Kill Switch Read Online Free PDF Page B

“It doesn’t matter. I know you’re recording this. You can look it up later. All that matters is that it’s something someone dreamed once and wrote down. Don’t focus on the messenger, pay attention to the message.”
    â€œAnd what is the message?”
    Prospero burned off nearly a full minute before he answered. During that time he reached up and pulled the hood forward so that the shadows now obscured his entire face.
    â€œPeople are afraid of the Devil. They think the Antichrist is going to come and go mano a mano with Jesus, blah blah blah. That’s bullshit. You’re a Jew, so I know you don’t believe it. Or, maybe you’re an atheist and really don’t buy into any of that apocalyptic bullshit.”
    Greene said, “My personal beliefs are irrelevant to this conversation, Prospero. The question is what do you believe?”
    Instead of answering that question directly, the boy asked, “How would you answer if I said, ‘Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn’ ?”
    â€œI have no idea what that is or what it might mean.”
    â€œIt’s a prayer I learned in my dreams.”
    â€œI would like to talk to you about your dreams, Prospero. You know I’ve always found them fascinating.”
    Prospero leaned his face out of the shadows and the smile he wore made Dr. Greene actually recoil. It was a smile filled with strange lights and ugly promises. It was not a smile Greene had ever seen on the boy’s face before, or on any human face. It was less sane than the Joker from Batman, and less wholesome than the toothy grin of a shark. It was so sudden and so intense and so wholly unexpected that Greene flinched.
    â€œDr. Greene,” said the boy, “I’ll miss you when I leave this world.”

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    THE VINSON MASSIF
    THE SENTINEL RANGE OF THE ELLSWORTH MOUNTAINS
    ANTARCTICA
    AUGUST 19, 10:17 P.M.
    The LC-130 did a pass so we could take a good look at Gateway. The scattered buildings looked like tiny cardboard boxes, the kind Christmas ornaments come in. Small and fragile. As we swept up and around for the approach to the icy landing strip, I had a panoramic view of Antarctica. I’ve been in a lot of Mother Earth’s terrains—deserts, rain forests, caverns, grassy plains, and congested cities—but nothing ever gave me the feeling of absolute desolation that I got from the landscape below. There was white and white and white, but mixed into that were a thousand shades of gray and blue. The total absence of the warmer colors made me feel cold even in the pressurized and heated cabin of the plane. I could already feel the toothy bite of that wind.
    Suddenly Bug was in our ears. “Got some stuff and I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
    â€œWe’re in Antarctica, Bug,” I said. “Our expectations are already pretty low.”
    â€œYeah, even so,” he said. “There are so many darn layers to this thing. They really went out of their way to hide it. They tried to keep the whole thing totally off the public radar, but with the ice caps melting there are too many people looking at the poles. So they have a cover story for when they need it.”
    â€œWhich is?”
    â€œStudying the Antarctic Big Bang. Before you ask, I had to look that up, too,” said Bug. “Apparently a few years ago planetary scientists found evidence of a meteor impact that was earlier and a lot bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs. They say it caused the biggest mass extinction in Earth’s history, the Permian-Triassic. We’re talking two hundred and fifty million years ago. There’s a crater on the eastern side of the continent that’s something like three hundred miles wide. The impact was so massive that it might have caused the breakup of the supercontinent of Gondwana. They’ve taken a lot of samples from meteor