Pandora's Gun (17 page)

Dante and Christy nodded.

“I’ve found out a lot about the gun. Wheeler . . .” he looked at Dante, “. . .she’s the commander of the fake army helicopter guys . . . told me that it can destroy everything. If Blue-suit gets it, the Earth is done, and it’s too powerful to give to anyone on Earth. We have to give it to her. She’ll take it wherever she came from, and then close the door so no one from their world can come back here. At least, that’s the deal I’m going to propose if you guys agree. I can call her. End this thing right now.”

“Go ahead,” said Dante.

Christy said, “Don’t we . . . sort of . . . have to have the gun if we call her? We’ve got all the same problems still. She can’t go get the gun because the army is all over the Student Union building, and if we wait too long, someone else is going to find it just like we did and start trying apps. They might not be as lucky as we were. We could end up with a Blue-suit of our own making.”

“Dang,” said Peter. He leaned back against the cold brick of the bridge’s underside and closed his eyes. He’d never felt so tired.

“How are we going to do it?” asked Dante.

“I don’t know. Peter?”

Peter took a deep breath, sat up, and took control. “Here’s what we’ll do: Christy and I are going back to the Student Union. We should be able to get in the same way we got out. We could be lucky and the soldiers could have already gone home. They have to think that whoever went through the window and got away was their mystery. The only reason they came to the campus in the first place is they traced the helicopter there. Once they clear all the students, the case will move in a different direction for them. They think it’s all about the helicopters. Christy and I will go in to get the stuff she dumped from the bag. Dante, you need to be our invisible cover. Blue-suit doesn’t know that you’re helping, so if you see things are going badly, you can swoop in. You have more cherry bombs?”

Dante dug into his pocket and brought out two. “It surprised him once. Do you think it will work twice?”

Peter’s ears still pulsed with the first explosion. “That’s the loudest sound I’ve ever heard. I don’t believe being prepared will make a difference. If nothing else, it will attract a lot of attention.”

On the way back to the Student Union, they had to go the long way around The Grayson Botanical Science classrooms. Two police cars, their lights flashing, were parked out front. “See,” said Peter, “I told you they’d attract attention. The bummer is that unless Blue-suit went back, the cops are going to find a gun in the foyer. They might decide they have to do a building to building search for the shooter. Too much has gone on here tonight for it to be swept under the rug.”

As they watched, another police car raced toward the classroom building. Students had come out of the dorms, coats wrapped around themselves to see what was going on. Others were on their balconies.

A megaphone voice from one of the police cars announced, “This campus is still under lockdown. Students should return to their dorms and stay clear of the windows until we are sure that everyone is secure.”

None of the students moved. There were a chorus of boos from the students on the balconies.

“You kids need to get inside,” the megaphone announced, sounding more peeved this time.

“It’s impossible to do a lockdown on a Friday night,” said Christy. “The parties are in full swing. College students will turn this into a drinking game.”

“That may be to our advantage,” said Peter. Proving his point, a loud group of students, most of them holding beer bottles or plastic cups, passed them going the other way. A round-faced guy, a six pack in one hand and a reading light, its electric cord dragging on the cement in the other, saw Christy, and said, “Look at her! She’s gotta be freezin’ to deaf.” He dropped the six pack, breaking a bottle, and then carefully put the reading lamp down before stripping off his coat. “Can’t haf a lady freezin’ to def.”

Dante said, “Waste of a good beer.”

Christy shrugged her shoulders and took the coat. “I
am
freezing!” she said as the drunken group left.

They trudged up the grassy hill toward the Student Union. “Dante, this is where we split up. The police may have moved their attention to the botany building, and we can get the gun.”

Dante ran to get to the building’s front.

Peter couldn’t tell if the army still occupied the parking lot. He checked his phone to see where Dante had placed himself. No signal. The jamming wasn’t lifted yet. There were no guards in back, which he took as a good sign.

From the rail overlooking the cafeteria, the place was a mess. Backpacks, books, notebooks, water bottles and a host of other student staples were in a loose pile in the middle. Tables and chairs had been pushed aside for the search. The janitors will hate this, Peter thought. One military truck remained in the parking lot, but the soldiers were not leaving. Three of them gathered around a table, and it looked like they were setting up a listening station as they had near Peter’s house. They must figure if a stealth helicopter landed here once, it might come again.

“No one’s around,” whispered Christy.

“That jacket smells. What is that?”

She brought the sleeve up to her face. “Pot, I think. Lamp boy hangs out with a decadent crowd. Don’t care. It’s warm.”

They went down the stairs, stepping softly.

Without people in it, the cafeteria felt cavernous. Three quarters of the lights were out—the room must have switched into an energy-saving mode—so the periodic bright spots stood as islands of light in a sea of shadows.

“I’ll get a bag.” Peter stayed low as he slunk to the room’s middle, sure that anyone looking in from the parking lot would see him. He grabbed an empty canvas backpack with an EAT VEGAN patch on the front, then backed up, hoping no one was paying attention to the cafeteria anymore. He wondered where Dante was, and if he could see them.

Except for the lights in the refrigerated displays, the commissary was completely dark. Christy, on her hands and knees, unloaded several quarts of milk from the dairy case, setting the gun and the plexiglass bricks to the side. Peter used the bricks to line the bottom of the bag before putting the gun on top.

Peter zipped the bag shut and slipped a strap over his shoulder. “Out the back door. Get away from the jamming signal. Call Wheeler for a copter ride, and then we’re done. We could be home by midnight.”

“I won’t miss it,” said Christy. “I don’t want to know what the other icons do. We don’t need this kind of technology.”

Peter started toward the stairs with Christy behind him.

“Then you won’t mind giving it up,” said a voice, followed by an electrical sounding jolt.

Christy lay face down on the floor, an arm extended uncomfortably above her head. Blue-suit stood over her, a black device the size of a deck of cards in his hand.

“Don’t move,” Blue-suit said. “Don’t think about doing anything at all. The girl’s unconscious, but I have other settings. A twist of a button, and she’s dead.” He kicked her in the back to demonstrate, which elicited from Christy a low moan. “See. Not dead.”

Blue-suit shifted his gaze from one side to the other. “Where’s your bomb-throwing friend? I should have taken care of him while he was sleeping at your house. Guess we didn’t convince him which side he should be on.”

Peter held himself still, afraid that if he moved Blue-suit would zap Christy again. Dante has to be outside, somewhere, Peter thought, or he could be on the balcony overhead, but he wouldn’t be in position to do anything, and now the plan to use a second cherry bomb seemed stupid. If Dante threw it, the remaining soldiers outside would be on them instantly, and, as far as they knew, Blue-suit was FBI. He could walk right through them with the bag and the gun and no challenge.

He should have guessed, thought Peter. Of course Blue-suit would be able to figure out where Christy had left the gun. The cafeteria was where they’d met. He’d been waiting for them to leave so he could catch them. No gun? Blue-suit just needed to wait for them to come back to the cafeteria and show him where it was. Peter wished he’d called Wheeler before moving back into the no-cell zone. That way the cavalry could be on the way, if she was willing to draw attention to her copters again.

Christy rolled over with a groan. Blue-suit stepped to the side, but kept the weapon poised. “Bring me the bag.”

Peter picked it up. He experienced a vivid sense of deja-vu. They were playing the Grayson Botanical Sciences building confrontation again. The stakes were the same.

He’d read thrillers and adventure novels. He’d seen a zillion movies and played video games. What would James Bond do in this situation or Laura Croft or Indiana Jones or Doc Savage? He couldn’t let Blue-suit get the bag, but none of the options worked. He could run, but Blue-suit would kill Christy. Or, as an FBI agent, Blue-suit could have the soldiers stop him in the parking lot.

Peter didn’t know martial arts. He didn’t have a hidden knife, or even a ballpoint pen. Those who don’t learn from the past are bound to repeat it, he thought. He didn’t have a weapon on him last time either. He should have asked the drunk college kids if any of them had a knife. Blue-suit won. Peter had to give him the gun.

But he couldn’t cause the world’s death.

Desperate times, he thought, call for stupid maneuvers.

He held out the backpack. Blue-suit, grinning grimly, reached for it.

Peter dropped the bag an inch short, then threw all his weight into Blue-suit’s chest as he reflexively bent to catch it.

Even as they careened across the room, Peter thought this would end in a hurry.

All Peter knew of real fighting—not the pretend fighting in the movies where everyone moved too competently and too fast—was what he’d seen in fights at school. They ended the same way, with the combatants wrestling. He and Dante theorized that what really happened in a fight, even if the boys were tough, macho warriors of the hallways, was that they really were afraid of getting hit. So after a showy punch or two, almost always an artless roundhouse swing that anyone could see coming from a mile away, the two would grapple. It was much harder to be hit in a clinch than if you were standing at slugging distance.

The only real fist fight he’d seen in the school, and it wasn’t much of a fight, was between two girls. Many of the girl fights he’d seen
started
with wrestling (and hair pulling and clothes tearing). There were no punches, expect for the one time a thick-shouldered girl who played rugby got into it with a slender band girl, who didn’t look any bulkier than her flute, over the rugby player’s boyfriend. She claimed the flute player had been flirting with him. The flute player said, “Nope,” and put down her books. When the rugby player charged, probably intending on squashing the other girl with her momentum, the flute player gracefully stepped to one side, and threw one short punch that caught the other girl on the side of her face. The rugby player hit the tiles, screaming about her ear, while the flute player picked up her books like nothing had happened, and went to class.

Peter wished he was as graceful as that flute player. Blue-suit grunted. Tried to swing his shocker around, but Peter’s charge continued to drive him backwards, until a chair caught the back of Blue-suit’s knees, and they went down.

Somehow, Peter ended up on the heavier man’s back, his arm around Blue-suit’s throat and his legs wrapped around his waist.

A cherry bomb exploded ten feet inside the broken window, still amazingly loud in the enclosed space, but it didn’t bother Blue-suit at all, who also didn’t seem hindered by the choke hold, and was prying Peter’s leg grip loose.

A drowning person is supposed to see his life flash by in the last instant. When someone is stopped at a red light, and the sound of screeching tires makes him look up in the rearview mirror to see a truck skidding toward him, time slows. For Peter, time slowed. The cherry bomb’s smoke eddied like a sinuous ghost toward the ceiling. Christy had sat up and was pulling the gun from the bag. Peter thought, the sleep-ray won’t work! Blue-suit inexorably leveraged Peter’s locked legs off of him, and as slow as time had seemed to be going, no time at all passed before Blue-suit was kneeling on Peter’s chest, forcing the air from his lungs.

“Soldiers are coming,” yelled Christy.

Blue-suit looked behind him where the first man was coming through the broken window. He swore, pushed off Peter’s chest, and ran for the bag, knocking Christy aside while grabbing the gun from her hands and scooping the backpack off the ground. He ran for the door to the stairs.

Peter tried to get up. He had to stop him. He could hit him with a chair. Anything before Blue-suit could have time to use the gun. Once Blue-suit picked the right icon—and who knew what most of the gun’s functions were—he would win.

But something ground in Peter’s chest, and he had a hard time getting a full breath.

“Stop him,” he gasped.

“It’s all right,” Christy said, inexplicably.

Blue-suit made it to the door. The soldiers weren’t even looking at him, and Peter couldn’t take a deep enough breath to call.

Christy said again, “It’s all right.”

The door opened. A horrible orange light spilled out. Peter’s ears popped as papers were swept off the floor toward the orange glow. In front of Blue-suit, whose dark shape partly eclipsed the scene, the orange world’s long, rolling landscape reflected its horrible sun. Peter couldn’t see the hill’s top through the door, but he knew the malevolent creature waited there, maybe looking toward them this time. Peter wanted to close his eyes, but he watched instead. Cups and loose papers slid on the floor toward the opening. Blue-suit grabbed for the door frame, held on, fighting the wind. For a second, he dangled, his feet off the ground, then he tried to shift his grip, slipped and was sucked away. He screamed, but the sound came from a distance, and when the rift in the stairwell winked closed, the scream snapped off as if it had never been.

Papers settled.

Blue-suit, the bag and gun were gone.