I look back for bearded guard, but he’s run off as Naia enters with Zeus.
Looking sideways I spot Del Frisco, hanging from the wall as if he’s been partially crucified, his untamable hair shagging his face.
I close the distance between us in seconds and whistle.
With great effort he lifts his head, his face wrecked, purpled with bruises and weeping wounds, eyes sunken with exhaustion.
“Jesus, Del Frisco, what did they do to you?”
He smiles, blood dribbling between his teeth.
“They got their licks in, man. I asked the lifers to kill me, but they didn’t have the stones.”
I hug him as tightly as I can.
“We’re getting you down.”
“There’s no time.”
“The Dubs are here.”
His eyes widen.
“How?”
“They followed us in.”
His gaze hops to Naia as I undo his bindings.
“Jesus, you weren’t lying were you?”
I shake my head.
“Mystery lady was real after all.”
“Mystery lady has a name,” Naia says.
The final straps come free from Del Frisco’s wrists and he falls forward into Naia and me.
“I’m Naia.”
“Del Frisco.”
“I’ve seen you before,” she says.
“How?”
“It’s a long story,” I say, helping Del Frisco take a few steps until he’s able to stand without assistance.
“Well, Naia, in the few minutes of life we’ve all got left at least I had the chance to get to know you.”
“We’re going to make it,” she says.
“I wish I could share your—”
“Optimism?”
“I was gonna say delusion.”
“Can you walk?” I ask.
He nods and knots his hair in a pony-tail.
“Then let’s get the hell out of here.”
We streak toward and out the door and back into the hallway.
The Dubs are at the other end, tearing into a group of terrified guards that probably came to investigate and finish off Del Frisco.
“This way!” Del Frisco shouts.
We bound up a ramp and into a hall that dead-ends at a metal door.
I grab and turn the knob and it’s locked so I shoot the thing off.
There’s the hiss of some unseen pneumatic device, whatever awaits us on the other side evidently sealed for some reason.
I kick the door in and shafts of light from the hallway reveal the enormous dimensions of the room.
We close the door behind us and I take a step and a motion-sensitive light sizzles on.
We’re in the middle of a vast hydroponics shop, an indoor greenhouse of sorts that takes up most of an entire building floor.
The space is glassed in on three sides and filled with long, heated tables where cubes of rock wool are being used to grow vegetables. The veggies have sprouted so tall and wide it almost looks like a jungle scene from one of Gus’s old National Geographic magazines.
There are aisles, maybe three-feet wide between the tables and lights dangling from the ceiling below a maze of sprinklers and fans.
Del Frisco processes his way forward, grabbing a few vegetables, tossing them back to us as we eat.
“We need to head up and cross over.”
“To where?” Del Frisco asks.
“The outer buildings.”
“There’s no easy way over.”
“I know a way,” I say.
“You’ve been there?”
I nod.
“Roger Parker took me over.”
“Parker’s in on the whole thing,” he says.
“No, he hasn’t thrown in with Odin.”
“Bullshit,” Del Frisco says, tossing his half-eaten tomato to the ground. “If he’s not trying to stop Odin, he’s in cahoots with him. He’s a – what do you call it?”
“Enabler?” Naia says.
Del Frisco snaps his fingers.
“That’s the one.”
“He’s our only chance,” I say.
Zeus drops to his haunches, facing the door, ears drawn back.
Bullets shred the wall and the door.
We’re forced back, retreating down an aisle as the barrel of a machine-gun noses through the ruined door.
Strummer follows the gun in along with Shaw and a few other killers.
They assess the room and take aim at us.
We dive between the rows of vegetables as bullets lap up the ground all around us.
Soon the air’s filled with vegetable-shrapnel and bits of wood and metal from the chewed-up tables as guns are fired and at least one explosive tossed in our direction.
Crawling under a bench fixed to one of the tables I spot Naia and Del Frisco who motions for me to follow as we collectively crouch-crawl between the rows of vegetation.
“COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU ARE!” Strummer shouts.
Del Frisco whistles to me.
“Gimme your piece, man,” he says.
I hand him my gun and even with his mangled hand he’s able to aim and fire a few expertly placed shots at the sprinklers above. Before I can ask why he’s doing it, the sprinklers open up, all of them, dousing the entire floor with water.
In seconds a layer of steam rises over the heated tables, visibility falling.
We use the cover to move briskly, crawling over and under tables and benches.
At a junction near the middle of the room we’re up on our feet.
I look back and nothing is clear in the steam.
The faint outlines of Strummer and the others are visible.
Along with something else.
There are other forms in the room now.
Little more than dark cutouts.
They’ve entered from gaps at the sides of the room.
I can’t discern whether they’re human or something else and then I hear Naia’s scream and I instantly know a bad situation has gotten immeasurably worse.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I’m motionless, crouching next to Naia, Del Frisco and Zeus, waiting for something to happen and then my skin starts to tingle like it does before a rainstorm.
And then everything comes into focus.
There’s dozens of forms out in the steam.
They possess the stooped posture of Dubs and appear to be hunting for warm flesh, padding up and down and across the rows of vegetables.
A female Dubs flaps past me, close enough to touch.
She doesn’t see us and then she turns, looking like a rabid animal, lips curled up.
She hisses at me and then her head disappears in a red spray.
More gunfire rings out, bullets slicing through the air just over our heads.
Dubs scream in anger and pain.
One man cries out, telling the others he’s been bitten.
More gunfire.
Someone tosses another explosive that rocks the room and shatters the glass walls.
A Dub squeals in delight, then another, followed by the patter of naked feet across the ground.
Strummer and another man shout orders to stand firm and shoot at anything that moves.
Del Frisco signals to me and points to the closest door and we’re up and combat-running.
Forms wolf past us as we advance through the steam which thankfully conceals us from view.
Peripherally I can see Dubs slashing through holes in the glass on either side of us.
Glancing back, the gloom is shattered by gunfire and the silhouettes of the Dubs as they fall to the ground and counter-attack.
Rising up, I throw up a hand to point the way forward and then the butt of a rifle strikes my jaw and destroys my equilibrium. I wobble for a few steps and then pitch to the ground.
Rolling sideways, I catch sight of Strummer who’s smiling demonically.
He looks ready for war with his slicked back hair and tactical v
est overflowing with ammunition magazines and what look like a cluster of baseball-sized grenades.
I search for Naia, Del Frisco, and Zeus, but they’re nowhere to be seen.
I elbow myself up, exposed in the open between a row of tables.
Strummer pulls back the firing bolt on his gun and I manage to plant my feet and dive over a vegetable table, bringing down a row of staked peas.
Bullets obliterate the clay and plastic pots on the tables around me, Strummer nearly invisible in the steam as he zeroes in on me.
I turn over on my hands and knees and a heavy object crunches the small of my back.
Strummer grabs my hair and pulls me back and then he flings me to the ground where I slowly rotate around.
As he closes on me, I remember how it was when we first met. Maybe we were never friends, real friends I mean, but I’d respected him once. Admired what I thought was his level-headedness, his ability to maintain his cool.
That’s all changed.
He looks deranged.
Feral.
His eyes seem as black as little pieces of licorice.
“You – you did this, didn’t you?!” he says, almost too angry to spit out the words. “You brought the fucking devil into this place!”
“I didn’t have a choice. They followed me back in,” I say, my hand in front of my face.
Gus always quoted some fancy writer who said there are only two types of people: the pursued and the pursuing. We’re both in the former category, Strummer and I. He might not realize it, but he’s got the look of a man who knows he’s little more than a meal for the things that are waiting out in the shadows.
“We can work together,” I croak. “We can do like we did before back with Darcy and the others.”
“That’s all ancient history, asshole,” he says.
“We can still get out of here.”
He glares at me as if this is the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.
“Why the fuck would I ever want to leave?”
I watch his finger curl around the trigger of the gun.
But for whatever reason, Strummer hesitates.
And in that moment of hesitation, Zeus soars out of the shadows and rams into Strummer’s ribs.
Strummer’s gun goes flying and he falls on his side.
Zeus lunges and rips the flesh from Strummer’s left Achilles tendon.
Little geysers of red stain the floor as Naia and Del Frisco appear.
Del Frisco grabs for the gun and Strummer surges up on his good leg and grabs Del Frisco and now the two are in each others’ arms like a pair of deranged dancers, fighting for the weapon.
Their momentum forces them back and through the rear door which is a shed filled with sacks and plastic bags of fertilizer and hills of soil and minerals and oil and fuel for the growing machines.
Strummer bites Del Frisco’s hands and Del Frisco, still bloody from his beatings, head-butts him back, splitting Strummer’s lip open.
Strummer sinks to the ground and Del Frisco brings the gun up, aimed at Strummer’s head.
“Go on and do it,” Strummer says.
BAM!
Del Frisco fires a shot—
–Directly over Strummer’s head.
Strummer wails and clutches himself and Del Frisco cackles.
“See,” Del Frisco says, “that’s one of the ten or twenty things I never liked about you, Strum. You’re a pussy and you never even knew it.”
He lowers the gun.
“What do we do with him?” I ask.
“We do to him like he did to us. We leave him.”
The war cry of the Dubs rings out, ten or fifteen of the monsters stamping through the mist.
There’s nothing we can do for Strummer and so we proceed toward a pocket-door at the back of the shed as Strummer’s voice rises.
He’s laughing like a crazy man.
We look back and watch him pluck two grenades from his tactical vest.
“If I’m going down, you’re coming with me!” he says before standing on his own good leg. He pulls the pins from the grenades and dives onto a pile of fertilizer sacks as the Dubs arrive.
There’s a moment of silence as the Dubs reach for Strummer and then the air is sucked out of the room as we dip trough the pocket-door and the room vanishes in a fireball behind us.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The resulting shock-wave shudders the floor and lifts us off our feet. What’s left of the walls shield us from the blast that causes the building to rock side-to-side.
We take shelter in an alcove between corridors, covered in dust and debris, my cheek ripped open, blood dribbling down into my mouth.
The lights flicker off and on.
“You still in one piece?” Naia asks me, rubbing her swollen ankle.
I run my hands over my body and aside from a few scratches on my arms and the lacerations on my face (and a few missing teeth) I’m fine. So are Del Frisco and Zeus who paces, peering back into the smoking wreckage of the growing room, barking.
The spine of the room (and the floors below) has been exposed, the lightweight composite floor torn open, cement flung into the air, the metal decking underneath visible and twisted.
Dozens of Dubs writhe on exposed steel frames and rebar like bugs on pins.
Some of their bodies, worn by time and the elements, simply split apart as their carcasses tumble to the floor below.
But the others, and now we can see there are literally thousands of them pouring into the building below, are slowed only momentarily.
Naia and Del Frisco haul me to my feet and we move down the corridor as terrified residents rush past us. They look like a band of refugees fleeing a war.
I come to a stop in the middle of the corridor.
I know it could cost me everything, but I get the feeling that if Gus were here he’d tell me that it isn’t right to punish the many for the sins of the few.
“The Dubs are here! Get up to fourteen!” I shout.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Naia screams.
“I can’t let them go down to their deaths.”
“They tried to kill us!”
“Not all of them.”
I spot Stanley Storch who’s huddled in the middle of them. I reach out my hand and he takes it, trembling, hugging me.
“Wha – what’s going on, Z?” he says. “You and the girl went down the chute and now you’re back and—”
“You still wanna go to the outer buildings?”
A smile tugs at his face and he nods.
“Then let’s go.”
I turn as many of those around us have stopped running and are staring. A woman holding a little girl hiccups a sob. A young kid holding a broom that’s been made up like a doll faces me, lip quivering.
“Listen to me,” I say to the stragglers. “This is not a drill. This is real. The Dubs are in the building and they are coming for us. We need to go right now!”
I throw up a hand and many of those around begin to follow. The rest are doomed, heading down the corridor to where the Dubs are waiting for them. There’s nothing more than I can do for them and I wince and cover my ears as the Dubs ambush them.
Del Frisco, flanking me, grimaces from his wounds, but soldiers on.
“Where are we headed, hoss?” he asks.
“Like I said, we’re going to see Roger Parker.”
“But he’s in one of the other buildings.”
“That’s right.”
We move up another flight of stairs and down through a rear passageway until we come to a secure door. On the other side is the exit that I used before when I left the outer buildings and crawled back into VC1 across the retractable metal ladder that was camouflaged in mesh.
I grab the door’s handle and pull back, but it doesn’t give.
Soon, the others that followed have latched onto the door and are collectively tugging back until the handle breaks off.
I stare at the handle as my face scrunch
es against the metal door. I’m being pressed forward by the sheer weight of those stationed behind me. Panic sets in and next come the hands, fists and open palms, slapping and pounding on the door furiously as the sounds of the Dubs grow closer.
The door’s hinges bend, turn white, and then one breaks off and the door falls away before us as I’m almost sucked outside—
—Into the dizzying open space that stretches between the buildings.
A chasm that plunges hundreds of feet to the streets below.
A hand grabs my back and steadies me and then I hear someone shout:
“How do we get across?!”
I look back to see Del Frisco clutching my shirt.
“We’re in a world of hurt,” he whispers.
Wrenching my head around, I see that the retractable ladder from before has not been maneuvered over.
There is no way across to the other building.
And the worst thing is when windows shatter several floors beneath us and a cluster of people are either thrown out or leap out of the building followed by an equal number of Dubs.
I turn from this to face the stragglers, the men and women and children gathered before me. The lack of a way across spurs a chain of whispers and I can see the fear in their eyes along with glimmers of rage. I promised them safety and led them into a trap.
Strangled cries ring out down the hallway and a woman screams because a Dub appears at the other end of the hall, then another, then three more.
“Get ready to fight!” I say.
Stan holds up his drum sticks, daggering them like weapons.
“I’m ready for ‘em!” he shouts.
Del Frisco waves his hands and I look back and now there’s someone on the other building, a kid who’s emerged from a doorway with a scarf wrapped around his face. He’s looking across at us, fronting the retractable ladder.
We wave our hands and shout and he stares quizzically at us. He doesn’t react, doesn’t extend the ladder, doesn’t do a damn thing.
My eyes go to Gus’s pistol and then to Naia.
“How many rounds do you have left?”
“I wasn’t counting.”
“At least three?”
“I think so.”
Vertical City (Book 4) Page 9