Requiem 4 Read online

  Djema glared at me. She was sweating profusely. And something else was in her eyes. Something I could only describe as dread. This took me aback. In none of our previous sweeps had ever seen Djema this frightened. She grit her teeth and released the weapon to me.

  I took the QVAC and turned and faced the spirit. A gust of wind flung rain into my eyes, nearly snatching the helmet off my head. The ghost had brightened, awakened by my action. Her scars had opened and were bleeding ectoplasm. Globes of pink gauzy coral oozed into the air from her wounds.

  I released the safety and leveled the rifle at her. With the prompt, the weapon whirred and crackled blue.

  I had minimal experience with the quantum-vacua. My role on the team was simply to perform last rites, dislodgments and exorcisms if needed. The unit did vacuations. Yet when necessary, I could also pull the trigger.

  I stared at the spirit. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

  There was frustration in my tone. Never a good thing when confronting the dearly departed. But it was driven by pity. And hope. Which I believed made things better. I aimed and fired.

  Quantum disentangling is the technical term. The weapon sends fine bursts of electromagnetic impulses, disrupting the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. The disentangling was something to see.

  Even though I’d been unable to finish the rite, there was a look of peace on her face as her visage imploded. Upon impact, a burst of foggy tentacles twined outward before collapsing in upon themselves with a sudden, inhuman wail. UniCon taught us chaplains that the sound had a simple physical explanation, a phenomenon created by the dimensional vacuum. I chose to believe it was the voice of the lost soul crying, going out one last time into the world they were departing.

  Djema and I stood for a moment staring at the space where the apparition had been. She snatched the rifle out of my hands.

  “Don't do that again,” she said through clenched teeth. “Got it? Now come on.”

  The unit was already waiting for us at the mausoleum. I stuffed the tablet into my pack and slung it over my shoulder. We hurried past a burned out truck chassis and some shattered headstones until we reached our team.

  The mausoleum was tall and had two marble columns atop which rested an ornate parapet with unusual inscriptions. Crumbling gargoyle-like sentinels peered over the crowns of the edifice; ivy webbed parts of the building. Graffiti had been scrawled across the structure and the nearby tombstones, evidence of the Resistance.

  “Earthers,” Cali said, pointing to the graffiti.

  Retig spat and ran his tongue across his silvery teeth.

  The symbol had been sloppily painted here and there. It consisted of an orb impaled with a dagger. Some said the dagger symbolized a cross. Others were convinced the symbol presaged a global apocalypse, the ultimate aim and expectation of the believers. They’d been nicknamed Black Earth and embraced the symbol as their signature. The Black Earth Resistance had grown strong over the years and developed more sophisticated tactics and weaponry. Graveyards were often their meeting grounds. Which complicated our job and made cemetery sweeps much more risky. Black Earthers would never yield to the UniGlobe doctrine. While I found their defiance noble, opposing UniGlobe was a death wish. Everyone knew that now.

  Birch ran an energy scan of the area and said the place was clear.

  “Okay, people.” Djema pointed to the thick wooden door that stood slightly ajar underneath the structural portico. “Look alive.”

  We approached the door but Djema motioned us to stay put. She switched rifles for something more conventional and directed Retig to ignite a lamp. He did and held the light in one hand while repositioning an XM-17, old school modular, in the other. Together they went to the door.

  The light illuminated unusual names and symbols that had been carved into the wood. The markings did not appear to be Resistance chatter but something far more esoteric. At the center of these etchings was an image of what appeared to be a blooming flower with spikes. Or teeth. Immaculately detailed vines and tendrils twined the carnivore flower. A glimpse was all I was afforded as Retig pushed the door further open. It grinded only several centimeters on the gravel.

  My heart was pounding, less from our sprint than from fear. An odd premonition of an impending misfortune. This was happening too fast. Something wasn’t right. As they prepared to enter the mausoleum, I stopped them.

  “Wait,” I said, still panting. “I s-saw something.”

  “Like what?” Djema asked, impatiently.

  “I-I'm not sure.”

  “C'mon, Preach,” Retig growled. “We ain't got time for this.”

  Lightning snapped behind us, causing shadows to dance helter-skelter through the graveyard. Thunder followed, this time so loud that particles of stone tumbled from the overhead structure and smattered the ground around us. Rain tumbled off the roof in founts now as the squall barreled down on us.

  “What was it?” Djema demanded. “What'd you see?”

  “Something big,” I said. “I mean—”

  “Big?” Cali asked. “Like human big?”

  I shook my head. “Not human. A Type Four maybe.”

  They groaned.

  “Well it didn’t show on the scan.” Birch patted the scanner which he’d reattached to his belt.

  “Yeah. Can’t we cut the crap?” Retig snarled. “We ain't got time for this hocus pocus, Captain.” With some effort, he wedged his shoulder into the opening and pushed the door slightly further open. Then he started in.

  “Wait,” Djema said to Retig, remaining focused on me. “Wait.”

  She peered at me. Something about this place rattled her. I could see it in her eyes. It was something that she didn’t want anyone else to know about. “A Type Four,” she said. “So you're talking a raver? Or a wraith? Right?”

  “Come on.” Retig shook his head in disgust. “Ravers. Wraiths. Who cares! Let’s get outta this thing.” He gestured to the squall.

  Yet Djema remained focused upon me.

  I sighed. “Maybe. I'm not sure, Captain. It was... big. Not typical. I didn't get a great look, so I can’t say for sure. It saw me and went in here. That’s all I know.”

  Retig muttered something. Djema kept looking at me, then she glanced out at the approaching storm.

  Finally, she said, “QVACs back on. Everyone.”

  They mumbled curses.

  “Now!”

  Requiem 4 already despised my role on the team. I hated to give them more ammunition, but what could I do?

  Djema signaled us to hold tight as they re-armed. Then Retig flipped his spectral goggles down and entered the crypt with the Captain on his heels. The wind whipped behind us, bringing with it froth from the approaching storm. The familiar chemical taint burned my nostrils. We huddled together, water puddling at our boots, glimpsing the lamp beam as they scoured the interior of the crypt. After a long minute, Djema poked her head out. “Clear.” She glanced at the approaching squall and motioned us to enter. “C’mon. Hurry it up.”

  Lincoln drew up the rear, and directed me to precede him. I made the sign of the cross as I entered.

  The room sat below ground. We descended a short flight of steps. The air grew slightly cooler, danker, as we went. When we reached the floor, Djema ordered Birch to perform another scan, which came up empty. Being that Graviton was a virtual landfill of paranormal energy, the absence of any readings was odd. The mausoleum reeked of dust and mold, along with an odd lingering sweetness. Vegetation had forced itself inward through small cracks, fleeing the toxic sky, and taken root in the corners and crevices. It was larger than the typical structure; ornate yet worn carvings lined the walls with obtuse, serpentine, anthropomorphous images in an odd subterranean mural. Yet there was no evidence of Black Earthers here. The ceiling seemed even higher inside, creating a shadowy canopy overhead. Retig ignited another light revealing a single, unadorned sarcophagus resting in the center of the room straddled by odd busts of feminine
forms without eyes. A large flat stone rested atop the sarcophagus, its surface defiled by dark liquid of some sort. Mounds of decaying waste, what appeared withered fruits and flowers, scattered the base of the crypt along with puddles of candle wax and blocks of half-burned incense. An altar of sorts.

  “Look, ain't no boogeymen.” Retig spread his arms, gesturing to the room, making sure to catch my gaze as he smirked. “It's all clear.”

  Cali lowered her rifle, looking perturbed. “Did'ya really expect any?”

  “Knock it off,” Djema said. She looked up at the doorway and back at us. “All right, then. We’ll let this thing pass and then gear up. After that, we circle back around. Should reach the IMV well before dusk.”

  “Thank the gods,” Cali said sarcastically. She removed her helmet and pack, tossed them on the ground, and plopped next to them with a heavy sigh. Then she readjusted her chest armor, cursing about its lack of comfortability.

  We followed her lead, removing what wet clothing we could, and separating around the interior perimeter of the room in order to catch our breath. I slumped into a corner, watching. Waiting. The premonition of doom had not departed, but simply crept deeper into the marrow of my psyche.

  The squall was upon us now, its winds battered the structure outside and the thunder caused the stone to tremble. Occasionally, a gust of wind would fling mist and gravel from the half open door above. I remained on edge, unable to relax like the rest, still unsure what I'd seen or if it was still near. Or was I mistaken? Were my intuitive sensitivities being tweaked by the ancient cemetery? It wouldn’t have been the first time. Perhaps if I’d remained strong, true to my vows, I wouldn’t be so susceptible to this kind of paranoia. But I always was. It never failed. If I ever really encountered a Type Four, I'd probably become a gibbering fool. That is, if Type Fours really even existed. Or maybe the UniCon boys were right and it was all part of the religious mythology that science had proven defunct? Whatever the case, I remained alert to the possibility of more paranormal activity.

  “The size of this place.” Cali shook her head. “We’ll be here for weeks.”

  “Months,” added Retig.

  “Especially at this pace,” Lincoln said, clearly intending the comment as a jab at me.

  “Can it, people.” Djema laid her helmet on the sarcophagus along with her QVAC. She ran her palm across her tattooed scalp, swiping off droplets of water. She proceeded to fidget with her radio, attempting another transmission, but we’d been in a zero radius for the last two kilometers. When it came to electronic communique, Graviton was almost a complete dead zone. Our coms were virtually useless there.

  Birch had removed his lamp and was studying the carvings and frescoes along the northern wall. The guy had a nervous disposition, twitchy and slightly manic. I wondered how he'd made it past the ORSAG psychs. Nevertheless, the images on the wall had sufficiently captivated his attention. My gaze drifted from him, to the sarcophagus, and on to the bizarre eyeless busts. A strange symmetry existed between these elements of architecture, one I couldn't immediately connect.

  I became aware of a dull throbbing behind my eyes, similar to the sensation of altitude sickness I'd gotten in the Lost Horse Burial Mounds before I blacked out. That had led to two weeks of light duty in Largo and a visit to a UniCon psyche. I closed my eyes and massaged the back of my neck, praying that I could avoid a similar experience.

  “You okay, Preach?” It was Djema.

  I nodded. “And you?”

  Despite the growing disquiet I’d sensed in her, she signaled a thumbs up.

  Djema was okay, she was fair. Unlike the others who openly loathed me, she tolerated my role on the team. Djema threw her weight around at times, but everyone in Requiem 4 could probably whip her. Including Cali. Which was saying a lot. Still, it didn’t matter. Djema was the ORSAG signature female leader. They forced them into the fold just to balance the scales and appease UniGlobe standards, but most of them hated it. Including Djema. It was all part of the reconstruction. The geopolitical movement had started covertly, first subsuming the northern continents under the guise of Global Sustainability. But it was a Trojan horse. We knew that now. Once our leaders signed on to UniGlobe, there was no going back. We’d surrendered our freedom under the guise of civility, diversity, and planetary balance. Now survival meant genuflecting, kissing the ring, and keeping your mouth shut. Djema did this well. And as long as she had the badge, she could hold her own.

  “So what was it, Lax?” she asked. “You said you saw a Type Four.”

  I kept massaging my neck, hesitant to engage her question. Finally, I said, “It was something big, Captain. Indeterminate. Inky. Lots of energy. That's all I know.”

  “Well, no one else saw it, right?” She scanned the group for confirmation, but there was none. “And there was no reading.”

  Birch grunted the affirmative without turning away from the artwork along the wall he was studying.

  “What are those again, Preach?” Retig asked sarcastically. He leaned against the far wall, scratching his beard, his teeth glistening in the artificial light. “The big ones, I mean. The Type Fours. Are those the goblins or the genies? I forget.”

  The others laughed.

  But I obliged. If anything, perhaps I could eventually get them to concede that something else existed than just blobs of protons and electrons. Besides, I'd practically memorized the MiChap handbook.

  “The breakdown is based on three data points,” I began. “Ghosts fall into one of these basic categories. Type Ones are usually orbs, ecto-lights. Type Twos are apparitions, like we just encountered. They may take human form, or have an auditory component.”

  “Like that sound they make when we blast 'em?” Cali mimicked holding a rifle and pulling the trigger.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “But sometimes—”

  “They talk to you?” Retig interrupted. “Then why can't we ever hear 'em?”

  I nodded leisurely, almost mockingly, refusing to be intimidated by Retig's blatant antipathy for me. “Well, maybe you need to listen harder.”

  This evoked some minor taunts aimed at Retig from his compatriots. Before he could offer a comeback, I continued.

  “Type Threes are specters, full sensory spectrum, imitate human forms, all that. Type Fours are poltergeists. Full sensory and extrasensory spectrum, metamorphic forms. Capable of limited independent action. Type Fives are actual entities, fully independent, wide range of quantum-based abilities, often self-aware.”

  “Those are the demons, right?” Lincoln smiled proudly.

  “Right. They're sometimes capable of possessing human hosts via quantum alignment. Then there's Type Sixes, which are pretty rare.”

  Cali said, rather seriously, “Those're, like, the Babylonian death gods 'n shit.”

  “Yeah. They used to be considered principalities or archons. Something so big and strong that lesser entities were drawn to them, pulled into their orbit, compelled to serve them. It was said that they could control entire armies, cities, sometimes even nations. Things so old and evil that no one could stand against them.”

  For the moment, describing the spectral hierarchy as UniCon had sketched it seemed to wrap them in a spell. Admittedly, the idea of a vast spirit world was becoming increasingly archaic, drowned out by the terminal materialism of UniGlobe’s doctrine and relentless propaganda. Yet concepts that rich and storied did not go easy.

  We sat silently.

  Perhaps it was the sound of the squall pelting the mausoleum, the shadows occupying its corners and crevices, or the decrepit scenarios and shapes Birch's lamp was revealing etched into the walls, but the unit remained momentarily hushed, apparently pondering the possibility that poltergeists and archons actually existed.

  Finally, Lincoln asked, “And what about you, Preach? You ever seen one of those big ones? You know, an archon or something.”

  As they turned their gazes upon me, I, surprisingly, detected a genuine interest in my answer.


  Before I could respond, Retig pushed himself off the wall.

  “For shit sake,” he said. “You guys act like this stuff’s for real. ‘Course he ain't seen one.”

  “Really?” I turned to Retig. “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yeah.” He sneered. “I'm sure.”

  “So when you put the spectrals on, what are you seeing? Anything? You can’t see something out there? Then what do you think we're doing out here exactly?”

  He squared his shoulders with me. “I'm doing my job, Preach. That’s all. Just tell me where to aim and fire. I don’t need to agree with your hocus pocus bullshit to do what I do.”

  I nodded again, suddenly feeling unafraid to push him. “So that thing out there, that thing you had your gun aimed at a few minutes ago—what exactly was that?”

  Retig glanced at the others, clearly taken aback by my continued challenge. Then he cleared his throat. “It was just what they told us. No discrepancy whatsoever. It was a noncorporeal extension of the body. Residual energy.” He was quoting ORSAG articles. “Energy. That’s all, Preacher. That’s all you are. That’s all I am. Carbon. Nitrogen. Protons. Neutrons. And a shitload of glue. Not a big mystery. You can perform those stupid last rites all you want. It doesn’t change a damned thing. Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes. Ain’t no heaven or hell or angels or devils. Just dust and ashes. Just us—us and the rest of it.”

  He straightened and then eyed the group, as if summoning their support.

  “If it bleeds, we can kill it. If it’s still a part of this world, then we can undo it. We got QVACs for a reason, preacher man. If that thing out there wasn’t energy, if it was really part of some superfied phantom army, then our weapons wouldn’t do shit, would they. Fact that they do says your theory is bunk. And your role in this unit is just for show. So piss off, right?”

  “Amen,” Cali said, extending her hand for a fist bump, which Retig ignored.

  I peered at him and then scanned the group. “So is that all you are? All of you? Just a collection of particles? Residual energy?”