Apocalypse to Go (39 page)

“Good.” He slipped the communicator back into his shirt pocket. “We want the gang members off the Playland site, don’t we? Defending the safe houses, running for their
sodding lives, I don’t care which.” He turned to Major Grace. “Chief Hafner’s on his way. He’ll post a man as your bodyguard for the remainder of today and tonight. Maybe longer, if necessary.”

“My dear Eric!” She smiled. “I mean, Agent Nathan. I appreciate the thought, but I have the best bodyguard in the world. And if He should decide that it’s my time to join Him in the world of light, then I will, no matter who stands guard here.”

“Maybe so,” Ari said. “But I’d just as soon he had some backup.”

The backup arrived in a few minutes when Chief Hafner and two patrolmen strode into the dining room. The few people who hadn’t gobbled their lunch and left got up and hurried out. I looked the ordinary cops over carefully, but none of them displayed any lycanthropic tendencies. It seemed logical that the wolves would lead the hierarchy.

The Chief nodded at me and the Major to acknowledge us, then took Ari to one side. While they stood talking, the patrolmen took charge of the pair of would-be assassins. One cop substituted handcuffs for the conscious guy’s belt, then hauled him to his feet and held him at gunpoint. The other patrol officer cuffed the ensorcellment victim.

“What happened here?” he said to me.

“He hit his head when he fell.”

The cop glanced at Major Grace, who smiled in fake helplessness. “I had my back to him,” she said.

“Okay. Hit his head will do, then.”

Ari hurried over to join us.

“The Chief wants to speak with you, Major,” Ari said. “O’Grady, let’s go.”

As we left Mission House, we met the police lieutenant, who told us that the Chief had ordered a wagon brought for our transportation out to the beach. He handed Ari the keys and indicated a black vehicle sitting at the curb. When we inspected it, we saw that it had been cobbled together out of several different trucks. Under its off-kilter roof it would seat eight people on tattered bench seats.

“Good, it’s got an engine,” I said to Ari. “I was afraid it would have horses.” I started to say more, then realized that
a smear of blood decorated the front of his shirt. “Are you hurt?”

“No.” He glanced down. “That’s where I cleaned off the Beretta.”

“Right. After pistol-whipping that guy.”

“No need to exaggerate! I only hit him once.”

“Whatever. I’d better drive.”

Ari glanced into the front seat. “It’s a manual transmission.”

“Damn! Okay, you drive, but please, try to not kill anyone on the way.”

W
E RETURNED TO SPARE14’S OFFICE
to find Sergeant Grampian and the two patrol officers still present, waiting with Spare14 and Hendriks. As soon as we walked in, Spare14 told me that Dad had never come back.

“He will,” I said. “You can’t blame him for not wanting to hang out with a bunch of cops.”

Spare14 gave me an odd look. I could have sworn he felt guilty about having arrested my father in the first place, though I couldn’t see why he would. I flopped down on the couch to grab a few minutes’ rest. My Qi badly needed to recharge.

“Is there a long gun available?” Ari said. “I wish now that I’d brought mine.”

“I have some in the kitchen,” Spare14 said. “In that narrow little cupboard. I think it used to hold an ironing board.”

Jan grinned and trotted into the kitchen. He brought back two rifles that reminded me of guns from Western movies. He handed one to Ari, who smiled and ran loving fingertips over the wooden stock. Spare14 opened one of his desk drawers, rummaged through it, and gave each man a leather sack of cartridges.

“Bolt-action Winchesters,” Ari said. “Solid, but I hope they reload quickly.”

“Let’s hope you don’t need more than six shots,” Grampian said. “Hendriks, you and I need to get on the road. These two men—” he pointed at the regular officers, “—are staying with Agent Spare.”

“Right,” Jan said. “Nathan, you’ve got a chrono, I see.”

They actually did coordinate their watches, just like the movies. I was impressed. The final plan required precise timing. Hafner’s two squads would begin their raids on the safe houses precisely at 14:30, a time chosen to fall after the working people’s lunch breaks but before rush hour. The safe houses were located on the stretch of Mission Street that ran parallel to Market, right downtown.

“We can’t risk harming pedestrians and bystanders,” Grampian said. “It’s not our job to kill innocent people.”

I would have been surprised by this attack of morality had I not remembered that wolves were the original breeding stock for herd dogs. Apparently, Hafner and his top level personnel were evolving toward domestication.

Jan and Grampian would move their men into Playland from the east side at 15:00 sharp. Ari, Dad, and I would sneak into the complex from the west five minutes later. With luck, I could find Michael and Sean immediately. Dad would walk them out of the hidden rooms. The Playland squads would meet in the middle of the ruins. With luck, again—lots of it. “Where is your father?” Spare14 sounded irritable. “I never even saw him leave.”

“Right behind you,” Dad said.

Spare14 yelped and spun around. None of us had seen him return.

“One good ambush deserves another,” Dad said.

To give him credit, Spare14 managed to smile. “Only fair, yes. May I ask where you were?”

“Up in Old Sutro’s front yard. I had a look at that statue of Diana.” Dad grinned at me. “You saw something worth seeing, Noodles. She’s guarding a gate.”

“Ye gods!” Spare14 said. “A trans-world gate?”

I caught my breath with a hiss.

“Just that. Now, I don’t know what lies on the other side of it. It’s out of balance somehow. I’m not sure what’s
wrong with it, but since I wasn’t sure I could get back, I didn’t try it out.”

“Wise of you. Very useful information, that. Thank you.”

“Well, the Public Solicitor back on Five made the terms of my release clear enough.” Dad looked at Spare14 with an unreadable expression. “I gave my word I’d help you with this. Damned if I’ll break it.”

Spare14’s SPP oozed a peculiar kind of guilty feeling. Later, I reminded myself, I was going to ask both men what lay between them. At the moment we had a few other things to attend to.

“As far as I could tell,” Dad continued, “there’s some sort of tunnel been dug nearby, leading up to the statue’s position. I don’t have the talents for spying out that sort of thing, but I could hear the hollowness when I walked over it. Our Nola might be able to tell us more.”

“Very well,” Spare14 said. “We’ll go have a walk around the gardens first. It’s only thirteen hundred now. We have time for a look. That tunnel might lead us to the Axeman.”

“It could also be his escape route,” Ari said. “We’d best make sure it’s blocked.”

“Hang on a minute, then,” Dad said. “I’d better collect an orb or two, just in case.”

He hurried into the bedroom. I could hear him rummaging around in the luggage, but when he returned, he didn’t seem to be carrying anything. I figured that the orbs could shrink or slide into one of those curly dimensions Willa had mentioned.

“Shall we go, gentlemen?” Spare said. “Nathan, if you’d drive—”

“No,” I interrupted. “We don’t want to turn into the Keystone Kops, do we? I think my father had better drive.”

Ari shot me a scowl.

“I can get you there a bit faster,” Dad said. “Especially with an orb right to hand.”

“Quite.” Spare14 looked rueful. “I tend to forget.”

“Not too fast, though, Dad. I need to run a few scans.”

The drive out on Geary went smoothly, at least on the mechanical level. Although Dad hadn’t driven a car in thirteen
years, the reflexes came right back to him. That we met barely any traffic on the street helped. My scans turned up nothing specific, but the closer we came to the ocean the more my feeling of dread grew. At the dirt crossroad that stood in for 19th Avenue, the dread crystallized.

“Sean’s in big trouble.”

Dad hit the accelerator. The wagon jumped forward. In a few seconds we reached a narrow street, partly paved, that would have been Point Lobos Avenue back on Four. He parked at the crest of an overgrown hillside that sloped down to the ocean beach below.

Once, here just as on my home world, Adolf Sutro’s mansion, a huge house set in a terraced hillside garden, had existed as a masterpiece of American wealth, the showplace of a self-made man. His staff had created flower beds and little groves, long lawns and flagstone paths. Sutro had imported copies of the world’s most famous statues, all of them made of the finest marble. I’d seen photos of the walks and stone parapets, the lacy white wrought-iron benches, and the utter bad taste of everything—the Venus de Milo stuck on a garden wall, a flower bed depicting an American flag.

When the Sutros died, both Sutro version 3 and Sutro version 4, they’d left the property to their respective cities. Neither city, San Francisco or SanFran, had the wherewithal to take care of it. Squatters moved into the mansion and inadvertently set it on fire one cold night. Vandals and decay gutted the gardens. At home, once the Great Depression began to lift, the San Francisco city government had hauled away the ruins and turned what was left into a tidy little park with spectacular views.

Not so here on Interchange, where depressions of all kinds had never ended. The area covered by the gone-wild garden looked twice as big as the park back home. From the street I could see the concrete foundations of the burnt-out mansion poking through the rampant shrubbery, a tangle of greenery that shouted “danger.” Although the others piled out of the wagon, I sat for a moment and ran SM: Location scans. I picked up a distant trace of Sean, but the collar stopped me from pinning it down.

“Bad situation?” Ari opened the car door for me.

“You bet. Someone’s in there. I’m not sure if they’re waiting for us or not.”

He swore under his breath. I got out of the wagon and took a good look around. A grove of trees, thick with underbrush, lined the street side of the gardens. In that riot of untended botany any number of enemies might have been lying in ambush.

“Here’s something worse,” I said. “I can’t find the Axeman at all. We know he doesn’t have the talents to hide himself.”

“Damn!” Spare14 said. “Perhaps he’s found some sort of interference device. Something that works like the StopCollar without having the drastic effect on the user.”

“Perhaps,” Ari said. “But I’ve got a bad feeling about this, and I’m not even psychic.”

The men readied their weapons. I gathered Qi in a loose skein. Spare14 insisted that he take the point himself, the most dangerous position. Ari walked just behind him, rifle at the ready. Dad and I occupied the middle of the line, and the two patrolmen took up the rear guard.

It took some searching among the trees lining the street, but we finally found a dirt path in. We walked between a pair of headless marble lions, covered in graffiti, and under the twisted remains of a towering wrought iron gate, blood red with rust. Panels of scrollwork dangled precariously above us from sagging pillars. I heard a bird chirp twice, then silence. The entire entrance area, I realize, had fallen silent, much too silent.

As we walked through the gate, I heard a whistle off to one side and distant. Human or bird? I couldn’t tell. We came out to a long view down the terraces. Eighty years of neglect had let the trees grow tall and shrubs and weeds fill in between them. High grass, clover, and wild mustard, all of it drying out here in early summer, had turned the flower beds into strips of meadow bordered with bushes and tangles of weeds. Everywhere I could see fallen statues, some smashed to pieces. Graffiti, most of it foul, covered every exposed bit of stone.

About twenty yards in, we came across a circular area
that once had been paved—a carriage drive, I guessed. The paving stones had kept down the weeds and formed a clearing of sorts. From it, graveled paths sloped down to overgrown lawns streaked with patches of tumbled stones and mud. In the troubling silence I could hear the distant murmur of the ocean far below.

“Someone’s cleared these paths recently,” Spare14 said. “O’Grady, do any personnel appear on your scans?”

I ran an SM:L. “Someone—something’s in here,” I said. “I don’t read them as hostiles.” I tried another scan and picked up half-formed talents. “Outcasts, maybe, people born with bad disabilities.”

“Well, we’ll do our best not to cause trouble for them.” Spare14 spoke loudly and clearly. “We do not want to harm the harmless. We’re only hunting a murderer.”

I heard rustling among the nearby shrubbery, quick steps fading away, as if a person scampered deeper into the gardens. Distant whistles sounded. Although the silence felt as thick as ever, I sensed another person approaching. His SPP radiated a desperate hope mingled with terror.

“Hold up,” I whispered. “A messenger.”

Among the tangled bushes and brambles a human face appeared, topped with red hair as wild as the foliage, then a pair of hands in thick leather gloves. With a rustle and a grunt a little person, his body a classic case of dwarfism, he parted the tangle and stepped out. He wore patched-together clothes of old denim. I went down on one knee to look at him eye to eye. He smiled, and his terror began to ease into simple fear.