Dead Mann Running (9781101596494)

by Petrucha, Stefan

  And then her guards opened fire.

  20

  Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise, surprise works great. The flying bullets took up most of the hall before any of us could think about moving out of their way. That was a given for me, with chak reflexes. It was also understandable that the liveblood cops, even with their training, would be taken off guard. I did expect more from Booth. I’d seen him duck and fire in less than half a second, even with his holster clipped. Not this time.

  I didn’t do any better. Unable to decide whether to run or drop, I spun and sank. The last thing I saw while on my feet was the straw-haired cop falling backward, hand clamped to throat.

  I wasn’t exactly unscathed, but I was on the ground before I saw the hole in my sweater. Shoulder wound. No biggie. Not that I enjoyed it. At least now, I was in the best position to avoid being riddled, facedown on the ground, like Penny and Jonesey.

  Seconds later, the three cops were dead or wounded and Booth hadn’t even drawn his gun. When at last his hand did move for his piece, there were ten weapons trained on him. Robbed of other options, he screamed. It was the same sound he made when he found me standing in Lenore’s blood.

  At least this time, the rage wasn’t directed my way. “You crazy fucking bitch!”

  In a lazy display of contempt, Maruta tsked. “You’ve a gift for the obvious.”

  One of the officers, wounded, tried to stand, blood streaming from his hip, right along the dark ribbon of his uniform pants. Maruta, vaguely bothered by the interruption, nodded at one of her NFL-sized grunts. He walked over, drew his sidearm, and aimed it at the man’s forehead.

  Booth gave off a pitiful wail, and lunged. A gun butt whacked across the back of his skull put him out of his misery. Not particularly caring that he was unconscious, Maruta continued talking to him.

  “Impatient, just like my husband. Little man, I used to call him. Be patient, little man, I used to say. I wasn’t going to kill your cub, Chief Detective. He’s going to be one of our exam subjects. Living volunteers are hard to find. Be patient, little man.”

  An exam. Like Hudson. Hearing that, I got up and threw myself at the grunt. Wish I could say I was more successful than Booth. I got within a foot, but he didn’t bother raising a hand. He stepped aside and I sailed past him. I felt his boot heel in the small of my back, then ate tile.

  I heard footsteps, saw Maruta’s flats stop in front of me. When her grunt flipped me over, I found myself looking up her lab coat and getting too much information. Her lingerie was made of a kind of rubber, like the gloves. Maybe they were easier to swab clean.

  She went to her knees and poked a finger into my shoulder wound. Aside from disgust, I felt the pressure. One or both made me queasy, but there was no pain. Her finger dug in like a little snake and prodded my insides.

  She kept yapping, reminding me of a doctor who liked to chat during proctology exams. “Clean shot. No harm. You’re remarkably lucky considering what you’ve been through. But trust me, it’s nothing compared to what’s coming unless you tell me where those vials are.”

  “You think I’m going to tell you anything?” I said.

  She withdrew her finger. The top third was marred with some grayish goo. It was thicker than the stuff that came out of my abdomen.

  “Yes, I do,” she said.

  She licked the tip, a pinprick of gray smearing her straight white teeth. When the nearest grunt gagged, she looked at him. “Come now, there’s no rot, so it’s perfectly sterile.” She held her finger out to the pasty-faced grunt. “Tastes a bit like haggis.”

  That did it. His cheeks puffed. He stumbled out of the room. Wished I could join him. Maruta glowered at the others, daring anyone else to leave. There was a glint in her eyes, like she was thinking of forcing everyone to have a taste of me.

  Had Rebecca always been this psycho, or did she dive off the deep end when Travis called it quits? I wondered if the shareholders knew about this. Ha. Maybe I could file a consumer complaint.

  Fortunately, a muffled groan from the back of the room broke her focus.

  It wasn’t one of the wounded. It was Jonesey, loud and getting louder despite the gag. Penny had been next to him, but she was gone. Took me a second to see she’d crawled under a gurney and was half covered by its sheet. Did she think she was hidden?

  Jonesey let rip with a pained lowing. I listened to two more of his long, deep wails, before I admitted to myself he was going feral. Back when he’d attacked me in an alley, I thought it was just a matter of time. Seeing Hudson was the straw that broke his myelin sheaths. Horrifying as that was for me, it must’ve been worse for a true believer, like watching your god eat your children. And I was the one who forced his face in it, the one who thought he deserved it. Funny how much damage I cause when I’m trying to do the right thing.

  From the looks of things, the lizard-brain steering his body couldn’t do much with it. Its struggles against the bonds became more rhythmic. Its back spasmed in tune with the alarm and the flashing, as if the lights were electrocuting it. How long before that was me?

  I couldn’t afford to let go. I had to keep it together long enough to take this place down, long enough to try, anyway. Not that I had a plan.

  I heard Maruta say, “What a pity. I so wanted to get to him while he was stable, poke my finger into that delightful mind of his. I may well have discovered exactly which part of the brain was responsible for his self-delusion.” She rose and rubbed her hands. “Oh, well. Time to clean up, my little men. Quality, service, cleanliness, and value!”

  She marched through the double doors, leaving the work to her grunts. Booth was carried out. Penny, once she was dragged from under the gurney, was shoved next to me, and we were both forced to march out. I never saw what they did with Jonesey, but I doubt it was pretty. I hoped he was with Kyua, real or not.

  We were taken to a windowless room, where Booth’s motionless form was already waiting. All three of us were chained at the ankles and left there.

  For the longest time, Penny and I sat there, watching Booth breathe.

  “You know him?” she asked.

  I nodded. “My boss. When I was alive.”

  “Doesn’t like chakz much, does he?”

  “Least of all me.”

  “So he’s probably not going to like it much when he wakes up and finds out he’s chained to two of them, is he?”

  “No, he’s not.”

  She shrugged her good shoulder. “Should we kill him?”

  I made a face at her. “No! Jesus, who raised you, alligators? We’re trapped by a psychotic sadist with armed guards and you want to kill someone just to buy a few more minutes?”

  “Yeah. Pretty much. A few minutes can be a long time.”

  She was right about the last part. “Penny, I’m sorry you got dragged into all this.”

  She sneered. “That and a dollar…crap, he’s moving.”

  We pulled away, but the three-foot chains didn’t let us get very far.

  Booth sat up and rubbed the back of his head.

  “Shit,” he said, looking at the ground.

  He looked at the ceiling and said, “Shit.”

  He looked at the walls and the locked door and said, “Shit.”

  He looked at me and Penny and said, “Shit.”

  Then he saw the chain and said, “Shit.”

  Each time he said it louder.

  When he looked back at me, every muscle in his face tight and bulging with rage, I said, “Well, don’t expect me to disagree.”

  I knew whatever happened next wasn’t going to be pleasant. He grabbed the chain and yanked. I fell to the side, my leg jutting in his direction. He kept tugging, like he could pull the metal clear through my ankle. Maybe he could. Alive, I might’ve been able to stop him. Now? A better bet would be to offer to snap off my foot to save him the trouble.

  Penny had different ideas. She jumped on his back and clawed at his eyes, yelling, “Let go of him!”

>   I didn’t get the sense it was out of loyalty. I think I blew any affection she might have had for me after my cell phone chat with Misty. She probably figured she had a better chance of not being mangled while I was still around.

  Booth bellowed, rose, and slammed her backward into the wall, dragging me along the floor in the process.

  “Take it easy! You could crack her fucking spine! I’ll try to help you get the chain off,” I said. Ignoring me, he moved to slam her into the wall again.

  Penny screamed, opened wide, and bit into his ear.

  If I was the biggest pacifist in the room we were in trouble, but I couldn’t let him hurt her any more than I could let Penny hurt him. I waited until he had one foot off the ground then pulled the chain hard. His leg flew out from under him. His ass hit the floor.

  I hoped that would give me a second to reason with him, but the kid didn’t know when to quit. Penny’s feet near his head, she whipped some chain around his neck and pulled until he couldn’t breathe.

  I pushed forward along the floor, grabbed her hand, and pried her fingers off the chain one by one. “Let him go!”

  She chittered like a rabid squirrel, then squealed, “He’s crazy! He’ll snap our feet off to get free!”

  I didn’t have a good comeback, especially since she was right, but I wasn’t her only problem. Booth had wedged his hand between Penny’s chain and his neck. Now he moved up and forward, taking her off the ground, ankle first.

  It was like that for a while, me dragging Booth off Penny, then Penny off Booth, getting twisted, scratched, and punched along the way. Like I said, it would’ve been easier to lose the foot.

  I tried to appeal to their egos. “You idiots! Don’t we have enough to worry about, like vivisection? Tom, you heard her, Maruta’s planning the same for your man that she gave Hudson.”

  He hesitated. Penny used the pause to punch him hard in the jaw.

  “Stop!” I growled.

  “I will if he will!”

  To his credit, Booth didn’t counter. The thought of what might already be happening to the wounded officer sobered him. He sat on his haunches, rubbing his jaw.

  Penny squirmed away the three feet that the chain allowed, huffing and puffing as she went, out of breath.

  And I finally noticed something I should’ve spotted a long time ago. If I hadn’t caught it while I was worried about my own disguise, I should have while we were hiding in the cabinets.

  “Fucking chakz!”

  “Tom, look…”

  “Fucking, goddamn, shit-ass chakz!”

  “Look at her! She’s panting. Breathing. She’s not a chak. She’s a liveblood. I think there’s a bruise swelling on her cheek.”

  Penny laughed hard, but with all that skin missing from her face, it came out more like a rush of air.

  Booth stared at her. “But her face, her shoulder…”

  “Chemical accident,” she explained, a half smile on her half face. It wasn’t like Maruta’s. A half smile was the only kind the kid could manage.

  I stood up. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Like I’m going to tell you?” She laughed again, then used a piece of her sleeve to wipe off some of the makeup that kept her face white. I’d met a chak who’d made himself up as a liveblood, but never the other way around.

  Booth was so shocked, he actually talked to me. “Where do you know her from?”

  “She was at the site where Chester died, at the motel Misty and I were hiding in, then at the exam center, and in the camps,” I said. “Christ, I’m a complete fool. She’s been following me. She’s after the briefcase, too.”

  She tapped her temple. “Now there’s the brains that got you here.”

  “Then you killed Chester on purpose.”

  “No,” she said, her young voice full of aged contempt. “Haven’t you been paying attention? I thought the briefcase was in that car. You, of all people, should know what a fucking accident is.”

  “But you’re working for the same people who chased us?”

  “Please.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I don’t know. I’d say military if they weren’t so stupid, shooting at the car carrying the only sample of Travis Maruta’s final project.”

  “Maruta’s final project,” I repeated. If those were the only samples, maybe they couldn’t replicate it. No wonder everyone wanted it, whatever it was. I looked at my old boss. “That news to you, Tom?”

  He shook his head, no. “I’m hoping it’s a way to send you all back to the grave.”

  “Most of us probably wouldn’t mind. Penny, do you know what it is?”

  Her eyes twinkled. “Sure, and I’ll tell you if you tell me where it is. Doesn’t matter much with us all stuck here.”

  “You’ve got a point. Okay, deal. I put it in a locker at the Fort Hammer Plaza Station. The key’s back in my office.”

  “Great. My turn. The vials contain a new natural flavor of Kool-Aid, no HFC, no unhealthy additives, no calories, and it even cures diabetes.”

  We looked at each other a while. She spoke first. “Is it safe at least?”

  I shrugged. “Safe as things get.”

  She scanned my eyes, like they were going to tell her something, then gave up. Something sharp and silver slipped into her hand, from where I couldn’t tell. As she used it to work on the lock that held her ankle, I got a closer look. It looked like it was made out of cheap cafeteria silverware, sharpened and welded together.

  “We’ve all shared beautifully, but, seeing as how Rebecca also has no idea where the briefcase is, the only things I’ll get from sitting around here are bored, dissected or both.”

  The ankle brace dropped away.

  “Why didn’t you do that while we were fighting?” Booth asked.

  “Didn’t want you to know I could. Could’ve killed you anytime, by the way, but I wanted the decaying dick here to like me a little longer.”

  She walked to the door and worked the makeshift tool into the lock. Once the door was open, she peered outside. “Now that’s interesting. Come look.”

  As she held the door a little wider, Booth and I got to our feet and approached. The long hall was white and sterile as a brand-new Apple gizmo, except for one thing: there were corpses in the distance. Like living stains on a clean kitchen floor, chakz wobbled and moaned. Between the white of the walls and their gray, the yellow tags on their wrists stuck out like traffic lights.

  “Ferals,” Booth said. His hand reached for his holster, but they’d taken the gun while he was out.

  A series of sharp snaps and crackles told me there were more than we could see, and that Maruta’s little men were using their MP5s on them. The ferals rocked and turned in the direction of the sound.

  “Jonesey’s cell phone network,” I said. “The pictures must’ve gotten around. The ones still in orientation probably freed the others. It’s what I would do. Anyone have any idea how many chakz they keep here at a time?”

  “Two hundred and thirty-seven,” Penny said matter-of-factly. “A nice cover for my escape.”

  When she moved to exit, I grabbed at her, forgot the missing shoulder and wound up holding the cloth of her coat. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  I pointed at the chains still on our ankles. “You’re going to leave us like this?”

  “Why not?” she said, sliding her tool up her sleeve. “Consider it payback for using your cell phone in a public place. There was a file I wanted to find before I broke you out, but you screwed all that up, didn’t you? Besides, the more noise you two make, the easier for me to get away. You survived this far, I’m sure you’ll make it.”

  “Unchain me!” Booth screamed. He jumped at her. She leapt back easily and blew him a kiss.

  “Aw. You missed! So long, handsome.” Still looking at Booth, she bobbed her head toward me. “And try to be nice to stupid over here. He saved your life.”

  She flew do
wn the hall, away from the ferals, moving faster than any chak or liveblood had a right to. As soon as she vanished from sight, I realized who she was. She’d been holding back the two times I grappled with her.

  “That,” I said, more to myself than Booth, “was a Red Riding Ninja.”

  21

  Jonesey used to say that if you truly wanted something, all you had to do was act “as if” it was already true. That’s what Tom Booth did. Acting as if I weren’t chained to his ankle, he headed after Bad Penny, almost pulling me off my feet with his first step. Forget about keeping up with him. Even free I had a limp. As he pounded after her dust, I focused on remaining upright, but it didn’t go well.

  He turned a corner hard and stopped. Scattered in the open cafeteria space ahead of us were about twenty ferals. They were tearing at the walls and serving counters, attacking chairs and tables. A soda machine got the worst of it. The only sign of Penny was a door clicking shut at the far end of the space.

  I was trying to see if there was anything resembling a path through them, when Booth headed for the door and this time did pull me off my feet. Next thing I knew, I was sliding across the floor, looking up at ceiling tiles and the crotches of the living dead. The extra weight didn’t seem to slow him. The stairs beyond the exit door would hurt, but we never got there. Penny had somehow managed to lock the door.

  Booth pounded at it and growled with his nice, wet, liveblood voice.

  “Quiet! They’ll hear you!” I said.

  “So what? They already see me.”

  “Liveblood screams attract them. At least let me up,” I said. “No way you’ll get past them dragging me.”

  That didn’t stop him from trying. Using a plastic chair as a shield, he shoved his way into the throbbing cluster of dead flesh, trying to go out the way we came in. He clonked a head here, smashed a chest there, and screamed every time he swung.

  Whenever he howled, a few snatched at the air like they could grab the tasty sound and pop it, dripping, into their mouths.

  I didn’t consider things completely desperate until a few more staggered in from the hall we’d just left. Now we were cut off, and unless Booth had it in him to cripple them all with that chair, our options were limited.