Blood Of Angels (48 page)

Nina looked steadily back at him. 'Thank you, Paul. Yes, I would.'

'Done deal. I can't give you an actual timing, because I'll be triggering it myself. Still, that should keep you on your toes. Make each thought a happy one because, you know, it could be the last.'

The driver got out. There was a finality about the sound of his door closing. Things were starting to happen for the last time.

Nina kept her eyes on Paul. 'You realize that however much you pretend otherwise, your leaving me alive is basically a deed of compassion?'

'And?'

'So you can do it. You can empathize. Do it more often than not and you could become a real boy. Just like Pinocchio.'

'I'm more real than you'll ever understand.'

'No, you're not. You're the same as me or anyone else. There's no genetic difference between you and Ward. You do not behave the way you do because you're part of a master race. It's just because of what has happened to you in life. You could be like everyone else.'

'Right,' he said, curiously. 'And who would these normal people be? You should have spent more time watching the news and less time hunting down people like me. Your species has been stealing and killing since it walked on two legs. It has been lying since it could talk. We're not the only ones who war and rape and murder. Only difference is you pretend it's a bad thing.'

'Paul — you really
aren't
a different species to us. You know that, don't you? Somewhere inside your head you must understand that you're human too.'

'No,' he said. 'We are the song of God. We've been tied to you for far too long and now we're cutting the cord. You're not going to be around to see it, but trust me — it's going to be wild.'

He opened the door and got out. He exchanged a few words with the driver and then went around the back of the car. He did something inside the trunk and Nina heard a beep she could only assume was the sound of a device being armed. The driver walked quickly away.

Paul came back to the door and leaned down to look in at her.

'You may think that you might be able to get one of these doors open,' he said. 'Even though you're tied up and they'll all be locked. Seems like a long shot to me, but maybe you'll hope it isn't. So I should explain that each door is wired to the bag of tricks in the trunk. Open one, and it all goes off. Do me a favour? Give me time to get out of the building before you try.'

Nina looked back at him and tried to work out, finally, what it was that looked out of his eyes.

'Paul,' she said. 'Do you even remember who you are?'

He shut the door. There was the sound of central locking being engaged.

And then his footsteps, going away.

The basement was a warren of storage designed for a time when you couldn't get goods delivered seven days a week. The stairwell from the kitchen led down into a space filled with metal racks. There was a pile of packing materials from frozen pizzas: also a small room entirely filled with old wooden chairs. No school employees to be seen.

John and I ran through this section trying to get through to the loading area at the back. Finally we found a corridor which was brighter at the far end. We hurried along it until we were a couple of yards from an open door. John motioned with his head and I took the side.

He stepped through, looping around to the right. When there was no sound of shooting, I followed through.

We found ourselves in a long, open space that seemed to stretch the width of the school. This was intermittently lit by strip lights on the low ceiling: tiles and mildewed stretches gave the whole area a greenish cast. Over to the left it became lighter where the sloping access road entered from the rear of the school. You could hear the distant sound of a couple of hundred kids filtering down from above. Still no sirens. Where in Christ were these people?

'You should go warn them,' Zandt said.

'I will when we've found Nina,' I said. 'Or you could do it right now.'

'If Paul's here, the bomb isn't going to go off yet.'

'You don't know what he's prepared to risk or do. And if he's not here it could go off any second and you're not going to find that out until too late.'

He just shrugged and ran off to the right. I realized I wasn't sure what John was prepared to risk either. I wished Bobby had been here with me instead. He had been a better man than John and a nicer one than me. He could be trusted to do the right thing, he had always put others before himself without considering the cost, and he had a level of expertise in violent situations that had been frankly disconcerting. I was an amateur and I knew now was not the time to make a single mistake.

People had to be warned.

It was going to have to be me who did it.

I swore and started running towards the slope. I was only a quarter of the way there when I realized a shortish figure was standing in the shadows by the wall down at the far end.

He shot at me. Three measured clicks from a silenced handgun.

I was moving fast so I just threw myself headlong across the remainder of the central space into the opposite bay. I hit the side wall hard and crash-slid down onto the floor. I tried to roll out of this and get in a position where I could fire back at the shooter, but he just kept up a steady rate of bullets past the end of the bay.

'Ward?'

John's shout rebounded so much off hard, echoing walls that I couldn't tell how far away he was calling from.

'I'm okay,' I yelled back. 'Can you get him?'

The answer was a volley of gunfire that went on for ten seconds. Loud claps from John's weapon interspersed with soft clicks from the other guy, the exchange laced with the flick and whine of ricochets.

Immediately after the last of John's shots rang out, I heard him shout 'Now, Ward!'

Before I could think about it I ran out of the bay and banked left, holding my gun out to the right and firing again and again. John was providing covering fire. Halfway across the central space I made him out, hunkered down at the entrance to a bay about thirty yards up on the opposite side. The last few feet were accompanied by the sound of the shooter firing at me again.

Then I was in the bay, bewildered to still be alive. I was surrounded by old desks. My ears were ringing. 'Jesus.'

'Who the hell is this guy?' John said.

'No idea,' I panted. 'But we're not getting anywhere near that exit until he's dead.'

'That's not going to be easy,' John said. 'He knows what he's doing. He very nearly nailed you.'

'Thanks for the information.'

'He missed. It's a happy story.' He stuck his gun out of the end of the bay and fired again. The return shot came a second later.

At the back of our bay was a door. I went over, yanked it wide. Beyond lay a passageway heading left.

'It's not going to get us closer to him,' I said. 'But it might get us in the other direction. Which frankly suits me fine.'

I went through first. John followed, backing away from the mouth of the bay, gun held out in front in case the guy decided to run into the bay after us.

When we were both through I shut the door. We hurried along the narrow passageway, reloading feverishly. About every ten yards there were further doors on the left side: the ones that opened gave onto bays just like the one we'd come from, stacked half full of stuff the school didn't need right now. I opened each in turn but couldn't see any value in going through any of them. Then the corridor ended abruptly in a flat wall.

'Shit,' John said.

'I guess we're going out one of those doors after all.'

'We at least need to know where that guy is now. We're trapped. If he comes across to that first bay and into this corridor then we're fish in a barrel.'

I opened the final door. It opened onto another bay. When I stepped out into it I saw there was another exactly opposite, and that it did not hold boxes or chairs like the others, and yet was not empty.

It held a big black car.

'We've found it,' I said.

===OO=OOO=OO===

None of the car's lights were on. From our position the tinting of the glass and the low light made it impossible to see what or who, if anything or anyone, was inside.

I stuck a foot out of the bay and jumped back just ahead of a bullet which came immediately down the central aisle. The guy with the gun was holding his position up at the top. Presumably his job was partly to stop us getting to the car, which was why he'd passed up the chance to run down into the passageway and take us out in there. He could see us the moment we tried to break for the other bay. He was some distance away now, however, and if we ran fast enough and asked for luck, we could still make it across. Probably.

John was already tensed, ready to make the run.

But I suddenly realized it wasn't that simple. To the right of the bay in the end wall was an arched doorway. This gave access into another section of the basement, under the next part of the building. It was very dark through there and we couldn't see if…

'Wait a second,' I said. 'Paul
must
be down here too.'

'How do you know?'

'If he got out of the building then this other guy would have left too. So assuming Paul was in that car when it came down here, either he's in it still or he's somewhere down there on the right.'

John got what I was saying. If Paul was still down here then the car could be checkmated in their lines of fire. Either the guy down the end shot us as we were running across to it, or we ran straight into a trap which Paul had in his sights from a location just the other side of the arch into the next section.

John nodded wearily. 'We only get one try at this.'

I didn't know what to do. We were twenty feet from a bomb that might have Nina strapped to it, and we couldn't get out of the building to warn anyone outside. There was no way back or sideways. We were going forward from here. The only question was which direction we took those steps in, and how many we had left. I sent up a thought, a question, hoping someone with more guile than me might see a way ahead.

Now would be good, Bobby. Now would be really good.

The seconds ticked by. John took a step forward. Another bullet whined past the end of the bay.

'We're just going to have to take the risk, Ward…'

And finally my old friend answered.

'His phone,' I said, slowly. 'Paul called your phone. His number will be stored. You can call him back.'

'He'll have the ringer off.'

'Maybe, maybe not.'

'Getting a signal down here…'

'John — it's all we have.'

He got his phone out and hit the button which showed previous incoming calls. The number listed last had come at around the right time and had no entry in his phone book.

'Got it,' he said.

'Wait.' I took a deep breath, tightened my grip on my gun. 'This is bang and go. You dial. If it rings and we hear it and the sound suggests he's not right there waiting to mow us down, we go that instant. I'll run across to the car. You go through there and find Paul.'

He thought about it, knew this was it. 'Okay.'

'Stay alive,' I said.

He looked at me with eyes full of the reflections of people long gone. His smile was sad but real. 'This isn't living.'

'It's better than nothing.'

'Get Nina out of here, if you can. Don't you dare come after me.'

'I know that's what you want.'

He breathed out heavily. 'You call it.'

I waited a beat, and then said: 'Now.'

John pressed the button on his phone. There was a series of quiet tones as it dialled the last incoming number. Two, three seconds of silence.

Then we heard a phone ring. It was in the area on the right, way back in there. Twenty, thirty yards or more.

'Go,' I said.

I ran straight across the aisle. John went just as fast but angled right to take him through the arch into the other section. Three, four shots fizzed through the air between us. None ended in a dry slap.

I made it into the bay and skidded to a halt near the back of the car, spun round immediately to be ready in case the guy down the end had orders to come running down here and duke it out.

'John?' I called, but he was gone.

Gone into the other section, gone away down the road he had always meant to follow to its end.

===OO=OOO=OO===

I gave it thirty seconds and then risked turning away from the aisle to the car. I went quickly to the back door on the right and reached for the handle.

My hand was actually on it when I heard a soft thud.

I started back, not knowing what I was hearing. Then it came again, and I realized something was impacting on the window from the other side.

I pulled my hand back from the door, squatted down and got my face as close as I could. Used my hands to shield out the light.

Saw Nina's face inside.

I couldn't see her hands and she looked awkwardly out of position, as if stretching against something. She'd banged her head against the window to alert me.

She pushed her face up as close as she could and mouthed something urgently. It took three tries, but I got it.

She was telling me the doors were wired.

Dust, first, and then the smell of something damp. Darkness and a heavy and dismal ache across his head.

Lee sat upright, slowly and painfully. He had no idea where he was. He tried to stand but the space was confined and his legs were unsteady. He crashed back again, bringing down a pile of something noisy off the hard wooden shelves behind.

He tried again, using his hands to help himself up. Got to a standing position, head spinning. White lights in front of his eyes. Felt strange and claustrophobic. Felt like he was somewhere small.

He put his hands out to the right. Shambled carefully in that direction for a couple of steps, before hitting another wall of shelves. Some of the things on there felt soft, like cloths or towels. His foot hit something with a clang. There was another thing that had to be a mop.

He was in a cupboard.

He tried to go the other way and half-fell against a door. He had a vague feeling that he might even have done this before, that he might have woken up a little earlier and shouted a while, before checking out again. His head felt like it could wobble out on him at any moment. His head hurt really fucking badly.