Premonitions (29 page)

She turned to her right, but the light that had been there earlier in the day had been extinguished. Anna pointed her flashlight in that direction. The beam attenuated into nothing but a faint shine on the dull surface of the water.

“Looks like there’s a vacancy,” Anna said.

“Thank God.”

The water sloshed over Karyn’s feet and wicked up the legs of her pants as she moved toward Adelaide’s former den. She stopped twice, listening for any sound of movement, but nothing was audible over her breathing and a distant drip of water. The two women had made it about halfway along the length of the wall when Anna’s
light caught a pale shape floating under the surface of the water ahead of them. The flashlight wasn’t much, but it got the job done. Karyn saw thin tendrils of hair floating off the shape, the hunch of naked shoulders, the knobbed row of vertebrae.

“You see that?” she whispered.

“See what?”

“Never mind.” She pressed forward. As she approached the corpse, she saw another beyond it, then the obscure green-pale shapes of others beside it.

At least they’re not moving.
She shook her head. How bad must things have gotten if
that
thought was a source of consolation?

A few more steps, and she reached a point where the water became choked with bodies in various states of decay. Little chunks of waterlogged flesh floated in clouds around some of them, and Karyn’s stomach roiled. She scanned the water ahead of her, becoming sick with dread and revulsion as she realized there was no way to go forward without pushing through the corpses.

“Ah, fuck,” she said.

Anna looked over, no trace of revulsion on her face, no acknowledgment of the bodies at all. They weren’t there, Karyn knew, but that fact had no power to calm her.

“You want me to go on ahead?” Anna asked.

“Sort of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”

“If I find anything I can bring it back. It’s not far.”

Tempting, Karyn thought, and then she imagined waiting here in the dark until Anna got back. In the dark with corpses in the water just a few feet away and who knew what else. This kept getting better and better.

“No,” she said. “But you get to go first.”

Anna pressed forward. The bodies spun slowly away as she pushed through them, leaving enough of a path that Karyn could at least hope to follow without touching anything horrible. She picked her way through after Anna and tried to ignore the way the glimmering, rippling surface of the water gave false movement to the corpses below.

All I need now is—

She let out a half-stifled scream as the outflung leg of one of the rotating bodies bumped her ankle. Her body convulsed in a shudder that started at the base of her spine and rocketed up through her shoulders.

“You all right?” Anna asked.

Karyn’s breath came rapidly, and she forced herself to slow down.
Be rational. There’s nothing there. And, even if there was, it was just a little bump. Like a piece of driftwood or a floating toy or something.
Yet, even after the corpse’s touch had gone, she couldn’t shake the sense that it had left a foul, indelible stain on her pants.

Another corpse came spinning toward her, and her control broke. This time, a full-fledged scream tore its way out of her lungs, and she ran forward, barreling past Anna, shoving and stomping the floating bodies. Her scream echoed throughout the basement, accompanied by the violent sounds made by her splashing path through the dead.

Behind her, Anna swore and ran after.

Karyn reached the collapsed ceiling in moments, and she leaned against it, arms covering her face.
Not gonna cry. Just not gonna do it.
Something that bore a suspicious resemblance to a sob shook its way out of her body, but she closed her eyes, held her breath, and counted to ten, and that was the end of it. It felt like part of her was still hidden in a corner of her mind screaming and gibbering and turning mad circles, but that part was locked down. It could gibber to its heart’s content.

“It’s cool,” Anna said. “That was pretty subtle—I don’t think anybody heard us.”

Karyn laughed, short but genuine. “Oh, good. I wouldn’t want to embarrass myself or anything.”

“Ready?”

“Yeah. You go first.”

Anna ducked into the tunnel, and Karyn followed. A new smell lay on top of the dank, wet odor of the basement, like scum on brackish water, and Karyn wrinkled her nose. The smell was roadkill or spoiled meat left in the sun. Whether it was real or not, she had no way of knowing.

They emerged from the tunnel, and Karyn looked around the small room in the glow of Anna’s flashlight.
The alcoves were empty, the shelves barren. The candles had burned down to puddles and gone out. “Where are the rats?”

“Gone. How should I know?”

A tightness eased in Karyn’s chest. One less thing to worry about right now. She moved to the wall. A quick review of the shelves revealed nothing, so she started checking for cracks or gaps, running her fingers over the wall from the rocky floor to the low ceiling. After a moment, Anna joined her.

“Here,” Karyn said. A block in the bottom corner was loose, surrounded by a narrow gap instead of mortar. She wedged her fingers into the gap and pulled. The block came away.

“I need a light,” Karyn said.

Anna leaned over and shone the flashlight into the hole. Inside were a handful of candles and a couple of rocks. Karyn scooped it all out and looked through it. No containers, bags, or powders—nothing that even looked like a component of blind, or even like it might be useful for something else. She threw the mess on the ground and squeezed her fists in frustration.

“Shit!”

“Keep looking,” Anna said, but Karyn noted the worry in her voice. If they couldn’t find anything here, the crew would have to wing it without Karyn, a grim prospect given the odds. And if they didn’t pull off the job, then what about Adelaide? They wouldn’t have the money to pay her off, and then what? Find another source? How? Where? How long would that take? Karyn might be screaming mad by then. Almost surely would be.

“Relax,” Anna said. “Breathe.”

Karyn realized she’d been hyperventilating, again, and again she tried to take one slow breath at a time. “A little freaked out here.”

“Me, too. Just keep looking.”

The desperate panic Karyn had been trying to hold back strained its leash, bucked and twisted, and it was only an extreme effort of will that kept Karyn from either running as fast as she could in no particular
direction or collapsing into a trembling heap. No blind
.
Not now, maybe not ever. She recalled first meeting Drew, when he’d thought she was a junkie looking for a fix. This wasn’t all that different, when you boiled it down. In her case, it was medicine she needed to keep her head together, but she wondered just how desperate she might get if she couldn’t find any.

Ha. Look at my whole life.

Not for the first time, she wondered what the stuff was made of, that it was so damn expensive. Part of her thought that was just Adelaide taking advantage of her, that the crazy woman had a little room somewhere with piles of hundred-dollar bills rotting in it, but Anna’s explanation felt more true. Adelaide had been taking blind
herself, at least sometimes, and it was nearly as expensive for her as it was for her customers. More expensive than any street drug Karyn could think of—more expensive, for that matter, than gold, at least by weight.
If I could get blind
for a thousand dollars an ounce, I’d have bought a truckload by now.

“Hell yeah,” Anna said, interrupting her reverie. “Jackpot.” From another little hidey-hole close to the ceiling, she pulled out a tightly rolled plastic sandwich bag. She held it up to her flashlight and unrolled it.

“This the stuff?”

Tiny chunks of a greenish-black fibrous material lined up along the bottom of the bag. There wasn’t much, especially as far gone as Karyn was, but she felt tears of gratitude and relief spring to her eyes anyway.

She wiped them away and pocketed the bag.

“Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”

* * *

Drew directed them to an apartment complex on the opposite side of the city from the motel, though in an equally shitty neighborhood. Nail drove into the parking lot, reasoning that none of the Brotherhood had gotten a good look at his van the last time. He sure hoped that was true. He backed into a spot in case they needed to get out of here quickly.

Nail turned to Drew in the passenger seat and gave
him a quick once-over. Guy was scared green. “You ready for this?”

“You better be,” Brown put in from the backseat before Drew could answer.

Nail frowned. Drew was rattled, no doubt about it, and you never wanted a rattled guy on your team at a time like this. You needed cool heads, or you needed to calm your guy down until his head cooled off. So of course Sobell’s fuckwitted lackey here had to kick him while he was down. Nail had known plenty of guys like Brown in the service. They were boneheads destined to end up as drill sergeants forever. Useless in combat, no good at planning, but they knew how to follow orders and how to humiliate the poor bastards in their command. Nail had more respect for cockroaches.

“Fuck you, jack,” Nail said, giving Brown the stink-eye in the rearview mirror. “I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

“We don’t have time for hand-holding right now, so—”

“We don’t have time for your bullshit right now. You earn your stripes?”

Brown stopped short. “My—what? Fuck you.” He stuck out his jaw, obviously preparing for a full-scale pissing contest.

“Didn’t get mine, neither.”

“Then I guess—”

“Busted my sergeant in the mouth, though.”

Brown’s mouth hung open.

“That’s right. That’s why they threw my ass out.” Pure fiction. He’d never hit a sergeant, and when he’d gotten out, it had been an honorable discharge—but if he was reading Brown right, it was the kind of thing the guy would respond to.

He wasn’t wrong. There was a pause, and then a genuine, good-humored grin appeared on Brown’s face. “Threw your ass out, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Me too.”

Imagine my surprise.
“And here we are.”

Brown nodded. “Pretty fucked up, if you ask me.”

“True that. You suppose we can get this over with without you giving Drew here any more shit?”

Brown glanced at Drew. “Yeah. Sorry, man. I’ve just had the shittiest day.”

“Yeah. Ain’t we all.” Nail dismissed Brown and returned his attention to Drew. Guy was sweating a bucketload, and by the look of him, he was about ready to re-release his peanut butter and crackers into the wild. “How you doin’?” Nail asked.

Drew swallowed, then sucked a long, hissing breath in through his teeth. “They’re gonna kill me.”

“They’re not gonna kill you.”
Probably.
“That isn’t gonna help them any, and they may be crazy, but they’re not stupid.”

“It’s the crazy part I’m worried about.”

Nail just nodded. That was the part that worried him, too. Relying on the self-preservation instinct of a bunch of religious fanatics wasn’t what he thought of as bulletproof strategy. But they’d talked it over, and this was all they had left to work with.

He let the minutes tick by. Brown’s movements rustled in the backseat. Cars drove by. A naked guy, locked out of his room without clothes for whatever unfathomable reason, pounded on a nearby door with one hand and covered his junk with the other.

“OK,” Drew said. “Who wants to live forever, right?”

“Oorah.”

* * *

Nail took the lead with Drew right behind him and Brown bringing up the rear. He wished he had some body armor. How the hell had he never gotten around to picking up a Kevlar vest or something? A wide-open space, maybe thirty feet, gaped between the last car and the apartment door he was headed for, and if one of the creeps inside looked out their window and recognized him, he’d be the proverbial sitting duck.
Bang bang.

Or maybe Drew had been mistaken, and this wasn’t the Brotherhood’s backup plan after all. That would be
plenty embarrassing. Plus, they’d have to figure out how to track down the Brotherhood all over again.

The little group broke cover. Nail’s body tensed up, like he thought he could stop bullets with his abs if he just flexed them hard enough. He knew better, of course, but the screaming fear of being out in the open did funny things to him.

They crossed a strip of sorry grass without attracting any unwelcome attention—or bullets—and Nail stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the unit. The scrape of his boot on the sidewalk was deafening. No shots were fired, though, and he stopped in front of the door. He bowed slightly and made a little “after you” gesture at Drew. Drew didn’t seem to find that funny, but he stepped to the door.

“Oh, boy,” Drew whispered, and he knocked. If Nail had thought their footsteps were loud, the knocks were like mortar rounds exploding. Even Brown, whom Nail wouldn’t have placed among the top, oh, thousand or so brightest people he’d ever met, looked nervous.

“Open up,” Drew said, and his voice barely shook at all. “It’s me. Drew.”

Nothing happened, and Nail couldn’t hear a damn thing through the door.

Drew knocked louder. “It’s me, guys.” He leaned close to the door and spoke in a low voice. “I know who’s got the relic.”

Nail heard the dead bolt slide back. He took a step to the side, getting Drew between him and the widening crack in the door. It didn’t hurt to be careful.

A face peered from the gap between door and frame. For a wonder, it wasn’t even accompanied by the barrel of a gun. “Drew?”

“Yeah.”

The guy’s bulging eyes darted from Drew to Nail to Brown. He looked about twenty years old, unshaven, and scared out of his wits. “And you know where the relic is? For real?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, wow. We gotta go get Brother Martel.” The guy
flushed. “Er, the Revered One.” The guy turned and muttered something to somebody else inside the room. A moment later, he slipped out of the room followed by a man ten years his senior who looked at them all with a scowl of disapproval.