Restore from Backup by J. F. Gonzalez

Author:J. F. Gonzalez [Oliveri, J. F. Gonzales, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: technological horror
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2017-12-08T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The first thing Lyle did when he got home was pull The Golden Bough out of his bag and sit down at the dining room table. He’d driven all the way home with a lead foot and twice he’d had to pull over to calm his nerves. The more he thought about what Bob and Keith told him, the more scared he got. And with Carl jumping ship so suddenly, begging him to quit his job, it had to add up.

Lyle paged through the book, trying to find references to priests or magicians aiding in warding off disease, but he couldn’t find anything. There were chapters about wood spirits and satyrs, soothsaying and turning lead into gold, references to a deity known as Hanbi or Hanpa, and entities known as the Watchers and the Mazzikim, but none of these helped. He found passages about curing individual disease, but nothing about warding it off en-masse.

He soon became too agitated to concentrate. He flipped through to the index, found dozens of entries on magic being used to ward off storms, disease and invading armies, and as he flipped to the appropriate page to begin his reading further, his cell phone rang.

Lyle scooped it up quickly. “Yeah?”

“Lyle?” It was Carl.

“Carl! Listen, I talked to some of the guys at work and they told me some crazy shit about KDS crunching numbers to help magicians and priests in—”

“It’s too late, Lyle, they’re on to me.” Carl’s voice was strangled and he coughed weakly.

A stab of fear went through Lyle’s belly. “You okay?”

Harsh breathing on the other end. Lyle could hear traffic in the background. “Damn … this motherfucker hurts.”

“Are you sick?” Oh Jesus, don’t let the bad .dll file be the thing that fucks things up!

“Not sick,” Carl managed, his breath a wheeze. “The minute I stepped in this phone booth to call you …” He paused, seeming to struggle with his speech. “… I was shot.”

“What?”

“Leave …” Carl said, his voice rough, fading. “Pack up … leave now …” There was a thump on the other end and a series of cracking sounds, then the background noise of the traffic from wherever it was Carl had called from.

“Carl! Carl!”

There was more noise, an excited voice. Lyle kept shouting Carl’s name and he thought he heard another voice in the background, distinctly male, say, “Jesus, man, there’s blood all over this guy! Hey! Hey, somebody call an ambulance!”

Lyle yelled into the phone and a moment later he heard somebody’s voice on the other end. “You talking to this guy?”

“His name’s Carl,” Lyle yelled, clearly panicked now. “He’s just been shot!”

“I’m hanging up and calling an ambulance,” the man said and then the line went dead.

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