The Anomaly(88)

“Then what—”

“It’s to make sure things happen nice and clean. Make sure all the sheeple out there, the ten billion dumb assholes of the world, never understand what’s going on, never suspect what’s being done in their name. You do not take risks with the mission. You tie up loose ends. You tie them up hard.”

He moved his other hand out from behind his back and placed the barrel of a handgun firmly against Molly’s temple. “So let’s get that done.”



I was ten feet away from him. Even if I’d been faster and fitter and less broken there was no way I could get to him before he pulled the trigger. There was no point even trying.

For a moment I felt that car crash swell of relief that comes when the worst is happening all around you, right now, and you can stop bracing yourself for it.

I breathed out slowly and held my hands up.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, Dylan—you win. I’m not going to come at you. You know that.”

“Ya—because you’re weak. All fucking talk, man.”

“Maybe. Also because I know when I’m beat, and Molly is my friend, and I’m not going to be the cause of her death. You’ll have to do the deed by yourself. But what I don’t understand is why this is so big a deal.”

“Seriously? It’s the biggest deal there is, Indy. It’s how we start again. How we reboot that big fuckup out there.”

“Reboot what?”

“Planet Earth. It’s not the first time. The other cycles—everything was lost. Almost everything. A few pockets escaped the flood. Cleanup crews that survived. Their DNA is supposed to collapse once they’ve done their job but somehow last time they made it into legend and the next human bloodline. The giants you’re forever talking about—it’s them. Echoes in the blood. But that’s why the last reboot didn’t work. You talk all the time about ‘anomalies’—and ya, I’ve seen your dumb show—but you don’t get it. Mankind is the anomaly, jackass. Humans are the fuckup, the thing that got mangled and messed up. This time we’re ahead. This time we’re going to run the game.”

“What game?”

“The game of life. When the Ninth Prophecy comes fully to pass and all is wiped from the Earth, we’ll be safe, in position to make sure it’s clean this time, and ready to lead the way into the next epoch. It’s time, my friend. This is a planet of dead men walking. And you helped us find the switch on the electric chair.”

“One of several, according to the room we’ve just seen. Why?”

“One of these machines isn’t enough to repopulate the world. This one should trigger all the others.”

“But how would that even work?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know how gravity works or why bees dance or how sharks can smell blood in the water from miles away. Do you? No. It still happens.” He nodded at the slash marks across my chest. “You got lucky. But only because they were barely out of the pool. And there’s worse to come. Much worse. The things we remember as demons.”

I remembered the pictogram by the big pool. The one that seemed to show something with short horns.

Dylan saw the look on my face. “Oh yes. Mankind didn’t make that shit up. They’re real. We know that in our back brains. And I’m not worthy, Indy. Those guys are the hard-core cleanup crew. Hundreds of thousands of them. Millions. Flooding the world at once, killing every living animal. No way to fight. No chance of escape. Wiping the planet clean.”

There was a distant thud, from way back in the complex. It didn’t distract Dylan, however. It was depressingly clear that he was focused on his task.

“It doesn’t have to go this way,” I said. “Look, Molly and I…we don’t care about any of this. We just want to stay alive. Let us go, and we’ll disappear. For good.”

He shook his head.

“Seriously,” I said. “Who would even believe us?”

“You’re done, Indy.”

I saw in his eyes that even if this weren’t his job, he would have been happy to do what he was going to do.

I heard another thudding sound, very faint this time. “Please,” I said. “Look. Kill me if you have to. But let Molly go.”

He laughed, good and loud. “You’re not the hero in this movie, man. You don’t get to save the girl.”

The thudding sound was a little louder now. I only needed a few seconds more.

“There’s nothing I can do?” I said, sounding as desperate as I felt. “Nothing I can say to change your mind? Or offer you? Nothing at all?”

He shook his head, tightening his forearm still further under Molly’s neck, pressing the gun harder into her temple.

She was staring straight ahead. The monster had finally come for her in the dark, and she knew she wasn’t going to escape this time.

“You’ve always thought too small, man,” he said. “Fuck the body shots. This is the knock-ou—”

Molly blinked with both eyes. I stepped to the side and killed the light from my phone.

And Pierre ran past me like a freight train.



I didn’t see him slam into Dylan. I heard the guy get off a shot—his reactions were fast—and after that the grunt of a sudden impact, the scrabbling of feet, a shriek from Molly.