Chapter Seventeen

The auditoriums were filling across the country, as workers cautiously filed into the rows. Nobody liked training classes or performance reviews; they only seemed to come when mistakes were made, and their thinly mounted pep-rally enthusiasm was merely window dressing for the witch hunt. Any time the company was gathered en masse the atmosphere thickened with fear, like coastal fog on a summer morning, bringing a slight chilling effect. The bodies shuffled in, heels dragging, plopping down uncomfortably in chairs like students on test day. Soon the room was full. In Mackinac Island State Park, Michigan. In Lake Havisu City, Arizona. In the temporarily closed due to construction repairs of Missoula, Montana. And in Somerset adjacent to Lake Cumberland, Kentucky.

The rooms dimmed and projectors rolled. There was no outdated music or the crackling distortion of old film, and there weren’t scenes of work or a cheerful baritone narrator. It was just the emblem of a hand from slightly above the wrist, closed in a fist, and grasped within was a golden, luminescent ring. It faded eventually, and the shot was of Dolph, sitting at his tree stump desk, wearing a white oxford cotton shit with the collar unbuttoned and a red striped tie loosely Windsor knotted. His elbows were propped on the desk, fingertips aligned and touching, though his palms were not. The look on Dolph’s face was not irritation or anger, but it was hardly a positive one. It was as though he had been vexed with thought, and was now caught struggling with the ramifications.

Dolph licked his lips and swallowed a deep breath before speaking.

“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody else has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. That was said by Albert Szent-Györgyi de Nagyrápolt, who I suspect none of you have ever heard of. He won a Nobel Prize over 70 years ago, mainly for discovering something called vitamin C, which, I’m sure you’ve all heard of. He had the ability that a rare few have, to go beyond the obvious and make the invisible visible alongside the obvious. And whether it’s clear to you or not, that’s what we are doing here.” He undid the cuff buttons and rolled up both sleeves mid-forearm and continued.

“There are thousands of employees in each of the different sectors of the company, but none so important to me right now as your branch – Security and Operations. Last week, we had a disastrous breach here in the Delta location, and let’s just say we’re still cleaning up the mess that was made. I’m not going to jeopardize their holiday party, but re-assigning hundreds of workers until that facility is fully operational again displeases me greatly because it is a waste of company funds that are needed elsewhere. Tonight, we are going to tune all of the grids, which is the first of the final steps in making our portal operational.” There was an obedient round of applause, long enough to be congratulatory but far short of the gratuitous wailing that accompanied awards ceremonies or political speeches. “And now that we’re here, it is critical that none of you err in your jobs.”

There were effectively three different areas the staff fell under – brains, bodies, or brawn. When Dolph first had his vision and idea to construct an inter-dimensional wormhole, the science had not yet existed for what he had in mind, and he lacked the technical ability to develop it himself. Realizing that having the proper research staff would necessitate gathering some of the top minds and radical thinkers in the fields of astrophysics, quantum science, and mechanical engineering, which would not be cheap by any means, Dolph first turned to an area he was intimately familiar with – the carnal pleasures of man. He took what paltry capital he could scrape together and got a piece of a gentleman’s club on St. Louis, slowly pushing his partners out until he had owned the place outright. It took only a few years to expand into other cities, and his money was not only coming in above the board, but also in backroom deals that allowed a massive flow of narcotics and sex to be available to clients whose appetite couldn’t be met openly. Of course, this was fine for a businessman to indulge in, be not the area a respectable businessman wanted to be in. In less time than it took to develop a small fortune in the smut and smack trade, Dolph had completely turned his profits five-fold moving into real estate and land acquisitions.

After a decade, Dolph had many connections to corporate America and government officials, and he further stoked the fires of their allegiance by re-entering the fields of vice. Before the four locations were even ground-broken, the mighty Mississippi was home to a trio of private riverboats that made his old establishments look like a children’s tea party. With his considerable resources and personal fortune, Dolph recruited the brains to execute his idea of reaching 4TH through 10TH dimensional space. He never told any of those captains of industry or govermentos his idea for fear of their ridicule or worse, a concerted effort to keep him from achieving his goal. But he did use them to secure the vast land and space to build the massive pleasure palaces which would front and fund his construction of secondary structures what would anchor the points of the portal once it was opened.

With his cadre of scientists, sexy sirens, and slick salesmen of salaciousness, all that was missing was some strong-armed sentries to keep the order and, more importantly, keep his empire safely underground and shielded. Compared to paramilitary organizations and the soldier of fortune type that ended up without loyalty like so many mercenaries, Dolph looked for a rougher, harder type – criminals. For many of them, their multiple strikes and background precluded them from even the shittiest of jobs, and faced with washing dishes or risking the income provided by their old ways, nearly every two-bit hood, con artist, petty crook and loser was on board when given the opportunity. Already fancying himself a master of decadence and a land baron, Dolph also bestowed the mantle of boss upon himself as he created his amateur army of thugs in the mold of a mob-like syndicate, save all the despotic grappling for neighborhoods and territory. He was the neighborhood, and his territory was the semi-secluded house of sin which hid a scientific masterpiece in its shadow.

Dolph looked into the configuration of monitors across from him, which displayed each of the four auditoriums on a closed-circuit feed and the current on-camera image of him. “As I have mentioned before, there are people in this country and around the world who disagree with the scientific discoveries we are attempting here, and in order to succeed in our goals, they must fail. Our progress and studies frighten them, and they refuse to see that we have the chance to reshape humanity and allow humankind the ability to explore this universe far faster and more vastly than they could. We have the people in place to develop it. We have the people in place to fund it. Now I need to make sure that I have the people to protect it.” There was urgency in Dolph’s tone, as well as in his face.

“These people are terrorists, splinter cells from within the government who use their power and connections to further their own agenda. We discovered one of their moles and had them subdued, but there was an escape. Fortunately we have them and an accomplice on their way back to us so that we can access the damage to our security structure, which is why I need hyper-vigilance and no more sloppy errors as we enter this critical phase. Because they won’t be tolerated. Or forgiven.” He sighed and looked down, knowing he’d said all that he could and now part of his success would be dependant on their capabilities.

“Now here’s a short film about binding techniques.”

---

The school bus was hardly a low profile vehicle, but Bronco wanted something big and powerful to get him to Kentucky. Breaking into the service depot was easy, and rigging the transmission was even easier. And if he ran into any trouble, they’d have a hell of a time getting him to pull over.

“GIMME FUEL, GIMME FIRE, GIMME THAT WHICH I DESIRE,” Bronco shout-sang along with the Metallica CD playing in his headphones. He pumped a black gloved fist, which, in metal fashion was fingerless and had chrome studs at the wrist. In the back rows, Angie and Harry were hogtied and gagged with duct tape. Harry came to and saw Angie looking and him regretfully. For a moment he struggled and tried to break loose, but it was useless. Angie was still looking at Harry, who drew his gaze back to her, and she shook her head confirming her own attempt and failure to loose the bonds. She nodded over to the front of the bus, and Harry saw the stringy jet back hair and small hunched form at the wheel in the dim interior safety lights of the bus cabin. School busses were not engineered for quiet, and the engine growled as Bronco pushed it hard, racing along the highway in the dark of the night.

There was hardly a car or truck on the road, and Bronco was making excellent time heading to Somerset. Bronco was primordially simple – eat, sleep, hunt, kill. As if some branch humanity never fully made the evolutionary step, the fruit it bore was Bronco, and he lived only to challenge the very concept of survival. Life for him was very much the speed riffs in a Metallica song – beautifully brutal, hard and fast. The lyrics were like a mantra, orders from a higher power that understood the struggle of living and the delicate line between life and death. As far as he was concerned, to live was to die, you fought fire with fire, and blackened was the end. Dolph or Marv would call him, sometimes frequently, sometimes with weeks and months between, but always with a challenge, a mission that brought him no particular joy in undertaking, but satisfaction at the end when he knew he’d completed it. And he didn’t complain about the generous money he was paid, which would allow for all the Metallica memorabilia he could horde and show after show when the band toured.

In the confines of the bench seats, Harry tried to rotate his adult body within the less than ample space that could accommodate a child sitting properly and not a man trussed like a sow. He finally managed to get onto his back, which allowed him to have his hands somewhat available although they were connected to his ankles. He wiggled to the edge of the seat and Angie leaned in from across the aisle. Angie got kicked in the face a little as they tried to maneuver into the right position where Harry could grasp the gag tape off her. After a few failed attempts, he managed a finger to hook into the corner and start her mouth free. Angie pulled back once he got his fingers around the tape firmly, and stretched her mouth now that it was unbound.

Harry did his breakdance, spinning and turning in the seat until he was back facing Angie. She leaned in and they clumsily bumped heads, both shaking it off and neither upset about the accident. “Sorry,” she said, wincing empathetically. Her second approach was more graceful, and she tried to grab the edge of Harry gag tape in her mouth. Angie nibbled on Harry’s face and cheeks, trying to get a hold of the tape without actually taking a bite out of his face to get a hold of it. It was endearing to Harry, as frustrating as it must have been for Angie to not be able to pull the tape off, and slightly enjoyed the gnawing on him she was doing. With a harder bite, Angie got a piece in her teeth and jerked back a few times to pry it loose from Harry. The tape had taken a few strands of Harry’s straggly facial growth with it, but left more sticky tape remnants than it took hair.

“Who the fuck is this guy,” Harry whispered at Angie.

“I don’t know. Do you have any idea where we are?”

“Probably the U.S. I don’t think we could have been out for more than half a day.”

“I didn’t see any signs while I was awake, but from where we were, if it’s been that long we’re maybe in Wisconsin or Illinois or Indiana.”

“How do you figure?”

Angie explained,” They’re roughly halfway to Somerset, and since we’re not dead, we’re probably going back to Dolph.”

“Do you think we can get the drop on this guy?”

“You tell me,” she said, wiggling her bound fingers and smirking.

“We have to try and get these things off,” Harry instructed. “If we can at least get free, of these, we have an advantage. He looked up at Bronco, who was rocking his head to the music, oblivious to the plotting that was going on behind him.

They started to look for a screw or point sticking out of the seat frame to snag their bonds, but struggled. Bronco was not paying any attention to them, and was not too focused on the road, otherwise he’d have kept his headlights on and not been goofing along with the song.

“DARKNESS, IMPRISONING ME, ALL THAT I SEE, ABSOULTE HORROR. I CANNOT LIVE, I CANNOT DIE! TRAPPED IN MYSELF, BODY MY HOLDING CELL!”

Bronco was fully into the song, and toggled the switch, flashing the lights along with the chugada-chuguda-chah chugada-chuguda-chah chuguda-chah of the guitars and drums synchronizing their one riff. The song drove hard into the finally and Bronco racked the lights in a flurry, cutting them off like the stage lights at the end of the performance. He was so moved by it that he didn’t bother to turn them back on, even when the next track came on. Had he, Bronco would have possibly seen the Mini Cooper that was wheeling back onto the highway from the concealment of the lowered shoulder. Then they certainly would have seen his high beams and not ventured back onto the road at low speed, putting themselves in front of the bus which barreled along far beyond safely or the speed limit.

When the bus slammed into the back of the Mini Cooper it was flung back onto the shoulder like a fly being swatted away from a picnic dish. Bronco frantically tried to correct the bus, which lurched back and forth before locking into a skid. He tried to regain control, but the speed and size of the bus was now in charge of their direction, which turned into trajectory was the bus slid off the road and then flipped as it went down into the shoulder. Harry screamed to Angie to hold on, as he tried to wedge himself into a position of safety.

---

The couple in the car were stunned, and when Bronco came over to them, they could barely comprehend that he was pulling them out of the car, which may have registered that he was trying to help them, which he was not.

“HEY BRONCO!”

He pulled them out and threw them on the grassy lip of the road. From his boot he drew a knife and moved at them, attacking the woman first.

“AM I EVIL? YES I AM!”

Bronco slit the woman’s throat and held her mouth closed while he pinched her nostrils. The man started to move, but Bronco kicked him in the stomach, winding him long enough to lunge and do the same to him.

“AM I EVIL? I AM MAN, YES I AM!”

Bronco looked at the Mini Cooper and got in. It was banged up to hell in the back, but the axle was intact and it drove. He pulled it up onto the road, around the silent shell of the bus. He went back in and found his headphones and put them into his pocket. Harry was in the midsection of the bus, having been vaulted from his seat, but appeared not too badly hurt, considering he survived a bus flipping. Bronco grabbed him and got him out of the fuselage. Strength can be a misleading attribute, as it is seen relative to things such as height and weight, and Harry would have been impressed at Bronco’s raw power carrying him if he wasn’t dealing with a slight concussion.

Bronco put Harry in the Mini Cooper’s back seat, which was even smaller now with the crushed backside. “SORRY BRONCO! THE SHORTEST STRAW, PULLED FOR YOU!” He went back to the bus, looking for the girl. Bronco hardly thought about women and sex, although those feelings were similar to a warrior’s lust for blood and combat, and he probably mistook one for the other sometimes. She was attractive, not ugly like the woman who’d birthed him, and he could not find her. He stepped out and looked at the tipped bus, perplexed.

“OH SHIT, MAN. FUCKING CLIFF BURTON, MAN!

Bronco bowed his head and spoke his tribute to the girl, who he’d realized was thrown from the bus before it landed on her.

“WHEN A MAN LIES, HE MURDERS A PART OF THE WORLD. THESE ARE THE PALE DEATHS WHICH MEN MISCALL THEIR LIVES. ALL THIS I CANNOT BEAR TO WITNESS ANY LONGER. CANNOT THE KINGDOM OF SALVATION TAKE ME HOME?”

Was a tear forming in his dirty eye? He didn’t have time to think about it, as the moaning from a patch of tall grass got his attention. It was the girl, and she was alive. She was in worse shape than the man, but still alive, and Dolph had insisted Bronco not kill them if he could help it.

---

On a stretch of road headed east, both Pam and Ivy were asleep. Anton was driving, helping them close in on their destination. Both women suddenly bolted awake and gasped. Neither one realized it was Hrel and Ru, conscious inside them and startled by the burst of power that coursed through the portals around the country, and made them both hear the screaming cries of angels and demons from their home dimension get louder as the boundary momentarily thinned between universes. They didn’t speak to each other, but they knew they both awoke with a bad feeling, and discussing it would only make it more real.