The Devil's Dream: A Nightmare by David Beers

extracted it from. There would be no more world. There probably wouldn’t be a sun either, because the detonation might even encapsulate objects that far off.
    Both Art and Gyle were looking at Jake. “Smart, but doesn’t really stay quiet, huh?” Gyle asked.
    “He actually hasn’t said much the whole trip over. I guess he was holding it in for this meeting.”
    “He’s right,” Gyle continued. “So we have a sixty percent chance that Brand can split all those atoms. The rest doesn’t really matter. Whether or not he takes them and fires them at the sun like some kind of super missile or it blows up in his face, we’re dead if that sixty percent is right.”
    “Jesus fucking Christ,” Art said, putting a finger to each of his temples. “There’s good news?”
    “Kind of. As long as he’s putting bodies across the city of Boston, nailing them up to crosses and what not, he’s going to have a tougher time collecting the bodies he needs for all those atoms.”
    “That’s our good news?” Art asked. “So we’re not going to publish what he wants us to publish? We’re not going to tell the world what’s going on?”
    “We’re not going to tell anyone. Not our allies, not the newspapers here, no one. We’re going to find Brand on our own, and until we do, let him crucify as many people as he wants. If we do anything else, if we tell anyone about this, the entire world is going to want in. The UN, China, Russia, everyone will attempt to have some kind of police force in America, all of them trying to find Brand. It’ll be a cluster of cosmic proportions.”
    “How are we going to find him, then?”
    Gyle leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “That’s the hard part, isn’t it? If he keeps up this crucifixion nonsense, it’ll be pretty easy to capture him. We’ll simply wait for a black guy in a white van to drive into Boston, pull him out of the van, and arrest him. He’s not that stupid though. No matter how much we want him to keep crucifying dead people and littering the city with them, he’s going to figure out some other way to get his message out.” Gyle looked down from the ceiling and over at Jake. “You got kids? Parents?”
    “Parents, sir. No kids.”
    Gyle nodded. “Your grandkids, Art. We’re going to need to get them locked down pretty hard. It would be much easier for Brand to grab up someone close to us and ransom them off for his message. I don’t think the President would go for it, but it would be a better idea than the current one he’s running with. Jake, you’re going to want to have your parents go into hiding for a while, if you plan on staying with us. If you’d rather not work with us so that your parents don’t need to go into hiding, Art and I would understand, but that’s just the way this is going to be played out unfortunately.”
    Gyle paused, swallowed, and then continued. “Everything we have is going to be focused in Massachusetts. Everything. Every missing person that comes up, every sighting of Arthur Morgant. The scientists are making up a list of what they think Brand might need to do all this, and we’re going to trace every piece of metal on that list bought in the past four years, and see what shows up in Mass. When we leave here, Art, you’re going to want to have Arthur Morgant’s picture on every newspaper, news program, and internet website you can think of—that’s the man we’re looking for, and we’re looking for him because he’s hanging people on crucifixes. His name isn’t Arthur Morgant; it’s whatever you want it to be. We don’t want anyone tracing this back to The Wall and then making inferences that it’s Brand. Get a team together, Art. Pull in everything we have. The scientists say there really isn’t any time limit on this thing. As soon as he has fifty-five bodies, they said he can go ahead and start. He needs fifty-one more.”

    * * *
    “ I didn’t want to speak in there—” Jake