Karnage smiled. “You’re angry. I get that. Mad. Pissed off. Hopin’ to cause me a lot o’ trouble as soon as you’re able.”
“You got that right.”
“And you understand o’ course why I can’t let that happen.”
“And what do you plan on doing about it?”
“Well, I could just knock you cold with the butt o’ my rifle here. But I thought I’d give you a choice first. See if you’d be willin’ to keep your temper.”
“I’m sorry, are you asking me to behave myself?”
“I am,” Karnage said. “Only until we get to our destination. Then you can jump up and down and scream and holler, and raise any kind o’ holy hell you like.”
“And where are you going?”
“Camp Bailey.”
Sydney furrowed her eyebrows. “Camp Bailey? Why the hell would you go there?”
“Stumpy and I are gonna fire up the Godmaster Array and stir up some shit. Ain’t that right, Corporal?”
Stumpy saluted. “Sir, yes, sir!”
Sydney looked incredulously from one to the other. “You can’t be serious. Do you have any idea what’s waiting for you out there? No, of course not. If you did, you wouldn’t even be thinking of trying something so damn stupid.”
“Why? What’s out there?”
“The Church of Spragmos.”
Stumpy fell back against the car with a loud thud. “Sweet Christ, say it ain’t so.”
“It’s so. It’s beyond so. It couldn’t be more so. It’s the biggest so in the whole damn universe, that’s how so it is.”
Stumpy slid down the car. “Fuck me running…”
Karnage turned from one to the other. “Wait a minute. Hold on here. The Church of what?!”
“The Church of Spragmos,” Sydney said.
“Spragmos… you mean like the gun manufacturer?!”
“That’s right.”
“What the fuck do they worship? Guns?”
“No,” Sydney said.
“They worship… The Worm.” Stumpy was clutching his arms to his sides.
“Okay, so they worship a worm.”
“Not a worm,” Sydney said. “The Worm.”
“All right. The Worm. What the hell difference does it make?”
Sydney stared at Karnage. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“No, I do not fucking know. I spent the last twenty years locked up in a goddamn insane asylum. There is a lot I do not know. Now quit starin’ at me like I got monkeys growin’ outta my ears and tell me just what is so goddamn frightening about this goddamn worm!”
“There’s not much to tell,” Sydney said. “Nobody knows where it came from. But it’s real. And it’s dangerous.”
“How dangerous?” Karnage asked.
“Dangerous enough that we stopped sending troops out to the base because they weren’t coming back.”
“So you just let those bastards dig in and grow stronger, while you hole up in your office suckin’ yer thumb, hopin’ they go away?!”
“You think I didn’t try?! I filed thirty different requests for counter-terrorism support! Those bastards left me twisting in the wind! You tell me what I was supposed to—”
A shuddering screech hurtled across the desert, a violent, jagged line of sound that cut through Karnage like a knife ripping through fabric. “What the fuck was that?”
“That,” Sydney said, “was The Worm.”
“Oh fuck me.” Stumpy buried his head in his hands.
Sydney looked around. “We must be a hell of a lot closer than I thought.”
Stumpy turned to Karnage, his face white. “Major, we got to get out of here. There’s got to be another way. Another old army base. Camp Casey is just another few hundred klicks away. We could make it. I know we can!”
“Listen to Stumpy, Major,” Sydney said. “If the Spragmites find you out here—”
The sound tore through them again, raking up and down Karnage’s spine like an electrified cheese grater. It was so jagged. So angry. So unlike anything he’d ever heard before. And yet, at the same time, it felt so familiar. Like something from a dream. Or a faded memory. A jagged black line etched in skin, slightly red around the edges from being pressed too hard.
And that’s when it hit him: the noise wasn’t jagged at all.
It was squiggly.
Karnage turned to Stumpy. “Camp Casey’s no good to me. I need that Godmaster Array, worm or no worm. Cult or no cult. Camp Bailey is our only option, and that is where we’re headed.”
Sydney looked at Karnage, aghast. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?”
“Every one of ’em.”
“And you’re still going in there?”
“I am.”
“You’re crazy!”
“I been told that before.”
“You’ll die!”
“I been told that, too.” Karnage looked at Stumpy. Stumpy sat there, leaning against the car, staring into the distance, rubbing the end of his stump. “You ain’t gettin’ cold feet on me, are you, Corporal?”
Stumpy looked fearfully into the distance, then down at his stump. He set his jaw, and rose to his feet. “No, sir. I’ve come this far, I’ll go the rest of the way.” He saluted.
Karnage returned the salute. “Good to hear, soldier.” He turned to Sydney. “And what about you, Captain? You gonna behave or am I gonna have to knock you out?”
Sydney gaped at Karnage. “You don’t think you’re taking me with you?”
“I am,” Karnage said. “I ain’t about to leave an officer out here to die of exposure.”
“So instead you’ll get me killed on this fool’s mission. Well, you can forget it. I won’t—”
Karnage cracked the butt of his rifle across Sydney’s head, knocking her out cold. “Suit yourself.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Riggs lounged in the backseat of the limo. He leaned against the ravaged remains of the mini-bar as he drank his third martini. His silk shirt and matching pants were cool against his skin. He looked down at his Tommy Dabney shoes. They sparkled so brightly they practically winked at him. He leaned back into the plush leather of the seat and sighed. He was drowning in luxury and he was going to savour every second of it.
Riggs watched Patrick drive. Patrick hadn’t acknowledged Riggs’s existence since they had left the precinct. Riggs leaned forward and tapped on the glass divider. The divider sank down behind the seats, and Patrick’s goggles appeared in the rear view mirror. “Is there a problem, sir?”
“No. No problem,” Riggs said. “Just wanted to talk is all.”
“I see.”
Riggs pulled himself up and rested his head on the back of the front seat. “Let me ask you something, Patrick. Are you happy?” Patrick considered this. “Happy, sir?”
“Yeah. Happy.”
“Do you mean with life in general?”
“Huh.” Riggs thought about that. Was that what he had meant?
He snapped his fingers. “Yeah. In general. Like life. Family. Career. All that stuff.”
Patrick stayed silent a long while, watching the road. Riggs started to wonder if he had somehow offended him. Finally, Patrick replied. “All things considered, I suppose you could say that.”
Riggs slapped the back of the seat. “Exactly! That’s the way it should be! Everybody’s always bitchin’ about how everything sucks. This sucks. That sucks. Everything used to be better. Fuck that— pardon my French, Patrick—but fuck that! Things are good. Things are great! Look at the two of us! Happier than a couple of clams in shit.”
“Pigs.”
“Sorry?”
“I believe it’s ‘pigs in shit.’ Clams don’t require shit to be happy, sir. They just are.”