Dead Mann Running (9781101596494)

by Petrucha, Stefan

  Booth looked like he was thinking about letting her go.

  “Tom,” I said. “You can’t. She’s not magic. Get the stuff to the CDC.”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  Maruta shook her head. “Bad boys. Bad, bad boys. This isn’t a dirty needle. If so much as a few drops get loose there’ll be contagion.”

  Booth’s eyes grew darker, but I was the one who growled, “You’re not getting near those vials.”

  Confident she could ignore me, Maruta took a smooth step closer to Booth. “Are you actually willing to take…?”

  I leveled the .38 at her forehead, not caring if it took my hand off. She looked around, if not for sympathy than for some semblance of shock at what I, a chak, was doing. Finding none, the Queen of Hell blinked, then deigned to look at me.

  “Detective, you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Travis Maruta and myself.”

  “That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?” I said. I cocked the hammer.

  Finally, she looked down. “Very well, I’ll allow the cuffs to stay. But let my people destroy it.”

  Tom crunched his molars, then said, “Fine. I’ll have the CDC and the army meet us at the site. Charlotte Manson here can alert her staff. It’ll make it easier to arrest them all. Now give me the gun, Mann, and tell me where we’re all going.”

  “Sure. It’s…”

  A keening, low, but strong as a mournful gale, erupted from the bowling alley. The chakz had reappeared. Only now there weren’t thirty, there were more like a hundred. Every liveblood, police, dog, and little man, reached for their weapons.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Jonesey said, stumbling over one of the empty window frames, “but as representative for a certain group of aggrieved citizens, I should be there, too.”

  I tried to cut him off. “Right. You heard Booth. The guard will be here in under a minute and turn your constituency to cinders.”

  Jonesey nodded and held his cell phone up. “Probably, once they get through our roadblocks. But even when the fifty show up, I already outnumber them two to one. Then there’s the few thousand waiting to hear back from me.” He walked past me and headed for Booth. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the wretched living, I shall fear no evil. Kyua is why I’m here. Let me bear witness and they’ll stand down, provided the guard does the same.”

  Booth’s face trembled. He rubbed his chest and leaned back against a squad car. “Christ, either your head or my chest is going to explode any second. You want me to believe you control all the chakz?”

  To his credit, Jonesey softened. “It’s not about control, it’s about empowerment. I tell them to trust each other, they trust me. I guarantee you on my word, at least seventy percent of the rebels will pull back. If they don’t hear from me, well…things get worse before they get better. What do you say? Cuff me if you’re afraid I’ll eat someone. All I’m asking is that you let me see this through to the end.”

  He held out his arms. I nodded at his stub. “Not much point to the cuffs, Jonesey.”

  He looked at it. “Well, whatever.”

  Booth kept rubbing his chest. “Somebody call Kagan or the governor. This one’s their call. They were quick to get me out of holding after that broadcast, so I can guess what those cowards will say. Shit. I should have hired a fucking school bus. Can we please try to get out of here before the vampire union or someone else shows up?”

  Someone else. Damn. Maruta, Green, the chakz, the cops, it was like the end of a stage play, everyone here except…

  “Tom, put us in a car. Everybody if you have to, just make it fast. I’ll drive.”

  Booth’s eyes flared. “You making demands now, too?”

  “No. But someone’s missing from this picture, don’t you think?”

  He thought about it, rubbed his chest some more, and nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. Let’s move. Crap.”

  Disarmed, the hired goons were cuffed. With the police van destroyed, they sat in a line on the curb. State witness Colby Green, in protective custody, and Maruta were unceremoniously shoved in the back of a squad car. With an okay from our corrupt governor, Jonesey was put in a second car with two cops.

  I’d hoped Nell would slip in with the dead and wander off, but, acting like she had some backstage pass, she got in the car with Jonesey. Her expression dared me to try to stop her. No one else said anything about it, so I didn’t mention it. Like a lot of situations, if I’d thought it through, I might have done different, but at the time I was thinking it wasn’t like the mycoplasma could hurt a chak.

  By the time we were ready to roll, the guardsmen arrived, reporting that aside from some liveblood looters, things had suddenly quieted down. Booby’s Bowl looked empty, but I knew the dead were all around, waiting in the shadows for their phones to ring.

  I got behind the wheel of the first car. Booth, swilling some Mylanta supplied by one of the guardsmen, took shotgun. Once he confirmed we had the CDC tracking us and an entire army regiment being deployed, we were on our way. I headed down the main drag, followed by a car with Jonesey and Nell. Within a few blocks, two more squad cars joined us.

  The broken windows of our bloodied city looked like blackened eyes, the shredded doors like missing teeth. The LBs we passed were more about videotaping for YouTube than vandalism. There were still fires, still ferals, but without a guiding force, they wandered aimlessly. The patches of quiet grew longer until finally that’s all there was.

  The silence made me antsy. Booth was busy talking on the radio and nursing his gut. My head was full of puzzle pieces refusing to make a picture. I didn’t know if that was because I was too crappy at puzzles to make it happen, or the biggest piece, Bad Penny, hadn’t turned up yet. Common sense said if she’d been listening in and heard what the birthday surprise was, she’d tell her bosses the bad news and stay clear. But ever since this began common sense had been an oxymoron.

  I didn’t want to talk to the Hell Queen, but she was the only one who could fill in some blanks. If she wanted to. I looked at her in the rearview.

  “Colby already told me he has no idea who the ninja is. How about you?”

  If she was surprised Green didn’t know Penny, she didn’t show it. She didn’t show anything. Serves me right for trying a direct question.

  “How will you destroy it?”

  Without a gun to her head, she might even have ignored that question, but there was nothing else going on. “Acid or superheating usually works. We just have to be sure we get it all.”

  “And if it gets out, no cure?”

  She looked idly out the window. “It takes up to two years of antibiotic treatment to eradicate the known mycoplasmas, and this is something new.”

  “Why would your husband even make something like this?”

  She met my eyes in the mirror. I knew she thought of chakz as less than dirt but something about my question amused her. “You’d be better off asking why he’d make something like you.”

  That rattled me a bit. I wasn’t sure why. “So the stuff in the vials was another mistake. Good thing we caught it before you started marketing. But why was it in that briefcase?”

  “He was being a very bad boy,” she said. Her smile faded slowly, giving me the weird impression she missed her partner in crime.

  “In what way? Was he trying to sneak it out of the lab himself? Working with someone like the ninja?”

  She made a vague effort to keep from laughing too loudly at me. “No. He’d never do anything like that without permission. That wasn’t the way he liked to surprise me.”

  Good lord, if this was his better half, what was Travis like? The rumor mill pegged him as the submissive partner in their little S and M game, a workaholic who reveled in being out of control. But this went far beyond bedroom fun and games. Their work put the species at stake and they knew it. Did they already see themselves as the sort of god Colby Green imagined he might become?

  When we reached the warehouse district, I made a left and saw
the gargantuan tin box I’d called home. Before I slowed, I scanned the alleys and roofs for our missing player. Nothing. The brakes gave off a final mouse squeak. I took a long last look before stepping out.

  “End of the line, end of the world,” I said. “Everybody out.”

  Booth exited, but not wanting to touch them, waited for his men to yank Green and Maruta from their seats. Trucks and a few cars appeared down the road. A helicopter swooped over the warehouse, its light shining down on us.

  Booth answered the question before I could ask. “They’re ours. All of them.”

  “Can I call my people now?” Maruta asked. “This is not the sort of operation you want to delay any more than absolutely necessary.”

  Booth shook his head. “We’ll wait for the CDC to unpack. A Dr. Alice Dixon will be coordinating.”

  “Dixon’s second rate!” Maruta said, her voice like the bark of an annoyed lapdog. “Tell them, Colby, tell them she’s no good.”

  But Green was sniffling and peering guiltily at Nell. He looked…hollow.

  As the rest of the good guys pulled up and Maruta’s protests fell on deaf ears, I walked over to Nell. “You want to tell me exactly what happened with you and Colby? Some new perversion didn’t sit right?”

  “Just leave it,” she said.

  Nell wasn’t talking to me, so I went up to the leader of the chakz. Jonesey had taken to watching and chuckling. Between that and Green’s quiet sobs, we were running the gamut of human emotion. There’d been something bugging me about him, anyway.

  “Hey, I’ve got a sense of justice, or at least revenge, that keeps me going. You already know there’s no cure in those vials. What’s keeping you from going feral?”

  He raised his eyebrows, a fleck of something fell off, hair or skin. “You already know the answer to that one, Hess.”

  I gave up. “Right. Kyua. Look, Nell says they’ve got like chak refuges north of the border. Doesn’t sound like a bad deal. Maybe when this is done you can herd your merry rebel band up that way.”

  He shook his head. “Thanks, Hess. But Kyua will not disappoint.”

  He reminded me of the guy stuck on his roof during a flood. A raft, a boat and a helicopter came, but he refused their help, saying God will provide. After he drowned, he went to heaven and asked God why He didn’t provide, and God said, “What are you talking about? I sent you a raft, a boat and a helicopter.”

  By then the CDC trailer and mobile lab had arrived. They put plastic sheets, inflatable tunnels and filters over the outside of the building. It was hard to tell who Dr. Dixon was, since they were all wearing the same heavy bio-safety suit with hood and gas mask. They even forced the rest of us into those suits—chakz, too, for fear we might be carriers. Every time someone pointed Dixon out I lost her in the crowd until I realized she was the one with the big red X on her back.

  ChemBet’s boffins were on their way, but Dixon didn’t think it was a good idea to wait for them. Once Maruta and Booth were suited up, I was given the nod.

  I entered the puffy plastic bubble covering the entrance, then pulled the door open along the wheels. The metal squealed long and loud. All sorts of lights pierced the interior.

  “Welcome to Shangri-la,” I said.

  Inside, the only guardians of humanity’s destruction were some water rats. They scampered into the remaining shadows, their fat bodies followed by flashlight beams.

  “We’ll have to exterminate once we’re finished,” one of the suits said. “The whole block at least.”

  Looking like the Pillsbury Doughgirl in her suit, Maruta shoved her way next to me. “I hope you didn’t just leave them lying around, Detective. You did use some sort of cushioning?”

  Rather than answer, I made my way to the cinder block where I’d left the vials. I tried to stick my hand in, but the gloves made it impossible. Dixon handed me a set of tongs and cautioned me to go slowly. I poked it in, felt around…

  And found nothing. My eyes popped wider than they’d been since I’d died.

  “Gone?” Maruta said, sounding genuinely flummoxed.

  Booth stared at me. “You sure this is the right place?”

  “Yes!” I said.

  Booth grabbed Maruta, loosening the seals on both his suit and hers.

  “Did you take it?” he said. “You bring us here to ambush us?”

  “Excellent idea,” she said with a girlish giggle. “If I’d known the vials were here, I might have thought of it.”

  He spun back my way. “Who else knew about this place?”

  “You, me, Penny, and Green, but I doubt he’d have shown up personally to kill me if he had the vials to play with. Bad Penny followed me to Green’s thinking I still had them.”

  “Anyone else? Anyone who knew you well enough to guess how you’d play it?”

  I thought about it. Flashes of my long-lost assistant stepping from a taxi outside this very warehouse appeared in my head.

  “Just…Misty. She could second-guess me easy. But why would she…?” She wouldn’t, unless someone lied to her. And then I realized…“Penny was hiding with me when she called. We struggled over the phone. She could have seen Misty’s number, called her to try to get to me.”

  I felt for my cell phone, but didn’t have it anymore.

  Booth pulled out his. “What’s her number?”

  “I don’t know…I can’t remember,” I said.

  “You have to remember!”

  “I can’t.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jonesey said. “I’ve got it.”

  The bio-safety suit pointless now, he pulled it half off and fished out his phone. His face was lit an eerie blue by the screen as he checked his contacts. “Whoa, haven’t used that one in a while. But it’s still three on the speed dial.”

  He pressed the number, then tossed me the phone.

  Two rings later, a shaky voice answered. “Jonesey? I heard what you’ve been doing. I want you to know you’re right. It’s all going to be okay. I’ve got it. I’ve got the cure. I’m going to see Chester again.”

  “Misty…”

  “Hess?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Where am I? Where have you been? You abandoned me!”

  “Long, long story. Listen carefully. That blue stuff is not a cure for anything. It’s extremely dangerous. Put it down and get away from it.”

  She gave off a tired laugh. “Too late for your fairy tales, dead Mann. Kyua already warned me you’d say something like that.”

  The line didn’t go dead, but a thud told me Misty dropped the phone. That tired laugh came again, then grew fainter. I screamed her name until the sound of her laughter faded completely.

  30

  You’ve got to love resources when people know how to use them. The CDC had been tracking the call since Jonesey dialed. Misty’s cell was located before Booth ripped the phone out of my cold dead hand. Dixon handed Booth a touchpad with a map grid. Misty was a blinking red light in the middle.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “Looks like the woods,” Dixon said. “The closest building is labeled Tuke’s. I’m not from around here. Does that mean anything to you?”

  I knew the name, but before I could answer, Rebecca Maruta gasped. She slapped a smile on her face and tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, but her lips twitched as if she were working hard to keep the grin in place.

  We all stared at her, but I asked the question. “Something you want to tell us?”

  She gave a single quick shake of her head, no.

  “You really think this is a good time for keeping secrets?”

  No reaction. I doubted torture would work. She might enjoy it. Regardless, there wasn’t time to get it out of her. The longer we waited, the farther Misty would get from her phone.

  We ran back to the cars, Booth driving this time, speeding actually. Green hadn’t moved fast enough, so Jonesey wound up stuck next to Maruta in the back, making for an even more awkward couple. Booth had one hand
on the wheel, using the other to radio commands to whoever would listen.

  I wasn’t going to stop him, except to say, “Make sure they understand she doesn’t know what she’s doing, Tom. It’s Chester, it’s the drugs. Go easy on her. We both know who Kyua is.”

  “Fucking ninja midget. You were with her how long before you finally figured out she was a liveblood?”

  Maruta shivered again and this time spoke up. “The raggedy you brought from the overflow camp? She was with you in the lab?”

  I wheeled back. “What do you know? You really want a world full of chakz? Help us!”

  Her face went blank, her eyes defiant. I started fishing, hoping to hit a nerve. “You didn’t even know she was a liveblood. Too many subjects to look each one over? She knew the lab well enough to think she’d get in and out. Disgruntled employee? Do you have any gruntled employees? She military? A lover? Part of your bedroom antics with Travis? One of your experiments?”

  Nada. I listed back into the passenger seat, my gut vibrating like it was filling with boiling oil. I looked longingly at Booth’s half-full bottle of Mylanta, wishing antacid could work on the dead.

  Once we left Fort Hammer, the road was lightless. Everything else, like my body, was a shade of gray. Maruta had closed her eyes, pretending to sleep, but not doing a good job of it.

  There were two possibilities, one bad, the other worse. Either Penny didn’t know what the vials were, or she did. What was her angle in this? What was she?

  An experiment. I’d said it by accident, but it made sense. Penny was sure as hell unusual. Was she one of those liveblood volunteers Maruta said was so hard to come by? Had they turned her into something in between dead and alive?

  Jonesey’d been remarkably quiet, probably focused on bearing witness. He was looking curiously at the end of his arm where his hand used to be, his eyes filled with the opposite of my father’s shame.

  Please don’t look at it.

  “Tuke’s mean anything to you, J? Some kind of Kyua holy spot like Stonehenge?”