“Hold on. I killed four of them and you killed one, and yet I’m supposed to say thank you? No. That’s not the way it works. Speaking of being a girl, with your hair like that you kinda look like a girl again. Maybe poke those back up if you can.” She tried and failed, but wouldn’t let him touch her hair with his hands still stained by the com-cells.
To hide the scaly head, Corrina pulled off the jacket she’d been wearing beneath her overalls and Cole used it to wrap it up as best as he could. Without the coat adding bulk, Corrina looked even more like a girl than ever. It couldn’t be helped, however. There was nothing they could do.
He had her follow as close behind him as she could so that he could shield her from excessive scrutiny with his bulk. But Corrina wouldn’t stay close, not with him swinging a zombie head around as if it was his lunch. To help hide her sex and to minimize the chance of getting one of the invisible germs up her nose, she pulled her shirt up out of the collar of her overalls and wore it like she was going to rob a bank.
Although a few people stared at her, there was something so creepy about the big Tier 3 walking in front of her that no one chanced voicing an opinion. He was a bloody, bruised, tatted-up mess, and he glared daggers at anyone who dared to look his way.
They made it up to the garage level without a problem and although he strode confidently to the hidden door, neither of them felt at all confident. Corrina had already lost the feeling of satisfaction that had come over her watching the slag fall. It had been replaced by a creeping sense of doom and a growing hunger for a ride on the mule or a gallon of gin fizz. Yes, they had fought and killed a bunch of Dead-eyes, but now they had to call in the police and she didn’t have any expectations of that playing out well. Then they would have to “hope” that Fantucci would follow through on his end of the bargain when there was no reason for him to do so.
Cole had all that going through his head with the added knowledge that he was also stabbing Ashley in the back. Wasn’t there a chance that she didn’t know what was going on in the deepest darkest part of her own factory? Didn’t she deserve a heads-up? Or at least an apology on Cole’s part before he destroyed her and her family.
“Hold on,” Cole said as Corrina darted for the tunnel entrance. “I need to think this through.”
“I wasn’t gonna leave, I was just checking to see if we can still get out this way.” A lead plate that had been painted an exact match to the wall hid the tunnel. It slid back easily. She stood up again and with a glance at the bulging coat, she asked, “Think about what? Ain’t you supposed to call your boss? That’s what we talked about.”
He took on a pained expression and she rolled her eyes. “No!” she snapped. “No, no, no. Call that team in, and then your boss and let’s be done. What about the orphans? Huh? What about them?”
“Ashley can pull in a dozen of those giant guards of hers. They can move the kids somewhere safe.”
“Yeah, sure they can, but will they?”
That was the question; could he really trust Ashley? Could he trust a woman who had been feeding humans to her zombie slaves? She had to know what was going on. After everything that had happened six months before, she would know the truth.
“I’ll give her one chance to make this right.” Corrina’s grey eyes flew open wide. “Now hold on. I’ll make her reimburse me for the five bounties. That’s fifty thousand dollars.” This kept the lid from blowing off her boiler. She leaned back, her eyes narrowing as if to say: Go on. “And I’ll insist that she kills off the last of the Dead-eyes. And I’ll make sure that she moves the orphans.”
She offered a shrug to these demands. To her, orphans weren’t anything special and the idea of someone besides Cole killing off zombies didn’t sit well with her. No zombies meant no job. “What about your execution? What can she do about that? Nothin’ I bet.”
“Not necessarily. She told me once that Vamps owned politicians. Maybe she can pull a few strings. I think I can trust her more than I can a mobster.” To be on the safe side, he told Corrina to stash the head somewhere while he was gone. Gingerly, she took the bundle and held it out at arm’s length. “I’ll call you on the radio when it’s safe. If you don’t hear from me in thirty minutes, leave as fast as you can. Meet me at that sub-t motel we stayed at last year.”
With her face turned away and her lips drawn back in a grimace, a grunt was all she could offer in way of an answer. He wished her luck and headed for the nearest bathroom, where he stripped to the waist and scrubbed himself raw with harsh lye soap. Only when he was sure he was free of the black blood did he dress and head up to the third floor where the management offices were concentrated near the east side of the factory.
It was nine at night and the floor was mostly empty with only a few secretaries hurrying here and there, and an even fewer number of men in white overalls who all glared fiercely at Cole, and at each other.
Cole had no idea exactly where he would find Ashley, if she were even in the building, something he hadn’t taken into account. He decided to ask one of the secretaries hurrying by. She squeaked in fright when he approached her, and wouldn’t even look him in the face.
“What the hell?” he growled when she pulled back and rushed away with quick mincing steps.
“Whadja es-pect?” a lean man in brown overalls said. He had huge pustules erupting across his face and there was rot in his hair. “Ya think a fresh one’ll give one of us the time of day?”
It took Cole a moment to realize that by “us” he meant a fellow slag; Cole had forgotten about his tattoos. “Yeah, I guess not. Say, are you a runner?” In answer the man held up a manila folder. “Great. Maybe you can help me. Where would I find, like the owner of the factory or the person in charge of everything?”
“The owner? I dunno. Never met any vamps. I did have to go down to Double Z once, but they didn’t let me in. Some giant monster of a man took my paperwork and that was that. Not even a thanks, not that I get many of them. People ain’t got no manners no more.”
Vamps were almost exclusively guarded by the strange modified giants. “Where is the Double Z?”
The runner rubbed his jaw as though in deep thought. “Wellll, if I can remember right, it’s through the finance section, all the way in the back. There’s this tall staircase, you know so the vamps can look down on their little slaves. There isn’t…”
Cole was already on the move, calling out a “Thank you,” over his shoulder. He knew where the finance area was from his last near-disastrous visit to Krupp. As he hurried through the maze of offices, he began to have second thoughts on his plan. He was putting his head squarely into the lion’s mouth and all he had to keep from getting it bit off was a tiny pistol and a little whore. Neither felt all that reliable at the moment. In fact, the pistol was useless. It would be taken from him the moment he stepped on those stairs.
He hated the idea of being at someone else’s mercy and it was more than disconcerting having his gun taken without the promise of getting it back. Halfway through the finance section, he knelt to tie his boot next to an empty desk. As he got up, he slid the .32 Crown under a stack of folders. He considered hiding the radio as well, instead, he pressed the “talk” button. “Corrina? Corrina? Hello? Can you hear me?”
Static rasped in his ear.
She was too far underground. “Not a problem,” he told himself, pocketing the radio. “She’ll go to the motel and that’s where we’ll meet. It’s the plan, after all.” Saying this did nothing to quell his building anxiety. She was a pain in the ass, and constantly getting in trouble, and she was also his lucky charm. Since finding her in the tunnel’s months before, he had yet to get through a scrape without her.
“But this won’t be a scrape,” he told himself as he mounted the stairs. There was very little chance that Ashley was even in the building. But he could call her, or have one of the admin people do it for him. One that was high enough up the food chain that…
There was a glass door at the top of
the stairs; it swung silently inward and one of the giants stepped out. The man had to be at least seven feet tall and weighed upwards of three-hundred pounds; all of it muscle and bone. He wore a shimmering silver suit which made him look like the world’s largest back-up singer. As far as Cole knew, Ashley dressed her goliaths up in black. So, who did this guy belong to?
Belong was the accurate word. The vamps bought their guards’ work licenses outright and could have them killed with a literal flip of a switch. Technically, it would be murder if it wasn’t done in self-defense, but as far as Cole knew, no vamp had ever been convicted of anything. Most of their crimes were bribed away, and those that couldn’t be were swept under the rug with a PR campaign that relied heavily on razzle-dazzle, innuendo, and blatant lies which became truth through repetition.
“Shtay,” the giant said, his voice somewhat garbled. Cole guessed that the chemicals which had made him so big had made a python out of his tongue.
“I’m looking for Ashley Tinsley. Is she here?”
“Shtay,” he said again, advancing on Cole.
“Yeah, sure.” Cole put his hands up. There was no sense fighting one of these things unless his life depended on it. Maybe it works for Krupp, the company as opposed to any one person, he thought as the beast ran its big paws over Cole’s body. The guard found the radio and the extra magazines for the Forino. He also discovered Cole’s bounty hunter license. He stared at it for so long that Cole was tempted to read it to him.
When he had finally slogged his way through the fine print, he took Cole by the collar of his stolen green overalls and propelled him inside the doors. These were far thicker and heavier than they seemed. It would take a battering ram to get through them.
As with so many places where vamps lived or worked, there was an antechamber where guests were generally searched a second or third time, or forced to wait for hours until the vamp in question finished their nap, or their book. Save for another shimmering silver-clad giant, there was nothing in the room, and yet it was magnificent in its way. The walls were metal but molded in such a way that it looked as though they had been created by an artist working in the center of a blast furnace. No paint was used to depict heroic men working with molten metals. Each wall showed a progression from simple tools to more complex devices. The fires in the worked images were a mixture of copper and gold. The men were bronze with eyes of platinum; their tools started off lead in the early depictions and ran through iron and then steel and in the end, they gleamed silver.
Cole found himself staring. The first giant clapped him on the shoulder to get him moving. It felt like someone had smacked him with a fifty-pound bag of rice.
“Is Ashley Tinsley here? Hello?”
The guards said nothing. They flanked him as they entered what felt like a new world. The factory had stunk of metal and chemicals. It was an acrid smell that had given Cole a low-running headache. The air in the vamp’s offices smelled of cedar, cinnamon and vanilla. It was an interesting combination that had him sniffing, trying to puzzle it out. And gone was the industrial grey concrete that had formed the walls and foundation of the building. Here were gleaming wood floors and walls studded with more art. Art was everywhere. Portraits and murals lined the walls, while the small tables bore up golden statues. The furniture was art as well; the wood was scrolled with intricate and beautiful designs.
Even the ears were treated to a change. Instead of the background noise of turbines and metal being drilled, melted or hammered, there was a soft sighing sound that rose and fell, soothingly. Beneath that was a distant rumbling that was familiar but elusive. When a gull let out a cry, he jumped a bit, realizing that he was listening to the surf.
He had never heard the real thing.
One of the guards ruined the ambiance by grunting, “Go.” He pointed a finger that was half the diameter of Cole’s wrist towards the far end of the large room where a desk sat. The top, a half-acre of gleaming oak, held little but a set of golden scales ten inches high. The chair—more like a throne, really—behind it was empty. In front of it was a stool that sat a bare foot off the ground. Cole was thrust down on it.
He felt like a child with his knees up around his chin. It was purposeful of course, designed to make him feel small and inadequate in the presence of the vamp.
“Either of you got a cig?” he asked the guards. Neither appeared to have heard him, meaning they had been muted. The idea of someone having that much control over him sent a shiver up his back. It was sickening. Cole was just stretching his legs out in front of him when a door opened to his left. The guards grabbed him by the back of his collar and hauled him up, and now he could see that it was…Ashley?
She had never appeared before him with the exact same hair style or color. As well, her eyes were constantly shifting; one time they had been gold, another time crystal blue and once they had been as deeply green as emeralds. Her fashion, too was all over the board. The only thing one outfit had in common with any other was that it was exploding with color and always accented her lithe form.
Now she was in black leather. Her patent leather boots had six-inch heels, her skirt gleamed darkly to just below her knees, her jacket was cut in a deep V displaying a firm cleavage and the fact that she was wearing nothing whatsoever beneath it. Her hair was black as well and cut in a harsh angle from the corner of one eye across her forehead. The same angle was used to cut the back. Her eyes were full black, shining and wet like a beetle’s.
She strutted to her side of the desk and sat. When she did, Cole was pushed down onto the stool, so that he had to sit up straight to minimize how stupid he looked.
Ashley said nothing. She sat in silence, a black eyebrow cocked waiting for him to speak.
“It’s me, Cole.” He tried to gesture toward his face but one of the giants grabbed his arm. “Can you get rid of these guys? I know they’re muted but still, it’s uncomfortable.” When she still didn’t say a word, he added in a low voice, “I need to talk to you, alone. You may trust these goons, but I don’t. Look, Ash, we don’t have a lot of…”
She burst out laughing, sudden and violent like a quail flushed from cover. Right away he realized he had made a big mistake. Ashley did not laugh like that. Ashley laughed as if people were judging her on how many teeth she displayed, with fewer being preferable to more.
“You’re not Ashley, are you?” The resemblance was uncanny. They had the same lips and nose, which could only mean they used the same plastic surgeon. They had the same high forehead and intelligent eyes. The difference between them lay in something odd that few would have noticed. This woman’s earlobes were a touch longer, stretched by the gold and onyx hoops she was wearing—Ashley only wore studs.
The laughter quieted into a burbling chortle as she said, “No, I am not Ashley. I am Monica Turner; her cousin. And you are her sub-t fling. My God, she has no taste in men at all.”
Chapter 19
“Her, uh, cousin?” Cole stammered. “And you run Krupp now?” Of course, the answer had to be yes. That’s how these things went for Cole.
Monica nodded. “For the last six months. I’m surprised you didn’t know. That’s strange if you ask me. Weren’t you two intimate?”
“That’s not, uh, that’s neither here or there. We never discussed who ran things here.” Or who would run them after he had killed her brother. Ashley had expected to be the next CEO in line but clearly that hadn’t happened. And this meant, what? That Ashley had once again used Cole to do her dirty work for her? More than likely, yes. Who else would know about the Dead-eyes down in the pit? Who else would benefit from slipping a rumor to someone in the Fantuccis? Had she slipped his name in there as well?
He groaned inwardly as Monica smirked. “So, I have a bounty hunter sitting in my office when I’m supposed to be having a meeting with…you guessed it, Ashley.” She leaned forward and drummed black nails on her desk. “She’s setting me up, isn’t she? She knows, doesn’t she? Of course, she does, otherwise you
wouldn’t be here.”
She sat back and eyed Cole, who was doing his best not to give anything away and compounding his mistake even more. Right at that moment, he had almost no leverage. He had no idea where Corrina had stashed the head, and no way to get a hold of her. He had stuck his head in the lion’s mouth and now the teeth were closing in on him.
“You’ve been down in the pit. I can tell. You have that look. I’m guessing by the fresh scratches that you killed a few of them. Bravo. Not an easy task. But why come here? You expected to see Ashley. It sounds like she’s looking to cut us both off at the knees.”
Cole had one play: the bluff. “I was contacted by a third party and I felt I owed it to her to give her a heads up that the police are on their way. Media, too. This is big news, after all. Maybe I can see to it that your name can be left out of the mess, if you let me go. If not, this place will be swarming in minutes. We both know Ashley. She’s got teams on standby.”
“And yet, they’re not swarming,” Monica said, completely at her ease. “You act like I don’t know how to play the game. If you had called the taxmen, I would’ve known. Instead you came here. Did puppy come to get a bone or a scratch behind the ear?”
“I came to warn her. And I’m warning you. The people who sent me…”
She interrupted, “Are about to get their payback. They trusted a slag and this is what it got them. Well. The boys are going to take you down to the silver smelter and they’re going to find out everything. Who’s been talking to you, what you’ve seen, what you’ve done, etc. etc.” She looked up at one of the giants. “After that make a statue out of him. Call in that Bostonian. He does such a good job with retaining features.” She waved a dismissive hand and the giant hands came down on him again.
“Whoa, hold on. Features? Hold on, why are we talking features?” The two giants pulled him back just as he bulled forward. The old fabric of the overalls tore in three places and he almost fell forward half-naked. “Look, we can talk here. Don’t you think I’d be a much more effective bargaining chip alive and in one piece?”
Dead Eye Hunt (Book 2): Into The Rad Lands Page 18