by Ty Drago
Tom’s eyes flicked over to the two cops, who were approaching them slowly from across the patch of grass separating the park from the parkway. Their hands were at their sides, expressions grim.
To the senator, he said, “You want to talk about control?”
Tom reached into his coat pocket and placed a water pistol on the tabletop.
Gardner sat back.
“What’s that?” Mitchum asked.
Tom didn’t reply. Instead, he reached into his coat pocket a second time, and placed a Ritter on the table beside the pistol. The big syringe, loaded with saltwater, glistened in the sunshine.
“Let me tell you about control, Senator,” Tom said. “Control, in my mind, ain’t somethin’ you hold over other folks. It’s ‘bout controlling your own self. It’s about gettin’ … really gettin’ … what you can do and what you can’t do. In my case, I know that, without the Sight, I can’t chief the Undertakers. I also know that you, without the Sight, can’t chief ‘em either.”
Mitchum began, “Now, just a moment. I think you —“
But Tom talked right over him. “Your people are right. I didn’t meet with y’all today ‘cause I want a job. I came ‘cause I found out that you had a spy … and yeah, that’s the word: spy … in Haven, and I needed to find out who knew about what and how much.”
“It’s just the four of us,” Mitchum said defensively. “I wouldn’t risk a larger circle. I know the stakes are high.”
“Do you?” Tom asked.
Then he moved.
With one hand, he grabbed the Ritter off the tabletop.
With the other, he grabbed Gardner.
He snaked an arm around the man’s neck and yanked him out of his chair, throwing him over the table and pressing the side of his face against its metal top. Then, before anyone could react, he jabbed the point of the syringe against Gardner’s lower back.
The others jumped to their feet in horror. Around them, strangers and bystanders looked over in alarm. Only the homeless woman ignored them, playing her game of chess. “Check!” she yelled again, cackling and changing sides.
The two cops stopped at the edge of the concrete that marked the limits of the park. Their eyes were fixed on Tom. But he noticed they still didn’t go for their guns.
Well, they wouldn’t, would they? he thought.
“What are you doing?” the senator demanded.
“Tom! For God’s sake!” Ramirez exclaimed.
Millie didn’t say anything. Her face had gone pale, her hands flying to her mouth.
Tom ignored them all, speaking instead to Gardner, who’d struggled at first but then had gone still when the point of the Ritter touched his spine. “You know what this is, don’t you?”
“You’re insane!” Gardner snapped.
“And you know what happens if I inject you … right?”
“Help me!” Gardner screamed.
“You put on a solid act. I’ll give ya that much. Here’s the thing, though: if you’re human and I stick you, it’ll hurt. But that’ll be as far as it goes. Then again, if you ain’t human … well, then you get to pop like a balloon and die. Permanent die. You get that, right?”
“Senator!” Gardner exclaimed, his eyes wide with terror. “Help me!”
“Jefferson! I’m ordering you to put that … weapon … down! I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but—”
This time it was Ramirez who cut him off.
To Tom, he exclaimed, “You can See!”
Chapter 28
ON THE STEPS
Tom
Tom said to Gardner. “Here’s how this is gonna go. You got a five-count to start talkin’. If you don’t, I stick you. If you don’t tell the straight up truth, I stick you. We clear?”
“I’m human!” Gardner screamed.
“Then you got nothin’ to worry about,” Tom told him, pressing the point of the Ritter syringe just into the man’s skin, about where his right kidney would be. “One.”
“Jefferson,” Mitchum said. “Listen to me. I don’t know what—”
“Two,” Tom said.
“Hugo!” the senator exclaimed. “Talk to him!”
But Ramirez didn’t say a word. His gaze was fixed on Tom, his face pale.
You thought you knew how the world really worked, Tom thought. But you didn’t learn the lesson quite good enough, huh?
“Three.”
“Help me!” Gardner yelled again, only this time the plea wasn’t directed at the senator or Ramirez or Millie. It was directed instead at the two cops who watched from the park’s edge.
Mitchum saw them too. “Officers, I think we need a little help here.”
The cops started forward.
About time, Tom thought.
“Four,” he said.
“All right!” Gardner screamed. “Don’t do it! Please don’t do it!”
“Then talk,” Tom told him.
Gardner’s face suddenly twisted into an expression of hatred and defiance. “You old fool!” he said to Mitchum. “You think yourself so clever, so in command. But you’re as blind as the rest of your pathetic species! How easy it was to stroke your ego, earn your trust. I should thank you! Being your ‘confidant’ kept me alive when the Queen wished me destroyed!”
Why do they always talk like super-villains when their Masks drop? Tom wondered.
Gardner was a Type Two, and a fairly fresh one. His host had once been dark-haired, but that hair was now falling out in clumps. His skin, also dark, had turned a sickly gray with death, the flesh slackened and purple in places where the blood had pooled.
Ten days gone. Maybe two weeks, tops.
Mitchum went pale. Ramirez drew a gun from inside his jacket, as if that would do any good. Millie just looked confused.
“How much does Cavanaugh know?” Tom demanded of the deader, jabbing him a little deeper with the syringe.
Gardner, of course, felt no pain. But he should have felt fear.
Instead, he laughed.
“It doesn’t matter, Jefferson. You and your band of brats are done! In a minute, you’ll be dead. You too, Mitchum! The Queen has ordered it!”
Gardner turned his head in the direction of the two cops, who had stopped right behind Millie.
A pair of early Type Threes, they’d started to bloat inside their stolen uniforms. Both glowered menacingly.
Mitchum exclaimed, “What’s going on? I don’t understand.”
“They’re Corpses,” Tom told him. “Both of them. Just like Greg here.”
The senator looked like he might vomit. “What? No!”
Ramirez trained his gun on the cops. Again: pointless.
“Kill them!” Gardner commanded.
Tom said calmly, “Now.”
The chess-playing homeless lady pulled a Super Soaker out from under her unseasonably heavy coat.
She sprayed both cops in the back. Instantly, they stiffened as the saltwater did its work. One fell backward, his body twitching as if electrified. The other fell forward, knocking Millie over and slamming into the side of their little table. Tom, who was still leaning over Gardner, was knocked off-balance. For a moment—just a moment—his grip on the Corpse slackened.
Gardner, seizing his chance, jumped to his feet, the Ritter in his back falling to the cement.
At the same instant, the homeless lady pulled back her hood.
“Tom!” Helene called. “You okay?”
“Shoot him!” Tom ordered.
She leveled her soaker and fired, but Gardner was just a little too quick. He darted around Mitchum, ignoring Ramirez and his “Freeze!” order, stiff-armed Helene, and pushed her to the ground.
Then he ran.
Tom snatched up the fallen Ritter and went after him. As he passed Helene, who was already righting herself, he said sharply, “Keep ‘em safe! Get ‘em outta here if you can!”
“Okay, Chief.”
&nbs
p; Gardner charged into the crowd, most of whom had been watching the drama with a mixture of excitement and confusion. Those who blocked his path were thrown aside. But the effort slowed him, allowing Tom to gain a little ground.
The Corpse left the park, tearing across the grass and around the statue of George Washington high on his horse, which marked the northwestern end of the Ben Franklin Parkway. Ahead lay a wide traffic circle, and beyond that, the Art Museum steps.
Tom pursued, wondering when he’d last run as hard as this. He kept trying to remember the Parisi lessons he’d learned as a kid: lean forward, keep your toes up, run on the balls of your feet. It had been a long time since he’d needed those skills.
But he needed them now, and there they were.
Gardner leapt into the traffic circle, apparently unconcerned about the near constant rush of cars. A tour bus hit him almost immediately, spinning him around and bouncing him off the fender of a passing Hyundai. Tom didn’t slow his stride, but instead shifted his center of gravity at a key moment, slipping behind the bus and through a gap between two honking cars.
Barely a dozen feet ahead, the deader made another bad move and got slammed by a Ford pickup, his stolen body tossed over the hood and against the windshield, which cracked with the impact. Uttering an oddly human curse, he pushed off and kept going, though Tom noticed he was moving slower than before.
Dude’s clumsy for a Corpse. He’s trashin’ his host.
Then Tom jumped and slid across the same pickup’s roof, drawing swear words from the driver.
Gardner hit the curb and crossed the sidewalk, darting between two food vendors before launching himself up the Art Museum’s famous staircase. Every time someone got in his way, they were bowled over, sending flailing bodies tumbling down the steps in the deader’s frantic wake. Tom kept after him, more than once having to jump over a falling tourist as he climbed the stairs.
Halfway up, the Corpse spun around and grabbed the nearest innocent—a dude in a Phillies T-shirt. The guy struggled, even threw a punch or two that Gardner didn’t feel, before the dead man pinned him in a chokehold and glared down at Tom.
“One more step, Undertaker, and he dies!”
Tom stopped.
Around them, people were screaming and pointing, much as they had done in the park.
And, as in the park, a lot of them had camera phones.
“Look around you,” Tom told Gardner. “Look at the witnesses.”
“They can’t See,” the deader sneered.
“No, but they can think. Your picture’s gonna be all over Twitter in the next ten seconds, and all over the news minutes after that. Your days of spyin’ for Cavanaugh are done!”
At first, the prospect seemed to upset the dead man, and he glanced left and right, looking very much like the trapped animal he was. But then a slow, savage smile settled on his blackened lips. “What does any of that matter now?”
Tom took a step forward, but Gardner saw this and clutched his hostage tighter.
The dude in the T-shirt cried out in pain.
“Okay!” Tom exclaimed. “Take it easy. Nobody else has gotta die.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Jefferson!” Gardner cried. In fact, he practically sang it. “Lots of people have to die! All of you have to die! And you …” he added, pointing a finger at Tom. “You and your little Peter Pan Club are going to be first!”
Tom said, “That’s what brought me out today. That’s why I did all this. Reports have been comin’ at me for weeks … reports of cops, a lot of cops, all comin’ together at different spots around City Hall, all at kinda the same time. By themselves, each one don’t seem like much. But take ‘em together and … well, it made me wonder.”
“Wonder what?” the Corpse demanded, his grin as terrible as the slash of the knife. “Wonder if the Queen might have finally found your hideout? Might have decided to take you all down, once and for all?”
“Yeah,” Tom replied, his throat suddenly dry.
“Well, you’ve got only yourself to blame,” Gardner hissed from behind his hostage. “You pushed us too far. Your constant meddling. Your endless interference in our glorious work. The Queen’s abandoned the true, artistic destruction of the Earth, and has decided on a more … direct approach. The siege on Haven is only the beginning. What’s the old Earth cliché? Today, Philadelphia. Tomorrow, the world!”
He threw back his head and laughed.
And that’s when two other tourists grabbed him.
They’d come from further up the museum’s wide steps, moving in slowly and carefully. Tom had noticed them at once, and had considered waving them off. But, given the situation, their help might be the only way to save the dude in the T-shirt. So he’d kept Gardner talking.
The Corpse snarled as one of the men, a big guy in a polo shirt, grabbed his shoulder. Meanwhile, an older dude in sweats reached around and tried to pry Gardner’s forearm from around the hostage’s throat.
The deader flailed his free arm with terrible strength, knocking the first Good Samaritan away. But in doing so, he’d given the other man the leverage he needed to release the dude in the T-shirt.
What came next was a wild, violent sort of dance as four men—well, three men and a monster—grappled on the steps. As the crowd watched, cameras clicking, Gardner kept trying to push past them, but his attackers closed in, landing punch after punch. The Corpse, of course, felt none of it, but that didn’t mean the blows didn’t do further damage to his stolen body.
Tom had to wonder what these good folks were seeing. They didn’t have Eyes, obviously, so how did Gardner’s Mask reflect all of the “injuries” that he must be suffering? For a moment, Tom adjusted his vision and checked it out.
Nothing.
No bruises or cuts. The deader’s projected illusion showed no sign at all that he had been repeatedly hammered by human fists.
That’s gotta be raisin’ some eyebrows.
Suddenly, with an animalistic roar, the dead man threw his attackers off him. The man in the polo shirt stumbled and went down on the steps. The older man staggered back. And the dude in the T-shirt, seeing himself one-on-one again, decided it was time to split.
By then, though, Tom was already moving.
As Gardner turned to run, his true face a ruin of ripped tissue, Tom blindsided him. He knocked the Corpse off his feet and slammed him, face first, into the edge of the next step. Bones crunched, sounding like egg shells underfoot.
Gardner lashed out with a forearm like a baseball bat, but Tom ducked under it and then pinned it across the deader’s back. It was a move that would have agonized a human being.
But this was no human being.
“You will die, Undertaker!” Gardner shrieked, his voice choked with rage and hatred and terror.
Tom, straddling the monster, leaned close and whispered, “You, first.”
He rammed the Ritter into Gardner’s lower back, emptying its syringe.
Then he stood up and walked back down the steps.
A hundred gazes followed him. He ignored them all.
He even ignored the screams that came a few seconds later, when the thing that had called itself Greg Gardner exploded on the Philadelphia Art Museum’s stairs.
No one challenged Tom as he made his way back to the park. There weren’t even any cops around, which seemed odd at first, since you’d figure one of the witnesses would have called 911 by now.
But then he remembered that a big percentage of the city police force was Malum, and they were busy elsewhere.
Ramirez had taken charge of the scene. The two dead cops that Helene had doused lay handcuffed on the ground. The F.B.I. Guy had gone into full professional mode, flashing his ID and announcing, “Move along! Nothing to see here!”
Helene stood over the deader cops, who continued to convulse as she re-sprayed them with her Super Soaker. As Tom approached, she said, “I’ve got a couple of Ritters. But the
re’s so many people around.”
Tom told her, “I ain’t sure that matters anymore.” Then, with a wan smile, he added, “Solid work. You nailed the whole chess-playing bag lady thing.”
The girl didn’t smile back. “Thanks. Now how about telling me why you lied to me in the first place about losing your Eyes?”
Tom shook his head. “I wasn’t lyin’ to you. I was ‘lyin’ to Jillian. I’d been suspectin’ for a while that she’d been turned. I didn’t think it was the Corpses, at least not directly. But I needed to put her in a mind to come clean about it. She had to think I was leavin’ Haven, givin’ up my gig as chief. And the only way to do that was to convince her that I’d ‘outgrown’ the Sight.”
“So why bring me and Mrs. Ritter into it at all?” Helene asked.
“To help sell it.”
“But you didn’t trust either of us enough to tell us the truth?” the girl demanded, looking hurt.
Tom put his hands on her shoulders. “Helene, I trust you with my life. Proved that right here and now, didn’t I? But Jill ain’t a fool. She’d have seen through an act. Your reaction and Susan’s reaction had to be solid. Had to be real. That’s why I waited until after I set up this meeting and Jillian split my office before I called you in. Sorry I didn’t leave myself time for a real explanation, but we had to get out here fast.”
Helene considered this. “I’m still mad at you.”
“I can dig that.”
“Mrs. Ritter’s gonna have a cow.”
“I know.”
“And then there’s Jillian …”
Tom sighed. “I wish that was my only problem today.”
He stepped around her, going up to Ramirez.
Mitchum and Millie occupied chairs nearby. Both looked like they were in shock.
“I’m surprised they’re still here,” Tom told the agent.
“So am I,” Ramirez said. “Helene tried to get us all to leave, but the senator wouldn’t hear of it. He insists on talking to you.”
“That right?”
“Tom …” Ramirez swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
“I know, Hugo,” Tom told him. Which wasn’t, when you got right down to it, the same as forgiving him.