I listened, catching a few words. The passage was something about angels, armies, and hate. I’d taken the time to look up Baudelaire’s work on the Internet. It had been outlawed in France two centuries ago. Gilling sure could pick an uplifting piece.
Somehow, Gilling’s chant made the entire experience more otherworldly. I felt disconnected from my surroundings. Maybe it was the stark insanity of what I was about to attempt. We were going to assault unknown beings in their lair and try to damage equipment we’d never seen, but knew they must hold dear. My respect for these Gray Men increased as I embarked on the kind of mission they had performed against us many times. They had real courage to come to our existence and make daring strikes. But when I thought of Holly, Tony, and an unknown number of others, I hated them anyway.
When the rip opened enough to step out, we didn’t waste any time. I went first, and then McKesson came right behind me, lugging his RPG box. We left Gilling and Rheinman behind in the desert. Their job was to keep the rip burning until our return and to kill any Gray Men who tried to flank us by coming through to our side.
I could see a blur of walls around us. Where were we? My first thought was that we had made a mistake. Gilling had screwed up, reading the wrong poem, perhaps. With my luck, we’d find ourselves in the Lucky Seven again, or maybe in the middle of a shopping mall. That was going to require quite a bit of explaining.
I pressed ahead and stepped out of the active region of the rip. Reality shifted and rippled around me, but at last my senses operated properly and I saw where I was.
Walls. Flat, square, and boring. They weren’t gray, but rather a dull golden color like that of molten tin. I twisted this way and that, looking for armed enemies. There weren’t any. The walls were featureless for the most part. The cubical nature of them was unmistakable.
“Bull’s-eye,” I whispered over my shoulder. “We’re inside the cubes!”
I glanced back, expecting to see McKesson standing there with his box. But he still stood in the rip. I could see his outline blurring and whipping about like a dark sheet in a stiff wind. When seen inside a rip, a man looked like a painting done by a half-blind impressionist.
I snorted. McKesson was waiting to see if I died on the spot. I waved both my arms, beckoning him forward. The room was essentially empty, about the size of a standard living room with a high ceiling, and there was only a single corridor against the far wall that led in and out. The corridor had nothing that could block it; there were no doors to close.
McKesson finally inched forward out of the rip.
“All clear?” he asked me quietly.
“Get out here and cover me.”
He did so, with many reluctant glances. I felt cautious too, but decided bold action was a better policy. For all I knew, alarms were sounding in other cubes, and armed Gray Men were racing to this spot. We had no idea if they had cameras on us or not.
“Every second we stand around we are losing our element of surprise,” I told him.
“Yeah, but the longer they don’t know we’re here, the longer we have to find this mystery machine of yours.”
“You can’t carry that box everywhere,” I said.
“I suppose you’re right. I thought we would have to blast down a wall. I can’t believe we’re already inside.”
I gestured for him to hurry. I watched as he snapped open the box and quickly assembled the RPG. He loaded the weapon and stood up.
“I’ll lead,” I said. “Don’t shoot me in the back.”
McKesson shouldered his RPG, which now looked like a large rifle with a pointed rocket on the nose. In his other hand, he carried another charge. We were down to two, and I hoped that would be enough.
We walked for what seemed like a long time, passing more cubical rooms. Each was identical to the one we’d first entered. We passed eight of them, most of which had a truck parked inside. I realized we were in a garage, of sorts. I didn’t see how the trucks were supposed to get out of these cubes, since the walls they faced were blank, flat sheets of metal. I didn’t see a door or a button to push to open one.
Feeling like a rat sniffing at a trap too complex to comprehend, I pressed ahead. The first cube hadn’t had a truck in it and I counted this as a further stroke of good luck. We’d appeared in a relatively quiet region of their garage at night, and that was much better than popping into their mess hall in the middle of dinner. It was almost as if we’d planned it.
A negative thought nagged at me, however. Nine garages? Having that many garages indicated they might have a lot of personnel who needed transporting. That news wasn’t so good.
We came to the end of the line of garages and the corridor turned to the right. I turned with it, leaning around a corner with my gun in my hand. There was no one there, but new sounds assaulted me. Loud sounds of heavy machinery. A buzzing hum came through strongest of all, a sound that set my teeth on edge.
“What’s wrong?” McKesson hissed at my back.