It’s getting on my nerves, being led around by a talking slot machine. I wonder if Kasabian’s head would work on one of these mechanical bodies? Maybe I’ll have to gently remove Paul’s head when this is over and see.
Every few yards there’s more graffiti. Each collection gets less and less coherent. No more HELP US. It’s all FUCK YOUs and HOME HOME HOME. Then the words are gone and the graffiti gets completely Neanderthal. All skulls, Devil heads, and tumbling dice coming up snake eyes. Like scribblings of someone on a very bad acid trip. A few yards beyond that, the graffiti is just random streaks of color and smeared handprints. Either they had a lot of paint when they got trapped or by the end they were using other stuff on the walls. I’m going with the paint theory and ignoring the stuff that looks like teeth and skull fragments scattered in the rubble. Even that feeble lie goes south when we find the hanged men.
They’re suspended by ropes and electrical wires from an overhead beam. They’ve been dead a long time. Long enough that they’re dried out and unreal-looking, like scarecrows meant to keep anyone from getting too close. But who else is going to come down this far but rescuers and why would they want to scare them off?
“Any idea when we get out of this fucking place?”
“I’m just feeling my way along,” says Delon. “If there are location markers down here, they’re covered up by junk. We have to get keep going until we find another way down. A staircase or even an elevator shaft.”
Our shadows flash across the far wall as lights come on behind us. For a second I think I can smell the Shoggots. I reach for the Colt in my waistband when a voice echoes off the walls.
“Don’t go for your gun, Stark. We have more of them than you do.”
I know that voice. It’s Norris Quay. I think I would have preferred the Shoggots.
“Stay there. I’m coming to you.”
Candy grabs my arm and Vidocq circles in front of me.
“What are you doing?” he says.
“Listen. I’m the only one who knows this guy. I can talk to him. The most important thing is to keep an eye on Delon. Make sure he doesn’t come over.”
“Why?”
“That’s Victor Frankenstein out there.”
Candy says, “I’m coming with you.”
“Fine. Don’t go for your gun unless I do.”
“Okay.”
I hold my hands out by my sides so they can see I’m not armed.
“Get those fucking lights out of my eyes so I can see you.”
“Do it,” says Norris, and the lights swing away, lighting the cavern and not burning holes in my retinas.
Quay is in the middle of a group of twelve men. He’s dressed in padded overalls and wearing lightweight leg braces. An attendant on either side of him keeps hold of his elbows in case the braces aren’t enough to keep him upright. Down here Quay looks so frail it’s like his attendants are perp-walking a mummy. Quay’s two Titans are there, each armed with HK417s, rifles you don’t walk toward but flee from as fast as you can. If you have a choice about which way to go. Quay’s other goons are just as heavily armed. Probably a collection of ex-military and cops. They look at Candy and me like we’re a couple of baked hams with biscuits and beans. There’s someone behind Quay but I can’t quite make out who.
“Does the old folks’ home know you’re missing bingo night, Norris?”
He smiles.
“I couldn’t let you and Paul have all the fun, could I? Who’s the young lady? You two have seemed awfully close on the journey.”
“Candy, meet Norris Quay, the richest asshole in this time zone.”
Candy puts her hand up to shield her eyes from the glare of lights.
“Wow. He does look like Paul.”
“Paul looks like me, dear,” says Quay. “Get the lineage right.”
The man behind him pushes past the attendants and points at us.
“They’re the ones who destroyed my workshop. Them and some Mata Hari. Now I can’t make any more familiars.”
Candy waves to him.
“Hi, Mr. Rose. How are you?”
Quay holds up a hand.
“Calm down, Atticus. We’ll have you set up in a new space as soon as we get what we came for.”
“Which brings me to the sixty-four-dollar question. What the hell are you doing here, Norris? You already have Paul planted with us. Does he even know about you? What’s going to happen if he sees you?”
“I don’t give a tinker’s balls what happens to him. He’s an instrument. A pocket watch bought and paid for. As to why I’m here, I thought that would be obvious. Redundancy.”
“There’s plenty of assholes in Kill City already. We don’t need duplicates.”
“Did you know that when NASA sent the Apollo rockets into space, they each had three computers on board? Three, on the assumption that two would fail.”
“So Paul is the first two and you’re lucky number three?”
“No. Paul is one. You’re two. I know you’d move Heaven and earth to get what you set out for. But what if you both failed?”
“What if I succeeded and didn’t want to give the 8 Ball up?”
“That too. And now that we’re this close, I don’t know that a redundant system is all that necessary.”
“We’re not there yet.”
“When the Apollo Eleven lunar module, the one that first put men on the moon, was landing, all three computers failed. Neil Armstrong had to land on the moon manually. But he was an experienced pilot and they were so close that it was not only feasible but doable. And so man landed on the moon and returned safely. I believe that from here my little team can pilot ourselves down to Mare Tranquillitatis all on our own.”
Shadows move in the cavern behind Quay and his people. They’re so focused on Candy and me that they don’t notice.
“Do you really want the thing so bad that you’re prepared to fuck up the plan this close to the end?”
“Yes. And we won’t fuck it up.”
“And this is all because you’re an art lover and not some crazy old man who thinks the Qomrama can somehow make him live forever.”
“My reasons are no concern of yours.”
Whatever is moving in the dark is getting closer. I take a step toward Quay. His goons level their guns at me. I’m fast but there’s no way I can get to Quay without acquiring many, many new holes in my body. Am I strong enough to throw any hoodoo? Maybe. But if the door to the spiral staircase was any indication, nothing fancy. On the other hand, maybe I won’t have to do a thing.
“What if you’re wrong, Norris? Did you find the bridge? Did you see the spiral stairs back there? Did your master plan include any of those? What if there’s more of that ahead?”
“Of course we didn’t cross the bridge. Some idiot destroyed it. But another family showed us a safe way around. You’re not the only one who thought to bring trinkets to trade with the natives. As for the stairs, slippery as they were, we navigated them just fine.”
“You walked straight down the stairs?”
The shadows behind Quay’s men have spread out across the whole cavern. There are so many I can’t count them.
“Of course. Did you expect us to fly?”
From the dark comes a grunt.
“You’re not a stupid guy, Norris, but you’re one dumb son of a bitch.”
With another grunt the shadows behind Quay swarm over him and his men. I don’t wait to see who or what they are. I bark some Hellion and practically fall over. Candy grabs me as a smoke screen fills the cavern between Quay’s people and us. We head back to our group, Candy pulling me the whole way. By the time we get back I can breathe again.
Behind us it sounds like a bad night in the arena. Shrieks and curses. The crunch of bones cracked by kicks and rocks. Then gunfire. Rifle flashes explode through the smoke like stars going nova. More screams. Some human and some not. The shooting gets sloppier. More desperate. A few rounds hit the floor near us. Whatever is back there is winning and won’t go home quietly once they’ve finished off Quay’s Boy Scouts.
Candy holds out her hand. It’s covered in blood.
“I think I’m shot.”
Her T-shirt is ripped and there’s fresh blood on the side. I tear it open until I can see the wound. There are a dozen punctures. Ragged lacerations.
“It’s rocks or shrapnel. You’re okay.” To the others I shout, “Go, go, go.”
They take off. Candy still looks a little freaked by the blood. I grab her hand and we follow.
Soon the wide passage is clogged with wreckage on both sides, narrowing the way so only one person at a time can squeeze through. Ahead is a long section of scaffold closed on both sides with lumber. Paul freezes at the entrance looking back toward the noise. Brigitte goes around him, turns on her light, and goes inside to see if the way is clear.
“Shit!” she yells, and backs out into the open. The skin on both of her shoulders is ripped and bleeding. She moves her light around inside the scaffold. The wooden planks are studded with metal. Some are wedged in sideways and sharpened like razors. Others bend back on themselves like fishhooks.
“It’s very narrow inside,” says Vidocq, looking past her. “We’ll have to walk sideways and carefully. It will be slow.”
“Then get going.”
They head straight for us as the smoke screen dissipates. I can’t tell how many of them there are, but it sounds like a small army. As the others file into the scaffold I try one more bit of hoodoo. Something simple, blunt, and not very powerful. I recite some Hellion and try to move just a few small stones on the nearby rubble just a little shove. Every breath I take hurts. Pain builds behind my eyes like an ice pick. But it works, in its own lame way. A few keystones shift and jagged slabs of rock and concrete slip away from the wall and crash onto the floor, blocking the narrow passage. It’s not exactly the Great Wall of China, but it will slow the crazies down, and right now I’ll take anything.
Candy is waiting for me at the scaffold entrance.
“Come on,” she shouts.
I push her inside and get out the Colt. She starts down the metal-lined corridor trying to keep her eye on me. But she can’t see what’s coming and keeps cutting herself.
“Turn the hell around. I’m fine back here.”
She turns and starts moving faster. The pace through the scaffold is slow enough that I can actually keep up. Little curses and whispers of pain echo off the walls. Everyone is trying to keep quiet, but the corridor is long and the metal is sharp and every inch of this place fucking hurts. But we’re cooler than Steve McQueen and no one panics or rushes. Even Delon is keeping a steady, reasonable pace.
Concrete crashes to the ground behind us, followed by screams and running feet. The crazies are through and coming at us. Up ahead, Brigitte, Delon, and the others are out from under the scaffold. A second later, so is Candy. As I step out, the scaffold shakes like there’s an earthquake. The crazies pour in behind us and it’s not pretty.
They’re not going sideways and they’re not slowing down. They sprint at us full speed, teeth bared and eyes blank, ripping themselves to pieces on the blades and hooks. I try some arena hoodoo, a killing hex. I shout the words and almost throw up. It’s too little too late, I played myself out collapsing the rubble. I aim the Colt and pull the trigger. It clicks.
Shit.
I fired the last two rounds in the corridor upstairs. Brigitte pushes past me and shoots at the mob.
“Go for the legs,” I say.
The crazies start falling, and the fallen ones at the front are trampled by the ones behind. Each fallen body narrows the way and slows them. I reach into my coat and pull out a SIG .45, and while Brigitte shoots at the crazies’ legs, I shoot at their chests. Between the two of us, we’re piling up bodies fast. It’s harder for each new crazy to climb over the body of its fallen, fruit-bat comrade. Soon there are so many bodies that the passage is blocked all the way to the ceiling. We can still hear screaming from behind the all-beef barricade, but no one is coming through.
I shout at Delon, “Find us a way out of here,” and he sprints into the dark.
On the far side of the dead crazies, the live ones are still trying to get through. They pull bodies from the pile, then pass them back and out of the bloody passage. The whole skeleton of the scaffold shakes with their movements. I have a couple of more guns, but we’re going to run out of bullets soon.
I grab Candy and Brigitte and point to a joint in the scaffold’s ceiling halfway between the crazies and us.
“See that? Shoot there. Everything you have.”
They both open up. I put away the SIG and take out the Desert Eagle .50 the Satanists left for me at the Chateau. Normally, I hate pistols like this because they’re more suited for killing tanks and dinosaurs than shooting people. But I might have finally found a use for it.
I join the women in emptying shot after shot into the scaffold joint. Candy runs out of bullets first. Brigitte has more shots, but her CO2 pistol is designed to punch through flesh not metal. I empty almost the whole clip from the Desert Eagle before I hear the first creak. The crazies have pulled enough bodies out of the way to start down after us again. They’re rocking the scaffold so hard it’s bouncing off the walls of the narrow concrete passage. The damned thing is rocking but it won’t fall.
When the mob hits the area with the weak joint, the whole structure moans and bellows like a gut-shot buffalo. And comes crashing down on top of them. As metal, wood, and concrete cascade down, the crazies claw the air and crawl on crushed arms and legs, still trying to get to us. The roar of the collapse bounces around the stone walls until it feels like my eardrums are about to implode. A blinding storm of concrete dust fills the air. We cough and hack like asthmatics running a marathon in a sandstorm.