"Yeah. Maybe we're not the only idiots around here. Come on."
She crawled out on hands and knees, her ears straining for any sign of the Reaper's distinctive hum. She'd never be able to hear another refrigerator without diving for cover. Assuming reliable power could be restored in the foreseeable future. Paulie would give anything right now for decent lighting. She'd been frightened enough of the Reaper in the broad daylight of the riverside cottages where Bobby had died, but creeping around in the half light trying to avoid a floating black lozenge of death was another level of terror entirely.
She got to her feet as she reached the entrance of the main hall.
"Can't hear nothin'" Marvin said.
"Let's go for it. And remember, we have to get to the control board and shut down the drone. Do that first, then we can worry about Liang."
Tucker nodded grimly and they headed out over the marble floor, dodging fallen shelves and boxes, trying desperately to make no noise.
"What the hell?" Paulie stopped and pointed to the left. There, against the far wall, lay the crumpled form of a human body.
"Leave it!" Marvin hissed as she went to investigate. "Shut down the Reaper, that's what you said!"
But she ignored him and ran across the floor, all caution forgotten, her instincts driving her.
It was a soldier in a blood-drenched Chinese uniform who was half-sitting against the base of a counter as if he was a leaf blown into a corner by the wind. He lay opposite an open door that led to a smaller department.
"Sheriff! Come on. We gotta move before it comes back!"
"Why did it shoot a Chinese soldier?" Paulie muttered to herself as she crouched beside the body. "What does this mean?"
She let out a cry of shock as, with a sudden convulsion, the corpse fell forward onto its face. "What the h— "
"Help…me…"
Tucker, who'd caught Paulie as she stumbled, pointed down at a space between the bottom of the counter and the floor. "Petrov!"
Paulie pushed the body of the Chinese soldier to one side and took hold of Petrov's trembling hand.
"What are you doing under there?" she asked as she and Marvin pulled him out. "You've been shot!" Fresh blood coated Petrov's shirt and his face, always pale and owl like, was as white as a sheet.
"Chang…him," he muttered, pointing at the corpse. "He caught me, was taking me to Liang…Reaper found us…he ordered it away. It shot him."
Marvin glanced through the door as if expecting to see it floating there, listening. "So, it was aimin' for you and got him? Poor sap."
"I don't buy that," Paulie said as she pulled open Petrov's shirt and examined the wound. "I mean, it's not yet the perfect killing machine, but I can't believe it's programmed to ignore the uniforms of its makers."
"I thought you said Lee Corp made the Reapers?"
Paulie nodded. "Didn't you know Annabel Lee was half Chinese?"
"Oh my G…"
"Yeah. As soon as we got here and found the Reaper, it seemed so obvious. We thought we were up against the Lee Corporation, but it turns out we're also fighting the entire Chinese nation."
Tucker's face darkened. "Oh man," he said, as he watched Paulie cleaning Petrov's wound. "Are you sayin' the Commies survived? All of 'em?"
"I don't know for sure, Marvin, but it looks pretty likely to me. I mean, if the Chinese government is behind the Lee Corporation, they wouldn't kill their own, would they?"
"Honestly, Sheriff, none o'this makes sense to me. Seems as though we'd best tackle the job in front of us and worry about everythin' else later."
Paulie nodded, then turned back to Petrov. "Looks as though you've been lucky. I think the bullet that got you had passed through him first." She gestured at the body of the Chinese soldier. "He took the brunt of it and it missed your vital organs. I'll bind it as best I can, but we'll have to get you some medical attention."
"Thank you, Sheriff."
"You wait here while Marvin and I deal with Liang."
Petrov shook his head vigorously. "No! I'm not staying here with…him…"
"Don't be an idiot, Custer. You might bleed to death!"
But there was no arguing with him, and Paulie could see the terror of being left on his own written in his eyes. "If you slow us down, Petrov, we'll leave you behind, I swear!"
Tucker helped Paulie drag the man to his feet, then, just as they were about to head back along the shopping hall to the door that led to Room 5, they all stopped and listened.
"It's coming!" Petrov cried out, jabbing his arm beyond the Chinese soldier's body and through the open door to the smaller room beyond.
There floated the Reaper. A black, lozenge-shaped drone, its four rotors humming as it observed them before, suddenly, it dipped its nose, the noise from the rotors peaked and it headed toward them.
"Run!" Paulie said, pulling on Petrov's arm. He didn't move. "Come on, Custer! Run!"
Marvin grabbed his other arm and, as if he'd been freed from a spell, the Russian came to life and his legs began moving so they could let him go. They'd just reached the exit door when it turned the corner into the main hall and, with an ear-splitting crack-crack-crack, the door frame exploded.
Not looking to see whether anyone lay beyond, they’d flung themselves into the corridor and ran for the entrance to Room 5.
Marvin kicked the door open and they saw the table the Reaper had been sitting on when they'd first stumbled across it. There were doors to left and right. Paulie made for one and flung it open.
"Put down your weapons."
Liang stood there with two other guards. His handgun was pointing directly at Paulie, giving her no time to react.
"Go ahead," he said softly. "Give me an excuse. There is information inside that pretty head I could make use of, but I am just as content to blow it off its shoulders should you insist."
Paulie's gun dropped to the floor, followed by the metallic thunk of Tucker's rifle and whatever Custer had been carrying.
Behind them, they could hear the hum getting louder. They were surrounded by death.
Liang nodded to his subordinates and they moved out from behind the desk, pulling thick black zip ties from their pockets. One went to Custer and secured his unresisting hands behind his back. Tucker pushed back against the guard that tried to do the same with him, but Liang pointed his weapon at him and, finally, he was forced to give in.
Paulie could hear the Reaper behind her and imagined she could feel the breeze from its rotors like the breath of the Grim Reaper on the nape of her neck. "Did you know it shot one of your soldiers?" she said.
"Do not be foolish," Liang responded.
Did she see doubt in his eyes?
"Go look in the main hall. You'll find…what was his name, Custer?"
"Ch…chang. It's true, Major. He was bringing me to you, and he ordered the drone to go, but it shot him."
Liang's eyes flicked to Petrov. "It was an error, then. This is a prototype unit. New units are being shipped from China. They will not have these…faults."
Behind her, Paulie could hear the drone's barrel spinning up.
"You will stand down!" Liang barked at a point above Paulie's left shoulder. "Do you understand me? Return to your charging station."
She heard the hum of the rotors altering slightly, terror turning her blood to ice as she waited for the machine guns to cut them down.
Liang's face went red with mixed anger and fear. "You are malfunctioning!" Then, quite suddenly, he reached to the left.
"Get down!!" Paulie yelled as the machine guns spoke, throwing Liang against the wall in a scarlet spray.
She rolled over to see the guards who'd been standing behind her running past the Reaper which swung easily in its axis and, with another terrible roar of gunfire, brought them down.
Paulie and Tucker scrambled around the desk to take shelter beside the body of Liang. Petrov, however, had tried to climb underneath and he cried out as another burst of gunfire hit his legs.
As it watched Paulie and Tucker, Petrov peered over the edge of the desk to where the control panel lay. As the drone's barrels began whirring, he hauled himself up and reached for a button. The Reaper swung again, blowing Custer into the air to land beside Liang.
It was now or never. Paulie had an instant to look at the controls. There was a joystick built into the console, and above it a monitor that should have shown a view from the drone's camera, but was, in fact, black. At the instant the gunfire halted, she threw herself horizontally aiming for the only button Liang could have meant to press. She heard the metallic staccato of the gun platform moving and the accelerating whine as it prepared to fire. She braced herself for death, as she stabbed down.
A deafening bang. A searing pain. And then nothing. She fell beneath the desk.
"She's comin' round."
"Oh, thank God."
"She was very fortunate."
Paulie wanted to sleep. So, she did.
She was alone when she awoke. Paulie felt the soft yielding of a mattress and her hands whipped onto her body. She was clothed, but not in her sheriff's uniform. It was a loose-fitting gown. A hospital gown.
She sat up, allowing her eyes time to focus. How long had she been asleep? She knew where she was. This was the makeshift hospital in Alldays Department Store. But who was in charge? Was she a prisoner of the Chinese?
"Enjoy your vacation, Sheriff?"
Well, that answered the question. She rolled her head to the left to see Marvin Tucker sitting there. "What are you doing here?"
"That's nice," he said with a grin. "It was my turn to watch, that's all. I'll go get the doctor."
She put out an arm to stop him. It felt as though it was made of iron and flopped down beside the bed. "Hold on. What happened?"
"The drone clipped you as you hit the button then, cool as you like, it spun around and took itself off to the charging station. I carried you into the hospital. They were locked in, you know. Pretty terrible conditions. But Doc Ashmal—you remember him?—he patched you up."
"And the Chinese?"
"None left alive."
"Luna?"
"She's been here. Wally's takin' care of her. She likes him."
She watched Tucker slink off. What a true friend he'd proven to be. Nicky Friedman was the only other member of her department she knew to be alive, and there was no saying what state her mind was in by now. But Marvin was the best of the best, and she found herself wanting to keep him close.
There was nothing sexual about it, no romantic connection. She liked him, sure enough, and Luna adored him. If grief and guilt would have allowed it, her mind might have admitted that she thought of him as a brother, but she'd had one of those and he was dead now. Let him be an uncle, then. Most importantly, let him stay near.
Paulie was out of bed the next day, though it was against doctor's orders. She already knew that there had been eight other people in the little hospital. All were young and therefore valuable to the Chinese, or the militia in Seattle, or whoever was in overall charge.
Doctor Ashmal had done his best to protect his patients by delaying their recovery for as long as he could manage, but he'd been unable to prevent the chronically ill from being taken out of his care to heaven knew where.
Twenty-two people had been found behind a locked door on the top floor of the department store. These were the workers used as slave labor by the Chinese troops to cook and clean for them and to search Arbroath for anything of value.
There was nowhere else for any of these people to go, for now, so the only practical difference in their living arrangements was that their doors were no longer locked.
She knew all of them by sight, and most by name, but the biggest surprise was when a once familiar figure launched herself at Paulie, causing her to stumble backwards.
"Sheriff! I didn't believe it when they told us. When they unlocked the door. I thought you couldn't possibly still be alive. All those rumors. So very dark."
Paulie gently pushed the woman back and looked into the face of Mayor Vogelbach. It was her face, but her business-like bob had been cut away, and that, along with the deprivation they'd all suffered, had given her a haggard appearance that had added a decade to her looks.
"I think they thought it a just punishment to have me working as a slave after I tried to oppose them. Of course, I thought it was just those bandits coming back, but the Chinese moved in a week later and, since then, things went from bad to worse. Oh, but it's good to see you, Sheriff. I'll confess, I thought I was having hallucinations when Mr. Tucker released us from our prison. I'm so pleased to learn I wasn't losing my mind."
Paulie smiled at her. "Let's catch up over dinner. We're going to liberate the supplies of the soldiers now that Marvin's organized the burials. I'd like you to officiate at the ceremony for our people. If, one day, we get back on our feet, we'll have to erect a statue to our Russian friends. Without them, we'd never have won. For now, however, I'm going to spend a couple of hours with Luna."
"I'll do that. I'll even speak for the Chinese. Even they deserve a proper burial," the mayor said, her eyes betraying the first hints of the energy she was famous for. "But tell me, Paulie. Once we've done that, what's next?"
"To get out of Dodge," Paulie said, "before the Chinese send someone to check on their garrison."
Chapter 13
She could hear the noise from the crowd gathering outside the town hall getting louder and angrier as the morning went on.
"You're gonna have to go out there, sooner or later," Skulls said as Bella looked out the window of her office. Immediately below her lay the canvas roofs of the market her father and daughter had set up, but there would be no trading until the crowd dispersed. "Make sure you're protected, mind," he added.
"And how would that look, my dear?" Bella said, as she felt the warmth of his hands on her shoulders. "If I go out there with a full security detail, doesn't that suggest I've lost control already?"
Skulls withdrew his hands and came to stand beside her. "Damn agitators. As if we don't have enough problems. It all started when we let the Lee Corporation help." The sarcastic emphasis on that final word said everything about what he thought of their involvement.
"I should never have agreed to let them supply us." That had been the thin end of the wedge. The next demand had been Lee Corp guards to secure the supplies. Perfectly reasonable on its own, but each concession strengthened the hand of the Lees at the expense of Elizabeth's autonomy.
"It wasn't just you. Every one of the council voted the same way. It was the chocolate that did it, I reckon. You can appeal to logic all you like, but if you want to tug on a person's heart, offer them a Hershey bar. Or a bottle of bourbon."
She gave a half-hearted chuckle and looked across at him. Though he insisted she use the name, at least in public, he wasn't Skulls to her anymore. He was Steve. Her Steve. Barely recognizable as the man who'd once been a highway bandit. But then, she found it hard to see herself in a mirror these days. She had lost weight, so there was that to count in her favor, but her hair was now more gray than brown because it seemed frivolous to spend time and effort finding the right shade of color and the idea of sitting down for a couple of hours while a hairdresser performed her magic was as tempting as it was unacceptable. Skulls had said he liked her fine as she was, but if she wanted a couple of hours on her butt—a very fine butt, he said—to make herself feel better then she should go right ahead, and he'd deal with anyone who complained.
Her predecessor, Mayor Kennedy, had felt no such compunction about modesty but, then, look at what happened to her. Kennedy was languishing in a police cell with around the clock protection, and that had been at Bella's insistence and against the will of many of t
he people who wanted to see her hanging from her own gallows. Bella had been to visit her several times, once the woman's bitterness and anger had abated enough for them to have a conversation, but she couldn't help wondering whether she might have been better off letting the people have their way. Having that snake in their midst might come back to bite them all, one day.
"Okay, I'll speak to them," Bella said, turning back to the window. She could see the placards from here:
Fair distribution!
You hoard. We become a horde!
Share and share alike.
Someone had leaked the size and contents list of the first shipments, but the euphoria that had greeted this soon turned to anger when it became obvious that these supplies were to be rationed. Of course, many people—perhaps most—understood and supported this approach, but, as is so often the case, they were drowned out by the minority who were driven by a desperate urge to find some normality in this changed world. And a few luxuries would, for as long as they lasted, help sustain that delusion.
To complicate matters, their introduction of the Lizzie Dollar had brought about its own problems since the council had decided to distribute at least some of the fresh food through the market which meant, inevitably, that some people got more than others. Everyone had what they needed, but not necessarily what they wanted.
A man stood on a box with his back to the closed market, barking his rhetoric at the crowd. She knew him as Ezekiel Crowe, though she doubted he'd been born with that name, and she'd first seen him after the Lee Corporation brought in the first supplies and their guards took up residence in the offices above the warehouse they'd been assigned. The connection was obvious to her and many others, but some simply didn't care. If the Lees provided food, how could they mean harm to Elizabeth? And she had no answer to that, though, as the company behind the implants that had killed nineteen out of twenty Americans, they'd hardly earned her trust. Until she understood their purpose here, it was hard to fight them.
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