theevilyouknowtwo



	At first, nothing happened, so Reggie began scraping a little louder. About thirty seconds later, the door flew open, and the guard walked in, groping for the light switch. He never found it, however. Reggie slammed him in the face as hard as he could with the wooden chair, and he collapsed onto the floor, bleeding from the side of his head. "Man!" Reggie said, shaking his head. "I can't believe he fell for that. It's got to be the second oldest trick in the book." He felt the guard's neck. There was still a pulse. Good, he didn't want to be a murderer, even of a military drone like this. Quickly, before the guard could wake up and start shouting, Reggie stripped off his uniform, tied him up, and put two socks in his mouth as a gag. Then Reggie put on the uniform himself. It was a little large, but over his clothes it fit all right. He walked casually out the door, carrying the rifle he had just acquired, and went over to see what he could do for Mike. The poor kid was lying sadly on his bed, almost as still as a corpse. he shook him several times, trying to get him to wake up, but it did no good at all. Reggie looked him over, trying to see if he had been injured, or, God help him, maybe lobotomized. There were several bandages, where he had either been injected with something, or had blood drawn, but he was otherwise unhurt. Reggie looked at the label on the bag of fluid dripping into Mike's arm through the IV needle. It had some kind of complicated Latin gibberish written on it that he didn't understand, but he didn't think it was there for any good reason. Probably it was some kind of drug that was keeping Mike asleep like this. Reggie pulled the needle out and flung it away like a poisonous snake. Then he unbuckled the straps that were holding Mike on the bed and lifted him into a nearby wheelchair. "Come on, buddy." He told his unconscious friend. "We're getting the hell out of this place." ******************************************************************************************* Kathy Jones skipped down the marble corridors humming to herself. She was carrying a doll she had gotten for her fourth birthday, a month ago. She didn't remember her birthday, though. She had not yet reached the point of cognition which all human beings must mature into. She swung the doll by one arm, humming to herself, trying not to be afraid. It was kind of dark in here. She wouldn't have come here at all, except her mom and dad and her neighbors Mrs. Lyman and Mr. and Mrs Gates had all gone away. In fact, everyone had gone away, but these few individuals were the entire population of Kathy's world at that young age. She had come here because she had seen a tall man with some children in funny brown clothes walk down the stret and come this way. She had run after him, hoping he had some candy, but he wouldn't stop, even though she had shouted at him. That had been yesterday, or maybe the day before. She had slept a couple times when she had been tired. The man she had seen come in here was kind of mean. She had asked him for some candy, she was getting awfully hungry since her mom and dad had gone away, but all he did was make an ugly face at her. She made an ugly face right back at him. Then he had just not paid any attention to her, instead doing something with some people who were sleeping on some metal tables instead of beds. Her mom was sleeping on one of the metal tables. Kathy tried to wake her up so she would make supper, but she wouldn't wake up. Then Kathy thought, maybe since the man walking around was only paying attention to the people sleeping on the tables, if she pretended to sleep on one of them, he would play with her and give her some M&M's. Only when she tried it, all he did was push her off the table, and stick some needles into someone else who was next to her. Well, that was kind of mean, but she didn't want needles poked in her. That would hurt. At least there was a sink in the bathroom she found. If she drank enough water from that, she didn't feel so hungry any more. She looked around the hall she was in. Wasn't there something silver she was playing with? (One way glass) Now that was a funny thought. Why should glass be any way? The only thing she was supposed to do with glass was not touch it, because it might break. Oh yes, she remembered what the silver things were. There were funny fat silver birds in here that flew around and hummed instead of chirped. Maybe they were that mean man's pets. But she didn't like him. He had pushed her hard onto the floor and wouldn't give her any candy to eat, and she was really hungry. She would try to catch the birds and not think about how her tummy hurt. Just then, one of the silver birds came flying around a corner. Maybe she could catch it and pet it like her cat? She ran after it, and found herself back in the big room where that mean man who made ugly faces was working. Now he had a bunch of people lined up sleeping on those hard metal tables in front of two silver sticks. He and some of the children in brown clothes were pushing them through the sticks, and they went into another room behind a curtain or something. Kathy looked at the sticks? Hadn't she seen something like that in a restaurant that she and Mommy and Daddy had to stand behind before they could sit down and eat? Maybe everyone else here was hungry and they were going to a restaurant to eat. "Can I go, too?" She asked the tall man. He looked mean at her, and she thought he was going to push her away again, but he finally said something for the first time since she had seen him. "No, giiirl. Your time is not yet. You still have things to do." He looked down at her. "In the library." He was mean. Everyone else was going somewhere, she bet they would get some supper and she had to stay hungry. And what did he mean she should go to the library? She didn't even have a library card. Then the big mean man went between the sticks himself and they disappeared. Everyone was gone. Now what would she do? For the next 24 hours, Kathy Jones wandered through the abandoned mauseleum. She was sleeping when a group of soldiers found her, woke up briefly to eat a Happy Meal they got for her, and then fell back to sleep again. By the time the soldiers brought her to an orphanage a week later, she had forgotten about that mean man who wouldn't even talk to her hardly at all, and by the time she was placed in foster care with the Gilman's a month later, she had forgotten about her mommy and daddy as well. ***************************************************************************************** "Where the hell is he?" The General shouted at Reggie's empty room. Leutenant Lewis looked unhappy. "We're not sure. We think he might have gotten out through the ventilation ducts. We're trying to see if we can find him on any of the security cameras, only they all seem to be on the fritz." "Great. Just lovely" The General fumed. "What the hell were you thinking, keeping him in a room built to debrief new recruits? Couldn't you have predicted that he'd be able to escape?" "Well, no-one ever has before." The leutenant tried to excuse himself. "It's a matter of psychology. When people are arrested or imprisoned, they feel that they somehow deserve it, even if they haven't commited a crime. It's a matter of respect for authority. We've been drumming that into people's heads through the public school system for nearly four generations now. If it weren't for that, the whole penal system in this country would fall to pieces." "That's not all that's falling to pieces!" The General pointed at Reggie's sheepish looking guard who was still standing pointlessly beside the now open door. "Stop standing around and go help find him!" "Yes, sir!" The guard saluted, glad of an order to tell him what to do. "Shall I shoot to kill, sir?" "What are you, nuts?" The General screamed furiously. "He's the only human being whose ever been able to interact with the gates and you want to kill him when we still don't have a fucking clue how he does it?! You stupid....ass! We need him alive!" He pointed an angry finger at Leutentant Lewis. "Call your men. If there is so much as a scratch on the subject, whoever did it can look forward to joining him in the vivisection lab next week." The general shook his head and marched angrily down the hallway. Morons. This whole army was filled with morons, afraid to move a muscle without an order to do so. He wished he had a man under his command with half of Reggie's resourcefulness. **************************************************************************************** Kathy walked down the hallways of the base. There were alarms going off, and people running everywhere, but she ignored them. They seemed almost transparent, as if they were in another world. At first she had heard shooting, as well, but that seemed to have stopped now. She stepped into Zeta base's library, and closed the thick oak doors behind her, shutting of the noise. The library was deserted, it's former patrons joining in whatever sort of chaos was occuring outside in the rest of the world. The library, with it's treasure trove of knowledge was exclusively her domain. (My domain, giiirl) She ignored the Tall Man's voice. She knew now that he had always been with her, whether he spoke to her or not. Likewise, she ignored the tall shelves containing both technical manuals and a small selection of well worn fiction novels, and sat down at a computer terminal. Like a ghostly touch, she felt the Tall Man standing behind her, his hands around hers as he guided her fingers into rapidly typing unfamiliar code into the computer. The screen flickered and beeped, and she rapidly entered a password she hadn't known until that moment. The computer beeped again, and a screen containing a document came up. She leaned in closer and read it. .....................................................................................Project Hades.............................................................................. Entry 222 15:33 June 6 .....continuation of last entry.......... So it now appears that the actual, tangible,existence of certain other-dimensional realms known to mythology and religion as 'The After Life' can be scientifically demonstrated as shown in entry 197. Apparenty the entity refered to as the Tall Man (see appendices a1-4, and b6) is able through use of his technological devices, in particular the dimension fork (see appendix a4) and the sentinel (see appendix c19) able to control the disposition of disincarnate human beings into or out of these realms. His purpose in doing so is still an unknown. ........................................................................................................................................................................................... Kathy typed a few more phrases, her fingers moving automatically, as if across a ouiji board. Another entry appeared on the screen. ........................................................................................Project Hades.................................................................... Entry 257 08:04 June 7 .....continuation of entry 240............... Prelinary analysis indicates that the subject known as Mike (see appendix a1) has been altered in some unknown fashion by the same technology as possessed by the entity known as the Tall Man (see appendices a1-4, and b6). This subject is consequently useless for thecurrent direction of studies, and possibly dangerous. The best recommendation is that the subject be kept under general anaesthesia for an indefinite period of time, possibly exceeding his natural life span. The second subject, known as Reggie (see appendix a3) is a far better choice for experimentation. Our interview with im suggests he may have some ability at utilizing this alien technology, but is not aware himself how he does so. Tissue samples have failed to reveal any physical anomolies. If a CAT sc and EEG does not detect any unusual activity in the brain, I would recommend as thorough a surgical exploration as possible (without anaesthesia, as this might possibly have a deleterious effect on the the data) followed by study of tissue samples from the subject's cerebral cortex and medualla oblongata. ........................................................................................................................................................................................... Kathy gripped the edges of the keyboard and struggled not to vomit. They weren't just going to kill Reggie, they were going to torture him. In the name of their 'god', science. Or rather, in the name of whatever bureaucrat who thought he could profit in some unfathomable way from whatever they might learn. The Tall Man had been right. They did his work here. She felt the intangible, icy fingers on hers again and continued typing. ........................................................................................Project Hades........................................................................... Entry 333 18:06 June 9 .....continuation of entry 327..... The conclusion to be arrived at is that while the marketting of a guarantee of a positive experience in the other dimension realm known as the 'afterlife' may gain both funds and the cooperation of certain individuals, it is of limitted use. The latest projection indicate either a civil war or a second 'great depression' in this country, unless certain recalcitrant factions are persuaded to cooperate with the New World Order, and cease sowing discontent and paranioa among the public. For this purpose, the demonstration of a negative 'afterlife' and the threat of their disposal there-in should prove far more useful. .....also of interest is that apparently whatever species created this technology suffers from a severe labor shortage. Possibly they could be persauded to enter into a barter arrangement wherein we would gaurantee them a continued supply of labor in exchange for various technological advance. Perhaps up to 95% of all deceased individuals could be traded to them for this purpose. However, if this is feasible, it is imperative that it be kept secret from American civilians, as well as most of the leaders of other nations, as it would probably not be understood by most individuals that the resultant scientific advances are necessary to ensure the ultimate survival of the human race. ........................................................................................................................................................................................... Kathy looked up from the final screen. The feeling of the Tall Man's icy fingers was gone from her hands, but she felt colder than ever, as if those fingers had reached into her heart. Perhaps there could be some justification for killing a man, even for torturing him first, but what could possibly justify damning them for all eternity? She pushed away from the screen and slowly stood up, like a tiger rising from a nap to seek it's prey. (Let me out, giiirl.) She nodded. She no longer had the strength to even try to resist or question the voice in her head. Her whole country, her whole life, had been nothing but a fantastic lie. She turned back to the library's oak doors, which swung open by themselves. There was still shouting outside, but it seemed to have moved into a different part of the base. She passed a soldier who was lying on the ground, bleeding from a large bump on his head. (Let me out, giiirl.) She knelt down and took the soldier's hand gun out of his holster and looked at it. She could blow her own brains out, but what good would that do? The Tall Man would still be with her, even then. Instead, she held the gun in front of her, in order to frighten or shoot anyone who tried to stop her and continued down the hallway, back to where she had started, back to the room where some fools in over-decorated uniforms thought they had the Tall Man trapped within glass and frigid chemicals. How far was it there? Surely not as far as she had come since she had left after fainting. She rounded the corner, and came face to face with a man she recognized, Reggie, pushing some limp person in front of him in a wheelchair with one hand and trying to hold on to a rifle with the other. She looked at him for a moment, and pulled back the hammer on the gun she held. ***************************************************************************************** Reggie had gotten pretty far along in his escape. It was the uniform, he decided. The idiot soldiers running around like so many insane lemmings didn't even see his face. All they saw was a uniform with some insignia on the sleeves and chest, and assumed that he must be one of them. A few times when he had seen a larger, less panicked group os soldiers searching for him, he had turned casually down a side hall, or into a nearby room, before they could get a good look at his or Mike's face. In one of these rooms he had found his old friend, the four barrels shotgun locked in a glass case. Reggie had taken the butt of the rifle he had , broken it out, and hidden it in some of the blankets he had wrapped around Mike, who was just starting to come to. He didn't want to abandon it, but he didn't want the soldiers to see him with it, and recognize him because of it, either. He almost thought that he was going to get away. he saw a row of elevators at the end of the corridor he was heading down, when a woman stepped into his path from an intersecting hallway he hadn't noticed, pointed a large pistol in his face and pulled back the hammer. Reggie froze, unsure what to do. He could try to bring the rifle into play, but he had an awkward, left handed grip on it, and by the time he got it aimed, his face could be history. "Oh, shit." He cursed. Of all the rotten luck.Fifteen more seconds and he would have been on the elevators and on the way out of this fucking place. The woman looked at him for five long second's, a strange sheen in her eyes. Then she finally spoke, but to his surprise, she did not demand his surrender. "You're.... Reggie, aren't you?" She asked rhetorically. "You're the only one left alive in this place." Then her face twisted, and she spoke in a tone that chilled Reggie's blood, an almost perfect imitation of the Tall Man's voice. "Ice Cream Man, this game is not yet finished. Find the way out,if you dare." Then she strode over to the elevators, took a card out of her pocket which she slid through a scanner. Immediately, a motor began running, and one of the elevators opened. Reggie wondered what the heck was going on? Was this woman a minion of the Tall Man's, like Alchemy? If so, why had she helped him? It was a good thing she had, though, since he didn't have one of those card thingies. He turned to ask her why she had done this, or maybe if she was the Tall Man, but she had already wandered too far down the hall. Reggie shrugged and pushed mike into the elvator. he knew from his trip here that this whole damn place was underground, and he pushed the button for the top floor. ***************************************************************************************** The General sat fuming in the tank room. Everything had gone wrong that could possibly have gone wrong. He had ordered the elevators shut off in order to trap that stupid ice cream man on this floor, but somehow he had reactivated them (The general had no way of knowing that it had been Kathy who had reactivated them, under instructions from the Tall Man using the library's computer.) Confident that he had Reggie confined like a fish in a barrel, he had ordered all the soldiers from other floors to come to this one and aid in the search. Also, the cameras were still malfunctioning. The only one that was working was the one that showed the exterior of Zeta base, through which the General had seen Reggie bundle Mike into a jeep which he then hotwired and drove off in. Furious, the general had ordered his soldiers back to the top level to give chase, only to find that the elevators were once again deactivated, and furthermore, could not be reactivated, trapping them all on this floor the way he had intended Reggie to be. He glared impotently at all the useless fools in the room. If any of them had any brains or courage at all, this would have never happened. It never occured to him that the demonstration of either of these qualities was not tolerated by his kind of army. The only thing that hadn't gone wrong was that the Tall Man was still confined in his icy prison. A miracle, considering the fact that no-one had been monitoring the conditions within it for the past three hours. Well, he had set that to rights. The thing in the tank wasn't going anywheres. Not like the ice cream man. The General settled back into his chair, trying to concentrate on the sole remaining fact he had to be smug about when a rather small, dazed looking woman brushed past him. He ignored her at first. She was wearing one of the generic uniforms, and therefore was part of the anonymous staff. But then he noticed that she was carrying a .45 caliber automatic, looking enormous in her tiny hands. He gasped, and rolled off his chair, assuming that she was here to assassinate him. "Somebody help me!" he shouted. Then he noticed that the gun was not pointed at him, although when he saw where it was pointed, he almost wished that it had been. The woman looked over at him. Her eyes were a strange shade of grey, almost silver "My parents didn't go insane." She told him matter of factly. "The Tall Man took them." Now what the hell did that mean? The general wasted one precious second contemplating the meaning of it, and jumped on Kathy a moment to late, after she fired the gun at the all-too-fragile holding tank. Chunk of glass and ice burst out onto the floor, like candy from a malevolent pinata. The liquid helium, lighter than air even in this state rolled onto the floor like steam from a witche's cauldron and evaporated bare inches before reaching Kathy, who didn't notice the danger she was in. Small wonder that, one of the shards of exploding glass had driven into her forehead and mangled her brain, killing her instantly. Or rather, it should have killed her, but for some incomprehensible reason, she was still standing, staring at the Tall Man in a combiantion of rapture and terror. The Tall Man stepped out of the ruins of the tank. He stripped the wires and probes off his arms contemptuously, as if removing paper handcuffs placed on him by an annoying child. Then he shook of the remains of the supercooled liquid, like the amniotic fluids of some unspeakable leviathon. He strode up to the trembling general and seized him by the ribbons on his chest. "Small Man," He grinned and squinted at him. "You seek to delay your end by bargaining with the lives of others? Make no mistake, when I want your life, I will take it." The Tall Man threw the General contemptuously across the room. He landed in an undignified heap against the far wall, one arm twisted and probably broken. He grimaced in pain as the Tall Man and his recently deceased acolyte, Kathy strode past him into the chaos of the hallway. The General winced and tasted tears. He couldn't let people know how he had failed here. There was a failsafe device activated from any of several locations within this base, in the event of one of the projects here going irrevocably wrong. Just recently, a trigger to it had been installed in this tank room. The general stumbled over to it, lifted up the lid on a small box, and entered a ten-digit code he knew by memory. It was too late to do anything about the Tall Man. In his heart, he knew that even what was to come would not kill him, whatever he was. But perhaps it was not to late to salvage his honor, and protect his country from the scandal of having the ugly but necessary work they did here discovered. The general entered the last digit, and sat back to wait for the thirty seconds it would take the nuclear device buried under the base to detonate. ***************************************************************************************** Reggie drove the jeep over the crest of a sand dune. Driving with his headlights off by the light of the half moon, he had gotten twenty miles from that damn place where he and Mike had been imprisoned. He wanted to get at least twenty more miles between them and anyone following them before dawn. That, and also ditching the camo painted jeep for a more anonymous vehicle. As he got to the top, he saw a freeway below him. Good. He would make better time on asphalt than on sand. He was about to drive on down the other side of the dune, when he saw a white light shining in the rearview mirror. Shit! Was it some headlights? Had they chased him down and found him after all? Or worse yet, maybe it was the Tall Man in one of his hearses. He didn't think a normal hearse could get very far through this sand, but with that weird freak, who could tell? A moment later, he realized that the light could not be from the headlights of pursuing vehicles. It was too large, and to bright. In fact, as he looked at it in the mirror, it got larger and brighter still. "What the hell?" He thought. He threw the jeep into park and got out to look at what was going on, grabbing his shotgun just in case it was someone following them after all, maybe with a big search light or something. The ground rumbled, and there was a sudden blast of hot wind like from an oven door, bringing with it a faint smell of burning, and ozone. Mike stirred, finally out of his drug induced stupor, and looked around. "Reggie? What the heck is going on?" He asked sleepily. "I don't know, Mike. Hold on for a minute." He looked at the light, which was starting to fade to orange, the color of the setting sun. He had seen something like this before, but only on TV, in documentaries about the Manhattan project. He shook his head. What the hell did those assholes do? "Come on, Mike." He said, getting the jeep back in gear and plunging down toward the light and motion of the freeway below. "Let's get the hell out of here and find somewhere to rest up. I here Vegas is real nice this time of year." ******************************************************************************************* Kathy followed the Tall Man out of the room, oblivious to the pain crumpled form of the General, who was struggling towards one of the rows of control panels. He ignored her as she trailed him, striding through the darkened hallways of Zeta base, towards some unknown goal, flinging aside the few soldiers stupid enough not to give him the right of way. As they progressed, it got darker yet, as if something were draining all the power and life from the entire base. Suddenly, there was a blinding white light, and she lost sight of the Tall Man in the sudden glare. She rubbed her eyes with one hand. Tall Man? Now who was that? Kathy Jones stepped out of the sunlight streaming through a broken stained glass window and hugged her doll close to her for comfort. She was terribly frightened. There had been soldiers running around this place earlier, but she had hid from them in a closet in the bathroom. She didn't like them. They had mean expressions on their face, like that mean man who had been here before who wouldn't even give her anything to eat, and had pushed her down a couple times. "It was a good thing we hid." She told her doll. The mean looking soldiers had burned everything up. They had even burned up the other children, the ones in the funny brown clothes. If they had found her, maybe they would have burned her up, too. She looked around. The place was a lot different now. Instead of dim, gray polished rock, it was now all sharply defined black and white, depending on whether she looked at the scorched walls or the sunlight streaming through the shattered windows. She was still hungry, though. Maybe she should try to go home. Perhaps mommy or daddy would be back by now and give her some lunch. Or even if they were still gone, she thought she remembered a big box of Oreos on the counter. Kathy skipped through the scorched remains of the mauseleum, trying to find her way through the maze like passages to the exit, when she heard a sudden humming. She bit her lip and tried to think. Hadn't she heard that humming before? Oh yes, now she remembered. it had been when that mean tall man had taken everyone else somewhere, maybe to a restaurant, but wouldn't take her. But now she heard that noise again. Maybe more people were going to the restaurant, and she could go this time. She was awfully hungry. She walked down the blackened stone corridors, trying to find the source of the humming. Then she saw it. The two silver sticks set in the floor, that everyone had gone through in a line yesterday. Only now, no-one was there. Well, maybe they had already gone through. She had better hurry before that mean man came back and wouldn't let her go again. Kathy stepped between the two humming sticks and found herself on a porch to a big house. She looked around in confusion. This wasn't a restaurant. Maybe she better go back and try to find her house. Only when she turned around, the two sticks were gone. Her eyes grew big. Where did they go? Well, maybe someone was home in this house that would give her something to eat, and find her mommy and daddy for her. She walked along the porch, trying to find a door, when she suddenly saw a man with a scissors in his hands, cutting on some vines that grew up the sides of the porch. She looked at him and got scared. It was that mean man again. If he saw her, he would probably push her down again. The man finished his cutting and turned towards her. His mouth opened as her looked at her. He didn't look mean, but maybe that was just a trick, so he could get close enough to push her. "Child," He said. "What in the world are you doing here? How did you get out here by yourself?" Kathy looked at him fearfully and put her thumb in her mouth. She wished someone would help her and not push her down any more. "You're so thin!" the man exclaimed as he got closer and could see her bony arms. "When was the last time you ate?" Kathy didn't say anything. The man was getting closer, maybe to push her down the steps or something, and she was feeling to hungry and tired to run. "Where are your parents?" the man asked. Kathy cocked her head and looked at him. She heard a faint voice, like something from a story. (The Tall Man took them.) Kathy shook her head again. That voice didn't make any sense. A lot of men were tall, like the one who was talking to her. And he didn't look mean now. "Do you want something to eat?" The man asked her. "I have some sliced ham and a big plate of cookies in the pantry." Kathy smiled. Cookies sounded good. Maybe they were even Oreos. She took her thumb out of her mouth and held out her doll. "Can Dolly have some, too?" The man smiled at her. "Of course she can." The man held out his hand. Kathy hesitated for a moment, as a loud crash startled her, but it was just the wind, making one of the shutters on the windows clatter against the wall. Then she joined hands with Jebediah Morningside and went with him into his bright, sunlit house.