Dead Mann Running (9781101596494)

by Petrucha, Stefan

  “Okay, are you sure ChemBet’s the one pulling Kagan and the governor’s strings?” I asked.

  “Who else?”

  I help up a dried finger. “There are two possibilities. Whoever chased us and took Misty were shooting like they didn’t care if they hit the case. If those were the only samples, Maruta’s little men would’ve been more careful.”

  When I held up the second finger, I remembered a liquid shadow on a computer screen, too heavy for the air to hold, too fast for it to let go. “Then there’s Bad Penny. That kind of ninja training can’t come cheap. Think she could be military? Or from Krypton?”

  Booth shrugged.

  I wouldn’t say we were buddies after that, but when we hit the woods again, we found a pace that worked. It’d grown dark, but some roofs soon poked through the tree-blanket. A short time later, we stumbled into a backyard with rusty swings, weeds, and a house that should’ve fallen down ages ago. It was likely owned by one of many families barely holding on due to the economy. There were lights inside.

  I stood behind Booth as he rang the doorbell. Even if Jonesey’s revolution hadn’t made the evening news, the last thing you want to see at your door after sunset is a chak.

  An eyeball came to the peephole. Booth held up his badge.

  “Police. I need to borrow your phone.”

  The eyeball went away, and then…nothing.

  He rang again, waited, then held the button down, like a man thinking he’d make the elevator come faster through thumb-power. Inside, there was shuffling, doors locking, metal clicking. Booth gave up on the buzzer and banged with his fist.

  A terrified male voice answered. “Go away! I’ve got children here!”

  Tom rolled his eyes. “For pity’s sake, I’m a police detective! I just need the damn phone!”

  “I’m not trusting anyone. I’ve got a gun! I’ll use it.”

  Booth took a step back. “Jesus, I told you I’m a…”

  I don’t know if the gun went off accidentally or not but along with the firecracker pop, a hole appeared in the surface of the door and a bloody scratch formed in the hair on the side of Tom’s head. We ran.

  “What?” Tom said. “We picked the only house on the block with a fucking meth lab?”

  “That’s no meth lab. That guy thought he was defending his family. Something’s going on,” I said. “Maybe Jonesey’s doing better than we thought. Damn.”

  Two houses down, an SUV sat in the driveway, keys on the passenger seat.

  “Well, that’s a gimme,” I said.

  When I opened the door, Booth hesitated. I guess he hadn’t stolen many cars lately.

  “If you stop and ask, you could wind up with a hole in your chest.”

  He grabbed the keys and took the driver’s seat.

  As we pulled out, I flipped on the radio. The station was airing the audio portion of Nell Parker’s show. It was not business as usual. Rather than chatting up a reassuring guest, she was appealing for calm.

  “I repeat, the photos circulating on your cell phones are a hoax,” she said, but she didn’t sound like she meant it. Knowing she wouldn’t be allowed to say anything important, I scanned for a liveblood news station and got some details.

  There were riots going on at five local camps. Smaller scuffles had broken out in and around the city, all blamed on that “fake” photograph.

  “At present, we have no idea if this was someone’s sick idea of a joke, or the intent was to cause a panic, but the authorities assure us they will find the perpetrator. Our other big story, possibly related, is that homicide detective Thomas Booth, now wanted by the police, is still at large, considered armed and dangerous after having apparently turned his gun on his own men during a routine investigation at a ChemBet facility in…”

  I turned off the radio. “Well, that’s not good.”

  “Shit, I don’t see how to win this,” Booth said.

  I closed my eyes, but the world didn’t go away. “At this point,” I said, “I’d settle for losing more slowly. Tom, the case, you want it?”

  He looked at me like I was crazy. It was a step up, like he’d forgotten I was a chak. “The briefcase?”

  “When I didn’t know whose it was, I didn’t give a rat’s ass who got it. Now that I know it belongs to psycho-bitch, I’m fine with giving it to anyone but her. Got a vat of acid you can dump it into?”

  “What if it’s like your idiot friend thinks, some kind of cure? It’s called birthday isn’t it?”

  “You don’t believe that horseshit, do you?”

  “No, but what do I know? I didn’t think they could bring the dead back to life, or that an arm could move by itself.”

  “And you want more of the same?”

  He shook his head. “Even if I still had a job, this would be way above my fucking pay scale.” He blew some air between his cracked lips. “I’ve got a friend at a university lab in Boston. I could bring it there, see if he can figure out what it is.”

  Whether the zombie scuffles were getting bigger or smaller, we didn’t see any. The trip to the warehouse was uneventful. I pulled open the big, squeaky metal door and let the headlights illuminate the oil stains, old crates, and other ghosts of commerce past.

  “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have cleaned up a little.”

  I walked over to the vat where I’d sunk the case, and pulled it out by the rope. As I did, I spotted something lying in the gloom. On the floor, lying across a crowbar, was a set of bolt cutters.

  I put the bagged briefcase, dripping gunk, on the floor. I headed for the cutters, pulling the chain between us taut. As soon as he felt the tug, Booth saw where I was headed and nearly got there before I did.

  I slipped the chain between the blades and tried to squeeze the handles. Bolt cutters go through chain link like butter. The links in our chain weren’t much thicker than that, but were made of sterner stuff. I put one handle down on the ground and leaned my weight into the other. Booth had to join in, both of us pushing, until the chain finally broke.

  We were free, of each other at least.

  “Going to crush my head now?”

  “Not just yet,” he said.

  “Tom, I’m touched.”

  He went back to the briefcase and started pulling off the garbage bags and duct tape. The cuff was tight on my bad ankle. With the bolt cutters in my hands, I might as well take care of that, too. I shoved a blade between my pants cuff and the metal and squeezed. This time it sliced through easily.

  “Should’ve started with the cuffs,” I said aloud, but he was too busy arguing with the duct tape to pay me any mind. Two more snips and I was able to bend the bracelet enough to pull it off.

  That’s when I noticed a blinking red light inside, sitting on a little bit of circuitry. Crap.

  “Tom,” I shouted. “They’ve been tracking us!”

  He was already ducking when a bullet sliced the skin on top of his hand. He was lucky it didn’t hit bone. When it hit a metal post instead, it exploded into a little red and yellow flower that lasted half a second. It was the third time we’d been shot at today, but this time was the prettiest.

  The SUV’s headlights made us sitting ducks. I rolled into one side of the darkness, Tom into the other, leaving the briefcase behind. Coming into a wobbly crouch, I tried to figure out what direction the bullet came from, then crept out of what I imagined was the shooter’s line of sight.

  Booth and I knew enough not to speak and give away our position. The sniper knew enough not to fire and give away his. We were all very clever. I spotted him anyway. He was across the narrow street, an ape-shape in a bulky suit. His hooded head was misshapen, just like it would be if he were wearing night-vision goggles.

  Keeping ape-man in view, I backed up slowly, staying low so I didn’t trip over something. I had no idea where Booth was, I just hoped we didn’t bump into each other.

  The shooter crossed the street with the kind of easy precision you get from regular drilling. Ev
en if he wasn’t military, his training was. He was cautious, but not overtly so, as if he doubted one chak and a homicide detective could give him much trouble. His problem would be entering the light to grab the case. If he took the goggles off, he wouldn’t be able to see us coming from the shadows. If he kept them on, close-up, the glare from the headlights would be blinding.

  I thought that might give us a small advantage, but once he reached the SUV, he turned off the lights. Problem solved. His, anyway.

  My back found the wall. I thought about doing the dead thing, acting like I was nothing until they all went away, but Booth was out there, and I knew, with the briefcase at stake, he was planning something stupid.

  So I headed for the SUV. It was easy enough. Booth had left the engine idling and the sniper didn’t think to turn it off. The trick was to get there fast enough to make a difference, but carefully enough to avoid being seen.

  I was maybe a foot away when I heard a familiar grunt and the sounds of a scuffle. The dark echoed with the slap of heavy punches, probably from Booth, mixed with quicker, heavier thuds, I assumed from the sniper’s counterstrikes.

  Hoping Booth might last two seconds, I hopped in the SUV and flipped on the headlights. Good thing, too. Tom was fighting two men, not one. The second entered while the lights were out, came up from behind and wrapped his arm around Booth’s neck. Now, he’d pulled Tom back and up, took him off his feet. The other had a combat knife and was about to gut the head of Fort Hammer’s Homicide Division.

  The light surprised them, though.

  In pain, each twisted their heads and reached for the goggles. Free, Booth landed a series of elbow jabs in the abdomen of the guy behind him, but the other one whipped his goggles off, took in the situation and regripped his knife.

  I honked. All three of them turned toward the SUV. The hooded apes nodded at each other. One clocked Booth in the jaw, the one with the knife came for me.

  Chakz aren’t very fast, but SUVs are, and all you have to do is put them in gear and step on the gas pedal. The ape with the knife jumped, but the bumper caught him in midleap. He rolled around before grabbing hold of the hood, then, like a panther, he jumped for the windshield.

  While he was doing that, I steered into his buddy. The car hit him head-on. Unfortunately, Booth didn’t get out of the way in time and wound up sideswiped. One sniper down, I spun the wheel and slammed into a concrete support post. Momentum should’ve thrown number two off the hood, but either the SUV wasn’t going fast enough, or he was real strong.

  Either way, the car wasn’t moving anymore, which made things easy for him. Rather than beat his way through the windshield, he jumped off and came for the door. Close-up, I could see his face was covered in black greasepaint, the whites of his eyes glowing like small versions of the headlights.

  He pulled out a sidearm, fired into the door lock, then stopped moving.

  What the fuck?

  It took me a second to notice there’d been a slight change in his outfit. There was a new flap in the cloth under his chin, revealing skin. A fish line across his neck seeped, then gushed blood. As he fell, the expression in his eyes didn’t change, like he’d never had a chance to realize he was dead.

  The other attacker was on the ground. His leg was broken, but he was trying to rise. He never did. A shadowy form flew across him. In the second it took to pass over him, a figure drove the man’s combat knife into the center of his chest.

  The briefcase vanished next. It looked like it was flying through the air before I made out the figure carrying it, the same figure that had killed Happy Jack in my office what seemed ages ago.

  Bad Penny.

  I watched her go, leaping from shadow to shadow like a devil in black. The only clear shape visible was the rectangle of the briefcase.

  Good thing it was empty.

  24

  There was barely time to enjoy the emptiness Bad Penny left behind, when a blast of blue and white assaulted the avenue between warehouses. The police. Made sense, I guess. ChemBet was monitoring us. Maybe the cops were monitoring ChemBet. More cars came from the other direction. I wasn’t sure if they were police or what. To be completely honest, I’d lost track of who was tracking whom, but it was a party, a big one.

  Booth was out cold. I probably should have told him the vials weren’t in the briefcase, but I hadn’t remembered myself until I saw Penny rush off with the case. There was no time to grab the vials now. Besides, having them on me in case we got caught was a bad idea anyway.

  I hooked Tom under the armpits and dragged him to the SUV. We couldn’t head out the way we came in, but the walls were cheap, thin corrugated metal. If I got up some speed, I’d be able to slam the SUV through the rear of the warehouse and make a break for it.

  No such luck. The engine wouldn’t start. The V-shaped cavity in the hood where the car had hit the support beam had done more than ruin the finish.

  I jumped from the driver’s seat as the first squad cars crunched to a halt. Car doors opened, feet hit asphalt. I’d never get Booth out of here before they spotted us. But these were Fort Hammer police, not mercs or rentals, men who knew and worked with him, bullshit charges or not. They may not have much love for me, but they wouldn’t hurt their head of homicide without hearing him out first. He’d be arrested, but they wouldn’t shoot him.

  Leaving Booth in the passenger seat, I scuttled into the dark, nearly tripping over one of the fallen snipers. That, it turned out, was a lucky break. With his night-vision goggles and headset staring me in the face, I realized how handy they might be. Yanking them off his head, I hustled out through an open space in the wall that used to be a window.

  Outside, it was pitch-dark and I was dead, so I managed to put six or seven warehouses between myself and the police without much trouble. I looked back every few seconds to make sure I wasn’t being followed. I had no idea how many groups were after me now. The shadows could be filled with everything from balding pederasts to Mouseketeers, all eager for the secrets of Travis Maruta’s final project.

  Satisfied as I could get that I was alone, I plopped myself on the ground by a sputtering streetlamp to have a look at my new toy. The easy part was figuring out what the headpiece was for. I slipped it on and lowered the goggles over my eyes. After poking the sides in search of a button, I found one, pressed it, and heard the high-pitched whine of powering electronics. The unseen world lay revealed before me, etched in gross browns and sickly greens.

  There were readings alongside the image, numbers and abbreviations, a menu. A spot right under the button near my right temple, moved a highlight around. Hoping it worked like a mouse, I put the bright green box on the word “COM” and double-clicked. What do you know? Maybe some things really are idiot-proof.

  A voice came through the headset, electronically altered just like my old buddy the toad. “Have you secured the goods?” it said.

  “You bet. Project Birthday is all wrapped up with a ribbon and a nice card. What name should I put on it?”

  “Hessius Mann. You have quite a knack for survival.”

  It was the toad. “Yeah, wish I’d had it before the execution.”

  “I assume this means more of my men are dead. Pity. I paid a great deal for them.”

  “Really? I figured they were ChemBet.”

  “They were. That’s why I had to pay extra. Did they put up a good fight?”

  “The best. Technically, second best, otherwise they’d still be alive. You’re probably not going to believe this, but the ninja got them.”

  The air had been quiet, but at that moment an icy breeze swept along the sidewalk. It made me wonder if Penny had already realized the case was empty, and had doubled back.

  “Oddly, I am inclined to believe you,” the toad said. “I’ve seen the footage from your office.”

  “That on YouTube already?” I looked up and down the street. A targeting cursor in the goggles zeroed in on some movement—a rat meandering around a trash can. Pretty coo
l.

  “You still don’t know who I am, do you?”

  I kept looking. “I’ve narrowed it down. You’re not Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. But if you want to just tell me, don’t let me stop you.”

  “Who has the briefcase?”

  No need to lie about that at least. “The ninja.”

  “Pity. He’s the only one in this whole situation I’ve been unable to track.”

  He. So he didn’t know who Penny was. Hell, I didn’t know who she was.

  “Must be frustrating.”

  “Oh, there’s more than enough data coming in to keep me busy. For instance, right now, I see that you’re sitting behind warehouse G3.”

  I snapped my head left and right. How the fuck could he see me? They didn’t bother putting security cameras down here. I looked up and saw the source of the breeze, a small plane, mixing with the clouds. Apparently they’d added a few pages to the army surplus catalog since last I checked.

  “It’s an older-model military drone, an MQ-1, if you’re curious. With the press of a button, I could patch the video feed to the police, or ChemBet security. They have two…no, three cars in the area. With the press of another button, I could have it fire a Hellfire missile at you.”

  “Button, button, who’s got the button?” I stood, planning to bolt. A dot appeared on my chest, rendered green by the goggles, but I had to figure it was red—a laser site from the drone. Acid, fire, and D-cap I had figured. What would be left of me after a missile strike? The temperature of the blast might take care of me, and even if it didn’t there was a good bet that whatever remained wouldn’t be talking much.

  “I doubt you’d tell ChemBet, especially after you stole their men. The police, maybe, if you’re the guy who has Kagan in his pocket. Then again I got away from them once. I really wouldn’t use the missile, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Same reason your boys shouldn’t have been shooting at us back on Essex Street.”

  “You said the ninja had the vials.”

  “I said the ninja had the briefcase. Seems they got separated.”