The Getaway God

by Richard Kadrey

  The flames at the top of the tunnel are burning down and the place is growing dark again. I manifest my Gladius, my flaming angelic sword. Its bright white fire lights up the tunnel like a movie premiere downtown. Nothing on Earth can stand up to an angelic sword. I slice the nearest chop-­shop killer nearly in half with one slash and wade into a crowd that’s surrounded Sola and Wells. There’s not a lot of strategy in this. No big battle plan. Just hunt and slash and keep the monsters off the nonmonsters for as long as I can.

  Good thing these chop-­shop types aren’t big on brains. They’re all either teeth or claws, which makes them pretty easy to take down. I put down a dozen fast and open a hole for Sola and Wells to run through. It doesn’t smell good, all burned meat and fried hair.

  One of the Broken Teeth lands on my back and sinks his choppers into my neck. It’s not even like he’s biting me. It’s like he’s trying to chew right through my spine. It reminds me of something, but that’s not important right now because I can’t reach the asshole with my sword and I can feel blood—­my blood this time, not some Heavenly angel’s from the sky—­running down my back.

  The biter twitches. Once. Twice and falls off. Wells and Sola keep firing into its body as it tries to get up. I wade into another crowd of them and slash away. It doesn’t take long for whatever part of their brains still works to cop to the idea that fire is bad and running is good. The ones still alive and on their feet take off away from the spur track, down one of the other rail lines, and disappear, making those howler-monkey whoops, claws still out and teeth still grinding.

  I keep the Gladius burning until I’m good and certain they’re gone. Then let it go out. The night-­vision gear is scattered all over the tunnel, so Wells’s ­people pull out their flashlights. None of them say a word and most of the lights are on me. I guess they’ve never seen a Gladius before. Probably most of them never saw anything close to a real angel before. Must be a hell of time to see your first, even if he’s only half an angel.

  I say, “Mind getting those goddamn lights out of my eyes?”

  A few of the flashlights move off me and flash around the tunnel, looking for stray crazies. There are a lot of them on the ground, and some of them still look alive.

  I go over to Wells.

  “What the hell is it with those guns? They didn’t do shit.”

  He holsters his gun.

  “Of course they do. My ­people took down more of them than you did with that flashy sword trick.”

  “Yeah, after you shot them fifty times. What kind of half-­assed weapons are those?”

  “Nonlethals,” says Sola. “Keyed to stun the brain and muscular function of living organisms. I guess those things aren’t quite technically alive. Not the way we normally define it.”

  I look at Wells.

  “You brought nonlethals down here?”

  He looks right back at me.

  “We’re not here to slaughter. We’re looking for information and to capture anyone carrying out extranatural activities in the tunnels, whether it’s Saint Nick or an Angra sect.”

  “Looks like you killed them pretty dead anyway.”

  “Yes. A lousy necessity,” he says. He shouts down the tracks. “Does anyone have a live one?”

  A voice comes down the tunnel.

  “A ­couple over here, sir.”

  “Right. Bag them and get them back to Vigil headquarters right now. I want the Shonin to have a look at them.”

  “Want to hear a theory? Two really,” I say.

  “Make them fast,” says Wells.

  “The Shonin said the chop-­shop bodies might be something to house Qliphoth. The way the crazies were moving, remind you of anything?”

  “It was a little strange. What are you getting at?”

  “Eaters and Diggers. Two of the most dangerous Qliphoth. They’d be good guard dogs if you wanted to keep something safe.”

  Wells watches his team wrap up the prisoners. They use some kind of expansion foam instead of cuffs on the arms and legs. Slide a harness with a rubber bit over each of their heads so they can’t bite. Then zipper them into body bags with ventilation holes.

  “You could be right. We’ll let the Shonin decide.”

  They set the prisoners on hoodoo platforms like floating stretchers and glide them down the way we came, four agents holding on to the body and two riding shotgun.

  “Want to hear the second theory?”

  “Go on.”

  “We were ratted out.”

  Wells sighs. A few of his ­people continue to steal looks at me as they work.

  “This again. You just said these things were guard dogs. You don’t warn guard dogs. You just leave them in the junkyard for kids climbing over the fence.”

  “But what if they’re not here all the time? What if they were here just for us?”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe it does. A little, sir,” says Sola. “This is a maintenance spur. Crews must work here all the time, but none of them have reported any trouble. Yet when we showed up, the creatures attacked without hesitation.”

  Wells looks up and down the track like he’s trying to see into the dark and find something to shoot down the theory.

  “Without further evidence I don’t want either of you talking to anyone about this. Things are hard enough for these ­people without putting the idea of a traitor in their heads.”

  “Yes, sir,” says Sola.

  Before I can say anything, one of Wells’s ­people shouts down the tunnel.

  “We have something up here.”

  We move up to the marshals. One is staring at a video monitor. She guides a flexible line with a camera on the end into a hole in the wall. There isn’t any dirt or dust on the debris around the hole. It’s fresh. I know Wells notices it too because he gives me a “Don’t say a word” look.

  “You see anything?” he says to the marshal.

  “No activity, but markings on the walls. There’s a lot of debris. Some of it looks like bones. Some . . .” She stares into the monitor, studying the scene. “It could be more human remains, sir. Wait. Damn.”

  “Watch your language,” says Wells. “What do you see?”

  “I think it’s a light switch. And wires. There’s power in there.”

  “Who has functioning night vision?” Wells shouts.

  A few seconds later a marshal comes over and hands Wells a set of goggles. He puts them on. I try to see past him into the dark.

  “You’re not going in there alone, are you? I just said there might be Diggers around.”

  “No,” he says. “You’re coming with me. If you’re that het up about it, you can go first.”

  A marshal hands me a set of goggles.

  “Thanks. But you can go in first. I have this thing about getting my head bitten off.”

  I reload the Colt and put on the goggles. The world goes green and flat and very bright.

  “You ready?” says Wells.

  “Hell no.”

  Wells gets down on his knees. The hole is only waist-­high, like something crawled out of it. He goes through and I follow. The bite on my neck hurts like hell. The last time I got bit by a dead man bad things happened. Like I almost went zombie. This time I’m going to see Allegra before anything interesting happens.

  The inside of the cave is extremely nondramatic in the sense that nothing comes out of the shadows to eat our faces. Wells finds the light switch and turns it on. The cave fills with light and we take our goggles off.

  He was right. The subway line runs right next to one of the old walking-­dead tunnels. The area where we’re standing is about fifty feet across and stretches into darkness at both ends. The walls are hacked out of raw stone. The lighting fixtures are made of human bones. Skulls and other bones are cemented together on the walls,
making elaborate shapes. Thirteen of them. Angra sigils, I’m guessing.

  There are a ­couple of hospital gurneys on one side of the room along with the same kind of gory surgical scene like we saw at the hospital. Only this one is old. The blood on the instruments and ground is dry and dusty. The body parts are shriveled and so far gone they don’t even smell bad.

  “Still think I’m Saint Nick?” I say.

  “Odds are you’re not.”

  “What would be my motive?”

  Wells looks around the tunnel.

  “You’re insane. The pressure of the Angra threat has pushed you over the edge, so you’re acting out your murderous Hell fantasies.”

  “The Shonin doesn’t think I’m Saint Nick.”

  “He doesn’t know you like I do.”

  “I’m a bastard. I’m not insane. There’s a difference.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Sir?”

  It’s Sola’s voice.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Send in the forensics team. I want this place examined down to the micron. Record the scene, then bag every single piece of evidence and bring it back with us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s get out of their way,” says Wells.

  “Just a minute.”

  An old wooden box sits in a niche in the wall.

  “I haven’t seen one of those in an Angra scene before.”

  Wells follows me over.

  “Don’t touch it,” he says.

  “Okay.”

  I don’t use my hand, but I flip the latch and push open the top of the case.

  “Dammit,” says Wells.

  “Watch the language.”

  Inside is a skull on a deep blue velvet pillow. Its metal teeth glitter and it has lips and a nose made of hammered gold. Its eyes are like elaborate silver brooches, each set with a blue stone in the middle. Rubies flow down the top of the skull from an old head wound, each ruby smaller than the one before it, so they form a line of blood down to the eye sockets.

  “Ever seen anything like it?” I say.

  “No. And that’s the last playing around you get to do today. Get out of the tunnel. Grown-­ups have to work.”

  We crawl out of the hole and back into the subway. Wells stands and brushes dirt off his pants. The forensic team pushes past us, wrapped up in sterile white Tyvek suits. Julie Sola comes over to me.

  “I guess no one’s in there.”

  “No one’s used that place in a while. Those chop-­shop crazies sure weren’t working in there. And they sure didn’t make that skull.”

  “Whose skull?” says Sola.

  “Good question.”

  “I’m disturbed,” says Wells. “After the hospital, this isn’t what I was expecting.”

  “This was probably their rehearsal space.”

  Wells shakes his head.

  “No. It’s more than that. Maybe forensics will tell us what. DNA. Dental records for the skull.”

  “Forget that. The teeth were gold too.”

  “That’s disappointing.”

  “That’s not what bugs me.”

  “What does?” says Sola.

  “That the place was abandoned awhile ago. That means whatever the Angra groupies were doing in there—­assuming it was them—­they finished.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” says Wells.

  He looks back at the hole.

  “We need to seal off this whole part of the tunnel.”

  “You don’t need me for that, right?”

  I turn and show him the bite wound on my neck.

  “I’d like to go and get fifty tetanus shots, so I’m taking off.”

  He looks at the wound, but doesn’t say anything. Just nods.

  “Be at headquarters early tomorrow. We’ll have work to do.”

  “Sure.”

  Like today wasn’t work.

  I head back down the tracks and up onto the train platform. I wonder what the watercooler talk will be like tomorrow, now that ­people know all the gossip about me is true. That I’m not entirely human and I’m really good at killing things. Too bad I don’t have a car. I bet I could get a really good parking space now.

  I take a quick look around to make sure I’m alone and step into the shadow of one of the concrete palm trees.

  I COME OUT of a shadow in the parking lot by Allegra’s clinic. It’s in a strip mall next to a nail salon and a pizza delivery joint. A sign on the clinic door says EXISTENTIAL HEALING. I knock on the glass. Fairuza opens up.

  “Hey, Stark,” she says. “Candy already went home.”

  “Good. I’m here to see Allegra.”

  I touch my neck and show her the blood. She just opens the door. Everyone here is pretty used to seeing me bleeding.

  Allegra comes out of the examining room, wiping her hands on a towel. Her café au lait skin contrasts with the bright white medical lab coat.

  She comes over and gives me a loose hug, trying to not get rain from my coat all over her.

  “He’s fucked up again,” says Fairuza.

  Allegra’s brow furrows.

  “What happened?”

  “A dead man bit me. Sort of dead. Walking around dead, but not a zombie. I just figured I should get it cleaned out or something.”

  “Look at you being sensible for once. Come on in.”

  “Need any help?” says Fairuza.

  “No. I’ve sewn this one back together more times than I can remember.”

  She has me take off my coat and shirt and sit on the exam table.

  She cleans off my neck with Betadine. I hate the smell of hospitals and clinics. They make you feel like you should be sick just stepping inside.

  “That hurts.”

  “Baby,” says Allegra. “I’d ask how the new job was working out, but you walking in here voluntarily tells me everything I need to know.”

  “They make me get up early too,” I say. “It’s pure abuse.”

  “The good news is that there’s a lot of blood, but the wound itself isn’t bad. I have a salve that will help the healing.”

  “I’m good at healing all on my own. I just don’t want rabies or lockjaw or diaper rash. Whatever a corpse bite can give you.”

  “I haven’t had a lot of experience with this, so I’m going to take some blood and give you a wide-­spectrum antibiotic.”

  “I hate needles.”

  “You really are a baby today,” she says. “Which makes me think you’re not just here because you scraped your knees. I’ve seen you hurt worse than this and you didn’t come in.”

  “You got me, Perry Mason. I’m worried about Candy. What can you tell me?”

  I can’t see Allegra, but I hear her draw a long breath.

  “Honestly, I don’t know. I haven’t worked on many Jades. I’m running some tests on her now. I should have something in a day or so.”

  “Call me when you do.”

  “You know, even though we’re not a regular hospital, there’s still this thing called doctor-­patient confidentiality.”

  “I know. But call me anyway.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “The clinic looks pretty quiet today.”

  “That’s why Candy went home. We don’t have that many patients these days. Still, we’re doing better than the regular hospitals.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are more Lurkers staying in town than ­people. Cedars-­Sinai, big hospitals like that are pretty much empty. Even the doctors are gone. It’s critical-­care patients only with a skeleton staff.”

  “So, it really is only us funny ­people left.”

  “No, and that has me worried. I think ­people have been watching the clinic. There was
a pickup truck in the parking lot across the street all day yesterday. A van the day before that.”

  “Who do you think it was?”

  “I have no idea. It just makes me nervous.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t just ­people looking for a place to get out of the rain for a few hours?”

  “Maybe. Maybe seeing the city like this is just making me skittish. I’m scared.”

  She puts some gauze on the wound and tapes it into place. I hate the feel of tape on my skin.

  “If it happens again, call me. I’ll check out whoever it is.”

  “Thanks. That makes me feel better. There. All done.”

  I put on my shirt and coat. Allegra sees the dirt on my pants and boots.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Have you ever been in an ossuary?”

  “I’m not sure I know what that is.”

  “They have one in Paris. Vidocq will tell you about it. It’ll be great pillow talk.”

  “It’s something gruesome, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll let you be the judge.”

  “Go home,” she says. “And stay in. Both of you.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  I start out and stop.

  “Candy is going to be okay, right?”

  Allegra washes her hands.

  “She’ll be fine. I’m sure it’s just a Jade-­specific virus or something. I’m reading up on it now. Don’t worry so much.”

  I nod and head out the front.

  “Tell Kas I’ll see him tonight,” says Fairuza.

  “Have him show you his new hat. And make him tell you where it came from.”

  I DON’T EXACTLY lie about who fixed up my neck when I get home, but when Candy guesses it was a Vigil medic, I don’t correct her. It will bug her if she knows I’ve been talking to Allegra, and after her being sick and my discovering I’m a serial killer suspect, it would be nice to have a few hours free from drama.

  I listen to Candy practicing guitar downstairs in the rehearsal room. Fairuza comes over around eight and disappears with Kasabian into his inner sanctum. Chinese delivery shows up soon after. I watch Three Extremes upstairs. It’s all gloriously boring.