Bzrk Apocalypse (31 page)

Calm. No hurry. He drew his throwing hatchet, and Keats could see

the killer’s eye on him, on a pitiful crawling wretch, saw the way it

focused on his upturned face.

Alien, the sight of his own face as he waited to die. Strange and

alien. Keats knew the face, knew it was him, but how could that be?

The blessed peace of action had faded, and now he was a bug, a worm

waiting to be crushed by the boot of the human god.

The hatchet flew.

It grazed Keats’s shoulder and clattered to the floor of the elevator.

Was Wilkes still screaming? Someone was.

Caligula blinked. Stared.

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MICHAEL GRANT

Knew.
Understood.
Because Caligula did not miss, not with gun

or hatchet. He did not miss, and he knew then it could only be some

fault in his vision.

Keats’s biot sawed and more nerves parted.

Caligula drew a knife and bounded, like some bizarre kangaroo,

rushing with unnatural speed. Keats saw the distance shorten in a

heartbeat, saw the killer’s focus, saw his own scared face, Wilkes’s

open mouth, a flash of Plath’s hand pressing down on the door’s

Close button, and the elevator door closing too slowly.

Caligula reached the elevator when the doors were still six inches

apart. He thrust in a hand to stop it.

Wilkes was on him like an animal, biting the hand, snarling,

shaking her head like a terrier with a rat.

Caligula yelled in pain and rage.

Keats saw the door from the inside.

The door through Caligula’s eyes.

The knife dropped from Caligula’s bloody hand, but he did not

withdraw, would not let the door close.

The hatchet was in Keats’s hand before he knew it. He observed it

through Caligula’s eye, saw the killer seeing him, saw the killer track

the hatchet as it went back and came down fast and hard and Caligula

tried to pull the hand back now, but Wilkes still had it in her teeth

and the hatchet blade hit with a cleaver-on-bone sound, barely miss-

ing Wilkes’s nose and biting deep into Caligula’s flesh.

Wilkes recoiled then, the hand pulled away, pumping blood from

the gash.

Keats saw the doors close from both sides.

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BZRK APOCALYPSE

He saw the killer stare at his mangled hand, then through his

own eyes saw the little pink curls of fingers on the elevator floor.

The elevator rose.

“Billy,” Wilkes said. Her mouth was smeared with blood, forming

a terrible rictus smile.

“Up,” Keats said, and punched the button for the highest floor

available, the third floor.

“What are we going to do?” Wilkes asked and there was a sob in

her voice.

“Surrender,” Plath said.

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TWENTY-FOUR

Suarez was handcuffed. The handcuffs went through a chain that in

turn went through a massive steel ring set into the wall at head height.

The wall was in a dungeon.

The dungeon was both frightening and absurd. There were mossy

stone walls. There was straw on the stone floor. She’d been left with

a rusty pail in which to do her business. The door was too low and

made of flaking, unfinished wood. There was a narrow window, but

when she dragged her chain over to it she saw that it was fake. The

scene visible through the window was a matte painting of a medieval

village.

“Cute,” she said dryly.

It was like a movie set, or something out of a video game. Some-

one was having fun with the whole idea of a dungeon. Which was

absurd.

The scary part came from the fact that the cuffs and chain and

even the ring in the wall were all of very high-grade steel.

A man who had the bearing of a former cop or soldier, a beefy,

steroided thirtysomething with a crew cut, brought her dinner after

a while. The tray was plastic and flimsy, no use as a weapon. The

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BZRK APOCALYPSE

cutlery was plastic as well, and not the good kind. Water was in a

plastic bottle. Wine was in a paper cup.

Wine, because it was quite a good meal, considering the location.

Better than airline food, in any event. Wine in a dungeon.

“You have a name, soldier?” Suarez asked as he set the plate care-

fully on the floor, five feet from where she sat.

“Yes, sir,” he said reflexively. So (a) he
was
an ex-soldier, and (b)

he knew that she’d been an officer.

He flushed, realizing his mistake. Then said, “You can call me

Chesterfield.”

“That’s not your name. It’s a brand of cigarette.” When he did not

demur, she said, “So, I’m guessing the other guards will be Marlboro

and Lucky Strike?”

“Eat your food. Ma’am.”

“Looks good. And I am hungry.” She crawled to the food. Took a

sip of the wine. “Know what the wine is?”

“It’s French.”

“Expensive, too, I’d guess. No point paying to ship cheap wine all

the way here. Of course I’m more of a whiskey drinker.”

“So’s the boss.”

“The boss,” Suarez said pensively. “The one who thinks civiliza-

tion is about to crumble so she built Crazy Town here. You’re not

crazy, though, right? You’re just here for the money? Bad economy

and all, a former serviceman has bills to pay like anyone else.”

“If the boss says it’s all coming down, it’s all coming down. I

mean, she’s probably the smartest person in the world, smarter than

Dr. Stephen Hawking.”

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MICHAEL GRANT

Dr. Stephen Hawking?
Suarez rolled that around in her head. A

strange way for a guy who looked like this to put it.
Doctor?

“Okay, well, what do you do for fun around here while you’re

waiting for the apocalypse?”

“It won’t be an apocalypse for the people here; it will be a rebirth.”

No irony in his gaze. He was dead serious. Someone had defi-

nitely sold this boy a complete bill of goods.

“Okay, which still leaves the question of what you do to pass the

time?”

He shrugged, and Suarez detected a softness in him.
I’m going to

try not to kill you
, she thought.

“I don’t suppose there’s any way I can get a shower? You know,

hot water? Soap?” She mimed it for him, mimicking the movements

of a bar of soap over her body, not lasciviously—that would be too

obvious and set off alarm bells. Just . . . enough. She just wanted

him to connect his boredom with the mental picture of a reasonably

attractive woman taking a shower. Let him stew on that for a while.

Activate the twin male instincts of protection and predation.

Later, when the time was right, there would be the metal pail.

“No shower,” he said in a voice just a tiny bit lower than it had

been. “I could maybe get you a deck of cards.”

“I would be very grateful.”

The explosion came as the elevator rose, an impact that knocked

Keats, Plath, and Wilkes to their knees. Not an explosion that would

bring down a building. Smaller.

But the elevator stopped moving, and the door did not open. The

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BZRK APOCALYPSE

backlit buttons went dark. The overhead light snapped off, replaced

by an eerie emergency light.

“He blew up the elevator doors down there,” Keats said, offering

his hand to Plath.

She spurned it and jumped to her feet. “We have to get out of

here.”

A second explosion, more distant this time. The second elevator.

“He’s cutting himself off,” Keats said.

“He’ll die with the explosion,” Plath said. Then, softly, “Maybe

that was the plan all along.”

Wilkes had started trying to pry open the elevator doors. Keats

and Plath jumped in, jamming splintering fingernails into the gap.

Slowly, inch by inch, the door opened. They were between floors, but

with an open space of several feet.

Plath went through first, boosted by Keats. Then Wilkes. Together

they hauled Keats after them.

They were on the ground floor—the lobby floor, polished marble.

Security guards were a swarm of uniforms and plainclothes Tourists

from Denver, though minus the parkas. All were armed. In seconds

there were a dozen weapons pointed at the three of them.

“One move and we shoot,” a woman snapped.

“No need,” Plath said. “I’m Sadie McLure. We need to talk to the

Twins.”

“And in the meantime, there’s an assassin down in the basement

preparing to blow this whole place up,” Keats said.

Nervous glances went back and forth.

“Hey, dumb asses,” Wilkes said. “Shoot us or beat us up or

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MICHAEL GRANT

whatever, but there is an honest-to-God stone-cold killer down there.”

“He’s wedged a car jack behind a gas pipe,” Keats said. “In a few

minutes high-pressure gas is going to start pouring into the base-

ment.”

“Leave his eye,” Plath ordered. “Find an artery.”

Keats’s eyebrow shot up at the tone of command. Plath, who had

seemed almost to be comatose, now sounded like her old self.

“Kill him?” Keats asked. He searched her eyes, not sure what he

wanted the answer to be. In this very building Plath had refused to

kill the Twins. She had refused to commit cold-blooded murder.

Many had died since then. Much had changed.

They had just ripped m-sub yards of wire from Plath’s brain, and

parts of her gray matter were as raw as a skinned knee. If she gave the

order, who and what would be behind it? What would be her motiva-

tion? How much responsibility would she bear in the end?

And if she said—

“Kill him,” Plath said.

And if she said,
Kill him,
would he obey?

“Get them up to Jindal. Cuff ’em, keep guns on them, any bullshit,

shoot ’em,” the woman in charge snapped.

The three remaining, active members of BZRK New York were

cuffed and hustled to the main bank of elevators.

“Has he blown the pipe yet?” Plath asked Keats.

“I don’t know, Keats said. “I’m no longer on the optic nerve.”

Plath and Wilkes both knew this meant he had sent his biot to

kill Caligula.

“And the last of the righteous succumbs to the darkness,” Wilkes

said mordantly, and added, “Heh-heh-heh.”

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BZRK APOCALYPSE

Lystra Reid laughed like a mad thing, and to Bug Man’s amazement

actually executed a somersault, as crazy as the terrifyingly unhinged

actors and producers and agents and whoever now baying like wolves

in the streets of Manhattan, chased by cameras that broadcast the

images all over the world.

She led the way to a limo and held the door open for Bug Man,

who tumbled in, shaken.

“Jefuf Chri’!” he cried.

“No, no, no, no goddamned made-up, bullshit divinities!” Lystra

yelled exultantly. “Jesus Christ and Zeus and Mohammed and what-

ever the hell you want, yeah, they didn’t write
this
game!” She fell

into the seat beside him. It was as if she was drunk or high. She was

cackling. “Fuck your gods, Bug Man, I’m god now! Yeah! This is my

fucking world!”

Bug Man had seen some crazy in his life. He’d spoken with the

Armstrong Twins, and those boys were crazy. He’d hung out with

Burnofsky, not exactly a paragon of sanity.
But
, he thought,
this chick
is nuts
.
Once you start calling yourself “god” you’re all the way into
crazy.

Berserk.

BZRK.

He was crying without quite knowing why, unless it was just

some kind of overload. Too much. Too much crazy. The whole world

was going crazy, and this madwoman was making sure of it.

“Wha’ nef?” he asked, both to humor her and because he needed

to know.

“Stop mush mouthing,” Lystra snapped. “I’ll tell you what next,

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MICHAEL GRANT

yeah. Next, we get back to the apartment to watch the Tulip blow up,”

she said, and winked conspiratorially. With her hands she made a

sort of finger explosion and said, “Boom! Crash! Tinkle tinkle tin-

kle. Woosh! Screams! Cries! It’s Nine/Eleven all over, but now, yeah,

the whole fucking world is going nuts! Crazy president. All the big

brains? Crazy! Crazy prince. Crazy Pope! Everyone you know, yeah,

is insane! And then, ah-hah-hah!”

“Then . . . what?” Bug Man asked.

“Then the Tulip comes down. And then, yeah, then, yeah, then

the rest of them. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. The

code is all laid in. The crèches are ready. Grow ’em, kill ’em. Grow ’em,

kill ’em, yeah. Biot fucking apocalypse, Bug Man! Madness! Have you

had blood drawn? Then I have your DNA, bitches. And, yeah, I have

your biot. We can do sixteen thousand at a time. Sixteen thousand an

hour. Day one? Three hundred eight-four thousand! A million, yeah,

in sixty-two and a half hours. Everyone from big to little. Everyone

from great to small. Everyone from rich to poor. The grocery clerk?

Berserk! The train driver? Berserk! The guy, yeah, in a missile silo

somewhere in Shitheel, Nebraska? Berserk! Cops? Berserk!”

She reeled back against the leather seat. Took a deep breath. Like

she was overwhelmed by the vision in her head. “Every continent.

Every country. I have twenty-nine million samples, yeah. One out of