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James kissed each of Luther’s palms and then his lips. “I have to do this. I promised. This is my country.”
Luther shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets and hunched his shoulders. “What if your country is asking you to do something you know is wrong?”
“Then I’ll accept the consequences. I signed up, and I’ll honor that.”
“Do you think your country would fight for you? For us?” Luther scoffed. “After all, you can read people’s thoughts now. You know what’s inside them.”
James angled his face toward the sky, cloudy gray with hints of blue. “You’d be surprised at what people think. It will all be fine. You’ll see.”
He kissed Luther’s forehead, then trekked back into the woods, toward the base, leaving a trail of footprints behind. Luther didn’t follow right away. He needed stillness. He needed to think. Along the lake’s edge, he looked out at the snow-dusted mountains and tried to shake his growing dread. More than anything, he wanted to believe as James did—that the people in charge of the experiment knew what they were doing and it would all be okay. But Luther had held back what he’d seen that had scared him most:
“Let me into your world,” the gray-faced man with the soulless eyes had whispered to Luther with a nearly orgiastic joy. “And I will tear it asunder.”
Whispering voices came from the forest.
“W
ho’s there?” Luther said. But he knew already. He could feel the press of the spirits at his back. The whispering grew louder, a clarion bell reverberating inside him:
“… It’s a trap, a trap, a trap…”
“… You are not safe from what comes. What comes. What comes…”
“… You must stop this stop this stop this…”
Luther bolted for the camp. As he neared, he could hear the men’s laughter. They were at ease. Bored. Passing the time. He had the feeling he had seen this all before: The quartet playing cards. The sergeant shaving. The dancing soldier beside the turning Victrola. Smile, smile, smile. His mouth in a half grin, James watched a hawk circling overhead. The air was crisp, the sky gray and calm. Light snow fell. Luther had never been more afraid.
We must stop this. The words wouldn’t come. What if he was wrong? What if he screamed the warnings—the warnings of the dead—and looked the fool?
“Don’t pick up the phone!” Luther said, breathless with fear.
The others regarded him curiously. Three seconds later, the field telephone rang. The sergeant wiped his jaw, pocketed his razor. “Spooky,” he said, shaking his head. The sergeant listened, nodding. “Yes. Yes. Ready, sir. Over and out.”
Luther took a step backward. Say something. Say something.
The sergeant yanked up his suspenders and grabbed his helmet. “Soldiers, this is not a drill. The time is now!”
“The time is now!” the men echoed, abandoning their card game mid-play and running for position. “Luther! I said, positions! That’s an order!”
Luther turned toward the forest. He would not die for a bad cause.
“Luther!” James called from the circle.
Luther saw his brothers-in-arms holding hands, ready. And then he had a sense of them, skeletal and screaming.
“Soldier! Take your position!” the sergeant ordered.
“James,” Luther whispered, but James was no longer looking at him.
Above the Marlowe estate, two streams of blue lightning shot up, piercing the cloudy sky, filling it with tentacles of blue light. The sky moved and groaned like a giant sea beast in pain, and in the next second, the electricity reached down like a staticky blue hand, surrounding the men of the one forty-four. Luther broke into a run, dropping his gun. He was numb with fear. Don’t look back. Just go. Keep running. But at the top of the hill, his heart reneged. Deserter. Luther turned. Down below in the clearing, the men of the one forty-four still held hands. Swirling mist wrapped itself in a deadly caress around their shaking bodies. The men stood fast, but their expressions—wide eyes, open mouths—betrayed their fear.
“Do… you see… that?” the soft-shoe dancer said in a strangled voice. “Dear god!”
“Hold!” the sergeant ordered through his own pain.
A slap of thunder echoed in the woods. The sky ripped open, a terrible birth. Fractured light pierced the men, pouring through their flesh. Luther could see their whole skeletons as if they were X-rays of themselves. And now they were screaming as they floated up toward the mangled sky and whatever lay inside its dark wound.
Luther’s horror was deep water; he was drowning in it. He could not move, could scarcely breathe. A pinpoint of silence held the moment in place, and then a blast of white raced across the ground with such force it destroyed the trees and knocked Luther through the air. He smelled burning flesh, felt a pain greater than anything he had ever known, hot as a branding iron.
