The God Hunter (23 page)

 

CHAPTER 52

THE OPEN GATES

A
cool wind tugged my hair. It was good to breathe fresh air again, to see the sky above me, the grass all about. I sat in the back of the truck, once more surrounded by armed men. At least this time their guns weren't pointing at me. Shailer had been right, I suppose; he'd done well to talk me up to Thoms, make out I knew more than I did. And Shailer's line had stuck with the director more than mine had. So, full marks to Shailer.

He and Anna got to come along, just for the ride. In a consulting capacity, you might say.

We puttered down the drive. Stopped at the inside gate. Hayes had thrown the flag down but was still gesticulating wildly, even though he knew we'd seen him. We couldn't hear his words above the engine. He kept pointing back, towards the hill, towards the camp. Pointing, then wringing his hands, as if in prayer.

A pause, and someone pulled open the inner gates. We drove through. Same procedure as before. In the middle ground, both gates closed, we stopped. The driver killed the engine, and we disembarked. Shailer, Anna, and myself were hustled to the rear, a guard assigned to us. I had hoped, perhaps, to sneak away, but it wasn't going to happen.

Hayes was yelling with redoubled efforts. His fingers clawed the wire, shaking the gates. His undershirt was soaked with sweat.

It took a while to realize what he was shouting for.

Nothing religious, nothing crazy.

“Doctor!” he called out. His throat was hoarse. “We need a doctor! Need a
doctor
!”

We just stared at him. He hooked his fingers in the wire, yanking at it till his body arched with strain.

“Listen to me! Listen to me! There are ­people
dying
here! For the love of God—­”

The guards stood around, debating.

“For mercy's sake! You have medical supplies! You
have
to help us! In the name of Jesus, please—­”

Willis said, “Why's he alone?”

He was looking at me. I said, “I don't know.”

“Why is he
alone
?”

Willis fidgeted, his jaw clenched. To Hayes, he called, “Who's injured?”

“I don't know! I don't know their names! There's—­oh God! Just help us!
Help us
!”

“How many?”

Hayes shook his fists in frustration.

“Hundreds! No, no—­dozens. Maybe forty, fifty. More. It just came out of nowhere. You've got to help. You've got to—­”

But when no one moved, no one rushed to open the gate, he began to scream and curse. “We need your help, goddamn it! Fuck you! We
need your help
!”

“Ground's clear,” said someone.

Willis said, “You know him. Is he dangerous?”

“Only to cigarettes,” said Anna.

“We should know what's happening,” I said.

“All right,” said Willis. “Looks like we have a situation here. Caution, everyone! Maximum caution!”

He sent men out to the wings, to each side of the gates.

“We bring him in. On foot. Any wrong moves, anything suspicious, we drop him. No guns. But put him on the ground.”

A half dozen guards approached the gate. They barely had to open it; Hayes squirmed inside. He was haggard. Weeping. The gate clicked shut. The inner gate was opened. The truck reversed, then turned, and waited on the other side.

Hayes stumbled. His legs just folded under him. A ­couple of the guards caught hold of him, helped support him as we made our way back through the inner gate. He was barely coherent. His voice was strained and scratchy, and he was talking all the while.

“There was a woman—­woman.” His eyes were wide and red. “Standing there, right next to me. Right—­right next to me. And suddenly there's blood all over her. Hole in her neck, size of a quarter. Straight through. And there was—­blood. Blood everywhere.”

The captain said, “Take your time, sir. Tell us what you saw.”

The inner gate clanged shut.

“I don't know what I saw. It was—­it was—­it was like the scythe of Heaven, chopping this way, chopping that.” He swung his arms to right and left. “It was . . . it was a vision, right in front of me. A horror. Dunno what it was . . .”

“Were ­people shot? Was there shooting?”

“No. Not shooting.” He gently detached himself from the two men holding him. We all stopped walking, looking at him. He said, “I'm all right. I can stand. They're the ones—­the ones need help . . .”

He looked back at the fence, but there was nothing to be seen there, just grass, the slope, and the trees. His mouth kept moving. The words were no longer coherent. His features seemed to sag, to droop, then suddenly to run together, like liquid, and he dropped—­not fell, but simply dropped, like he was swallowed by the earth.

Where he'd been was only empty space. Not even a shadow on the tarmac.

Nothing.

“What the fuck . . . ?”

“What happened there?”

He had been screaming, talking, shouting. Now there was silence. That was the weirdest thing. The silence.

Then the captain yelled, “That man there! Cortinez!”

One of the uniformed guys was heading for the farmhouse. Already he was twenty yards away. Slick black hair and a rolling walk. He didn't even glance up when the captain called.

At my elbow, someone said, “I'm here, sir. I'm Cortinez.”

He, too, had slick black hair. We looked back and forth. The other man was down the drive, beyond the truck, heading for the buildings. And he began to run—­no; to bound in great leaps, hanging in the air, crossing the ground at an extraordinary pace.

Willis shouted, “Get him! Get him!”

Half the guards set off running. The truck gunned up, and Willis was already pulling open the door, even as the driver turned it around.

Shailer said, “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.”

Anna said, “Has no one any fuck hell cigarettes?”

 

CHAPTER 53

SHAILER RUNS

T
here's an emptiness that comes when you are dreading something and it happens, suddenly, and in a way that takes you off your guard, and all at once, you're powerless. No more point preparing, planning. It's already over, and it just stepped right around you. Gone.

Failure's a simple thing. Failure's an end.

The three of us stood on the empty drive, and all at once, we were alone. Unwatched, unguarded. The truck was gone. The men were gone.

The creature they called Seven B was gone.

Anna looked back at the buildings.

“Boom,” she said.

Except there was no boom. There was nothing but the rustle of the breeze. Then a gunshot. And another, and another, a tight, rhythmic pattern:
tac-­tac-­tac
. Nothing again. And then a second series, muffled now, and deeper in.

The rustle of the wind over the grass. The flutter of a bird's wings.

Silence.

I could picture it. I looked down at the complex, and I saw it, any moment, bursting into flame. Or just—­I don't know. How did it look, to see an atom bomb explode? Ground zero, Hiroshima? Did they have time to
know
something was happening? Or was it all too fast? Faster than light, faster than thought?

Shailer said, “I'm out of here.”

He set off for the wire, cautiously at first, glancing backwards all the time. Then he was running, sprinting like a high school athlete. Anna and I began to follow. He hit the wire like a fly smacking on a windshield. He rattled the gates. He strained at the lock, he pulled at it, just as the man who'd looked like Hayes had done.

Then he began to climb.

He launched himself upwards, hooked himself into the mesh. And slowly, awkwardly, he started moving up, hauling himself higher, inch by inch, digging the toes of his shiny, handmade shoes into the mesh, his arms and legs splayed wide . . .

Anna said, “Cockroach.”

“Ha.”

“When I was young, I have apartment—­it is full of them. They look just like him. I use bug spray. Zap! I wish for bug spray now, too.”

He reached the top of the wire. We had both stopped walking and were watching him, the pair of us, I think, secretly hoping that he'd fall. He hesitated there. Then—­with the utmost difficulty—­he took his coat off, flung it up over the tangled blades and barbs that topped the fence. It was an expensive coat; it must have hurt him, doing that. He hitched one leg across and lay there for a moment, spread out on the top of it. He looked ridiculously awkward. Finally he swung his other leg over. He tugged the coat, freeing it with a loud ripping sound. His body lurched, dropped, and he caught himself, dangling from one arm. He swung there. The coat fell with a thump.

“Come on,” he yelled at us. “We can do it! Come on—­”

He wheezed, and then let go. He crumpled on the ground and lay there for a second, curling around himself; then he was up, coat in hand, running for the next fence.

I said, “Still no boom.”

“Perhaps he will not boom. Perhaps they kill him. Contain him. Whatever.”

I looked behind, at Honest Abe peering from the farmhouse wall.

An odd idea had formed, without my even consciously debating it. It was just there, inside my head. No arguing it out, no weighing pros and cons. It existed, it was real.

I said, “I'm going back.”

She said, “I, too.”

“No. See, I was thinking—­what if Shailer's right? I've met him, he hasn't harmed me. Maybe he's . . . I don't know. Sentimental? Maybe I've got some kind of advantage, anyway. You know? But you, you're not . . .”

“Shailer's idea. Shailer is asshole.”

Shailer was on the outer fence. And rising fast.

“You better go,” I said.

“I stay.”

“There's cigarettes outside.”

“So.” She shrugged. “I go with you, or him? Better with you, I think.”

 

CHAPTER 54

GUNFIRE

T
he doors were open. No one about. No one tried to grab me or jab me with a needle, which I reckoned as a step up from my past experience, at any rate. A small, battered-­looking flask stood by the door. I went across and checked the monitor, for form's sake. It had not been used.

The reception area was empty. A strip light buzzed like an unhappy wasp. A clutch of stationery had fallen from the desk and fanned across the carpet.

Anna pushed ahead, wary but eager. Even in the time we'd been together, I hadn't really grasped how much this meant to her. More than just a job. More than just career. She checked the corridor in both directions, motioned me to follow. And we moved into the complex.

The first man that we found was dead. He lay, sprawled across our path, his head and limbs at awkward angles, his beige shirt ripped, the gun still in his hand. One side of his face was shriveled up and crumpled, eyes like fat peas perching in the sockets.

The second man was dead as well.

He'd fallen backwards through a door into a room stacked full of cleaning gear—­a big industrial vacuum cleaner, rolls of plastic bags, detergent bottles, mops. There were no clear wounds, none of that dreadful withering, nothing visible at all. His white coat had a blotchy, iron mold-­type stain on it. His glasses were askew. But he looked healthy, intact, as if he could have just got up and walked away. Somehow it bothered me the more, the fact he didn't, and that I couldn't work out why.

The third man was still moving.

We found him in a lab, curled up beneath the tables, left hand clawed and shrunken, like a dead white twig. He kept waving it, lifting it up and rattling it, as if it were some irritating burr that had attached to him and he could not shake free.

His eyes had swiveled up inside his head, white crescents underneath the lids. But when I bent to him, he focused suddenly.

“You,” he said.

He twitched, his body weakly spasming. He swung the dead hand like a rattle.

“Is there a medical kit?” I said. “Is there morphine?”

I could see his chest heave. His uniform was wet with sweat. I put my hand on his forehead. He tried to squirm away but didn't have the strength. His skin was cold.

“You,” he said again.

Anna said, “Chris. We need to go. Quick now.”

I stood up, left him there.

“You,” he called out after me. His voice was very weak. “You, you, you—­” and he thrashed the air with that dead twig of a hand, lifeless fingers clattering.

W
e went down into the lower level. The air was stale and hot down there, and for a few moments it seemed that we were all alone, except we weren't.

I felt the shot before I heard it; sudden rush of air, making me spin around, startled, and then
crack!
and Anna, pushing me down to the floor.

“Quick. We must go. Cover—­”

She scuttled rapidly across the tiles, up against one of the yellow pillars bolstering the doorjambs. I pressed in behind her, yelled, “Don't shoot, don't shoot!”

“Chris. Is stupid thing to say. You know that.”

“Don't shoot!”

A voice, a long way down the corridor, said, “Come on out. Hands up.”

“We're not even armed! You know us—­you know who we are—­”

“Not no more, I don't.”

I said, “We'll come out. Don't shoot, and we'll come out, OK?”

“Chris—­” said Anna.

“OK?”

“Stand where I can see you. Stand, don't move.”

I stood slowly, turning sideways, thinking—­panic-­stricken—­that I'd make a slimmer target that way.

“Look,” I called. I couldn't see him, couldn't see who I was talking to. There were a ­couple of high-­stacked trolleys in the middle of the hall; I guessed the shooter was behind them. “If I were him—­if I were, I wouldn't do this, would I? Wouldn't need to. You've seen what he can do. He's a monster. But you've met me. My name's Copeland. You know that. This is my friend, Detective Ganz, Budapest police.”

Anna was beside me. She looked worried. But she called, “Is true. We are on your side. We saw what happened. We can help.”

“Hands high,” said the voice.

I said, “Where is everyone? We need to stick together. Where's Willis? Is he here?”

“Higher! Higher!”

I put my hands up higher.

“Now. Walk toward me.
Real
slow.”

He wanted to sound tough, and in charge, but he wasn't. I could hear it in his voice. I could see him now; a faint, dark shape peeping from behind the trolleys. A little boy, all alone, and frightened of the dark.

I had a theory if I just kept talking, kept him occupied, then we'd be safe.

So I did. I sweet-­talked him. Explained again who we were, dropped names I thought he'd recognize, spoke about cooperation, all of us, pulling together . . . And about twenty feet along, we reached a junction, a corridor that opened on the left. And Anna threw herself at me. She almost knocked me off my feet. I tumbled sideways, arms out, smacked against the wall. Then she was dragging me away. “Run!” she shouted. “Run!” She pulled my arm, and I stumbled after her. And every other sound just vanished in a roar of gunfire.

We ran. And ran. It was a maze down here. I passed the place I'd fixed the flask, all neat, a schoolroom set up for a lesson nobody would ever get the chance to learn. Or so it seemed.

Shots echoed; an intermittent burst of firing would be answered by another, and another, till I realized there had only been a single shot, rebounding through the corridors, repeated, on and on.

Then Anna stopped and pulled me back.

“Here. This door.”

I looked around. “What?”

She put her finger to her lips and pointed to the big sign overhead, red lettering on white.

Stairs, it said.

“H
e was bedded down. He would not chase. Also, he was scared.”

“Thanks for the explanation.”

“It is you took stupid risk. I will tell you—­I was in his place, I would shoot you. Shoot you dead. For safety.”

“Yeah. His boss promised me that, as well.”

“Lucky that his boss is not here. Perhaps he is dead. Better for us, maybe, if so.”

The stairs were narrow. Concrete stairs in a concrete shaft. We went in single file. Seven tight turns and we were at the foot, facing another door.

She put her ear against the wood and listened for a long time. Then she shrugged and pushed it open.