Resurrection Express (29 page)

The voice calls my name one last time before she’s thrown through the curtain directly ahead of us.

The scent of her hits me, just before she lands on the ground like a broken puppet.

The scent of roses and gunmetal.

She looks up at me and her face is beautiful.

So, so beautiful.

It’s all that matters in the world.

Her eyes are like something in a dream I forgot about a million years ago.

My God . . . has it been that long?

Her cold stare freezes me right there, even in the center of this deadly noose, now that she’s this close to me—the smell of hard things and soft flowers wafting out of nowhere to sock me right in the face. I stagger back and drop the gun and it clangs on the dusty floor.

And I just don’t care.

It doesn’t matter.

Nothing matters.

Just this moment.

Just my wife.

An icicle picks itself into the worst spot in my head—the bad spot where everything was lost—and a hard wave of sour heat comes down across my senses, smothering me. I force myself up through it and pull myself toward the memories, the faceless shapes, those awful missing things that have mocked me for so long.

And as she reaches out to touch me, I see devastation in her eyes. I see worlds destroyed. I see her lips shivering and her whole body rumbling with pain.

I see a version of Toni that terrifies me.

“Elroy,” she says. “I waited so long . . .”

Her voice, stabbing me worse. Her scent, reminding me of everything I couldn’t see in my mind’s eye until just this moment . . .

What has he done to you?

I move to embrace her and something in my head blows like a bomb. No, wait . . . that’s not my head. It really is an explosion. A gunshot, right near me. It spikes through the chamber hard, receding to leave me frozen there with my arms around her, my ears ringing . . .

Then, silence.

And a thick roll of sadistic laughter, coming right at me.

The man who destroyed my life steps out from behind the curtain, his white suit spackled with bright red blotches.

His eyes flare like cruel diamonds.

His smile is disgusting and final.

“Ain’t she a sexy thing,” he says.

13

00000-13

MANIACS LIKE US

H
artman stops laughing and cocks his head skyward, the pistol smoking in his hand. It’s aimed into a dark corner of the wide chamber, not at my heart. I look at him over Toni’s shoulder, my hands holding on to her. The warning shot still echoes long.

“Sorry to spoil the moment,” he says. “Why don’t you be a good boy and let go of the merchandise?”

“What have you done to her?”

“I said let go of the lady.”

He aims the gun at me now, getting a bead on my next thought.

I’ll never let you go, Toni.

Never.

The next shot cracks just past my head. I hear the slug hit the floor behind me, bouncing back into the room. The thunder staggers me on my feet, and I lose my grip on her. In the same second, a pair of rough hands grabs my arms, pulls me back—and then more hands. I can’t fight these guys. Too much pain in my head, the crashing of angels and devils on all sides. The smell of roses, contaminated by sweat and grime.

Toni, just out of reach now.

The world tumbling and turning.

She is dressed all in black—silk pants and blouse, buttoned up the front, revealing just enough of her, like she’s peeking out at
me from beyond my ruined, black dreams, her form delicate and overpowering, her long dark hair almost hiding her face. She bites her bottom lip, then lets it go, her face defaulting into a quivering question without words.

Hartman holsters his gun under his giant suit jacket, rolling towards us.

The room is dark and frozen, the same way it was ten seconds ago, Franklin standing in place, aiming his HK at the ceiling in surrender. Me and Toni, facing each other, shot through with pain. Two dozen men with guns, making sure nobody goes anywhere.

All of us, right up shit creek.

Hartman strikes a pose, the master of the universe.

“She smells sweet, don’t she, boy? Like steel roses. She always did, didn’t she?”

I take a breath and I am full of her.

My vision almost blurs, and my legs almost go.

He laughs again.

“You’re right on time, buddy-boy. I expected you and the old man to come in with a lot of firepower, but it wasn’t really necessary. You could have just walked up and knocked.”

I hardly find my voice through the buzz, through the scent, through the dark ice that freezes the room. Through Toni.

“We tried that once,” I tell him, and the memory stabs me.

“Yeah, those were some good old times, weren’t they? How’s your head these days?”

I don’t answer him.

I want to run at him.

I want to break every bone in his fat body.

I tense up and the goons grab me harder, the muscles in my legs coiling like some mad beast programmed to eat and destroy and be full of violence. And in this moment . . . the rage finds me . . .

. . . first in the pit of my stomach . . .

. . . then drawling up my throat like the smell of blood and seawater . . .

And I make noise like an animal.

“You stay right there, buddy-boy. Don’t even think about it. I might just tell those good old boys to wipe what’s left of yer high IQ all over the ceiling.”

I almost don’t hear Hartman’s voice, the thunder is so loud in my head now. I feel the shadows on all sides of us tighten, the choking sweat and steel-hard grunge of ten men holding me back. I almost try to break free and spring forward.

But I stop.

I hang on for dear life, in a clutch of stinking muscle.

I look at Toni, who bites her bottom lip again—she looks like a movie star full of self-doubt when she does that. Some impossibly beautiful porcelain doll streaked with one fatal weakness that throws the whole illusion. It makes her human, makes her dangerous and elegant in mysterious imperfection. As the image rolls at me, and the mythology of her is rewritten from one second to the next, I want to reach out and touch her face. And I am stopped cold. So many gorillas on me now. Wholesale slaughter aimed point-blank at my head. More guns behind them. Hopeless.

Two of the men step over and remove Franklin’s machine gun from his hand. They pat him down and find the Korth revolver, too. He stands there like a statue and lets them do it. The guy holding me takes my Colt from the dirty floor where I dropped it, and I notice for the first time that he looks like a mule wearing a dirty suit. He smells like his own leavings. They all do. Cheap backup, typical Hartman. But they’ll kill me just as well as real professionals.

Toni stares at me with those eyes.

The pain almost recedes as the mythology mutates further.

Hartman does one of his wet snorts, and keeps himself from laughing out loud. “Ain’t love grand? I just
knew
this would be a right teary-eyed little reunion.”

I look at her hard.

I’m filled with the scent.

She shivers in the real world, wobbling on her feet. I look harder now. I see that her long black hair is sweaty and hanging in her face, makeup clots running down her chin like some kind of goth-harlequin nightmare. She stares at me, a lost ghost.

Shivering. Shaking. Unsure of anything.

I felt the tremors in her body when I touched her. I can still feel them now, like electric shocks in the space between us. She’s been drugged. Or worse.

Hartman laughs again, soggy and awful.

“We’ve had a lot of fun since you went away,” he says. “I guess you know that. She was a wild one, boy. But everyone has their breaking point, don’t they?”

She bites her lip again.

She is so beautiful when she does that.

My rage, held barely in check:

“What have you
done
to her?”

“Lots of things.”

“
Fuck you
.”

“Don’t make me angry, boy. Just don’t do it.”

The heat shocks through my body again, and this time I try to break free—but they still have me good. I scream Hartman’s name. I writhe and I kick and I get smothered under the gorillas again. Dumb laughter and drool in my ears, the thunder of a dozen heartbeats . . . David, you son of a bitch . . .
you son of a bitch
 . . .

The big guy doesn’t look amused anymore.

He shakes his head as they hold me down.

And he says:

“Okay, fine. Have it your way.”

He rolls over to one of the curtains and pulls it back along the steel bar. On the other side of the curtain are racks of equipment. Tools. A butcher’s block on a table. On the butcher’s block is a meat cleaver. There’s blood all over it.

Just to the left of the table is a really big guy.

He’s upside down.

Naked.

Strapped helpless into leather and iron.

The Weasel.

Hartman looks at me and burns.

“You’re just so goddamn smart, ain’t ya?”

•  •  •

T
he Weasel gurgles through rivers of blood. He’s been worked over pretty bad already, his nose mashed back the other way on his face like a pulverized fruit.

Marcie lies at his feet, facedown.

Out cold or dead, I can’t tell.

She’s half naked and part of her midsection looks hacked away.

Hartman’s face stitches with a hideous crooked spider-grin, scrawled there like bad sidewalk art, his fist grabbing the handle of the big meat blade.

“Looks like you’re running with a new posse, huh? Guess that means the old man is out of the game. That’s a shame, ain’t it? Old Ringo was a hell of a lot better at sneaking up on someone than these two idiots.”

He looks right in the Weasel’s eyes.

“What’s your name, boy?”

The Weasel tries to say something and the sound crashes and burns, a blubbering nonsense full of hatred and agony—but it’s a lot louder this time, right in Hartman’s face. And then he finally gets the words out: “
Fuck YOU!
”

Hartman grabs the Weasel by his dreadlocks and spits: “You know it’s a funny thing, boy. That’s
my name,
too.”

He holds the meat cleaver up to the guy’s face.

I look away. I hear it loud. The Weasel doesn’t scream.

But the sounds he
does
make are horrifying.

Like a baby choking back its own birth.

And then Hartman slices him again.

And again.

When I finally look, part of the Weasel’s face is gone, peeled away, dripping awful. Franklin’s fifty-yard stare never changes. Doesn’t even shake his head or flinch once. Can’t tell if he’s seen worse, but he’s cold as ice under fire.

Toni doesn’t look, her back to the whole thing. She doesn’t even have to close her eyes.

What have you done to her?

Lots of things.

I tense again. Almost try to fight the goons again. Hartman sees me move and wags his eyebrows, tasting the blood on his finger.

“Just stay right there.”

“David . . . don’t hurt him anymore. He’s just hired help.”

“Well, then you shouldn’t have hired him. You knew I wasn’t kidding when I told you people were gonna die. After you hit my vault, it got pretty damn nasty around here. These boys will tell you all about that. My girls will tell you all about it, too.”

He turns and hacks off one of the Weasel’s ears.

I almost don’t look away fast enough.

I hear Hartman’s wheezing breath as he does the deed with three long, hard thrusts—this was always a real workout for the fat slob.

The Weasel still doesn’t scream.

A couple of the goons giggle like animals.

“You made a real sloppy getaway, kiddo. Hell, it was all over the street about your meeting with Kim Hammer in less than twenty-four hours. Of course, Jenison got to you first, the lousy bitch.”

He points at Toni with the cleaver.

Blood drips on the floor.

“I thought I’d send you a familiar voice,” he says. “At the hotel, I mean. It was a long shot, but I figured what the hell? You were always so good at following the bread crumbs.”

“Like SAVIOR-1? That was you, too, wasn’t it?”

“You like that? One of my hackers. But you probably had that figured, didn’t you?”

“Actually I didn’t. You keep surprising me, David.”

“I’d like to take credit for that—but you know I ain’t a guy who likes to change his act, not like you. If I need an extra brain, I just
buy
the fucker.”

Never underestimate the power of cold cash.

Shit.

“I had to do some real shopping when you went in the can, kiddo.
You’re
a tough act to follow. You’ve been talking to a lot of my ghosts in the last few days. They tell me what to do and I bring the hammer down.”

“So this is Resurrection Express?”

He grabs the Weasel by the hair.

Licks a tiny spot of blood off his face, then winks at me.

“No. But you’re damn close.”

I look away, just as he does something much bigger and a lot wetter to the guy. It’s a huge sound of metal on flesh, right in the Weasel’s thick side flank. I hear it happen, deep and terrible. And the poor bastard almost gets to scream this time, before the backwash drowns him. Then, silence.

The air freezing again between us.

Hartman rips out the cleaver and giggles.

“Here’s where it gets fun, kiddo. See, you can break a hunk of meat like this one in half so easy. You put another notch in your belt and move on to the next good old boy. But a woman like
yours
 . . .”

I look deep in her eyes, trying to find what he took from her. I see tears, finally welling in there. Her whole body quakes, her lips trembling.

“. . . now, buddy-boy,
she
was a challenge. That’s why I always wanted her. That’s why it became my own little
project
. I saw what she did to everyone around her and I knew the old gal was special. A prize.”