Deadlock

by Robert Liparulo

  “A light just came on in one of the eating areas,” Logan whispered from the doorway.

  “I did that,” Hutch said. He toggled the switches, one after the other.

  The monitors showed the restaurant springing to life. Every few seconds the images changed as the monitors cycled through the cameras, showing the lagoon at the restaurant’s epicenter, trees with twinkling lights, whole areas of empty tables, the kitchen . . . where Page was leaning against a stainless-steel countertop, puffing on a cigar. He lifted his gaze to the fluorescents overhead, nodded, and tossed the stogie aside. He raised a helmet off the counter and slipped it over his head.

  “What are you doing?” Logan said. “Aren’t we safer with them off?”

  Hutch pointed at Page on the screen. “Not when our enemy can see in the dark. The lights even things up a bit.” He continued flipping switches. Lights in the ceiling and mounted to the walls came on, marching toward them from deeper within the big space. Overhead lights illuminated the security room and exit area.

  Logan hissed out a scream. His hand covered his mouth.

  Hutch looked past him to a body facedown on the floor. It was an older man, wearing a security guard’s uniform. His hat lay a few feet away. A puddle of blood fanned out behind his head like a halo in a Renaissance painting. The liquid had found the cracks between the floor’s tiles and fingered out from the main pool along them. The man’s holster was unsnapped and empty.

  “Don’t look,” Hutch said. A flash of thought, like a poke on his shoulder, reminded him to be glad the boy’s experience with the corpses in the van hadn’t jaded him to the horror of death.

  He turned back to the controls and flipped a switch labeled WATERFALL. The humming of a pump kicked in somewhere. Next came the sound of splashing water. He said, “I think those helmets enhance sound. The water should mess things up for him.”

  A monitor flipped back to the kitchen. Page, still helmeted, was stretching his back, rotating his arms. He picked up one of the machine pistols Outis favored, slung its strap over his head, and headed for a steel-covered door with a port window. The image changed to the arcade room: flashing pinball machines, stand-up video games, and skeet ball lanes.

  Hutch stepped past Logan, knelt beside the guard, and felt for a pulse. Nothing.

  He moved with Logan to the bottom of the wide ramp that would take them to a viewing area in front of the lagoon and waterfall. The pool’s surface was one level down, but this higher ground offered better views of the diving platform and kept customers from getting wet when the performers plunged into the water. At the viewing area, diners could go left and back into a faux Mexican village, angle slightly left around the lagoon into the arcade and game rooms, or take a sharp right into what resembled a beachside resort. It was in this resort area that Hutch, Laura, and Dillon had eaten lunch.

  Logan tugged at his belt and whispered, “Are you after the soldier guy, or do you want to find Macie and them?”

  Good question, Hutch thought. Take on the threat, or go right for the goal? He said, “Macie, Laura, and Dillon. If we can get out of here without a showdown, all the better.”

  “Did you tell Dillon about the bridge in Black Bart’s Hideaway?”

  Hutch nodded.

  Logan said, “Then that’s where they’ll be.”

  He was right. Out of all the places to hide, the one in which Logan had once eluded his parents and the restaurant staff for three hours was clearly the best. Hutch had told Laura and Dillon about that.

  He tried to remember the layout. The kitchen was behind the food bar, which placed it way off to the left, on the ground floor. That’s where Page would be coming from. He’d have to traverse the Sierra Madre mines and would come out . . . Hutch had no idea where. Why hadn’t he ever written a column about this place? Too bad they weren’t in the Denver Mint. He’d covered it twice.

  Black Bart’s Hideaway was behind the lagoon, between the waterfall and the arcade. They could reach it from the viewing area at the top of the ramp.

  He leaned back. “Ready?”

  Logan gave his belt a quick tug.

  Staying as close to the right-hand wall as the sconces, plants, and mounted artifacts would let them, they started up the ramp. At the top, where the wall curved to the right into the resort area, Hutch stopped. He crouched low, and Logan nestled up beside him. Directly in front of them, the waterfall roared. While the sound should help their movements remain undetected by Page’s electronics, it also prevented Hutch from hearing Page.

  If they veered to the left side of the lagoon opening, they’d wind up right at Black Bart’s Hideaway. But they would be more exposed. If they followed the wall around into the resort area, they could move through a cantina, then behind the waterfall, and reach Black Bart’s that way: a fifteen-second run versus five minutes of wending around walls, tables, and who-knew-what. He signaled to Logan his intention to dash straight across the open area.

  Wide-eyed, Logan nodded.

  Hutch held up three fingers. He lowered one, then another. As he made a fist, he sprang up and ran. Logan was slower and tugged him back. By the third stride, they were in sync. On the fourth, Page appeared.

  On the right, he rose up from a narrow staircase. To Hutch, he appeared to lift out of the floor like a warrior robot in a James Cameron movie. Among the platform for a mariachi band and the complicated arrangement of fake buildings, the staircase was nearly invisible.

  Hutch swerved to cut across the viewing area, which was designed to resemble a bridge. He swung his free arm back to get it around Logan.

  “Let go of my belt, Logan,” he yelled. “Let go!” He propelled Logan forward, putting himself between the gunman and his son.

  Page fired. Apparently not worried about pinpoint targeting, he panned the machine gun across the wide area. Divots tore out of the wall at the far side of the resort.

  Hutch caught up to Logan and ran alongside. As his faster legs moved him ahead of his son, he grabbed Logan’s wrist. Inexplicably, Logan yanked it out of his grasp. Continuing to move forward, Hutch turned.

  Logan tumbled over the bridge’s handrail.

  “No!” Hutch yelled, braking hard, heading back.

  Bullets tore into the handrail. They zinged past Hutch, forcing him back. Over the rattling gunfire and the waterfall’s susurration, he heard a heavy splash.

  “Logan! Logan!” Hutch stepped forward and swung the bow toward Page, who was heading toward the handrail. Seeming to act faster than Hutch thought possible, certainly faster than Page could have registered Hutch’s switch to offensive mode, Page dived away. He rolled into the Mexican village, disappearing behind a family of stuffed burros.

  Hutch took a step toward the handrail.

  Page popped up, shooting wildly. A light shattered above Hutch.

  Glass and bits of ceiling rained down.

  “Dad!” Logan yelled. He coughed. “Dad!”

  “Are you okay?”

  Logan sputtered. “Y-yeah.”

  “Run, Logan,” Hutch yelled, backpedaling out of Page’s line of fire.

  “Hide! Logan, hide!”

  He heard more splashing—either the boy climbing out into the mines beneath him or swimming to the waterfall and the dark cavern behind it. “Hide! Hide!” he yelled again. His mind told him to keep yelling it until his throat gave out.

  Page was out of sight. He had stopped firing. Hutch caught the man’s shadow. It stretched along the floor, nearly to the bridge. It joggled and reached the bridge. His shadow’s head slipped over the edge, where Logan had tumbled away. Hutch darted forward. Catching the merest glimpse of a solid body, he plucked back on the string and let the arrow fly.

  Page hit the ground and rolled. The arrow thunked into the head of the lead burro.

  SEVENTY

  Hutch had stopped yelling for Logan to hide.

  He wanted now to call out to him, make sure he was still okay. But more than needing that reassurance, he needed Logan to be
silent. He turned and ran through the resort, and jogged sharply into the cantina. He dropped to all fours and scrambled to the wall beside the entrance, where he sat and pushed his back against the wall. He leaned his head toward the opening, listening for Page’s approach. The cantina was its own room, boxcar shaped and open at each end. The bar ran the length of the room on Hutch’s right, across an aisle. Booths formed a scalloped pattern along the other wall, which separated the cantina from the resort area. It was this wall that Page had shot up, aiming at Hutch and Logan.

  Hutch stretched his injured leg out in front of him. Blood dyed his jeans from the knee down. His sock was soaked. Other than a dull throb, however, he felt no pain.

  Logan, he thought. What had happened to make him go into the lagoon like that? Could he have been shot? Odd as it seemed, he hoped that if a bullet had struck him, it would have hit his torso, where the ballistic vest would have absorbed most of the impact. He knew that even through vests, bullets stung like getting punched with an iron fist. A SWAT officer had once shown him a nasty yellowish black-and- blue mark where he’d been hit. That would have been enough to drive Logan over the handrail. He thought his son would still be screaming for him if it was any worse than that.

  Hutch hated being separated from him. He could not think of a nightmare more hellish than for Page to get his hands on Logan again.

  Which way would Logan have gone? Behind the waterfall or into the mines? The Sierra Madres—here as well as the real ones, Hutch imagined—offered plenty of hidey-holes and crevices in which to hide. On the other hand, the waterfall side of the lagoon was nearer their destination, Black Bart’s Hideaway. Logan probably would head that direction. If not because he thought Hutch would continue toward it, then to reach his favorite hiding place and possibly his sister and the others.

  Hutch looked along the length of the cantina to the opposite entrance. It was dark through there—a few lights, walls, and ceiling painted black. It was supposed to represent a cavern behind a waterfall. He thought of the movie The Last of the Mohicans. Hiding in a cave just like this one, Daniel Day-Lewis tells Madeleine Stowe, “You stay alive! I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you”—then he jumps through the waterfall.

  Hutch wished he could tell Logan the same thing. Macie, Laura, and Dillon too. Stay alive. I will find you.

  He heaved himself onto his feet and crouched to sit on one heel. He looked at his quiver: four arrows left. He selected one and nocked it.

  Page called out to him. “Hutch! So you thought you killed me, did you?”

  His voice sounded amplified and a little distorted. No doubt coming through a speaker in the helmet.

  “The playback in my monitor was rich: ‘Page, stop!’ Poor Emile. Just doing his job the way I programmed him to do.”

  He slowly turned in a circle, using the helmet’s optics to scan for them, Hutch thought.

  “Bet you’re wondering how I knew to come here,” Page continued. “Rather simple, really. Frankly, I’m shocked you didn’t know better. You gave me the number of the cell phone you used to call your lady friend. The restaurant you ate at the other day? Hutch, you used a credit card. Don’t you think I have access to those databases?”

  Hutch squeezed his eyes closed. There were just too many things to think about—all while running, trying to save lives. Hutch hunted animals and knew how to do it. He knew how to read broken branches, antler marks on trees. One glance at their prints and he knew how many animals, how big they were, and how long ago they had passed through. He knew where they had bedded down and where they were heading by the freshness of their spoor.

  Page hunted humans, and knew this task as well as Hutch knew his. People left electronic clues to their whereabouts and even their destinations. Human trackers needed only to know where to look, how to read the signs.

  “I have to say,” Page went on, “this place is wonderful. Exactly what I would expect from you. I feel like I’m outdoors. There’s even a kind of woodsy feel here, don’t you think? You must feel right at home.”

  Hutch rose and hurried to the far end of the cantina. Stepping out of it into the cave, the rushing water of the falls all but obscured Page’s diatribe.

  “You must know by now that you can’t win,” the man said. “I’ve got the technology, the superior firepower. Best of all, I don’t have people I love to worry about—running all over the place, getting in the line of fire. Like right there!” The machine gun rattled.

  Hutch jumped. His heart wedged itself in his throat.

  Page’s laugh stuttered electronically. He said, “Bet that scared the crap out of you, didn’t it?”

  Hutch raised his bow. He saw that his hand was trembling. He wondered if that had been Page’s intention. Hutch had hunted in the most adverse conditions: freezing cold, hail, tired and hungry. Even, he thought, while being hunted himself. He believed when he found another opportunity to fire at Page—and he would, he would—his instinctual shooting abilities would kick in, trembling hand or not.

  He moved to the waterfall showing through a floor-to-ceiling opening in the cavern’s wall. Through its flowing veil, he saw Page. The man was standing on the bridge on the opposite side of the lagoon, facing the resort and the cantina entrance Hutch had ducked into. It dawned on him that Page was unfamiliar with the restaurant’s layout. He would have no way of knowing about the cantina’s back exit into this cavern. The opportunity had arrived sooner than Hutch had expected. He looked at his feet to brace himself for the best shot.

  Looking up at him from the floor below was Logan. The boy was in the water, clinging to the lagoon’s edge on Hutch’s side of the waterfall. Hutch held his palm out to him and mouthed the words Stay there.

  “I’d say we could still work this out,” Page was saying, “but we’re beyond that now, aren’t we? My only regret is that I won’t have a photograph of this for my wall. Can’t you see it? Me standing in this great place, next to a pile of bod—”

  Hutch let loose—pulling back and releasing in one smooth, two-second motion. The arrow pierced the water without the slightest deflection.

  Page bent backward, and the arrow sliced through the air his body had occupied a second earlier.

  Hutch already had the next arrow nocked . . . and rocketing at Page.

  But Page was dancing away. Dancing. As he disappeared down the main ramp, his voice trailed back: “Technology, Hutch! It’s a wonderful thing.”

  Hutch shook his head. What was he up against? Not just a man. No wonder Page’s soldiers were known as the best in the world: bloodlust, firepower, unimaginable technology. And Outis had ten thousand soldiers in the field.

  Man! The way Page had dodged that arrow!

  He found Logan still gazing up at him, wet, shivering, scared. Hutch slung his bow over his shoulder and stepped over the short rope netting that kept kids from spilling into the lagoon. The waterfall grabbed at his bow and tried to pull him down. He lowered himself, hung from the floor’s edge, and dropped to the level below. He landed on something soft and almost fell. He kicked away the ballistic vest, which Logan had draped on the edge.

  “D-D-D-Dad,” Logan whispered through chattering teeth. Hutch pulled his son out of the water, and sidestepped with him behind a wall. The boy’s entire body shook. His lips were as blue as his braces.

  Hutch knelt in front of him, removed the bow, and set it on the floor. He removed his jacket and draped it around Logan’s shoulders. He embraced him, squeezing—he imagined—the cold and fear away.

  “I . . . I . . . I . . .” Logan said, “took off . . . the vest. It was . . . dragging me down.”

  “That’s okay,” Hutch said.

  “It saved me, though,” Logan said. “I felt . . . the bullet hit my back.”

  Hutch’s hand rubbed over Logan’s back. “Does it hurt?”

  He felt Logan shake his head.

  “It’s the cold,” Hutch said. “It might start hurting as you warm up, b
ut you’ll be okay.” He broke away to hold Logan at arm’s length. He brushed the wet hair away from his son’s face. “You did well.”

  Logan nodded. He smiled in that lopsided way he did when he thought of something smart. “You too,” he said. “Except you missed.”

  That brought a grin to Hutch’s face. “That’s my boy.” He looked around the cavern, half expecting Page’s black figure to step out of the shadows.

  Logan pointed. “Black . . . Bart’s . . .”

  “I know, it’s just around the corner. You ready?”

  “Let’s . . . let’s do it.”

  SEVENTY-ONE

  At the control room door once again.

  Julian pushed the buzzer button and pounded. He gave the camera a panicked expression.

  Come on!

  He hoped he wasn’t too late. The water had taken longer to reach the Void’s door than he’d expected.

  Now he stood outside the door again, this time in only his boxers. He rubbed the bravery bracelet on his wrist. Do your job, he thought.

  Colonel Bryson’s voice came over the intercom. “Julian, what are you doing? Where are your clothes?”

  “The locker room, Colonel Bryson! Something’s wrong. It’s overflowing. Quick!”

  “What? What were you doing at this hour? I’m tied up right—”

  “Colonel Bryson!” Julian pointed in the direction of the Void.“Look!”

  He imagined the man leaning up over the control panel to peer into the Void. He’d flip on the lights and see two inches of water shimmering on the floor, drawing closer to the VR equipment and various plugs, monitors, and cables.

  “What the—?” came the voice over the intercom.

  A bolt released in the door mechanism, and Bryson appeared in the doorway. All that hair and sharp features. He looked like something from Where the Wild Things Are.

  “What did you do?” he said and bolted past.

  Julian let him descend two steps. He whipped the replica 1911 pistol from his boxers’ waistband at the small of his back. He put everything he had into cracking the butt of it into the back of Colonel Bryson’s head.