“I don’t think he is,” Sharkey told him. “And the scary part is, nobody’s heard from him in over forty-eight hours now.”
33
The way Hayes was seeing it, he’d paid for this dance and LaHune was going to have a cheek-to-cheek waltz with him whether he liked the idea of it or not. And LaHune most certainly did not like the idea. But he knew Hayes. Knew trying to get rid of the guy was like trying to shake a stain out of your shorts.
Hayes was tenacious.
Hayes was relentless.
Hayes would hang like a tattoo on your backside until he got exactly what he wanted. No more. No less. But LaHune, of course, had had his merry fill of Jimmy Hayes and his paranoid bullshit. Had it right up to his left eyeball and this is what he told Hayes, not bothering to spare his feelings one iota. In his opinion, Hayes was the rotten apple in the storied barrel. The bee in the bonnet. And the cat piss in the punch.
“I’ve had my fill of you, Hayes,” LaHune told him. “I’m so sick of you I could spit. Just the sight of you roils my stomach.”
Hayes was sitting in the administrator’s office, his feet up on his desk even though he’d been warned a half dozen times to get his dirty, stinking boots off of there. “Are you trying to tell me something, Mr. LaHune? Because I’m getting this funny feeling in my gut that you just don’t like me. But maybe it’s just gas.”
LaHune sat there, really trying to be patient. Really trying to hang onto his dignity which had been chewed up, swallowed, and shit on by this man from day one. Yes, he was trying to hang onto his dignity and not come right over the desk at Hayes, that smarmy, bearded dirtball.
“No, you’re reading me fine, Hayes. Just fine. And get your goddamn feet off my desk.”
Hayes crossed one boot atop the other. “You saying it’s over between us, then? No more quickies behind the oil tanks in the generator shack?”
“You’re not funny, Hayes.”
“Sure I am. Ask anybody.”
LaHune sat there, sighing heavily. Yes, Hayes had pissed all over his dignity, his authority, and his self-respect. But that would come screaming to an end one way or another. LaHune wasn’t used to dealing with working class hardcases like Hayes. Guys like him buttered their bread on the wrong side and spawned in a different pond. Maybe he was good at his job, but he was also smartassed, disrespectful, and insubordinate.
“I’ll tell you what you are, Hayes,” LaHune finally said. “You’re reckless and childish and paranoid. A man like you has no business down here. You’re not up to it. And when spring comes . . . and it will come and no aliens, flying saucers, or abominable snowmen will stop it . . . when it comes, I’ll see to it that you never get another contract down here. And if you think I’m joking, you just fucking try me.”
“Hey, hey, easy with the profanity! Remember my virgin ears, you fucking prick.”
“That’s enough!”
Hayes pulled his feet off the desk. “No, it’s not, LaHune. And it won’t be until you pull your over-inflated head out of your ass and start seeing things as they are. We’re in trouble here and you better start accepting that. You’re in charge of this installation and the lives of these people are in your hands. And until you accept that responsibility, I’ll be riding you like a French whore. Count on it.”
LaHune said nothing. “I don’t what to hear about your paranoid fantasies, Hayes.”
“That’s all it is? Paranoia?”
“What else could it be?”
Hayes laughed thinly. “Where do they put your batteries, LaHune? I think they’re running low.” He sat back in his chair, totally frustrated, folding his arms over his chest. “Those goddamn mummies are making people go insane. You’ve got three men from the drilling tower, that Deep Drill Project, that are missing. You’ve got three dead men . . . what more do you need?”
“I’ll need something factual, Hayes. St. Ours, Meiner, and, yes, Lind have died from cerebral hemorrhages. If you don’t believe me, ask Dr. Sharkey. Dammit, man.”
Hayes uttered that laugh again. “Cerebral hemorrhages? No shit? Three of ‘em in a row? I didn’t know they were catchy. C’mon, LaHune, don’t you think that three exploded brains pretty much tweaks the tit of chance a little too hard?”
“I’m not a medico here. It’s not my job to engage in forensics.”
Hayes just shook his head. “All right, let me try again. Remember that day we called Nikolai Kolich over at Vostok? Sure you do. Well, old Nikolai, boy, he told us some kind of fucking yarn. You remember that derelict camp Gates and his boys found? Yeah? Well, that there was a Russian camp from the old Soviet red scare days of yore. Joint called the Vradaz Outpost. Yup. Now this part here, boyo, it’s going to sound just whackier than Mother Teresa working the pole in a thong and pasties. But Kolich told us they all went mad at Vradaz. Yup. Crazier’n bugs in bat shit. You know what drove ‘em crazy? Spooks. Sure. Now I know this is all going to sound real fantastic to you, real far-out and nutty, because you’ve never heard of nothing like this, but I’m willing to bet you can wrap your spooky little brain right around it, you try hard enough.
“See, how it started at Vradaz was that those scientists up there, they drilled into a chasm, found some things in there. We’ll call ‘em mummies, okay? Well, not long after, all those commy scientists started having real weird dreams and before you could say Jesus in drag, they started hearing things. Knockings and poundings. Funny sounds. Then they started seeing apparitions, ghosts that walked through walls and the like. Well, the Soviets said that’s enough of this horseshit, so they sent in a team to take care of those boys, root out the infection so to speak. So, those silly communists, they killed everyone there. Isn’t that a funny story?”
LaHune was unmoved. “That’s some pretty high speculation, isn’t it?”
“Oh, not at all. See, the other day when Sharkey and I went with Cutchen to check his remote weather stations, we went out to Vradaz instead. Took a look around there.”
LaHune just shook his head. “You are so very out of control, Hayes. That installation, abandoned or not, is property of the Russian Federation.”
“No, they disowned it years back, LaHune. Some twenty-odd years back to be exact.” Hayes had him and he knew it. He had LaHune hooked and he was now going to play him for all it was worth. “Okay, so we dug our way in there and, lo and behold, we found bullet holes and blood, crosses cut into the walls to keep the haunts away. Then, down below, we found a pit with bodies in there. All them scientists but the three insane ones the Ruskies took away with ‘em. All those bodies, LaHune, they’d been gunned down and then burned. Yeah, you heard me right. We also found one of those alien carcasses down there that had been toasted like a marshmallow at Camp Cockalotta. And Ivan did these things because he realized the very thing that you’re afraid of: that those aliens are dangerous. They get in men’s mind and destroy them, same way they’re doing here. The Russians killed those men and burned them along with My Favorite Martian because those dead, alien minds are a contagion that spreads and devours healthy human minds just as they always have. It was quite a scene there, LaHune. There were even a few Russian soldiers in that pit and you know why? Because those alien minds got them, too.”
LaHune said nothing.
There was nothing he could say.
But Hayes could see that he believed him. Completely believed him. But he wasn’t really shocked or surprised by any of it and Hayes figured that was because their grand NSF administrator knew all about what happened at Vradaz.
“Now, while back, LaHune, you asked me why in the hell I knocked in that wall on Hut Six. Well, I did it to freeze those fucking Martians back up before this entire goddamn station is destroyed. Before we all have our minds sucked out or blown up. See, I don’t think those dead minds are completely unthawed yet, but when that happens . . . well, you get the picture, don’t you?”