. The whispered voice was male and familiar. Sizzling through his skull like a tuning fork. Patrick Shepherd whipped his head around, startled. “Who said that?”
The empty helopad mocked him. Then the rooftop exit burst open, the stairwell releasing a dark-haired beauty. Her white physician’s coat flapped in the wind. “Sergeant Shepherd?”
“Don’t call me that. Don’t ever call me that!”
“I’m sorry.” Dr. Nelson approached cautiously. “Is it okay if I call you Patrick?”
“Who are you?”
“Leigh Nelson. I’m your doctor.”
“Are you a cardiologist?”
The reply catches her off guard. “Do you need one?” She saw the tears. The anguish on his face. “Look, I have a basic rule: If you’re going to kill yourself, at least wait until Wednesday.”
Shepherd’s expression changed, his anger diffusing into confusion. “Why Wednesday?”
“Wednesday’s hump day. By hump day, you can see your way clear to Friday, then you’ve got the weekend, and who wants to off themselves on a weekend. Not with the way the Yankees are playing.”
Patrick’s mouth twitched a half smile. “I’m supposed to hate the Yankees.”
“That must have been quite a problem, a Brooklyn son pitching for the Red Sox. No wonder you want to jump. Anyway, you can call me Dr. Nelson or Leigh, whichever you prefer. What should I call you?”
Patrick took in the pretty brunette, his emptiness momentarily quelled by her beauty. “Shep. My friends call me Shep.”
“Well, Shep, I was just about to grab a coffee and a donut. I’m thinking chocolate cream-filled, it’s been a helluva Monday. Why don’t you join me? We can talk.”
Patrick Shepherd contemplated his existence. Emotionally spent, he expelled an exasperated breath and stepped down from the ledge. “I don’t drink coffee, the caffeine gives me headaches.”
“I’m sure we can find something you’ll like.” Hooking her arm around his, she led her newest patient back inside the hospital.
“What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.”
—Aldous Huxley
Hart Senate Office Building
2:11 p.m.
“Please state your name and occupation for the record.”
The wiry fifty-seven-year-old man smoothed his brown goatee, then spoke into the microphone, his Brooklyn accent heavy. “My name is Barry Kissin. I am an attorney currently living and practicing law in Frederick, Maryland, the home of Fort Detrick.”
Chairman Robert Gibbons, the Democratic senator from Maryland leaned into his microphone to address the witness. “Mr. Kissin, could you briefly describe the nature of your work as it pertains to today’s hearing.”
“Over the last decade, I have been investigating US biowarfare activities, specifically as it pertains to the FBI’s blatant cover-up regarding the anthrax letter attacks on two members of Congress as well as the media in September and October of 2001.”
“Cover-up? Mr. Kissin, are you suggesting the FBI has willfully misled this committee?”
“Senator, the evidence is overwhelming. Case in point: At a prior committee hearing, held on September 17, 2008, Congressman Nadler specifically pointed out to the FBI and attending members that there are only two facilities in the world, let alone the United States, that have the equipment and personnel necessary to produce the dry silica-coated anthrax powder found in the envelopes of Senators Daschle and Leahy back in 2001. These facilities are the United States Army’s Proving Ground in Dugway, Utah, and the Battelle Memorial Institute in West Jefferson, Ohio, a private CIA contractor. Despite numerous requests, the FBI still refuses to include these facilities in their investigation.”
“Mr. Kissin, the Ames strain of anthrax was discovered in a dead cow in Texas back in 1981. The FBI’s primary suspect, the late Bruce Ivins, experimented with the Ames strain as a potential bioweapon while he worked in a biosafety-3 lab located in Fort Detrick.”
“Correct. But Bruce Ivins sent the strain to Battelle, where the anthrax was converted from Fort Detrick’s wet slurry form into the powdered weaponized form found in the letters addressed to the two senators.”
“In your opinion, Mr. Kissin, what was the motivation behind this alleged FBI cover-up?”
“The anthrax letters had ‘Death to America,’ ‘Death to Israel,’ and ‘Allah is Great’ printed in them, a crude propaganda attempt to make the public believe the letters were sent from Muslim terrorists following the events of 9/11. The Bush administration used this fear card to ram the Patriot Act through Congress, even though the evidence overwhelmingly proves that the military-grade anthrax came from labs run by our own intelligence agencies. The Amerithrax investigation metamorphosed into an FBI cover-up soon after the New York Times and Baltimore Sun reported that the Ames strain in the letters had been weaponized, meaning the anthrax had to have come from either Dugway Proving Ground or Battelle. From that point on, the FBI stonewalled, phasing out any reference to weaponization, referring to the anthrax spores as merely dried. This allowed the FBI to paint immunologist Bruce Ivins as a rogue operator in order to divert attention away from Battelle and Dugway. Ivins’s reported suicide in 2008 was a convenient way to wrap things up and close the books on this case before the evidence trail could be traced back to the US intelligence community and Battelle’s private labs. The cold harsh reality, Senator, is that the United States has embarked on a program of secret research into biological weapons that violates the global treaty banning such weapons, and threatens the lives of every citizen on this planet. These programs were begun under the Clinton administration without the president’s knowledge, then embraced during the Bush administration and the tenure of CIA Director George Tenet, who was looking for ways to quote-unquote ‘break the back of biological terrorism.’ As a result, we now have a series of covert and extremely dangerous bioweapons research programs that are being controlled for profit by our own military intelligence.”