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the crack out. Dodd glanced at the opposite wall where an antique deer rifle
hung between two swords.
I still have the firing pin to that, he thought. There's ammunition in the
hall closet.
Dodd strode to the hall closet, opened it, and dropped to his knees to pull
out a plastic storage box. The television was not dead enough for him; Dodd
wanted to kill it even more. When he opened the storage box he was distracted;
in the box, among dusty cartons of 30.06 cartridges, was a smaller box made
out of wood.
On its side was the name: Jack Daniels Kentucky Bourbon.
He paused, then reached in and pulled out the bourbon, brushing the dust off
the box. This was a treasure. His father had locked it in a vault when the
proof limit had gone into effect, and had died without ever opening it. This
stuff was old. Dodd had inherited it and was saving it to celebrate the birth
of either a son or a daughter --- either one, he wasn't picky. Now he thought:
Why wait? Straining, he pulled open the wooden box and slid the bottle out. As
he opened it, Sheila came from behind him, her arms loaded with clothes, and
said, "I'm going to hate you forever for this."
"Good," he said without looking at her. He had popped the cork out of the
bottle and was smelling it. Strong. He tipped the bottle to his lips, gulping
some of the amber liquid down. Then he stopped, his eyes bulging, and erupted
into a fit of coughing. He was still coughing as Sheila left, leaving a trail
of clothes behind her.
The phone rang.
Dodd picked up the box of ammo and carried it and the bottle of bourbon with
him to the kitchen table to answer the phone. It was Toby, the only friend he
had left. He made what he hoped would pass for a pleasant expression. "Toby,"
he said, "hi, how are you!
Praise the lord."
"You are a bastard," Toby said. "How dare you say that to me." Toby pronounced
"that" as "dot," his accent very heavy. He was upset.
"What?" Dodd said. "What do you----"
"I saw your stupid speech. I could not believe you were not struck dead and
sent to hell right there on the camera. I guess that only proves that He has
mercy. But I am not perfect. I can not tolerate stupid, godless vermin like
yourself. Be it known, that you are no longer welcome here. And I don't want
you calling me no more."
The screen went blank.
"Toby?" Dodd said to the screen. "Toby?" He took a swig out of the bottle,
feeling himself sink into himself. Looking at one of Sheila's stockings on the
floor, he said her name out loud,
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Je...avis%20-%20The%20Code%20of%20th
e%20Beast.txt (132 of 152) [10/18/2004 5:02:56 PM]
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Jerry%20Davis%20-%20The%20Code%20of%
20the%20Beast.txt then took another swig. What a disaster, he thought.
The screen blinked, and Dodd looked up. There was mail waiting. Oh, great, he
thought. More hate mail. He turned it off and took another swig of the strong
bourbon.
Dodd moped around his apartment for hours, drinking a third of the bottle. He
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was rolling the Jack Daniels cork back and forth across the table with his
index fingers when it came to him. He knew what he had to do. Travels was
created at least in part somewhere near Avilla Beach. He'd seen the pier in
the background of Travels more than once; Dodd knew that pier, he practically
grew up on it.
Without laughing, without smiling, Dodd corked the bottle of bourbon and put
the bottle in a paper bag, got out a long, thin box for the gun, then grabbed
a couple boxes of cartridges. He stuffed these into his pockets and walked out
of the apartment, letting the door close softly behind him.
36. EYES ABOVE
They'd headed out like they'd planned, travelling no more than a few feet off
the ground with painted blankets draped over the air launch to disguise it as
a ground vehicle. At one point one of the blankets got caught on some brush
and was pulled loose.
Danny cursed, stopped the craft, and got out with a roll of tape to refasten
it. Looking up into the clear night sky he hoped no one was watching.
When he was climbing back into the Mercedes Wiley said, "Why am I more nervous
than usual?"
"Every day is the last day of your life," Danny said. "Think of it that way
and you'll get used to it."
The hatch came down and sealed with a puffing sound. Danny settled himself in
the pilots seat and nudged the craft forward.
Inside the craft it was very dark, and the readouts glowed dimly.
Outside the window everything seemed bright by comparison despite the fact it
was deep in the night with only a sliver of a moon.
"I'm more nervous than usual, too," Aaron said. "I think it's because we're
finally vindicating ourselves."
"From what?" Danny said.
"For writing CoGen in the first place."
"The army made you write CoGen. The pentagon."
"The devil worked through us."
"You've been forgiven."
"I know. But I don't want to die until I know we're done."
There was a heavy silence after he said that. The night seemed to be filling
with more and more menace. Danny weaved the craft through trees and made
gentle hops over stumps. He was looking at the readouts and the scanning
screens more than he was looking out the windshield. Once they were in the
heavy tree cover and had turned due south they felt better, but Danny still
remembered the war, and the terrible machines they had hiding in the forests.
Crude by comparison now, but still smart and quick and silent. Drones that
were ordered to shoot anything that moved, anything that didn't carry a beacon
that told it "I'm a friend" in
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Je...avis%20-%20The%20Code%20of%20th
e%20Beast.txt (133 of 152) [10/18/2004 5:02:56 PM]
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Jerry%20Davis%20-%20The%20Code%20of%
20the%20Beast.txt machine language. They were designed to look like bushes,
like rotted out tree stumps, like ruined overturned jeeps. Devious things,
nightmarish and evil.
I was a pawn of the devil, too, Danny thought. Images of the dead haunted him,
he couldn't force them away except by concentrating on what he was doing. I've
been fighting this for 16
years now. I feel I've repented, but I've been doing it for so long that I
don't know what else to do. The images still won't go away. The memories are
there until I die.
Danny brought the craft to a halt and let it settle gently to the ground.
"Okay," he said. "This is where we change the
Mercedes's clothes." He popped the airtight hatch and it opened with a
wheezing sound. He grabbed his roll of tape and the second set of painted
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blankets and stepped out into the dry grass, followed by the two hackers. They
pulled the first set of blankets off and folded it up, then Danny threw on the
second set and they positioned it and taped it down.
"Farm equipment," Aaron said, reading the front blanket.
"You've got the bar code on here and everything."
"Wait a minute, Danny," Wiley said. "The USFMC monitors all this stuff with an
AI program. The FarmSat is going to see this from orbit and say, 'Hey, this
isn't scheduled to be out here now.' It's going to radio down to tell this
unit to go back to where ever it came from and when you don't respond it'll
send out a repair crew."
"They're not going to send down a repair crew in the middle of the night,"
Danny said, but his voice was uncertain. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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