by Victor Koman
"
A scream shuddered around me. The grey fog vanished. I stood facing a screaming child. Zack still held his blade aloft, as if I'd only been gone an instant. I aimed with both hands and fired.
The pistol blasted, its report filling the chapel like a physical presence. Through the blinding flash and explosion, I saw Emil grab at his hand and howl.
"
Abbadon!
" he shrieked. "You'll pay for this, Ammo!"
"Deduct it from my tab," I said.
Ann glared at my client with a savage hatred. She made cutting motions in the air with her knife.
Emil stared at me, then at her. His lips curled back, and his voice reached straight up from the gutter.
"You! You fucking
mother!
I'll get you for this. Nobody betrays me!"
"I'm not betraying you," I said, stepping up to the altar to lift the kid's shuddering body off the black velvet. "I still intend to fulfill our contract. I'm getting new leads all the time. You've been an inspiration."
He never took his eyes off Ann.
"You'll regret this alliance," he said.
"I learned not to have any regrets," I said, stepping down from the altar with my small burden. "I've had a full life, and I don't give a damn what happens next. You're looking at the man who's going to pull the cosmic trigger and blow Number One into stardust."
"You talk a hard line, Ammo. Let's see some delivery."
He turned to storm out the side door of the chapel. I didn't want to imagine which direction he went from there. I'd glanced at the bullet wound through
his
hand.
It didn't bleed. Not a drop.
9
Isadora
"A thousand men yet none," Ann said. She walked beside me, leading the way with the flashlight beam.
We departed the chapel, leaving the candles to flicker behind us. I wasn't worried about anything catching fire in this damp tomb. And if it did, the city fathers would probably applaud me for an act of urban renewal.
The flies were gone, the plaza silent.
I shifted the kid to piggyback when we reached the thigh-high water. "She put on a pretty swell act for a virgin."
"You have to nowadays," the kid said.
"What's your name?" Ann asked.
The kid squirmed a bit. "Isadora Volante. And it's no act. They got their money's worth. Weren't you convinced?"
I had to admit that she had a wild talent. Just how wild she didn't seem to know.
"Look, kid-"
"It's Isadora," she snapped, "when I've got my clothes off."
"Right. Listen, you acted as if you didn't know what led us to you."
"I don't. You weren't just passing by?"
"Ki-Isadora, you lit up L.A. with enough special effects to shame Cecil B. DeMille."
She snorted. "Well, I never noticed it. All I knew was, that freako tried to kill me and there wasn't any way I could even touch the son of a bitch. I've bounced some weird stuff back at guys, but whatever was inside his head..." She quivered and hugged my neck tighter.
"Go easy on him," I said. "He's suffers from a massive inferiority complex."
A fluttering noise half-echoed from another part of the lower plaza. "Listen," I said. "More flies?"
"Too loud for that," Ann said.
"Let's change directions," I suggested. "We can try the northside escalators."
"Why?" Ann asked.
"Call it a hunch, call it intuition, call it a healthy cowardice. I don't think we should go back the way we came."
Ann nodded. "Lead the way."
I turned. The fluttering was behind us now. I jostled Isadora. "Hey," I asked softly, "you're not transmitting anything, are you?"
"Too tired." She leaned her chin on my shoulder.
The sound grew louder, like slabs of wet leather slapped lightly against one another. Ann and I waded as swiftly as we could.
I started to say, "Ann-".
And then they were on us.
10
The Damned
The first one flew out of the darkness to strike my shoulder with sharp black talons fully extended. They ripped through cloth down into flesh. Blood welled up in droplets like dew on a beer mug.
No illusion. This was real. It hurt. The screaming grew louder.
Except that I thought bats couldn't scream.
Ann didn't make a sound, even when the other dozen or so swooped down the corridor, howling madly. Score one for her.
I dropped the kid into the drink to give me a little elbow room. I reached for my Colt, only to hesitate. The bats outnumbered my supply of rounds, and I wasn't such a fabulous shot that I could bring down small animals in this light.
My concentration was broken by one of the things slapping against my back and sinking its fangs into the nape of my neck. I reached up and behind to squeeze its little neck until it choked and let go.
Two of them had ganged up on Ann, and they weren't the storybook types that get tangled in hair. They went for her eyes. The others circled about, screeching.
I had problems of my own.
I pulled the struggling thing over my head. Bad idea. It tried to give me a Mohawk by raking its claws over my scalp.
I got him in front of me, though. We stared face-to-face. And what a face!
Where a bat's head reasonably should have been glared a contorted mockery of a human face, twisted in agony. Its lips curled back around huge, bloody fangs. Watching it as though I had nothing better to do at the time, I finally heard what it was screaming.
It screamed for forgiveness.
So did the others slashing at Ann in an unbatlike manner.
I thought about it long and hard for a second or so. But a generous nature is one of the virtues I lack.
Continuing to choke the tiny monster's throat with one hand, I twisted its body with the other. Its neck snapped like a hollow, rotted twig, and the thing fell limp. I dropped it from my hands into the sludge.
"Dell!" Ann grasped the flashlight in one hand, her steel in the other. She was cutting at the air again with the knife while swinging the torch like a club. Her purse slapped against her wet hip like a wrecking ball. It was a wonder she managed to remain standing in the middle of the fracas.
I splashed back up to the chapel gift shop. Inside the shattered window display were some shelves. I grabbed one, ignoring the crosses lying there. I figured they wouldn't help in my case.
I waded back into the fray. The plank worked fine. The first bat I hit flew halfway across the hall-though not under its own power.
I pulled off a bat that had plunged its teeth in the heel of Ann's left palm. Its face looked familiar, like that of a dead president or someone of that ilk.
I swung it around me like a chicken marked for dinner. When its spine snapped, I threw it against the escalator steps for good measure.
The kid played it smart. She submerged as deep into the water as she could and ducked her head when one of them swooped by.
I grabbed my board and tried to improve my batting average.
Ann finally seemed to get the knack of keeping the bats away from her. Whenever she waggled her knife in a certain manner, they backed off.I caromed another flying rodent off the walls in a banked shot. It splashed about angrily in the water before drowning. As creatures from Hell went, they were pretty tame.
One of the bats fluttered too close to Ann's blade. She managed to nick it.
Its shriek became a sickly moan. It didn't seem as if she'd done it much harm. It acted, though, as if she'd shot it full of hydrofluoric acid. The moan became a pitiful, rattling sigh, like air escaping from a bottle. It took one last wing-flap and performed a graceless nosedive into the water.
That made the others go crazy. Almost as one, they swept toward Ann. Her hair whipped about as she swung her dagger in wide angles and sharp turns. She must have had all the aces on her side. The bats almost looked as if they were diving into
the blade's path. Within seconds, the rest of the bats fell sighing to the floor.
The place sounded like a tire-slasher's wet dream.
The room fell silent. Slowly, Isadora rose up from the water. Slowly, Ann regained her composure. Slowly, I grew aware of the throbbing pain and hot wetness at the back of my neck. I dabbed at the blood with a soggy handkerchief.
One of the bats that Ann had killed floated near me, face up. Its eyes were closed and-as much as possible around those vicious fangsits human face smiled.
I felt that overall sort of shiver you feel when you touch something that's not supposed to be there.
"Come on," I said, trying to sound tough and cool. It came out sounding hoarse and old. I took the light from Ann. Isadora followed on her own, to my aching back's relief.
I felt around for the base of the escalator. My toe found it, painfully. We rose up out of the slime toward the inside entrance to North Tower. Halfway up, I turned to shine the beam back past the kid. She was climbing up naked and dripping wet, looking like a severely misplaced water nymph. The light threw a circle of white on the lumpy surface of the water, where it shimmered and cast rippling reflections on the walls.
I noticed something missing in the water. The bats.
I didn't want to know whether they merely sank or vanished or danced out doing the cha-cha. All I knew was that I had blood coming out of various parts of me and that I ached like a second-place prizefighter.
Dell Ammo's a real hard man. He fights Heaven and Hell. Ammo's real tough. Ammo wants to lie down on dry sheets with an ice pack and a heating pad. Dell Ammo wants life to ease the hell up on him.
I looked up to see a dark shape snarling at the top of the stairs.
Dell Ammo gets all the breaks.
I snapped the Magna-Lite up at it. The thing hissed and pulled back. I drew my automatic, whipped it a couple of times to get water out of the barrel, and waited. "Get behind me," I whispered.
"Right," Ann said. "I'll guard the rear." She wedged the kid between us.The thing stepped into the light, crouching low. It looked like a wolf, but I wasn't calling any odds tonight. It had lost its fur sometime in the past, but had made up for it with thick scales of blackened, flaking skin. From the way it crouched, it gave no sign of being weak or sick. Tiny droplets of foam dripped from its slavering tongue when it opened its maw to snarl.
"Oh, shit," said a small voice behind me.
I took aim as it reared up to leap. The muzzle blast stung my hand. The report rang in my head like the bells of St. Mary's.
The kick nearly threw me off balance on the slick steps. A firm hand at my back steadied me, pushing me upright.
"Thanks, sweetheart," I muttered through clenched teeth. I stared at the dog-or whatever it was. It had collapsed at the top of the escalator, dead before it could lunge toward us. The bullet had made a large, ugly crater in its crusted skin. This one bled, though, nice and normal from its mouth and nose. Its forequarters hung limply over the top step. Where there should have been paws, dirty, callused hands twitched reflexively a few times and grew still. They looked as if they'd once been slender, graceful hands, perhaps those of a woman.
I said nothing. Ann said nothing. The kid said nothing. We all kept saying it until we'd edged past the limp, lifeless hulk.
Ann poked it with her steel.
"Are you sure it's dead?" Isadora asked.
"It won't bother us anymore," Ann replied. She poked it harder. It hissed slowly, languidly. Like an old woman recalling a pleasant memory. The sound stopped as abruptly as it began.
"Did you puncture it?" The kid looked at Blondie with a queer expression.
Ann looked back, her features calm. "It's dead, Isadora. Gone for good. I just wanted to be sure it wouldn't... revive."
I turned to face the next flight of steps. "If you're through playing coroner, angel, we can try making it to the top. This escalator heads right up into the lobby of North Tower. The fire doors were locked from the inside before they began decontamination."
Ann took the kid's hand to lead her past the corpse. "I suppose you've got the key?"
I flicked the safety on my Colt back and forth, smiling. "I have an Open Portal spell. Hasn't failed me yet."
I couldn't coax a smile out of either one of them. I hadn't expected to. We were as raucous as a funeral home.
I beamed the Magna-Lite at the steel doors blocking the top of the escalator. Nothing there but some angular shadows and piles of rusty red dust. We started up the cluttered steps.
The stark shadows at the top shifted-with the bobbing of the light, I assumed, paying it no mind.
I felt that familiar shiver pass through me, though. Below us, I heard the scraping of tiny claws on steel. I froze.
The shadows above kept moving.
The footsteps below us slowed a few at a time. It sounded like rats.
"Just rats," I said out loud, more for my sake than the others. I took another step up and beamed the fire door.
The shadows looked even more solid in the direct light. Not good.
They continued to move and shift, keeping no particular shape for more than a few seconds. The wall behind them barely showed through.
A few high-pitched, thin voices at the bottom of the stairs squealed, "Forgive us!" A few more whined in, adding, "It's not our fault!" to the chorus.
Tiny feet scampered to reach the first step.
The lady and the kid crowded up next to me.
I sweated what to do. Rats are more suited to shotguns than pistols.
I fired into the shadows ahead. They made bigger targets than whatever was closing in on us from behind. The round went through the one in the middle and spattered against the wall.
I should have expected as much.
I fired again. This one marked the wall with a silvery splash. The shadow continued its wavering motions, unbothered.
The things below us gained a couple more steps. They shrieked like a thousand fingernails on slate.
I was getting more than nervous. Just to have something to do while I thought things out, I aimed a third time.
"Out of the way!" shouted the blond and blue-green form shimmering past me. She almost shoved me over the side of the escalator to charge up the stairs straight at the wraiths.
She screamed like bad opera and swung her arm.
The little beasts behind us gained a few more levels. I pulled Isadora in front of me, lifting her up from the steps with my free arm.
Ann's blade passed through the first shadow. It drew away from her, seeming to fold in on itself. The others pulled away toward the walls. She jabbed at each one. They vanished at the touch of her knife.
"
Let's go!
" she yelled, pointing to the padlocks on the doors. The screaming, pleading things behind me jumped up to my step a heartbeat after I'd started to run to the top of the stairs. It was a very quick heartbeat.
"Get behind me!" I shouted, handing the kid to Ann. I didn't know what good being behind me would do in the event of a ricochet, but it seemed the courteous thing to say.
The door's rusted hasps looked far weaker than the locks. I leaned the muzzle against the lower one, shielded my eyes, and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet tore through the hasp and ricocheted twice. Fragments of mirror exploded from the opposite wall to cascade down the escalator steps.
Loud animal cries rose up from below. They were even closer.
I reached up to shoot off the other hasp. The round went straight through the ceiling into the lobby. I hoped that no one was sitting right above us.
Blondie and I pulled at the door and managed to open it a crack. A sheet of light trickled in, along with a dozen or so years of accumulated trash.
Into that light swarmed the squealing terrors. Little rat heads and little rat paws. Attached to little human bodies.
I jammed my legs on one side of the opening and my back alongside the other. Old bones popped in surprise with the
strain. The doors creaked and parted another foot or so. I shoved the kid through. My muscles felt like old rags stretching beyond their limit. I pushed Ann through just as she was getting ready to go at the little horrors with her knife. Enough is enough.
I squeezed past the opening. Debris clogged the fire-door channel, jamming the doors.
The three of us stood in a recess in the lobby at the base of another escalator. People rimmed the edge and stood at the top of the stairs, peering at us. They were the same old lowlifes I'd seen in the tower for years. I didn't even feel like warning them. I turned to take Ann's hand.
She held the flame dagger she'd pulled from the dead man. With her other hand, she struck her own blade against the bloodstained steel. After a half-dozen tries, an actinic spark flashed between the two weapons.
She'd have been a hit in Scouting.
A powerful toss of her arm flung the flame dagger through the doorway.
"Close it!" she cried, shoving at one side of the door.
I leaned against the other to push while the kid scooped paper and beer cans and cigarette butts out of the guiderails.
The rats began to howl and hiss in agony and release. The doors edged closer together. Through the shrinking crack sighed the tired sound of death.
The doors ground shut. I sat down in the rubble and felt my age.
Ann slipped her knife into its sheath and returned it to her purse. The things a woman hangs on to.
"Let's go," she said. "We can't stay around here."
I dabbed at the rips in my neck and scalp. The others didn't look too healthy either.
"There's a doctor on the fourth floor," I said wearily. "He can clean us up a bit."
Ann nodded and climbed up the escalator. I took off my jacket and offered it to the kid. She shook her head.
"No thanks. I'm used to it. I'm no traffic stopper, anyway."
We followed Ann up the moribund escalator to reach lobby level. Old drunken and drugged eyes watched us head toward the elevator. The excitement was too much for some of them-eyes began to unglaze and return to life. Luckily, the elevator waited for us at lobby level. We stepped inside before anyone had a stroke.