by Jamie Quaid
24
As the rumbling motion of the ground continued, Leo shouted into his phone, and below the hill, people fled into Edgewater Street, screaming in alarm and expecting an explosion. The gargoyles growled uncertainly. I checked the chemical plant to the north. It wasn’t completely dark. I could see flickering lights but no signs of fire. I didn’t have time to study the situation. If the street was about to cave, we had to get our people out of the shelter. Rippling pavement couldn’t be safe.
I could have sworn bats were swirling out from cracks forming in the streets, but by this time, I was bat-obsessed and prepared to believe anything.
Andre, Cora, and I ran toward the apartments. I stumbled when blacktop cracked beneath my shoes, but Andre caught me just in time. Flames shot up before our noses. A gas line must have cracked.
I froze in horror. Gloria writhed and raged in the flames.
Apparently not noticing apparitions, Andre jerked my arm and navigated me around the pillar of fire. I was more than ready to follow. I did not see that, I chanted to myself.
Pearl and Tim appeared on their respective porches, eyes wide in terror. I shouted at them to take Milo and my car and drive south, away from the plant. I didn’t know if they listened, but as we hit the porch, I tossed my keys and Milo’s bag to Tim before he flickered out.
“Pearl can’t drive,” Andre informed me as we hit the basement stairs.
“Neither can Tim. They’ll figure it out.” I was hoping Milo would have the sense to go with them. Cats can’t fight fire.
We saved our breath after that. In the bomb shelter, the med students were dithering, uncertain whether they were safer under the street or above. Seeing no evidence of unwanted intruders, we directed the docs to start hauling the patients up the basement stairs. Once there, we’d have to decide how to deal with them.
The rocking, swaying motion seemed to be lessening, but we couldn’t take chances that 150-year-old tunnels would remain intact. Or that more gas lines wouldn’t burst. I pushed Nancy Rose’s gurney down the hall and helped carry her in a stretcher up to Andre’s front hall, then left Cora in charge of directing the med students outside to the porch while I ran upstairs to Julius. As expected, he was in the attic with Katerina.
“We’re staying here,” Julius announced.
In an earthquake, general wisdom says to leave the building, but if anyone was my boss, Julius was. I’d have to respect his choice.
“Look after Andre,” he ordered.
Well, maybe not entirely my boss, but also my friend and Andre’s father. Complicated. “What, you want me to smack him upside the head if he starts shooting?” I asked in exasperation. “You know we have to go to the plant, don’t you?”
I had avoided putting those words into the Universe for fear they’d come true, but it was obvious this was no normal earthquake. We only had one cause for our regular catastrophes, and we knew the source. And my greatest fear was that the origin wasn’t in Acme’s offices, but in the dragon-infested dungeon.
“Every time Andre uses violence, he loses a piece of himself,” Julius warned. “I don’t understand how it happens, so you’ll have to take my word for it. The only way I can explain is to say he’s operating on low battery power right now.”
“He’s operating on a murder charge!” I shouted in frustration. “Why don’t I just tie him up and toss him to the alligators? It would be just about as easy.”
I didn’t linger to argue. I dashed back down to the bomb shelter, grabbed the end of a stretcher from a med student so he could prepare another patient, and helped carry another zombie upstairs.
I was operating on pure adrenaline. I really didn’t have the strength to carry two-hundred-pound bums. I was useless here. I needed to be at the plant, hunting villains.
Someone must have turned off the gas line. The pillar of fire had vanished. I was terrified it would sprout anywhere I walked.
Leo had apparently called ambulances. Official medical vehicles screeched to a halt in front of the town houses. I gave up trying to help patients. Medics rushed past me, probably thinking they were dealing with earthquake victims. I hoped Acme wouldn’t realize the casualties being hauled off now were their zombies from earlier.
With Gloria gone, I no longer knew the enemy. Ferguson, the pervert? Bergdorff, the guy Paddy called a mad scientist? MacNeill, the greedy shyster? I couldn’t damn an entire building to hell in hopes of catching a villain.
I didn’t see Andre or Cora anywhere. That was probably for the best. They’d only disagree with me anyway. Since I had no clear idea of what I was about to do, I wasn’t in a position to argue. That’s a tough spot to be in for a lawyer.
I jogged back to my Harley while studying the situation down by the waterfront.
Now that they realized the town wasn’t being bombed, people were wandering back to the club or climbing into their cars and leaving. I saw nothing immediately hazardous, like green clouds or black floods of pitch. No more fires. The jagged cracks forming down the middle of the street didn’t pour brimstone, but I still saw bats.
I could have sworn I saw Sarah in chimp form gazing into one of the cracks, swiping at bats. Maybe she’d crush any demons who tried to escape. If hell wasn’t scorching her, it must only be me Gloria was after.
Given my experiences lately, I was imagining Gloria and Dane setting off fireworks in hell, but without Max as my mirror to the underworld, I couldn’t verify fantasies.
Still, the flickering lights at the chemical plant were suspicious. Technically, Acme didn’t have a night shift. Employees streamed out of the plant daily at five o’clock on the dot. There were guards and maybe some management or researchers who might have reason to work overtime. But it was almost midnight. This wasn’t overtime.
Bill and the other patients were still inside the plant, being subjected to whatever atrocities Acme had planned for them. My DNA for justice burned through my veins like a shot of heroin, turning my normal caution to ashes.
I dug my jacket out of my saddlebag and dragged it on. The night air was cooling rapidly, and my silk shirt didn’t lend itself to warmth. Besides, the leathers were from Max and made me feel safe. Stupid, I realized. But I was warm as I rode my bike down garbage-strewn alleys, avoiding anyone who might guess my direction. I zipped past the cordoned-off dead zone and up the north side to Acme. The earlier swaying had diminished to an occasional burping rumble, and the bike handled just fine.
Even a Harley can’t handle a chain-link gate rolled across a drive, though. Given the bike’s roar, I wasn’t exactly hiding my presence, but no one appeared at the guardhouse. I wheeled into the shadows of a transformer station, took off my helmet, shook out my hair, and studied the situation.
I saw no evidence that the chain link was electrified, but I ambled around the side until I found a long weed. My rural education had its uses. I held the grass against the fence, and it didn’t jump. Just to be safe, I tested the links with the back of my hand in case it pulsed slowly. I didn’t want my fingers to instinctively wrap around the wire.
No juice. I could go home and mind my own business, or climb the damned fence and snoop.
Lawyers didn’t break and enter. Apparently daughters of Saturn did. I really needed to work on that superhero costume, though. My gloves held up but I ripped a hole in my leather jeans going over the barbed wire on top.
Given what I knew already, I didn’t need too much more evidence to convict Acme of jeopardizing lives and possibly manslaughter if any of our patients died. But for real justice, I needed the human culprit behind the gas attack and earthquakes. Gloria Vanderventer had already gone to her just reward.
I assumed the villain I needed was the one who’d sent the gray suits in the white sedans to evacuate us this morning. Was he busily covering up his dirty deeds tonight, and that’s what the rumbling was about?
As I worked my way around the perimeter of the sprawling plant, searching for an opening, I reminded myself that I couldn�
�t get mad and close the plant, legally or otherwise. Presumably, Acme made perfectly legitimate products while employing hundreds of hardworking people. I didn’t know what the experimental element they were working on was—except dangerous—but for all I knew, it could be a cure for cancer.
So blowing up the plant wasn’t an option, even if I knew how. Nice that I was finally learning to plan ahead. Sort of. Maybe I should do that more often—anticipate what could go wrong and plan for emergencies. I’d try that just as soon as life quit knocking me down.
One thing I could anticipate was that Andre would be aiming this way as well, but I hoped he’d have Paddy with him. Andre was sneaky and devious but he liked to appear legal—when he wasn’t flying off the handle. Julius meant well, but I really didn’t think Andre needed a babysitter. He was probably far better off without a loose cannon like me around, truth be told. I didn’t want anyone else involved if I decided to take someone out.
Had it only been a few months ago that I’d been horrified at killing a rapist? And now my adrenaline was pumping in expectation of executing someone. At this rate, I’d be a merciless killer. I would become Sarah. That possibility gnawed one giant hole in my gut, but it didn’t slow me down. Someone at Acme had crossed a line when they’d endangered the helpless—and continued to do so.
Vigilante justice rides again. Not liking it. Happening anyway. Maybe I should have brought Sarah and used her as my weapon—a different moral quagmire.
The plant had been renovated and added on to since Acme acquired it ten years ago. No coal cellars with handy chutes to slide down in this place. But I figured underground labs required air vents.
I hunted until I located the electrical control building. The door was locked, but I pried the aluminum siding open easily. As I’ve said, I’ve lived in some pretty crappy dives. Aluminum is bad for security.
I had no way of knowing if the control room actually contained ducts into the main plant, but I hadn’t seen a more likely entrance.
I still had a flashlight in my bag. Given my propensity for exploring hellish places, I’d have to transfer it to my pretty briefcase should I survive the night.
Luckily, the flashlight beam revealed that this was more shed than bona fide building. No insulation or drywall hampered my access. I ripped the aluminum back to a point where I could see the machinery and wiggled through the studs and inside.
The grate for the air vent was on the wall facing the plant where it should be. I pried it off with a screwdriver I’d filched from a toolbox that really shouldn’t have been stored there. I’d have a word with Paddy about security later, should I survive this.
Being small had some advantages. I tucked my jacket into my bag and crawled down the duct without a bit of problem. I was probably picking up pink particles and breathing green gas, but I was feeling pretty confident that I was closing in on the bad guys and had Saturn on my side. Right now, I was thinking anyone causing bat-spewing earthquakes qualified as bad, if not outright evil. I could make a case for attempted murder and self-defense.
Pondering the differences between bad and evil and deciding there might be an element of redeemability in the former, I levered open another grate and dropped to the floor in the secret underground dungeon. Bingo.
I heard voices in the lab where I’d seen them keeping Bill and the others. So, were these syringe-wielding scientists bad or evil? Evil was so much easier. I could just damn them and watch them find their own way to hell. And maybe Satan or Saturn would grant my wish that my friends would regain consciousness. That notion had temptation written all over it.
Bad meant . . . they were merely guilty of a crime, right? If there had been a crime, I could conceivably call in authorities, but so far, the authorities had been turning their backs on the Zone and protecting Acme. Not the most appealing of alternatives, but I had to consider it.
I hated being judge and jury. If the scientists were just guilty, I should figure out how to teach them a lesson about experimenting on people without their subjects’ permission.
I needed a repertoire of punishment to draw on. I needed to get back to Fat Chick and check out the others to see if they had any good ideas.
Too late to think of that now. Besides, I could spend a lifetime studying and never get anything done. If Gloria kept pet demons in here, I was betting no other Saturn’s daughter had encountered them or developed a better remedy.
I was right next to the head honcho’s office. I tested the knob, but he’d locked his door. I guessed he was worried about that missing tablet with his pornography on it. Stupid, but worried.
Ye Olde Credit Card Trick doesn’t work if you don’t have any credit, but the nail file on my pocketknife worked to open the feeble lock they’d installed on the cheap interior door.
Once inside the office, I studied the lab through the two-way glass. I didn’t think a bunch of research scientists could cause the earth to tremble, but it wasn’t as if I was any expert. My powers of observation were all I possessed, not magical knowledge.
I didn’t see any demons in the lab—nothing with horns and a tail, anyway. No pillars of flame. Nothing obviously evil. As far as I could tell, these were simply employees following orders. I watched them for clues.
The researchers were huddled between the rows of cots, gesticulating angrily and yakking and not in the least happy. Huh, maybe they didn’t like earthquakes, either. Maybe they actually thought they were helping their victims. People are arrogant like that.
I picked out Bill and Leibowitz on their cots, sleeping soundly but otherwise looking good. They were big men. I had no way of getting them out even if I knocked the scientists cold.
But despite my caution, my rage was still simmering. It needed an outlet. I wasn’t finding one here. Not exactly. That Bill’s jailers seemed as worried as I was prevented me from judging them and finding them guilty.
I donned a lab coat hanging on a hook. It was twenty sizes too big, but it hid my clothing and my bag, thus making me harder to identify when they checked their security cameras. I wasn’t planning on confronting the scientists. Yet. I needed to explore and find out who was in charge of earthquakes and zombie thieves.
I yanked out the scarf I usually wore under my helmet and tied it around my distinctive hair. Black scarves aren’t easily identifiable. I’d dispose of the evidence later and get a red one if I had to.
No one patrolled the dimly lit corridor. I kept my head down so cameras couldn’t catch my face and stopped at the supply closet to add a surgical mask to my dashing white coat. I didn’t normally carry weapons, but a case of surgical instruments could be useful. What the devil did any of the surgical supplies on these shelves have to do with better living through chemistry? It chilled me to consider it.
Now it was time to determine who the street wrecker was.
Sticking to the shadows along the walls, I slipped down the corridor, keeping my eyes and ears open. I knew I was underground, on the secret dungeon level beneath the public corridors. The lights I’d seen had been aboveground. I couldn’t remember if there had been windows in the normal labs the next level up. Since there was no evidence of earthquake machines down here, I had to leave Bill and Leibowitz and investigate elsewhere.
I located the secret stairs and stole quietly upward in darkness. I was wearing biker boots, so I had to tread carefully. I listened at the hidden door into the main lab, but there was no way of discreetly opening a wall to hear better. I’d have to either slide the door open and confront anyone on the other side or admit defeat. We all know how that worked out, right?
As soon as the wall opened, I heard a furious voice and froze.
“Dammit, Padraig, what in hell are you doing in here? You nearly scared the shit out of me.”
I didn’t recognize the loud voice, but I knew the owner of the mumbled reply. Paddy hadn’t been able to wait for justice, either. Or to find his mother’s will.
I wished he would speak up. I couldn’t tell if he was
playing crazy or exercising authority. Unable to see either man, I hesitated, hoping they’d move on.
“Don’t question me, you old coot!” the first speaker shouted. “You abdicated your responsibility. I’ve been the one managing the lab all these years in your absence, standing up to your damned mother. You can’t just come in here and throw out years of work. MacNeill supports our research.”
I was betting Max wouldn’t like hearing that his former father thought it was fun to play with magic elements. But he probably suspected it, and that was the reason Max had been investigating Acme before his Granny Gloria had him killed. And here I was, following in his footsteps, courting hell.
Damn Paddy and his muttering. I put an eyeball to the crack, but this lab was nearly dark. A pity they didn’t make black lab coats so I could blend in better. I couldn’t see either of the players, but their voices carried just fine. I shimmied out of the lab coat and stuck it in my bag. Now I was in black.
“Padraig, you have gone too far!” the furious voice thundered.
Hooeee, that was one scary shout. Normal voices don’t thunder, no matter what it says in novels. This voice was deep and resonant enough to rattle glassware and jangle my Saturn’s daughter antennae.
Paddy the scientist didn’t know what not normal meant.
I did. I’d seen through mirrors into hell and killed demonic bats by damning them to perdition. I seriously believed in demons these days, even if they came disguised as normal people. Or bats.
To hell with secrecy. Paddy could be in some serious shit. I slid through the crack and into the darkened lab, searching for Paddy, praying his antagonist hadn’t already flung him against a wall with the strength of a thousand devils.
I wrapped a fist around the handle of one of the surgical knives I’d lifted, but I didn’t think I could get close enough to use it. My martial-arts training did not lean toward knives. Throwing stars, yes, but knives were too up close and personal for someone my size.
Too late. Glassware crashed. With a thud, a lab table rattled and hit the wall to my left. A curse and a groan followed as I eased in that direction.
