“You changing your mind now?” asks Janicea.
“Yeah,” the man answers, but pauses, glancing up at the stained concrete above them. “I hear helicopters.”
Everyone freezes, apparently listening.
The sound of rotors carries to them over the water, although all they can see is about ten feet above the water.
“Something bad coming,” Tracks murmurs and gathers Daric into his embrace.
“You got that right,” says the old man. “That’s a lot more than one helicopter. Maybe you folks should go ahead and come aboard? If you want to. I’m happy to take you with me.”
“Sure, we’ll take that offer,” says Bronte. “Let’s get aboard, everybody.”
THEY FACE EAST, standing on the sea wall and looking out over the choppy bay. Behind the two men, leaves skitter across the sidewalk in a gusty breeze. The clouds are heavy with the promise of more rain, and an occasional bolt of lightning flashes somewhere over the broad expanse of water near Tampa. As night falls, lights should be visible over there, but they aren’t. There’s just a haze or an incredibly dense wall of rain heading their way. Boats are all over the place, but none near enough to signal. Not that anyone would pick us up anyway. Talaski lowers the cell phone and puts it on a belt clip.
“Don’t torture yourself, Nick,” Keller says. “There really isn’t a choice. Debbie asked for our help. The people trying to evacuate don’t even know we’re here and probably wouldn’t give a damn even if they did.”
Talaski shakes his head. “Can’t argue with you there and we don’t even know what Lionel’s yacht looks like.”
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“And that does mean that Lionel and the mayor will probably get away, but so be it,” says Keller.
“But now we need transportation. It may take us hours to get there.” Talaski cocks his head to the side, cupping an ear. “Do you hear rotors? Think the Feds are finally coming to help?”
“Somebody’s coming. Maybe we better take cover, just in case?” Keller replies.
The helicopters appear, at least four of them coming over and between the downtown high-rise buildings.
“Three Apaches and a Blackhawk,” says Keller.
“Yeah,” says Talaski. “All painted black.”
“This ain’t friendly.”
“No,” says Talaski. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, let’s get moving. Otherwise we may get involved with all this.”
Talaski nods. “I’ll take point for now.” He starts off at a slow jog, crossing the small park that separates the waterfront from the houses. Keller is following about twenty feet back.
They run this way for close to ten minutes, going ever deeper into the neighborhood beyond. The Old Northeast is what they call it. A hell of a lot of wealthy people live here. Or did. All the lights are still out. At least in the houses.
Talaski slows up, and lets Keller catch up. They stand in the middle of the road.
Keller’s breathing is a little uneven.
Talaski points. “About a block up, see it? That’s the dome light of a car.”
A motorcycle engine revs. Suddenly the car up ahead is bathed in light from the right—It’s a motorcycle’s headlight.
The car is a police cruiser.
“Let’s hurry, this might be our chance,” says Keller.
Talaski runs almost as well as he did at twenty. The only difference now is that sometimes his knees ache and of course there is the old shoulder injury. Nobody knows but Keller. Funny how I opened right up to him from day one. He breathes in and out easily, pistol held loosely in his right hand. Off to the right, Keller’s breathing is a bit ragged, but he’s keeping up.
Whoever is just ahead doesn’t seem to hear them coming.
“Tommy, let’s just go,” says a voice. A whiny miserable voice.
“He isn’t dead yet,” says another. “You want to just leave him like this?”
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“Yes I do Tommy. I’m scared.” Ten feet to go now. Talaski slows up, drags his flashlight out and turns it on.
“Somebody’s here Tommy! Run!”
Talaski puts the light right on the person sitting on the motorcycle. “Police! Stay right there,” he says. Ten feet or so, to the right, Talaski sees Keller turn his flashlight on also.
The person on the motorcycle looks like a junkie. An androgynous junkie. Long scraggly hair, skeletal facial features to match a spindly limbed body. Impossible to guess the age. The owner of the voice without doubt.
“It’s more cops Tommy. Now what do we do?”
“You shut up, for one!” shouts Keller, surprising Talaski when his patience runs out first.
“Cover the freak show, Matt,” Talaski says, and he moves toward the cruiser. He gets a bad feeling. A small Canadian flag sticker is on the bumper. Yates! I knew I shouldn’t have let you go like that!
On the other side of the cruiser is a horrific scene. Two motorcycles are on their sides and a lot of bodies are scattered on the ground. A kid is squatting next to someone wearing a police uniform.
Talaski kneels next to the kid. The kid doesn’t look up, just keeps holding Yates’ hand. He might be sixteen, a little on the skinny side. “He saved us, Mister. A group of those things knocked both my friend Jelly and me off our bikes. Poor Jelly was knocked out. They got him right away, but this cop here saved us. I knew, just seeing him, that he was hurt bad already, but he came out with his shotgun blazing. He wasted them all.”
Yates’ breathing is uneven and shallow. The end is near.
“He’s going to die soon. I thought the least I could do would be to keep him company, then…” the boy’s voice chokes up. “Then I’d put him to rest.”
“You’re a good boy, Tommy.”
The kid looks up at him. “My sister’s not a freak you know.”
Talaski nods without speaking.
“She just has some problems.”
“Maybe you’d better go stand with her. I’ll take care of Officer Yates.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Get away from here. Find a place to hide.”
The kid climbs to his feet. He is a mess from falling off the bike. They must’ve been going pretty fast. He’s wearing blue jeans, a plaid
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shirt, a blue jean jacket and cowboy boots. He runs over to the motor cycle his sister is still on. “Slide back a little, will ya Terry?” he says. A moment later, he peels out and roars down the road toward the 1st Street edge of the neighborhood.
Terry—Even her name is androgynous .
Keller comes over and stands nearby. He doesn’t say anything. Yates breathing slows, hitching, almost as if it’s snagged on
something. He makes a choking sound. Then nothing. Talaski takes aim. It can’t be long now.
“Don’t wait, Nick. Just do it.”
Keller is right. He pulls the trigger.
A helicopter flies by overhead. They both stand still a moment.
“We taking the car or the bikes?” Keller asks.
“Let’s take the car. I don’t even know how to start a motorcycle.”
“Me either.”
“T HERE’S AT LEAST THIRTY OF THEM on the 1st floor now. Please, I’m begging you, let me at least set the doors back to normal where you need a card to get anywhere.”
The fat guy’s voice is getting to him. I’m cut off from the others. What if they leave me with these losers? I’ll never get out alive.
Dodd lifts the walkie-talkie. “Mitch, this is James, over.”
Almost immediately, Mitch answers. “Yes Jim, what’s up?”
“We’d better close down the doors man or we may not get back out of here alive.”
“Go ahead and lock us back up, then.” A snapping noise, then, “We got that guy Gransky. I thought you said he’s tough?”
A little bravado seems in order. “If he got too good a look at you, Mitch, that may have scared him to death.”
Distant, tinny laughte
r. “Good one, James. The good sergeant should have the door open for us at any time now. By the way, is Carlos there?”
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Dodd thinks fast. “I haven’t seen him. He wouldn’t follow me into the station, so I had to leave him in the cruiser.”
Dead air. Time draws out. “You’re disappointing me, Jim. I thought I made it clear that he was supposed to stay with you?”
“Can I help it if the fucker doesn’t listen, Mitch? Can I? I practically beg the guy to stay with me and all he does is ignore me.”
“Okay Jim. I guess you two weren’t exactly buddies. Still, I’m expecting more from you from now on. Get me?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry.”
THE SQUAD ROOM IS IN DEEP SHADOW with the lights off, but Debbie still moves around it quite easily. She goes from one desk to another. “What are you looking for?” Blake asks.
“I thought maybe some of the detectives might leave a backup gun in their desks. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Sounds like a long shot, but we’ve got nothing better to do.”
Blake sits down in a chair at a particularly cluttered desk. Opens the top drawer.
There are a couple of books, a small bottle, and something with a foam handle. Blake snorts, and holds up the bottle. “Debbie, do you like an Aqua Velva man?”
She smiles and looks at him through hooded eyes.
The look leaves him with a pleasant little glow. “What’s this?” he asks, holding up the handle thing.
“Looks like you found yourself an ASP, or better known to you as a riot baton or night stick. That’s the new type. It extends if you flick it.”
“Guess it’s better than nothing. Did you find anything?”
She shakes her head. “A pack of cigarettes and some gum.”
“Then it’s hopeless. Where were you going to take me?”
“Up to the Comm Center. I’ve got a first aid kit up there and there’s a little kitchen stocked with all kinds of snacks and drinks. We may as well go up and find out what’s going on, I suppose.”
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“I could really go for a soda right now,” Blake agrees. “I probably should have taken us straight to the armory. Do you know how to shoot a gun?”
He nods his head. “I used to go shooting with my uncle. He was a Gulf War Vet and—”
He watches her eyes cloud over, and her jaw clench. “A simple answer of yes or no would have been enough. I’m trying to make a decision here and you aren’t helping.”
What the hell? Are all women flaky? One minute she’s flirting with me and the next she’s treating me like a kid.
“Let’s just hurry then, whatever you want to do,” he hears himself say, surprising himself.
Debbie doesn’t appear to notice or maybe she doesn’t care what he thinks. She is fiddling with a pack of cigarettes. Finally she gets one out, holds it to her lips and grabs a lighter. She flicks her thumb and the light flares and suddenly he’s lost, remembering his narrow escape; shoving a burning wad of paper into a dead woman’s mouth and laughing hysterically. That was the strange part. The laughter. Couldn’t stop it. Like finding the Stryker Saw, a small vibrating saw used for removing the brain. Ah, the horror of that! Fire and saw versus flesh and bone. Laughter. Seeing what was left of Joss the Hoss… Someone grabs him. They got me. He struggles and a hard slap snaps his jaw sideways. Darkness laps at the edge of his awareness for a moment. He blinks his eyes.
Debbie is close, holding him in her arms. “I thought I lost you for a minute there,” she says.
He shudders.
“Nah, just a waking nightmare. I’m capable of terrible things, Debbie. Shooting a dead thing is probably the least of them.”
“When we go into the Comm Center be ready then. You may have to be terrible again.”
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EVEN THOUGH MILLS HAS HIS LIGHTS ON, he still nearly hits the woman on the bike. The light is very poor in the early dusk. The brakes lock up and the rear end of the truck begins to slide sideways on the slick road.
All this happens as Kathy screams and he nearly bites through his tongue in the effort to avoid the biker. There is a second or two of nothing as the truck slides on the slick asphalt and crashes rear end first into a pile-up of cars. He is aware, but removed, observing from some distant place and feeling nothing. A sudden bloom of heat and light brings him back. Kathy is slumped in her seat, held in place by her seatbelt. He is draped over the steering wheel with blood in his mouth and an ugly headache coming from a bump on the head.
Someone or thing bangs on his door. He looks up. A woman’s face is in the window with a hand rapping hard on the glass.
“Are you okay in there?” the woman asks.
“Not sure,” he answers.
“Open the door. And if this thing will still move, we better get going.”
We?
He opens the door, sees a petite blond wearing shorts, sneakers, a torn shirt and not much else. The shirt, apparently scoop-necked, has now but torn down to her navel.
The effect of the view is immediate, which seems strange given the situation.
Get past it Mills—Focus!
Kathy still hasn’t moved. The blond reaches around the door frame and unlocks the back door.
“I’m serious, you better move if you can. Those wrecks are on fire,” the woman says. She leans over the seat and reaches for Kathy’s hand. Mills turns away, puts the transmission back into park and tries the ignition. The engine turns over and he presses the gas experimentally. The resulting roar sounds good. He grins over at the blond, watching her eyes. She smiles back and her eyes don’t flinch away.
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Uh-oh . Back to business, Mills.
“I think she’s okay,” she says, then adds, “Her pulse is strong.” Mills risks a quick look back at her. Not a raving beauty, but it
doesn’t hurt my eyes any to look at her. There is some sort of masked sensuality. He almost laughs, and barely manages to look away from her face. Masked—Yeah, right! “Thanks. Sort of hard for me to check right now.”
He glances behind and in front, shifts into drive and pulls away from the wrecks.
“I’m Adam. What’s your name?” he asks, without looking her way.
“Patricia Reed. Friends call me Trish.”
Trish.
“What’s her name?”
“Oh, her name’s Kathy, we saved each other over at the mall,” he says, feeling awkward like he’d left something unsaid—Something obvious. Do I want her to think Kathy’s just a friend? Strange things happen during a disaster. Can’t let this make me crazy. Why worry about anything more than surviving right now anyway?
“I’m actually glad you almost ran me down, a bunch of those things were after me,” she says.
“Glad to help. Kathy and I are headed for the Police Station. Is that okay with you?”
“If I can get a gun there, I’ll be really happy. I’ve fought those things with everything but a gun and I’m getting tired of it.”
He laughs. “I’m better with an axe, but I lost mine. Some big guns would be nice. Or even better if the government finally sweeps in to rescue us.”
She barks a laugh that might be closer to a cough. “God, I hope I’m not catching a cold now.”
Thinking about her laugh, he says, “I take it you are skeptical that the Feds will help us?”
“About as likely as…” and her voice trails off. He looks over and she’s looking at the sky. An all-black helicopter is about to fly over them. It appears to be covered with weapons.
“That ain’t a news chopper,” he says.
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A FEW DROPS OF RAIN PATTER DOWN, then for a moment or two there is nothing.
“Keep going,” says Fugi. “We need to hurry.”
Within three or four steps, Graham has time to realize that something isn’t right.
The people with Fugi and crew aren’t willing members. They are all attractive women, with their hands bound behind the
ir backs and mouths gagged.
He wants to ask why so badly. Why add to the misery around them? Even more he wants to set the women free.
Then he thinks he recognizes one of them. Her glasses aren’t on top of her head anymore and her mass of reddish-brown curly hair is no longer done up neatly in a bun behind her head. All the spirit he saw in her earlier seems to be gone. This person has joined him in the ranks of losing it all. No doubt about it. The irony of finding her this way is a little too much.
Even worse, it may be too late.
I wish I could be sure its her. He starts to count how many men there are. Of course, all of them have guns.
Suddenly, a man’s voice in his ear, “Hey man, good to see you!”
Looks up. “Oh, hey Louie. I was wondering what happened to you.”
Louie grins. “I was guarding the boat but I saw you guys coming. I had to get a closer look.” He wiggles his eyebrows while looking the women over. “So it looks like you got yourself equipped. You strip a dead guy or something?”
“Shoulda stayed at the boat, Louie,” says Kurt, the broadly built short guy. “I told you—”
“Yeah, I know Kurt, but you ain’t the Sarge. He won’t like how you an Fugi there have been acting like bigshots. He hasn’t named a secondin-command yet.”
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Fugi steps forward, while putting a restraining hand on Kurt. “While all that may be true, Louie, what makes you think you rank higher than any of us? You’re nothing but a Private—An E-nothing!”
“Still more than you, Fugi!” Louie snarls. “You’ll never be more than an ex-con—”
Graham hears someone cock a pistol hammer. Fugi is holding a pistol inches from Louie’s forehead. “And what do you think you’re about to be Louis?”
Louie has gone absolutely still, mouth agape, one hand still raised in mid-gesture.
Very carefully, Graham slips the safety to semi on the rifle, then curls his finger around the trigger.
“Put the gun down Fugi,” Graham hears himself say. “The sergeant is dead. No sense in any more killing.”
Fugi doesn’t move, but he darts his eyes toward Graham. “Listen man,” he says to Graham, “this little piece of shit is getting uppity. We’ll be better off without him.”
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