The Neon Boneyard

by Craig Schaefer

  Language, I realized, as I saw more of the symbols adorning his charts and notes. Elmer Donaghy was an alien, not from outer space, but a parallel Earth. He’d learned to speak English at some point, but he naturally kept his personal records in his native tongue.

  “Clear over here,” Jennifer called out.

  “We’re clear,” Caitlin said. She waved the others inside.

  Pixie made a beeline for Elmer’s personal computer. She ducked under the desk, yanking cables, tugging his boxy tower out onto the floor and going after the back-panel screws with a multi-tool.

  “Touch nothing electronic,” she said. “Leave it for me. If it’s anything like the gear at the waste plant, it’s all booby-trapped ten different ways.”

  I pointed to the tripod. “How about the camcorder? This thing looks vintage.”

  “Huh?” She glanced over, uncertain for a second, then nodded. “Sure, knock yourself out.”

  I picked up a random tape from the pile, fed it into the bulky camcorder’s slot, and leaned into the eyepiece. I rewound and set it for playback. I wanted to see what Elmer had been up to while we were chasing our tails all over the city.

  I saw it, all right.

  “You sick bastard,” I breathed.

  38.

  Elmer had a twelve-inch monitor on a rolling cart near the back of his lab. Pixie scrounged some cables, and we hooked up the camcorder for playback so we could get picture and sound. Everyone gathered around the screen and I played projectionist.

  “I fast-forwarded through five of the tapes,” I said. “As far as I can tell, this one is the first.”

  The camera’s eye was fixed on the cell with the Plexiglas walls. A man, bleary-eyed, wavering on his feet, stood with his wrists in the dangling manacles. They were almost too big for him. He had spindly arms and a shirtless, emaciated chest, ribs poking through his jaundiced skin. The feed was too grainy to show the tracks on his arms, but I knew they were there; I knew a junkie when I saw one, and this guy was a long-term member of the heroin weight-loss program. He had blurry tattoo squiggles on his hip, another over his right nipple that looked like Minnie Mouse. Amateur ink, maybe prison-grade.

  “I told you,” he drawled, sounding half-asleep, “this kinky shit costs double.”

  Off camera, Elmer’s voice drifted over the speaker like he was trying to put a baby to sleep. “Of course, of course,” he soothed. “Just like I promised.”

  His hand appeared in the corner of the frame, opening a leather case. He tugged out a syringe and a band of rubber tubing. The guy in the cell opened his eyes a little wider.

  “We gonna party? All right, man. You’re pretty cool.”

  “Sure,” Elmer told him. “Let’s party.”

  I pressed eject and fed in a second tape.

  “This one’s later,” I said, “but I can’t read his writing and these aren’t time-stamped, so I can only guess how long he had this guy locked up in here.”

  The prisoner’s hair was one clue. It had been scruffy in the first video; now the tangled locks brushed his shoulders. And now the manacles were just right. He’d put on weight, growing out, and his skin had a healthy sheen to it. He still seemed half-asleep, though, disoriented, his eyes refusing to focus as his head lolled from side to side.

  “Subject is…healthy,” Elmer murmured from off-screen. “Taking to the supplements, no rejection of initial treatment. Having to hose him down and shovel out his feces every morning is laborious and irritating, but I can’t risk losing him to a bacterial infection. The humans of this world are fragile. Then again, if they’d had to survive three generations of nuclear fallout, plague spores, and weaponized necromancy, I suppose they’d grow into a more resilient species. One can only hope for the future.”

  He chuckled. His hand came into focus, holding up another syringe. Something oily and yellow burbled inside, flecked with gnat-sized black specks.

  “No more o’ that stuff,” the prisoner mumbled. “Makes me sick.”

  “Oh, it’s just a little something to help with the rigor mortis,” Elmer told him.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re dead.” He tittered. “You’ve been dead for two hours and fourteen minutes.”

  “Man, tha’s…s’not funny.”

  “Six times I’ve attempted this experiment. First five subjects were all nonviable long before this point. You, sir…you’re a prize.”

  I ejected the tape and reached for the last one. “Brace yourself,” I warned them.

  All the same, once it started rolling Pixie grabbed my arm and squeezed, hard.

  The man in the cell had gained at least two hundred pounds. His gut, solid flab, hung over his sweatpants and he’d sprouted a double chin. His beady eyes poked from folds of fat, his face swollen. His hands were blue, curled and dead, circulation murdered by the manacles that had buried themselves in the flesh of his engorged wrists.

  “Success,” Elmer’s voice whispered, trembling, proud. “Candidate six is a quantified success. We have full bio-factory conversion.”

  The man raised his head, as far as his wobbly neck would allow, and let out a faint, wheezing moan. His bulk jiggled, and as the camera zoomed in, we saw movement under his skin. Fist-sized forms scurrying, crawling, infesting his body.

  “What Santiago was trying to tell us when he died,” Jennifer said, her voice low. “The breeder is a—”

  “Human,” Caitlin replied. “The breeder is a human being.”

  I looked over to the empty cell. The dangling, open manacles.

  “Clearly,” Elmer said, the camera’s eye running like fingers over his prisoner’s body as he savored the moment, “we have a long way to go before we create genuine urban-infiltration breeders that can act autonomously, but this…this is a milestone. The breakthrough I’ve been working toward.”

  The prisoner moaned again. Something squirmed deep inside his throat.

  “Time for phase two,” Elmer said. The video died in a burst of static, and then the screen went dark.

  “He’s on the move and he’s got that thing with him,” I said. “Pixie—”

  She was already hustling. “His computer. On it.”

  “Everybody else, fan out and tear this place apart. Books, notes, photographs, anything you can find. We need to know where he’s taking it and what he’s going to do next.”

  Bentley pored over his scattered loose-leaf notes, turning a piece of graph paper like he wasn’t sure which way was up. “I doubt we’ll get much out of this. Deciphering a foreign language—even one from our world—is a skill outside any of our wheelhouses.”

  I stood beside him and chipped in. I tried to sort the material into piles: one for charts, one for journal entries. It was busywork, organizing data we couldn’t even read, but I didn’t know what else to do. All this time, while Harry Grimes was changing personas on a whim, leading me out of the city and back again on a pointless chase, Elmer had been right here and hard at work. No telling when he had left or how much of a lead he had on us.

  “I have something,” Caitlin said. She held up a color printout. “It looks like a Google Maps search. What’s in Boulder City?”

  Jennifer and I locked eyes from across the room.

  Phase two is about targeting more valuable hosts, Elmer had told me. Setting our sights a bit higher than the rabble we have pushing our narcotics.

  “The United Conference of Mayors,” I said. “Damn it, Seabrook—”

  “I’m callin’ her,” Jen said, tugging out her phone.

  “They’re holding emergency talks about the ink epidemic,” I said. “They want to coordinate a nationwide police and PR response, make a united front against the Network. There’s going to be reps from at least twenty cities there.”

  “If that thing were to…erupt in the hotel,” Caitlin said, pointing to the empty cell.

  “All at once, the Network would turn some of the most influential mayors in the country into their mind-controlled puppets. And this is j
ust the beginning. We have to get out there. Now.”

  Jennifer held up her phone. “I’m gettin’ voicemail.”

  “Try Commissioner Harding, he’s with her.” Then I realized with a jolt: so is Teddy.

  My brother didn’t know the Network was real—hell, he didn’t even know magic was real—and he was standing at ground zero.

  * * *

  We tore down the 515, southeast to Boulder City. Caitlin was behind the wheel. I sat beside her and drummed my fingertips on the armrest. Jennifer sat in the back, sliding fresh rounds into her chromed .357 one by one.

  Earlier Caitlin had tugged me by the arm, halfway out the door, and held me tight until I’d gotten some sense back. Then she washed my face in Elmer’s sink, sluicing away the blood, while Bentley found some gauze for the jagged cut along my scalp. Now I was fresh as the rising, boiling sun. I had the window down, and the arid morning wind ruffled my dress shirt. With no jacket, hair rumpled, bristle on my cheeks and a bandage on my forehead, I looked like I’d just pulled an all-nighter and maybe gotten into a bar fight along the way.

  I didn’t need sleep. I needed to save my brother and put a bullet between Elmer Donaghy’s eyes. Adrenaline would see me through. I knew I’d crash at the end of the line, but that was fine. I could crash when the job was done.

  We rolled up to the Boulder City Hyatt at 9:14. The parking lot was standing room only, and Cait had to swerve to the back end to find a spot. Lots of limos were taking up four spaces at a time, along with more unmarked police cars than I could count. The three of us jogged to the revolving doors out front and ducked into the air-conditioned embrace of the lobby.

  The whiteboard in the lobby read Welcome United Conference of Mayors, but I felt like we’d walked into a cop convention instead. Half the attendees had brought an escort, and they were all right here, drinking coffee and giving a visual pat down to anyone not wearing a badge. Their suspicion washed over me like a heat wave as I made my way to the front desk.

  “The mayors’ conference,” I said. “Is it in session?”

  The woman behind the counter checked a clipboard. “Um, yes, looks like they got started at nine. They’re in conference room A, looks like.”

  I held up my phone. I’d pulled up the official website for Donaghy Waste Management on the way in; Elmer’s photo was on the board of directors page.

  “Have you seen this man?”

  She leaned closer, squinting. “You know, I think I did. Maybe half an hour ago? He was headed that way.”

  She pointed down a side hallway on the opposite side of the lobby. I tried to move one step ahead of the chess master. Elmer was here to attack the conference and snare as many people with his walking roach farm as he could. How would he do it? He couldn’t just walk into the conference room with that thing; he’d start a panic. No, he’d have to be more subtle, slower. The conference was supposed to run for two days, meaning he’d have all day and all night to get the job done.

  I thought about Santiago. And Jennifer’s response, after she’d blown his passenger to pieces. I didn’t want that sucker getting loose and escaping into the vents, she’d said. I’d have to start sleepin’ with a helmet on.

  “Is there any access to the HVAC system down there?”

  “Well, yes, a utility stairwell,” the woman replied, looking half-confused and half-worried now. “But that’s for employees only.”

  Jennifer and Caitlin followed behind me as I cut a path through the milling cops. We ducked down the side corridor.

  “He’s going to release the roaches into the vents,” I said. “Then tonight, when everybody’s snug in bed…mass infestation. By tomorrow morning, half of the people in this hotel are going to be Network slaves, and they won’t even know it.”

  “We need a plan,” Caitlin said. “If he’s cornered, he won’t wait.”

  Right. If we couldn’t guarantee neutralizing the roaches, we’d have to deny him his targets. A couple of cops in state trooper garb were jawing around the corner, drinking coffee. I stepped between them.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” I said and pulled the fire alarm.

  A klaxon broke, shrill and strong, echoing through the hotel floors. One of the troopers grabbed for me. I pivoted on my heel, threw a right cross, and dropped him to the carpet. His buddy’s hand shot for his belt, but Jennifer was faster on the draw. She pressed the barrel of her revolver to his forehead and plucked the gun from his holster.

  “Don’t you hear that alarm goin’ off, sugar?” she asked. “You’d better evacuate.”

  He half stumbled, half ran up the hall. The entire hotel was stirring like a kicked-over anthill. Doors opening, heads poking out, feet rumbling down the stairwells. We waded upstream through the crowd and found the utility access door. A steep flight of concrete steps shot down into a dim, cool tunnel. The door glided shut behind us, muffling the sounds from above.

  Elmer was down in this maze, somewhere, with his living weapon in tow. It was time for the endgame.

  39.

  We made our way into the belly of the beast. Great metal boilers thrummed and hissed beneath the hotel floor, as hot steam and water coursed through metal pipes. The tunnels twisted like a maze for rats, junctions marked by stenciled numbers in lemon-yellow paint.

  Caitlin’s eyes were orbs of molten copper, glimmering in the twilight. She wrinkled her nose, sensing something Jennifer and I couldn’t, and pointed up ahead.

  We used the sounds of the machinery for cover, staying low, watching our shadows stretch along the tunnel walls. I glanced left and poked my head into a storage closet. The walls were stocked high with cleaning products, a mop and bucket lying abandoned in the corner, but no sign of life.

  A flicker of motion caught my eye up ahead. A short, crooked shadow loped along the corridor. Elmer.

  Jennifer passed me the pistol she’d taken off the state cop upstairs. I braced it with both hands as I took point, easing along the wall. The tunnel opened onto a second boiler room. The long, iron-bellied machines took up most of the floor space, with gaps and narrow aisles between them.

  Muzzle flash erupted from a blind corner and I threw my back against the wall as a slug tore into one of the boilers. A white-hot plume of steam screamed loose, close enough that it felt like the desert sun on my cheek.

  “Dan,” Elmer called out, like he was greeting a friend. “I have to say, I’m almost pleased to see you.”

  Caitlin slunk low and broke off. Jennifer did the same, turning and flapping her fingers at me in a mouth-wagging gesture. I got it. Keep him talking.

  “Yeah?” I called back. “Why’s that?”

  Another muzzle flash blinded me for a split second. His second shot tore out a chunk of wall and showered me with concrete dust. I answered with gunfire, snapping off three quick rounds and darting between the iron-cast aisles. I huddled low and waited until the reverberations died away.

  “Still alive, Dan?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  “Still alive. Oh, tell your friends to stop flanking me, please. I can see perfectly well in the dark.”

  “Well,” I said, “we are here to kill you.”

  “Quite.”

  Movement on my left. He’d gotten around me. I hurled myself to the concrete as his sidearm blazed, punching more holes in the boiler and sprouting deadly lances of steam. I lay on my belly and spent the rest of my magazine, shooting at a phantom while burning air sizzled inches above my head. Jennifer got into the act, her hand cannon booming somewhere off to the left.

  I scrambled on my forearms like a soldier in a trench, crawling out from under the ruptured metal, and tossed the empty gun. “Caitlin? Jen?”

  “Fine, sugar.” Quick footsteps followed her voice, heavier than Elmer’s; she was moving to fresh cover. Caitlin didn’t reply, but I didn’t expect her to. She could take a bullet and keep fighting, and seeing as we still didn’t know what other tricks Elmer had up his sleeve, I figured she was angling t
o get the perfect drop on him.

  On him. That was his game. He would have known trouble was coming the second he heard the fire alarm going off. How much time would he need to release the roaches from their living prison? Minutes? An hour? The longer he kept us pinned down and focused on him, the more time he had to get the job done.

  Instead of moving closer, I scrambled back—back to the supply closet we’d passed on our way in. Rummaging through the shelves, I shot a quick text to Caitlin: Need to get past him. Can you hold him off?

  Just say when, she replied.

  I found what I was looking for, buried between jugs of bleach and tall cans of floor polish, and jogged back into the fray.

  “Dan,” Elmer was calling. His voice bounced, echoed, coming from everywhere at once. “Out of curiosity, does this mean Harry Grimes is dead?”

  “Afraid so. Friend of yours?”

  I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him. Moving like a spider in the dark, locking in on the sound of my voice. I put my back to the wall and slid toward the corner of the room. From here, bracketed by the hull of a boiler, there were only two directions he could come at me from.

  “Not really,” Elmer said. “He was their crowd, not mine.”

  “The Enemy?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Something rustled to my left. My shoulder muscles went tight. “He was on loan. You know, that gentleman, the Enemy…he really hates you.”

  “I have that effect on people.”

  My phone buzzed. I chanced a two-second glance at the screen. A message from Jennifer: Keep him focused on you. Moving in from behind.

  “Tell me,” I said, “that whole thing about killing me in a replica prison cell…was that even supposed to work?”

  “Who cares?” Elmer replied. He could play all the echo tricks he wanted, there was no mistaking his voice was clearer, closer now. “You weren’t wrong, before. We don’t actually want him to get his power back. If we can derail his plans and make it look like an unfortunate accident, so much the better.”