Those Who Walk in Darkness so-1

by John Ridley

  And Soledad smiled. It was a sweet one that warmed across her lips. She leaned over the table, getting dressing on her sleeve and not caring, put her mouth to Ian's. Kissed him.

  Yeah. He definitely wished he was a ballsier kind of guy.

  And as he thought that, he let himself be.

  "Let's go away," Ian said.

  "I've got days owed. Maybe we could get lost for a couple of—"

  "I'm not talking a vacation. Where would you be happy? Canada? Hawaii? Australia? How far away do we have to be from the rest of the world for you to smile all the time? Just tell me and I'll take you there."

  Soledad put down her fork."If we're going to do this, if you and me are going to be together… it won't work with you worrying about me getting killed."

  "That's not why I'm… Yeah, I think about that. I'd be lying if I said I didn't. But as I come to know you more I worry less. Sometimes I think nothing could kill you."

  "Then why—"

  "Look at us: two people stumbling along in life. The only way we even hooked up was by accident. Really by accident. Baggage for days, pasts we don't want to talk about. A world of people we don't even want to know. So, fine. Let's leave all that. Let's… It's like we're no good for anyone but us. And we're no good at all except anywhere but here."

  "Here?" Edging forward again: "So get away from here, you mean: get away from hunting freaks."

  Ian looked down at the table."From… everything."

  "I don't… One second we're talking about salad dressing, then you're asking me to give it all up."

  "Give all of what up?"

  "My job, my life."

  "An obsession as much as a job."

  "You don't like what I do—"

  "You're the one who said that. Not me. And a job doing what, hunting people down? You sit there asking me if I think you're a bigot, then you go right back to having no problem doing what you're doing."

  "Being a cop and being a bigot are not the same thing."

  "They are if it's the reason you became a cop: to have a legal excuse to kill the people you hate."

  "You know what?" Soledad was already half up out of her chair."This conversation needs to end and you need to get out of my face."

  Ian reached out. Ian grabbed Soledad by the wrist, pulled her back down into her seat. In the time that she'd known, yet barely known him, Soledad had always thought of Ian as a sensitive guy. Sensitive a euphemism for timid, but timid not being a pejorative. He was quiet, little on the nervous side. She remembered his panicked look when he caught a glimpse of her off-duty piece the afternoon their cars collided. Soledad remembered his halting, breathy request for a first date. Things that made him more human than the hard guys she mixed with daily on the force.

  But all previous concepts of Ian got shoved to the side by the strong hand that latched on to Soledad's wrist with a firm, firm grip. It surprised Soledad. It was unexpected; hard but not harsh. It directed her to shut up, sit down and listen. It also revealed to Soledad an as-yet-undiscovered attractiveness in Ian.

  Ian said: "What did your job," again, derisive there,"give you except months of getting slow-roasted over coals? The same people who were supposed to be supporting you were ready to hang you, couldn't turn their backs fast enough on you. Lied, Soledad. They lied to your face."

  Ian eased up his grip. Soledad was almost sorry for it.

  He said: "I don't want you to give up your life. That's not what I'm asking. What I want… I want you to start a life with me. I want us to start one together."

  "What are you saying?"

  "What I'm… I'm trying… I'm telling you…" Fumbling, fumbling."I'm saying what people say to people every day. I'm saying what you said to me. I'm saying I love you."

  "… Fuck…"

  "I tell you I love you, and you say fuck?"

  "… Yeah…"

  "You told me you loved me. It's only supposed to work one way?"

  "No, but… Fuck…"

  Ian laughed some."Sucks, doesn't it?"

  "Yeah."

  "You love somebody, it's nothing. Easy. All you've got to do is sit there and love them. Somebody loves you… that's obligation you're feeling."

  "Fuck. Thought love was supposed to feel good."

  Ian shrugged.

  "This how you felt when I said it to you?"

  "I felt kind of like all the oxygen suddenly left the planet. Lightheaded, like Goodyear just bought my skull and was using it to sell tires above a sporting event."

  And Soledad laughed.

  "Can't believe," Ian said,"this is new to you."

  "It's new to you."

  "I'm me. You're, you know, pretty. You should've had lots of guys after you."

  "Should've." Soledad picked up her fork, moved around the food on her plate. That's all she did, move it around some. Didn't eat. Put the fork back down."High school. But that doesn't count. That never made me feel… I'm a pain in the ass. You ought to know that by now. Guy's don't… I don't even like talking about this shit."

  "But we are talking about it. So…?"

  "So…"

  Soledad's brain did a thousand calculations in a single second. What had the LAPD done except try to lynch her? What would being an MTac get her except dead? Eventually. Why was she doing what she was doing? Because the law said to, or because guilt told her to? Didn't know. She didn't know. And what were the chances of ever in her life finding another man who fit her as snugly as Ian did? Zero.

  But…

  There was the telepath. There were two ways to stop it: by ending its life or by, maybe, it ending Soledad's. And could she share that with Ian? How would he take, how would anyone take, the person they love going kamikaze with their life? And if she hid it from him this time… call it what it was. A lie. If Soledad lied to Ian this time about the whys of her life, what was to keep her from lying next time? The time after? What was going to keep her from protecting him from her life same as she felt she had to do with her parents as long as she was MTac?

  Nothing.

  But…

  But that was a discussion to have with herself later. In a day. If she was still alive.

  Now?

  There was responsibility. For whatever her reasons, there was obligation. No matter how the cause was viewed, right or wrong by any sense, any form of measure, Soledad was at the start of Vaughn's rampage. She was at the start, so…

  "I have a thing I have to finish first."

  "Soledad—"

  "Just one, and then we can talk about—"

  "I don't want to wait. Let's go now. Let's you and me get up and go and keep going and never talk about our lives up till now again."

  "You said you weren't afraid anything was going to happen to me."

  "I'm not."

  "Then please let me finish this because…" Now her hand was taking his, holding it strong."Because there's no other way except for me to finish things."

  Ian looked to Soledad, looked her in the eyes: determination as solid as his disappointment. He mouthed" Okay" but didn't really make a sound.

  He and Soledad went back to eating their salads. She hurried her meal because she just wanted to get home and get in bed with Ian and hold on to him until four in the morning when she and the rest of the element would assemble to serve a warrant on the telepath. And when they were done eating, this time, going, Soledad left enough cash to cover what she'd taken for free.

  Soledad had a pair of Bushnell's focused on the salvage yard. Junked cars, junked appliances, plain junk piled all around. A rambling shack, built on piecemeal over the years, until it was a study in sprawl. Part wood. Part sheet metal. All quiet.

  "See anything?" Yarborough asked.

  "Nothing."

  Different than their last call, different than most, the four MTacs were head-to-toe in full reg body armor. Fritz helmets, Kevlar, Nomex, knee and elbow pads… Part of the return to by-the-book dress was in response to Eddi accidentally just about putting down Vin. Part w
as in response to the fact they were going up against something that could real easily make them try to kill each other.

  "Maybe the freak's standing right in front of the place," Eddi pointed out,"and it's just puppeting us not to see it."

  "Except," Soledad said,"none of us are bleeding out the nose."

  Vin: "Or maybe it's just making us think none of us are bleeding."

  "Or maybe we're all on a beach in Maui and he's just making us think we're outside a junkyard in North Hollywood." Yarborough was heavy on the sarcasm."Getting paranoid does us no good. When you get puppeted, you know it. There's a few seconds of queasiness, light-headedness, and you get the nosebleed just before" — he touched the scar on his temple—"the freak takes over. Feel any of that, let one of the others know before it's too late."

  "So they can do what?" Vin asked.

  "So they can shoot you before you take out the rest of us."

  Soledad was pretty sure Yar was being hyperbolic. Sort of sure.

  "You all knew the deal, and we all took it. We're alone on this, and we got better than our usual bad chances of not walking out. If you believe we're good as dead, however things happen, you won't be disappointed. Going against a telepath, best we can hope for now, one of us dies last."

  Pep talk over.

  Yar gave the sign and the element moved on the building, paired off and keeping low. It was Yarborough and Soledad, Vin and Eddi.

  The closer Yar got to the building, the more clearly he recalled the night he'd mixed it up with a telepath: Three other cops put bullets in themselves. The feeling of being trapped in his own body, buried alive, the muzzle of his gun pressing against his head. Thought it would feel cold. It didn't. He remembered that very much: the warmth of the metal on his flesh. Then Yar felt nothing. Then he woke up in a hospital. The doctors told him, miracle, a slug had passed through his brain and done no damage. See, Yar had joked. Pays not to use your brain. Or sometimes: Pays to be stupid. Sometimes he said: All the beer I've drunk, didn't have any brain left to damage. In public he joked like that. Attitude was his cover. In private, when he thought about the incident, if he was lucky he made it to the bathroom. Otherwise he just puked on the floor.

  Yarborough asked: "Soledad, any chance you figured out a bullet to take care of one of these mind-control freaks?"

  She answered, flat: "There is none."

  The convergence was measured but not tedious. Slow going only in the care and caution the pairs took. Movements forward followed by moments of stillness, of listening and looking. Looking for something that could strike without showing itself. Self-analysis for bouts of nausea or dizziness. When all that came back negative, the pairs would move again, then stop and one more time run their checklist.

  On the metal side of the building Soledad and Yarborough made a window. Vin and Eddi arrived at a door around a corner perpendicular to it. The window was unlocked, the door open. Both parties gave a serious visual check to the inside of the building, then eased their way through the ingresses.

  "Nothing," Yarborough said, hushed."Probably got himself holed up near the center of the place."

  Eddi, fast: "Let's check it out." She caught herself giving orders. Caught Soledad giving a look.

  Yar didn't own a lot of ego, but he had earned SLO, and he'd earned the respect that went with it. Most likely, from anybody else, he wouldn't've cared for orders getting tossed past him. To Eddi all he said was" Let's," and threw her a confident smile.

  Out the door of the room was a hallway. Long. Lined with the sheet metal of the building. Two by two in a covering formation the MTacs made their way toward whatever waited.

  What.

  What was certain. How was the unknown. How things would kick off and how things would end. How, and how many of them would leave the place alive.

  Soledad tried not to think of Yarborough's question: Did she have a bullet for a mind-controlling freak?

  And Soledad felt… fear. She had a thought of death, and it made her afraid. Not of dying. Dying was nothing. But… Ian. With Ian in her life the thought of death made her realize how much there was to be lost in life. A future, a family. Possibility. That's what Ian gave her, and that's what she was suddenly afraid of losing. When there is no possibility, living or dying, what's it matter? An existing emptiness versus an eternal emptiness. Variations on a theme. But when you stand to lose all the possibilities of all the days that you are owed, that's when life becomes precious and death becomes significant.

  Death, for Soledad, had become monumental.

  Bad time for it.

  Vin: "Hold up."

  Everyone held.

  "Thought I heard…"

  Soledad did a quick look around. The hallway was narrow, tight and poorly lit. Bad place to be when bullets started flying. Too hard to hit the target without hitting one of your own. Maybe, Soledad thought, that's just the way the freak wanted things.

  Soledad: "We've got to move."

  Vin, again: "Hold on."

  "You feeling something?"

  "No, but I—"

  "You getting scared?"

  "Hey," Yarborough said, voice soft.

  "I thought I heard something, something moving. I don't want to run into a trap."

  "What do you think we're standing in?"

  Eddi gripped a little tighter on her HK.

  "We move," Soledad said,"or we end up doing the freak's work for it."

  "Hey," Yarborough said one more time.

  They all turned and looked at Yarborough. They turned and looked and they saw disbelief in his eyes. And they saw what it was Yarborough could not believe. Shock numbing him, dumbing him down, made him point out what couldn't be missed.

  "Look at that," Yarborough said, quiet, fading."There's some metal sticking out of my chest.

  There was. There was the sheet metal of the hallway formed— having formed itself—into a long spike that punched Yarborough through the back, diminished none by his body armor, and kept on until it erupted from his chest. And like living, viscid fluid, the metal withdrew itself from Yarborough, returned to being nothing more than wall. A gaping wound the only evidence of the violence that had happened. No longer held in place, blood geysering from the tunnel in his body, Yarborough puddled to the ground.

  Eddi was first to him, screaming his name.

  Yarborough tried to reach up, touch her face. His limbs were feebled. His hand never made it."I didn't… didn't tell you…" Unable to focus, his eyes spun freely in their sockets. The hole in his chest wheezed as he worked to draw air."Never told you… God, I could go for Taco Bell…"

  Yarborough's eyes finally locked on something a million miles away.

  Dead.

  Soledad gave one split second to something she'd just realized: She wasn't even sure of Yar's first name."Metal morpher," she barked.

  The remaining two of the element kept low, did some quick looking around, Eddi staying close to Yarborough's body like she was standing honor guard.

  Vin: "You see him?"

  "He's probably tactile, uses the metal walls as a conductor. He could be anywhere."

  "How does he know where we are?"

  "The telepath, it's giving him a mental picture. We've got to get back to the wood part of the…"

  Soledad trailed off, went quiet, listened to a sound getting louder. Drawing closer. Tickety-tick. The tickety-tick of metal tapping on metal.

  From the far end of the hall, from the darkness, came engine blocks. Moving on their own. In-line 6s, V-6s, big block V-8s, a Hemi mutated, sprouting arachnid legs. They scurried along the walls and ceilings—hideous, hungry things—for what was left of Central MTac.

  Eddi whipped around her HK and was the first to cut loose with live fire. Her response time: zero. Wasn't by accident she'd scored so high at the academy.

  Good grades weren't much help against animated engine blocks. Bullets weren't much better. Dead on target, all they did was nothing but ping-ping off the living metal.

>   Fast as she could, Soledad ejected the clip from her piece and swapped it out with one marked in orange, set her piece for single fire. She took an extra split second to aim her shot, be sure of her shot. It's what Bo would've done.

  She fired.

  The bullet hit the lead-most… thing. The bullet was tipped with Semtex. The impact, the Semtex, lit an explosion that blew a fat chunk from the aberration. The thing made a noise that was as much the grinding of stressed metal as the shriek of a dying animal. The concussion of the blast kicked it backward into a second spider/engine. Both fell to the wood floor. No longer in contact with metal, no longer in contact with their master, they went back to being hunks of automotive hardware.

  Soledad, stepping up and taking charge: "Move! Get to the wood part of the building."

  Eddi: "We've gotta take his body!"

  Another spider/engine scrambled fast along the wall for them.

  Again Soledad fired. Again her aim was true. A third thing twisted and shattered, joined the other two motionless on the ground. The same dying cry echoed off down the hallway.

  Soledad took Eddi by the shoulder, threw her in the direction she wanted the younger woman to go."Move!"

  Eddi led the retreat with Vin right behind. Soledad had the rear, she had the most precarious position. She had the O'Dwyer and her bullets too.

  Two more freak things came up fast, and they went down quick with one shot apiece. There was no extra ammo. One clip. Twenty-eight rounds. No shots to be wasted. None were. Each slug fired struck a target. Each target was obliterated. Hitting the mark, for Soledad, wasn't the problem. Problem was the things kept coming. Each a little nastier than the one previous.

  Eddi reached a door, flung it open. Just beyond: axles and pistons and rocker bars. Mufflers and tailpipes hung from chains that stretched up to the ceiling. In the room there was nothing but toys for a metal-loving freak to play with. Nothing but tools for him to kill with.

  "… Fuck…" Eddi yelled to the others: "No good!"

  Vin said: "Keep going, down the hall."

  Soledad said nothing. Soledad was up to her eyeballs in morphed engine blocks. Quick as they came she took aim, fired.