Bzrk Apocalypse Read Free Page A

interests and owned a small but
    useful number of local government officials. From there they’d made
    their way to Malaysia, to the Sarawak state on the island of Borneo.
    The Armstrong facility there was involved in mining rare earths.
    And it did a bit of logging, as well, all very eco-friendly, with careful
    replanting programs and all of that. Whatever it took to avoid too
    much scrutiny. The Armstrongs were good corporate citizens out of
    self-interest.
    But this facility was not strictly about mining or logging. It was
    built of three elements: there were two identical buildings, each a
    crescent, facing each other across an elongated oval that formed an
    enchanting tropical garden, a sort of tamed version of the surround-
    ing rain forest.
    There were trees and flowers, streams full of fish and waterfowl,
    pink gravel pathways leading to benches, and seating areas where the
    white-collar employees could take their lunches alfresco.
    At the top of the oval, connecting the two crescents, was a stumpy
    tower topped by a domed observatory. There was an impressive
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    MICHAEL GRANT
    optical telescope that profited from the profound darkness of the sur-
    rounding countryside.
    No one was using the telescope at the moment because it was
    pouring rain. It often poured rain here. And when it poured it was
    unlike anything Charles Armstrong had ever known in New York. It
    came down not in drops but in sheets. The heavens did not sprinkle
    on Sarawak, they emptied buckets and bathtubs and swimming pools.
    Charles watched a lizard climbing up the glass side of the dome,
    pushing against the stream of water. Sarawak had lizards. It had liz-
    ards and snakes and birds in abundance.
    “I would have thought the rain would wash it off,” Charles said.
    His brother, Benjamin, was less interested by the lizard or the
    rain, but of course could see both since it was impossible for the twins
    not to face in the same direction. Their individual eyes could roam
    this way or that, focus independently under the direction of their sep-
    arate brains, but they did not have separate heads, rather two heads
    melded together.
    This gave them two mouths, one nose, and three eyes. The middle
    eye was a bit smaller than the other two and often had an unfocused,
    glazed quality. It could see, but its focus was not consciously directed
    by either Charles or Benjamin. Rather it often seemed to have a mind
    of its own and would focus where it willed, suddenly granting depth
    perception to one or the other twin, but never both at once.
    They were large, the twins were, tall but even more broad, with
    shoulders capable of carrying the unusual weight of their doubled
    head. Two arms, neither muscular; two fully developed legs; and a
    third, stunted leg.
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    BZRK APOCALYPSE
    At the moment they were sitting in a modified electric wheel-
    chair. It was far more capable than the usual motorized wheelchairs
    and had been given an almost dashing, exotic look with burgundy
    velvet trim, two side panels that likely concealed weapons, and wheels
    that looked more racetrack than hospital, but it remained, in the end,
    a wheelchair.
    The observatory was their haunt for now. There was a bedroom
    down a ramp, and a specially outfitted bathroom. But the bedroom
    had only conventional windows. All their lives had been spent indoors,
    and they craved the openness of the observatory, even when all they
    could see was water sheeting down the glass and a lizard struggling
    against that tide.
    “Looking at lizards,” Benjamin said, disgusted.
    They had both been depressed since the sinking of the Doll Ship .
    The Doll Ship had been their happy place, the place they could think
    about when life became too gloomy or the pressure too intense. Now
    it was gone. All those poor people, the people who worshipped them,
    who saw beauty in their deformity, all of them gone.
    “Fish food,” Charles said, knowing where his brother’s thoughts
    had wandered. “And we still