Caligula emerged from cover. He holstered his now-empty gun. Calm. No hurry. He drew his throwing hatchet, and Keats could see the killer’s eye on him, on a pitiful crawling wretch, saw the way it focused on his upturned face.
Alien, the sight of his own face as he waited to die. Strange and alien. Keats knew the face, knew it was him, but how could that be? The blessed peace of action had faded, and now he was a bug, a worm waiting to be crushed by the boot of the human god.
The hatchet flew.
It grazed Keats’s shoulder and clattered to the floor of the elevator.
Was Wilkes still screaming? Someone was.
Caligula blinked. Stared.
Knew. Understood. Because Caligula did not miss, not with gun or hatchet. He did not miss, and he knew then it could only be some fault in his vision.
Keats’s biot sawed and more nerves parted.
Caligula drew a knife and bounded, like some bizarre kangaroo, rushing with unnatural speed. Keats saw the distance shorten in a heartbeat, saw the killer’s focus, saw his own scared face, Wilkes’s open mouth, a flash of Plath’s hand pressing down on the door’s Close button, and the elevator door closing too slowly.
Caligula reached the elevator when the doors were still six inches apart. He thrust in a hand to stop it.
Wilkes was on him like an animal, biting the hand, snarling, shaking her head like a terrier with a rat.
Caligula yelled in pain and rage.
Keats saw the door from the inside.
The door through Caligula’s eyes.
The knife dropped from Caligula’s bloody hand, but he did not withdraw, would not let the door close.
The hatchet was in Keats’s hand before he knew it. He observed it through Caligula’s eye, saw the killer seeing him, saw the killer track the hatchet as it went back and came down fast and hard and Caligula tried to pull the hand back now, but Wilkes still had it in her teeth and the hatchet blade hit with a cleaver-on-bone sound, barely missing Wilkes’s nose and biting deep into Caligula’s flesh.
Wilkes recoiled then, the hand pulled away, pumping blood from the gash.
Keats saw the doors close from both sides.
He saw the killer stare at his mangled hand, then through his own eyes saw the little pink curls of fingers on the elevator floor.
The elevator rose.
“Billy,” Wilkes said. Her mouth was smeared with blood, forming a terrible rictus smile.
“Up,” Keats said, and punched the button for the highest floor available, the third floor.
“What are we going to do?” Wilkes asked and there was a sob in her voice.
“Surrender,” Plath said.
TWENTY-FOUR
Suarez was handcuffed. The handcuffs went through a chain that in turn went through a massive steel ring set into the wall at head height.
The wall was in a dungeon.
The dungeon was both frightening and absurd. There were mossy stone walls. There was straw on the stone floor. She’d been left with a rusty pail in which to do her business. The door was too low and made of flaking, unfinished wood. There was a narrow window, but when she dragged her chain over to it she saw that it was fake. The scene visible through the window was a matte painting of a medieval village.
“Cute,” she said dryly.
It was like a movie set, or something out of a video game. Someone was having fun with the whole idea of a dungeon. Which was absurd.
The scary part came from the fact that the cuffs and chain and even the ring in the wall were all of very high-grade steel.
A man who had the bearing of a former cop or soldier, a beefy, steroided thirtysomething with a crew cut, brought her dinner after a while. The tray was plastic and flimsy, no use as a weapon. The cutlery was plastic as well, and not the good kind. Water was in a plastic bottle. Wine was in a paper cup.
Wine, because it was quite a good meal, considering the location. Better than airline food, in any event. Wine in a dungeon.
“You have a name, soldier?” Suarez asked as he set the plate carefully on the floor, five feet from where she sat.
“Yes, sir,” he said reflexively. So (a) he was an ex-soldier, and (b) he knew that she’d been an officer.
He flushed, realizing his mistake. Then said, “You can call me Chesterfield.”
“That’s not your name. It’s a brand of cigarette.” When he did not demur, she said, “So, I’m guessing the other guards will be Marlboro and Lucky Strike?”
“Eat your food. Ma’am.”
“Looks good. And I am hungry.” She crawled to the food. Took a sip of the wine. “Know what the wine is?”
“It’s French.”
“Expensive, too, I’d guess. No point paying to ship cheap wine all the way here. Of course I’m more of a whiskey drinker.”
“So’s the boss.”
“The boss,” Suarez said pensively. “The one who thinks civilization is about to crumble so she built Crazy Town here. You’re not crazy, though, right? You’re just here for the money? Bad economy and all, a former serviceman has bills to pay like anyone else.”
“If the boss says it’s all coming down, it’s all coming down. I mean, she’s probably the smartest person in the world, smarter than Dr. Stephen Hawking.”
Dr. Stephen Hawking? Suarez rolled that around in her head. A strange way for a guy who looked like this to put it. Doctor?
“Okay, well, what do you do for fun around here while you’re waiting for the apocalypse?”
“It won’t be an apocalypse for the people here; it will be a rebirth.”