Apocalypse to Go (42 page)

“He’s coming closer,” I whispered. “The Spottie, I mean.”

Ari nodded to show he’d heard. He studied the nearby spread of garbage, then picked up a fist-sized lump of rusty metal from the ground. I had no time to wonder why.

I focused on Michael. Mike was moving down a long hallway toward the huge open space Javert and I had seen, but he paused and then darted sidewise into some sort of opening. I felt his flash of triumph as he grabbed a small object from a flat surface. He was so pleased to have it that I could finally identify what he’d been searching for. The code tube! He had no way of knowing that we’d already released Sean from the StopCollar.

Michael left the small room he’d been in and started inching his way along a corridor. The huge room loomed in front of him. I realized that he was approaching stairs, an improvised rickety-looking set that led up to the ceiling.

“Ari!” I whispered. “Mike’s about to come up.”

Ari made no answer. He was staring across the open space at a small gap between piles of rubble, just a few feet from the hatch itself. On the bigger of the two piles, a fallen wall lay across a hunk of metal girder. I caught a trace of movement. Dad laid a warning hand on my shoulder. I froze, barely breathing. In the still of the windless day, a clutch of paper bags, stuck against the girder, fluttered with a tiny rustle. I heard a low sucking sound like a very small pump.

Ari rose to a kneeling position and threw the chunk of scrap metal toward the sound. It landed with a thump. He dropped flat onto the ground. I never heard a gun fire, but something whistled through the air in the direction of the thump. Ari got up to a kneel again.

“He’s got an air rifle,” he whispered. “Clever bastard.”

We waited. I heard another rustle, another pumping sound. The metal hatch shuddered and with a scrape and groan began to slide back. I heard a growl. The Maculate’s head appeared from behind the rubble heaps. Claw had also risen to a kneel. He swung up the rifle he was carrying and aimed not at the hatch but straight at me. Ari shot first. Claw’s head jerked around. He rose to his feet in what must have been a sheer animal reflex, because he fell in an instant. His body thudded onto the downed girder with a spray of red blood. His gun slipped from his flaccid hands and dropped onto the clutch of paper bags. The hatch slammed shut.

“Nola, don’t look,” Ari said. “He won’t have a face left.”

The force of his icy rage knocked the breath out of me. I gulped air and summoned Qi to steady myself down.

“Anyone else?” Ari said. “In the immediate vicinity, I mean?”

“No.” I could hear my voice shaking. “Not between us and the east, where the roller coaster is. There are some people over there.”

Ari’s communicator beeped in his shirt pocket. He took it out. “Nathan here,” he said. “Is that you, Hendriks?”

I could just hear Jan’s answer. “Yes. We heard a shot.”

“I took out the Spottie.”

“Good.”

“Can you get a fix on our position?”

“Yes. We’re proceeding forward under cover.”

“We’ll wait.” Ari clicked off the communicator and returned it to his pocket.

“Wait?” I said. “Michael—”

“Do you know if that was Mike opening the hatch or was it Scorch? Can you be sure?”

I realized that I didn’t know, not with any certainty.

“Scan,” Dad said.

I did. I picked up Michael right away, no longer triumphant, still simmering with rage as he pressed up against a freestanding wall. I also saw a muddled, fuzzy image of the open space in front of him: the big underground level to the Fun House that Sean had mentioned. Out on the floor a man paced back and forth. It wasn’t Michael. I had a feeling
that I could almost see the long metal slide behind him and some other tall structure as well. Nothing came clear.

“Okay, it was Scorch. He’s got to be right under the damned hatch. Mike’s watching from the side.”

“I thought so. Scorch must be trying to prevent Mike from getting out.” Ari paused, listening. “Here comes Hendriks and his squad.”

I turned to speak to Dad. He’d disappeared.

I
YELPED, AND ARI TWISTED AROUND
, rifle at the ready.

“What?” he snapped. “Your father! Where is he?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I can guess,” I said. “He’s gone after Michael.”

“A stupid move! Damn him!”

I choked back my impulse to snarl in my father’s defense. When I ran an SM:P for Dad, I found him down in the complex below us. He was standing in the middle of a narrow corridor and turning his head back and forth, as if he was deciding which way to go. The sounds of footsteps crunching trash and men’s voices brought my mind back to the upper air.

Shouting Ari’s name, Jan led his squad—Sgt. Grampian and four street cops—out of the rubble. Ari called back, and we stood up to join them. I hung back, but the men surrounded the hatch, a square of metal three feet on a side. One edge sported a pair of handles, shiny from recent use. I drifted forward and ran an SM:L for the area immediately under the hatch—no one near it. Scorch and Michael must have moved away from the stairs to resume their deadly game. With Javert’s help, I sensed them: Scorch hopeless and furious, Michael merely furious. I could find Dad, too, but his position kept changing, blinking, as he fast-walked through the complex, one minute here, the next there. I gave it up.

“Above ground’s been cleared of hostiles,” Jan said. “Where’s our senior O’Grady?”

“Down under,” I said. “He’s trying to fetch Michael out.”

Ari muttered something under his breath. From the tone I was glad I didn’t understand it.

“You’re the one with military experience,” Jan said to Ari. “Should we wait?”

“It depends.” Ari turned to me. “Is Scorch the only hostile in the complex?”

“Yes. He’s not going to come out now. He’s not deaf, and so he must have heard us up here.”

“Then we’ll open the hatch. Nola, stand back from the edge.” Ari glanced around. “Grampian?”

“Acceptable, yes.” Grampian looked around at his officers. “Follow his orders. The Jamaican knows what he’s doing.”

Ari and Grampian took up positions either side of the hatch. Jan moved back a few feet from the third side but stood where he could shoot anything coming out of it. All three held their rifles at the ready. Two patrolmen bent down and each grabbed one handle. They counted, one, two, three, and on three pulled the hatch up toward them like a shield. They stepped back and let it fall in their direction with a clang and a drift of dust. The opening appeared, dark against the pale dirt around it. I felt the stab of an ASTA and ran an SM:D.

“Scorch is waiting for someone to step on the stairs,” I said. “He’s behind the curved wall by the slide. I can feel his SPP. He wants to take some of you with him.”

“Where’s Mike?” Ari said.

“Around the other side of the big room. There’s someone standing just under the slide, not Scorch—crud! I should have known. It’s Dad. Mike’s moving out into the room.”

Shots. The twang of a bullet striking metal. More shots. I felt every one of them like electric shocks down my spine. I wanted to scream. My mouth had turned too dry to make a sound.

Dad’s voice, echoing up, “You can come down now. He’s dead.”

Consciously, I never ran another search or scan. Adrenaline and Qi together flooded my mind and gave me a temporary power of vision. I could see the scene below like a picture painted on a vast piece of cloth that floated and wavered in the air in front of me. Dad was standing between the huge metal slide and the rickety stairs, staring across the room at a dead man lying facedown on the floor. Michael stood behind the body with a gun in his hand.

The sound of men pounding down the staircase jerked me away from the vision. Ari and Grampian had disappeared inside, while Jan was in the process of following them down. The patrolmen fanned out around the hatch and stayed up above, just in case, as one of them said to me. I was so stiff with tension that moving hurt, but I forced myself. I trotted over and went down the stairs.

When I reached the floor below, Dad ran over and joined me. A shaft of dusty sunlight fell through the open hatch and illuminated enough of the huge room for me to see what I needed to. On the other side, past the stairway and the slide both, Michael stood staring down at Scorch’s dead body. He was still holding the gun. I could tell that he was fighting back tears. Ari called his name and waited until Michael looked up and saw him. He walked over and threw an arm around Mike’s shoulders. Mike started trembling.

“Yes,” Ari said. “It hurts.”

Michael took a deep breath and nodded his agreement.

“You’re one of us now,” Ari said. “Never forget how you’re feeling at the moment. It will keep you from killing someone when there’s no need.”

“I did need to, didn’t I?” Michael was whispering. “Now, I mean.”

“Oh, yes,” Ari said. “This goes in the report as a justified homicide, an emergency measure when protecting an unarmed world-walker. That’s who’s standing with Nola. You
will
have to answer to the liaison captain at a hearing.”

“Okay. Here.” He held out the gun, and Ari took it.

“That’s what I was waiting for,” Dad said to me. “You
never want to startle a man with a gun in his hand, particularly when he’s just used it.”

Michael started to walk over to me and Dad. Halfway across the room he stopped and stared. Dad took a step forward. I could feel Dad’s SPP, a tangle of feelings: pride in his youngest son, relief at his own safety, regret that it had taken a killing to keep him safe. Yet, most of all, I picked up his joy at seeing Michael again.

“Dad?” Michael said. “Dad!”

“None other.” Dad started toward him, then looked back over his shoulder at me. “By the by, you’re marrying the right man, even if he is a cop.”

He’d just made me a tremendous concession, but I had ground to defend from that dark cloud of wedded doom.

“Dad,” I said, “I am not marrying anyone.”

“We’ll just see about that.” He nodded my way, then strode to Michael’s open arms.

Ari hurried over to me. “What are you doing down here? I told you—”

“Oh, shut up!” I was snuffling back tears. “I had to see them safe for myself.”

Ari snarled and pointed at the stairs. I took another look at Dad and Michael, who stood close together, face-to-face, talking in soft voices. My gaze wandered to Scorch’s body and the pool of blood thickening around him. I decided that, yes, I’d seen enough and headed for the stairs.

I’d gotten about halfway up when something came floating down from outside on a waft of air. Trash, I thought, and swatted at it to knock it aside. I missed, got a better look in the shaft of sunlight, and grabbed it instead. A peacock feather, clean and whole. Despite the humid air, I turned cold. I hurried up the rest of the way. For a change, the watery yellow sunlight, tainted with the dusty mist, struck me as beautiful.

The patrolmen, all armed, had taken up positions around the perimeter of the open space.

“Did anyone come by here?” I held up the feather. “Did someone throw this down the stairs?”

“No, Miss,” one of the street cops said. “We would have
seen them. There’s probably a lot of junk left under there, from the old days, I mean, when this place still worked.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” I knew he wasn’t, of course, but I saw no use in pressing the issue.

Javert called to me.
YOU OKAY NOW?

Yes, but. Peacock Angel cult—do you know anything about that?

He radiated puzzlement.
HUMAN THING YES/NO

Yes. Religion.

Utter and complete puzzlement.

Never mind. It’s okay. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help.

WELCOME. I GO BACK TO TANK.
A wave of disgust followed in the wake of that last word.

Okay. So long and thanks for all the Qi.

In a flood of squiddish laughter Javert broke the connection.

I was expecting the usual bureaucratic police procedures at the site and afterward. From the number of gunshots I’d heard, I knew that a lot of men had died both in Playland and out on Fulton. I doubted that the raids on the safe houses had been bloodless. Ari and Jan had just carried up Scorch’s corpse when Hafner arrived, flanked with the men he’d commanded on the raids. Grampian hurried to meet him and report in. Hafner listened, nodding now and then to show approval.

“The Spottie’s dead,” Grampian told him. “Right over there. Nathan killed him.”

Hafner walked over to the girder where the Maculate still hung, splayed out. Flies had already gathered for the blood. Hafner spat on Claw’s body, then turned away and walked over to Ari. He shook Ari’s hand and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Good job,” Hafner said. “One less crook for you CBI men to take back with you.”

Hafner walked off to rejoin Grampian. With a shake of his head, Ari came over to me.

“Won’t there be some kind of inquiry?” I asked him.

He looked at me as though I’d turned into a blithering idiot. “Here?” he said.