Free X's for Eyes by Laird Barron Page A

assault with mechanical discipline. Mr. Kowalski’s grievous wounds had no apparent effect as he ran three full steps up the ice wall and somersaulted over the onrushing squad and landed near their left flank. A blade flashed in his hand and drove into the spine of the nearest Spetsnaz. The rest pounced and buried Mr. Kowalski under a threshing pile of stabbing arms and stomping jackboots.
    The boys didn’t linger to observe the gruesome outcome. They fled to the opposite side of the structure.

THE GATE
    Telemachus Crabbe organized the ragtag group of laborers who were also trapped on the ziggurat. He said to Mac and Dred, “Those Red bastards can’t get to us for a while. What’s our plan?”
    Dred appreciated that Crabbe didn’t waste vital seconds demanding to know why the Russians had turned coat. First came escape and evasion; later, explanations, accusations, and payback. He pointed to the archway on the upper tier. “Mac and I are going to breach. Danged pyramid has to be chock full of alien artifacts. Nobel, here I come.”
    “There’ll be no prizes,” Mac said. “Think clearly. Think as a Tooms above the age of nine.”
    Stung, Dred crossed his arms. “Sheesh, why do ya have to crack smart?”
    “Granddad will drop a hundred million tons of ice onto this thing before he permits our rivals to learn of its existence, much less get their mitts on it.” Mac winced and brushed away blood trickling from his nostrils. He paled.
    “Oh, like that, eh?” Crabbe said. “Didn’t Slocum tell you? An energy curtain blocks the entrance. Repels everything—you won’t make it five feet. Doc Slocum planned to bring a sonic emitter and disperse the field.”
    “Slocum is history,” Mac said. “We don’t have the luxury of a sonic emitter, or dynamite—”
    “Say, ya don’t have any dynamite handy?” Dred interrupted.
    “Are you insane?” Crabbe gave him a look.
    Mac climbed the steps and stood before the metal arch. Its sole adornment was an indentation at the apex of the arc suggestive of an O-mouth. A veil of scintillating darkness barred the way. He chucked several shards of ice into the barrier and watched them shatter. “There must be a way to open . . . to open the way . . . ” He groaned and fell to his knees and clutched his skull.
    “Macbeth!” Dred knelt, unsure how to comfort his brother.
    “I remember, Dred. I remember what the man told me...He’s no man.”
    “The man? Talk sense!”
    “The man in the suit.” Mac’s gazed into the distance. He struggled to form each word. “Tom Mandibole flew to the Mountain Leopard Temple and whispered the Way into my ear.” His eyes focused again and he grated, “A dark seed has nested in my mind and now it blooms with terrible purpose.”
    Dred appealed to Crabbe. “Telly, my brother has cracked or he’s havin’ an aneurysm.”
    The tendons of Mac’s neck rippled. He shrugged off Dred’s hand and stood. Fear and pain were replaced by stony coldness. “Cover your ears. I will utter the profane syllables.”
    “Uh-oh,” Crabbe said.
    Dred obeyed an overwhelming compulsion to stick his fingers into his ears as Mac shouted a guttural oath at the arch. Crabbe did likewise. The workers weren’t quite as savvy. The poor sods went stiff, as if shot through the brain, then toppled one after another like a chain of dominos and slid down the icy slope of the ziggurat.
    “Poor devils,” Crabbe said with real lament.
    The barrier vanished. Faint yellow light flickered somewhere far ahead in the throat of the revealed stone passage. Mac gestured for the others to follow, which Dred did with great reluctance. He reflected that the second-born truly got a raw deal. He was doomed to traipse after Mac like a puppy. “Hypnosis,” he muttered to himself. Whomever this “man in the suit” had been, he’d implanted a suggestion in Mac’s subconscious with a specific trigger. This raised a number of unpleasant questions that would have to keep for