by JJ Zep
“You saw the performance in Carson City?”
Carmen nodded.
“You saw what I did to those Z’s?”
Another nod.
“Well that’s nothing compared to what I’ll do to you if one hair gets harmed on this kid’s head, comprender.”
Out in the stadium the crowd had started a slow handclap. “I’m sure she’ll be here any minute now folks,” Ruby heard the stadium announcer say.
“You understand?”
“I understand.”
“For Christ sake Ruby, can we just get this done?”
Ruby turned to face Vanessa. “She knows about the bracelet?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Vanessa said. “I explained everything. Can we just go now please?”
“You better hope she knows,” Ruby said. “Anything happens to Pearl and Cyrus Cain will be the least of your problems.”
twenty six
“Now entering the arena ladies and gentlemen, Ruby Collins!”
Ruby accepted her sword from one of the security men and jogged up the short flight of stairs that brought her out onto the floodlit dirt floor of the stadium. Directly across from her, against the outfield wall, stood the holding pen where Cain had a few hundred Z’s tethered down for tonight’s show. At her back were the bleachers from whence a volley of jeers was being hurled in her direction. It appeared the patrons of the Aces Ballpark (a full house tonight) did not tolerate a tardy performer. Ruby turned to face them, ignored the abuse and went through her warm-up routine as the stadium announcer launched into his usual blurb. “Believe it or not, folks, this little girl used to be a trained killer for the Pendragon Corporation. You think I’m kidding? I ain’t kidding, folks. Watch this.”
A buzzer sounded behind Ruby as the catch on the holding pen was released. A blast of calliope music signaled game on. She paid it no mind, continued swatting at the air with her Katana, face to the crowd, dodging the occasional missile that was directed towards her.
A gasp from the audience told her that the first of the zombies had put in an appearance. Still Ruby didn’t turn, instead scanning the sea of faces until she picked out Cyrus Cain in the V.I.P. seats, the Chief as ever by his side. Cain gave her a broad grin. She responded by turning her back on him.
The Z’s were now staggering across the arena towards her. Ruby counted out twelve of them. She blanked out the crowd noise and honed in on the zombie wavelength, the frequency that allowed her to control them, the place where all became one.
As a child, this skill had come to her naturally, something that the Corporation had exploited for its own purposes. She’d been co-opted into a program that was designed to harness the force of her telekinetic powers against the Z’s. That program had come at a price. Both of her juvenile colleagues, Justin and Fiona, had suffered irreparable brain damage. Ruby had only survived because her mentor, Dr. Gish, had taught her how to suppress her abilities, to hide them. Eventually, those abilities had diminished, although Ruby had summoned them one more time, in her teens. That had been in New York, when that psycho Bronson Chavez had thrown her dad and Uncle Joe to the Z’s in Central Park and she’d had to break them out. After that Ruby had believed that her kinetic powers were lost forever.
Then, while taking on some Quicks aboard the Calypso Quest back in Galveston, Ruby had experienced an epiphany, a series of apocalyptic visions. At first, she hadn’t known what to make of them, but eventually she’d come to realize that she’d tapped into a collective consciousness, a hive mind. She’d begun experimenting, learning how to access that consciousness at will. It had been a short step from there to figure out how to transmit to it and influence the Z’s behavior. It didn’t always work and it worked less often with Quicks than with ordinary Z’s but it was a valuable weapon to have in her armory.
She accessed that weapon now, triggering a rapid-fire slideshow of images, most of them violent, others misplaced among the carnage - a crowd of people fleeing across a collapsing bridge, a zombie dragging a screaming woman from a car, a father pushing a toddler on a swing, a mob of Z’s rampaging through a burning apartment building, a young couple making out in the backseat of a car. On and on it went, faster and faster until it was nothing more than an electrical pulse, a stream of pure energy into which Ruby slipped effortlessly.
The first zombie was almost upon her, the crowd baying out panicked warnings. Ruby sent the Katana singing through the air in a series of elaborate maneuvers. She waded into the melee, whirling the sword like some demented cheerleader. Limbs and heads were severed, guts sliced open ejecting coils of rotted intestines into the dirt. Ruby ducked out of reach of a flailing claw. She thrust, skewering two zombies in a single lunge, walked them backwards, skittling those coming behind. Then she withdrew the sword and marched along the line of fallen Z’s, snapping their necks with the heel of her boot as they tried to rise. The crowd roared its approval.
The buzzer sounded again, signaling the arrival of the next batch, a larger group this time, perhaps twenty. No Quicks though, Cain would be saving those for her second shift. A chant went up, the earlier jeers of the crowd now turned to adulation.
Ruby jogged to face the new onslaught. She wanted this done quickly, wanted to get back to Pearl. A flash of the blade and the lead zombie lost its head. A pirouette and the katana was sent arcing through the air to open another’s throat. Eight minutes later the mutilated remains of over thirty Z’s littered the dirt floor of the stadium.
The crowd was on its feet, whipped into a frenzy. “Ruby! Ruby! Ruby!” was the cry.
Ruby strode across the arena, blood glistening on her sword, spattering her face and the slick black leather of her suit. She stopped and acknowledged the ovation with a wave. Then she turned and disappeared into the bowels of the stadium. She reached the bottom of the stairs, held out the sword to be received by the security guard. A flash of light suddenly illuminated the darkened corridor, followed a millisecond later by a deafening thump.
twenty seven
The floor seemed to buckle under her feet. Ruby was thrown sideways. She shifted her weight and maintained her footing. She heard screams, yells, the sound of running feet. From the end of the corridor came a mist of rolling white smoke and dust. Now a woman staggered from it, a woman with her arm ripped off and her denim jacket torn to sheds. Carmen stared sightlessly out of a face that appeared to have been flayed of flesh across its entire right side. She opened her mouth as if to say something. Then she slumped against the wall, leaving behind a bloody smear as she slid to the floor.
A cry exploded from Ruby’s lips, a primal, animalistic scream that only half formed the word ‘Pearl.’ Then she was sprinting, hurdling Carmen’s fallen body as she ran headlong into the smoke and dust with no concern for what lay beyond. She cannoned into someone, sending them sprawling, reached the shattered door of the locker room and vaulted through it.
There was blood on the doorjamb and on the floor. Ruby scanned desperately across the smoke-filled room and spotted a swatch of blond hair jammed under one of the benches. She ran towards Pearl, dropped to her knees, slid in beside the little girl. She was hardly even aware that she was still carrying her sword until it went clattering across the floor.
Pearl was crouched into a praying position, head between her knees, hands placed firmly over her ears. Ruby snaked a hand under the bench, got a grip on the child’s wrist and detected a strong pulse.
“Pearl!”
Pearl turned her head slowly towards Ruby, her blue eyes large in her terrified face. “I told her not to take it,” she sobbed.
A feeling of relief, elation akin to none she’d ever felt before, washed over Ruby. She felt tears prickling at her eyes and for a moment she was sure that she was going to cry.
“Told who, Sugar? Told who not to take what?” She gave Pearl a gentle nudge and helped her out from under the bench. A quick inspection told her that the child was unhurt. The explosion had been detonated in the passage, not in here. Pearl had
also had the presence of mind to creep under the bench to protect herself from the blast. But how had she known? How could she have known there was going to be an explosion?
“She wasn’t nice like Sharon,” Pearl said. “And I told her not to take it. I told her it would hurt her if she did. But…” Pearl fetched a deep sigh. “…she wouldn’t listen.”
Ruby understood now. That junkie, Carmen, had no doubt seen the jeweled bracelet and figured it was worth a week’s supply of PCP or crack or whatever it was she was on. She’d slipped the bracelet from Pearl’s wrist and made a run for it, getting as far as the corridor before it had detonated. Cain had been telling the truth about that after all.
Ruby took Pearl’s hand, examined the wrist that had so recently worn the deadly trinket. The only bangle there now was a band of pale skin against Pearl’s deeper tan. This was the break they’d been waiting for, the break that Ruby had never stopped believing would come.
She helped Pearl quickly to her feet, gave her a hug. “You up for a little trip, kiddo?”
“A trip?”
“You want to go with me to California to see my family?”
“You mean Chris and Kelly and Ferret and Sam and –”
“Yeah, yeah, the whole dang gang,” Ruby said. “You up for it?”
“I’ll go anywhere you go, Ruby,” Pearl said and clung to Ruby’s legs.
A piercing scream came from outside, then another and another, soon melding into a seamless wail. Ruby heard the sound of running feet and knew what it meant even before the cry went up.
“Z’s! The Z’s are out of the enclosure!”
twenty eight
The katana lay up against the array of lockers at the far side of the room. Ruby picked it up and sheathed it. Then she turned towards Pearl, dropped into a crouch so she could look the little girl in the eyes. “Listen up, kiddo. I need you to pay attention to what I’ve got to say, alright?”
Pearl nodded earnestly.
“We’re getting out of here,” Ruby said. “Far away from Mr. Cain and his Z’s and exploding bangles. But Mr. Cain’s not going to be too happy about us going and he may try to stop us, you understand?”
Pearl frowned. “You won’t let him, will you Ruby?”
“Not if I can help it, sugar, but I’m going to need you help. Think you can help me out here?”
Again Pearl nodded.
“When we get outside there’s going to be some scary things. I’m talking scary stuff, kiddo. Stuff you don’t need to see. Which is why there’s only two things I’m going to ask you to do. I’m going to ask you to keep your eyes shut the whole time.”
“Like if I’m sleeping?”
“Like if you’re sleeping,” Ruby agreed. “The second thing is, you need to hold onto my hand. Whatever happens, you don’t let go unless I tell you. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good girl. You ready to blow this joint?”
“Ready as teddy,” Pearl said, sharing an in-joke. Then her face crinkled into a frown.
“What’s wrong?” Ruby said.
“Can Teddy come too? And Barbie?”
“Well, duh,” Ruby said. “Did you think we were going anywhere without the rest of our gang? Come on.”
She took Pearl by the hand led her across the room, stopping on route to retrieve the toys. She stuffed the Barbie doll down Pearl shirt, while Pearl clung to the Teddy Ruxpin with her free hand.
Ruby walked to the door and peered out into the smoky expanse of the corridor towards the rectangle of light at the end. The floodlights were still on out there and Ruby could see figures darting across the stadium floor. Screams and gunshots perforated the night. Someone was barking out instructions. Not Cain. He’d most likely have gotten himself somewhere safe as soon as things had gone south. Her mind went back to a promise she’d made in Galveston. When I do escape, she’d told Cain, I’ll be sure to pay you a visit on my way out.
Well, that was one promise she was going to have to break. Her priority was getting Pearl out of here, away from all this.
Ruby turned her head to the right, tracing the path into the darkened guts of the stadium. She wasn’t sure where that led exactly, but it had to be better than going out onto the floodlit ballpark, where she’d likely be spotted. She turned right, leading Pearl by the hand into darkness.
The corridor ran straight on for about fifty feet then ended in a t-junction. Ruby’s eyes had by now fully adjusted to the dark, but the curved walkways that stretched out to either side provided no clue as to where they led. She tuned in her hearing, picked out footfalls and the babble of excited voices to the left and went in that direction. Twenty paces on and she saw that she’d made the right call. An exit sign glowed out of the darkness. She could see chinks of light.
Ruby hurried along the corridor pulling Pearl behind her. Soon she could make out a pair of doors with a horizontal security bar. A length of chain was wrapped around the bar, secured with a large padlock.
The babble of voices grew louder. She picked out laughter, snippets of conversation.
“Did you see…”
“Thought … was a gonner there for sure.”
“…goddamn refund…”
“Unbelievable, unbe-fucking-lievable!”
“Was that part of the show, do you think?”
Ruby pushed up against the doors, pressed her eye to the slim gap between them. The main foyer of the stadium lay just beyond. With the immediate danger of rampaging Z’s brought under control, the crowd was filing through it in an almost orderly fashion.
Perfect. If Ruby could just get the security door open, she and Pearl could blend into the throng. They could walk right out of here.
“I’m going to let go of your hand for a minute, sugar. You stay close now.”
She unsheathed the sword, inserted the tip into the loop of the padlock and gave it a twist. The lock sprung open with minimal resistance.
Ruby stowed her katana, pushed down on the security bar and heard it click. She applied her shoulder ever so slightly to the door not wanting to open it too suddenly and startle the patrons on the other side. Cain probably had men out here. Stealth was required.
She pushed harder at the door, opening enough of a gap for her and Pearl to squeeze through. She slipped out into the crowd.
“Hey! Hey you!”
Ruby swung round towards the sound of the voice. A staircase stood to her left, providing access to the upper tiers of the stadium. It had been in her blind spot when she’d been on the other side of the door. Two of Cain’s goons were positioned there. One of them had an M-16 pointed at her.
twenty nine
Ruby wasn’t about to be captured, not when she’d waited so long for the chance to escape. She pushed Pearl back through the door, then ducked through herself as a volley of bullets cut a swathe across the crowd and slammed into the frame. From the other side of the door came a cacophony of screams and curses. Then the crowd was in motion, stampeding. The sound of imploding glass marked their path through the glass frontage of the foyer.
The chaos bought Ruby valuable seconds as she grabbed Pearl’s hand and ran back the way they’d come. Pearl was sobbing, lagging. Ruby stopped just long enough to scoop her up, then hit a right at the t-junction. She ran past the destroyed door of the locker room, rounded Carmen’s lifeless body. She had hoped that the stadium lights would have been extinguished by now but they still blazed. No matter, she was committed. It was do or die time.
Ruby hit the stairs on the run and crested them in two bounds. She emerged on the stadium floor and didn’t bother looking right or left. Her target was the Z pen, standing astride the outfield wall. She darted towards it, running on a trajectory that dissected first and second base. A couple of Cain’s men were wrangling the last of the escaped Z’s into the pen but Ruby paid them no mind.
“Teddy!”
Pearl’s cry in her ear was so frantic, so distressed, that it brought Ruby to a shuddering halt.
; “I dropped Teddy!” Pearl cried.
Ruby looked back along the path she’d run. She saw the doll, lying in the dirt, just ten feet away. She wasn’t going back. Not now, not when they were so close. She began backing away.
“Please Ruby, pllleeeaassse!” the child wailed. “Don’t leave him.”
Ruby cast a panicked gaze across the stadium. In the outfield, the Z wranglers were still occupied with rounding up the strays and weren’t paying any attention to her; near the dugout, the stairs still stood empty, the shooters had evidently not yet fought their way through the crowds in the foyer. She scanned the banks of seats on the other side of the stadium but the light from the risers was in her eyes, blinding her.
“Okay, okay,” she told Pearl. “We’ll get him.”
Ruby turned and headed back towards the doll, scooped it up and handed it to Pearl. “Thank you, Ruby,” the little girl wailed. “I just couldn’t leave him behind. I couldn’t.”
“That’s okay kiddo,” Ruby said, hugging her close. “No harm done.”
She’d barely said the words when a spray of dirt kicked up in front of her. A nanosecond later she heard the report of the rifle. Then Cain’s voice boomed out over the P.A. system. “Planning a night out in Reno, Ruby? You should have said. I know people. I can get you comped at any casino in this town.” He ended in a chuckle that morphed into a phlegmy cough. “Now you just stop what you’re doing. sweetheart. Stop right there. Uncle Cyrus is coming down to say howdy.”
Ruby caught movement to her left and saw the shooters from the foyer clambering up the staircase by the dugout. At right, the wranglers had snared their last Z and stood blocking her path. Now Cyrus Cain came into view, stepping from the stadium announcer’s box and descending the steps to ground level at the head of his entourage, the Chief by his side, four armed men boxing them in.
thirty