Blood of Angels

by Marshall, Michael

  'Okay. Let's get him. But be careful.'

  Zandt almost smiled. 'I've always valued your advice.'

  'You know what? Scrub that. Be as rash as you like.'

  Shooting out the frosted windows would either reveal the guy's position or make it harder for him to hide. It would also make it easier for him to fire accurately at us. The alternative was going low up the corridor, keeping under the level of the glass, getting to the door to the lab and just taking it from there.

  We did both. John went down low and scooted up the corridor. Meanwhile I fired at each of the three windows in turn, starting with the furthest in the hope this would drive him back towards me, deeper into the room away from the door. As the second window collapsed into shards I caught a glimpse of him heading exactly that way. As soon as I'd shot out the third window I headed after John.

  By the time I was halfway there John was standing in the doorway and he and the guy were shooting at each other. I saw John knocked back against the wall, and I turned and emptied my gun into the room. The first couple of shots were random but then I saw the guy trying to get behind one of the long benches and I held still and tight and kept pulling the trigger.

  When I stopped firing he wasn't firing back.

  John held his arm up and I saw he'd just been grazed across the wrist. I reloaded and then the two of us moved carefully into the lab.

  We walked slowly down opposite sides, towards the back, and rounded the last bench at about the same time. At the corner I found a handgun with a snub silencer lying on the floor, and kicked it out of harm's way.

  The skateboard guy was sitting wedged up against the back wall, arms straight down by his side. There was a lot of blood on the floor. More was joining it.

  'Where is he?' I asked him.

  The guy shook his head, businesslike. 'You're too late,' he said, thickly. 'It's started. The Day of Angels.'

  'Not for you,' John told him. 'Your days are coming to an end. You're going to tell us where Paul is. I don't give a damn how badly we have to behave to get this information. You're going to tell us if I have to start shooting your limbs off one by one.'

  Another shake of the head. John moved his arms so his gun was pointing at the man's leg.

  'I'm not kidding,' he said. He wasn't.

  The guy closed his eyes for a moment, as if summoning strength. I raised my gun to keep him pinned.

  Slowly the man lifted his arm.

  'Don't do that,' I said. 'Keep your hands where they are.'

  But then suddenly he moved much more quickly, slipping his right hand into the pouch in the front of his sweater. It was out again in an instant, holding a knife.

  'You're not getting anywhere with that,' John said.

  The man took a deep breath. 'Enjoy your world while you can,' he said, and then plunged the knife into the left side of his neck.

  John lunged forward and tried to pull it back out, but the man had committed his last bit of strength. Once the knife had gone in as far as it could, he yanked it back out from left to right.

  The mess was bad, and he was dead very quickly.

  •••

  John searched the body. He found a wallet with a little money but no ID. He found a half pack of cigarettes, one of which I took and lit. He found something that was evidently a compact radio, but one of my shots seemed to have hit it square on and it was misshapen and bent and I couldn't get it to make any noise. Presumably he'd used this to contact the fake cop outside, the one now in the trunk of his own car.

  There was nothing to lead us to Nina.

  I turned angrily away from the mess to the window along the other side of the room. This gave a view down on the open space to the rear of the school, and I was relieved to see the near end was full of milling kids. More were joining them from various buildings.

  The children were being organized into neat ranks within a marked-out area in the shadow of the school underneath my window. A few hundred of them, maybe. The top end of the open space was clear.

  And a car had just driven in the gate.

  At first I thought, thank Christ—the cops have finally arrived and we can get out of here, but it was a dumb thought that only lasted a nanosecond. The local cops wouldn't drive around in a large black car with windows tinted black.

  'John,' I said. 'Come look at this. Quickly.'

  The car drove across the open space at a measured pace. Nobody was watching it. Everyone was too busy marshalling each other into orderly rows, enjoying the lark that fire drills always seem to be.

  'Oh Christ,' John said. The car cruised over to the back of the school and entered the sloping runway we'd seen the pizzas taken down. Within seconds it had disappeared from view as if it had never been.

  'Basement,' I said. 'Or loading area. Why is he bringing her…'

  'The bomb hasn't been planted yet,' John said, dismally. 'We just saw it arrive.'

  A car full of explosives is a very big bang. Best case it would take the school down to shower in burning chunks over the kids in the open space. Worst, depending on the layout and extent of the basement area, it could detonate right underneath them.

  We hadn't achieved anything at all. Paul was still at least one step ahead.

  I grabbed the handle on the window but it had been painted shut many years before. I banged on the window with both fists but no one was paying any attention.

  'Leave it,' John said. 'We know where we've got to go.'

  We ran out into the corridor and back into the other arm of the building. I thought I heard someone shouting somewhere as we sped through but I couldn't work out where from and didn't have time to worry about it.

  We raced down the steps to the ground floor and searched for access to a lower level. There wasn't any. We ran out onto the lawn and around into the main structure, turned left into a corridor that went past a big open space that seemed to be the cafeteria.

  Which meant kitchens. We dodged in and across it to where the food was dispensed from. Behind this was the food preparation area, battered stoves, big refrigerators. And way in back, a door to a stairway. We got out our guns, and went down into the basement.

  Chapter 39

  When Paul directed the driver to drive into the back of the school, Nina realized that anything she said would be a waste of time. Pulling the car down into this subterranean space could mean only one thing. She knew there was no appeal to reason she could make, and that this was not because Paul was too insane to follow an argument. He'd comprehend perfectly, but disagree. Like Wittgenstein said, if the lion could talk, we would not understand him. Paul had reached this place through his own rationality, simple and logical steps in a mind that was simply wired differently and organized around other values. This thing was going to happen. There was an almost sexual charge about his conviction now, and Nina realized she was probably entering the last few minutes of her life. Good to have spoken to Ward, then, however briefly. Shame he had not picked up on her reference to the school, but it had been a subtle hint. There really had been a gun at her head.

  There wasn't a great deal she could do about it now either way. Not much she could do about anything. She had to just be, for whatever time she had left.

  Sometimes the decision not to pursue hopeless action is the bravest act of all.

  •••

  The car was driven down into a space beneath the building, four cars wide and lined either side with access stairways and a series of bays twenty feet deep. Parts of the walls were lined with old, shiny tile. The lighting was gloomy and intermittent. The driver pulled the car into a bay at the end, next to a wall with an archway leading to a further section of the basement. The engine was turned off.

  Paul turned to Nina.

  'Upside is that it's going to be very fast,' he said. 'Pow. Vaporized. Downside is you're going to have to wait for it. I could just kill you, of course. Partly I'm just not inclined to make things easier for you, but on the other hand I suspect you'd like to keep those
moments, however imperfect they may be. Correct?'

  Nina looked steadily back at him. 'Thank you, Paul. Yes, I would.'

  'Done deal. I can't give you an actual timing, because I'll be triggering it myself. Still, that should keep you on your toes. Make each thought a happy one because, you know, it could be the last.'

  The driver got out. There was a finality about the sound of his door closing. Things were starting to happen for the last time.

  Nina kept her eyes on Paul. 'You realize that however much you pretend otherwise, your leaving me alive is basically a deed of compassion?'

  'And?'

  'So you can do it. You can empathize. Do it more often than not and you could become a real boy. Just like Pinocchio.'

  'I'm more real than you'll ever understand.'

  'No, you're not. You're the same as me or anyone else. There's no genetic difference between you and Ward. You do not behave the way you do because you're part of a master race. It's just because of what has happened to you in life. You could be like everyone else.'

  'Right,' he said, curiously. 'And who would these normal people be? You should have spent more time watching the news and less time hunting down people like me. Your species has been stealing and killing since it walked on two legs. It has been lying since it could talk. We're not the only ones who war and rape and murder. Only difference is you pretend it's a bad thing.'

  'Paul—you really aren't a different species to us. You know that, don't you? Somewhere inside your head you must understand that you're human too.'

  'No,' he said. 'We are the song of God. We've been tied to you for far too long and now we're cutting the cord. You're not going to be around to see it, but trust me—it's going to be wild.'

  He opened the door and got out. He exchanged a few words with the driver and then went around the back of the car. He did something inside the trunk and Nina heard a beep she could only assume was the sound of a device being armed. The driver walked quickly away.

  Paul came back to the door and leaned down to look in at her.

  'You may think that you might be able to get one of these doors open,' he said. 'Even though you're tied up and they'll all be locked. Seems like a long shot to me, but maybe you'll hope it isn't. So I should explain that each door is wired to the bag of tricks in the trunk. Open one, and it all goes off. Do me a favour? Give me time to get out of the building before you try.'

  Nina looked back at him and tried to work out, finally, what it was that looked out of his eyes.

  'Paul,' she said. 'Do you even remember who you are?'

  He shut the door. There was the sound of central locking being engaged.

  And then his footsteps, going away.

  Chapter 40

  The basement was a warren of storage designed for a time when you couldn't get goods delivered seven days a week. The stairwell from the kitchen led down into a space filled with metal racks. There was a pile of packing materials from frozen pizzas: also a small room entirely filled with old wooden chairs. No school employees to be seen.

  John and I ran through this section trying to get through to the loading area at the back. Finally we found a corridor which was brighter at the far end. We hurried along it until we were a couple of yards from an open door. John motioned with his head and I took the side.

  He stepped through, looping around to the right. When there was no sound of shooting, I followed through.

  We found ourselves in a long, open space that seemed to stretch the width of the school. This was intermittently lit by strip lights on the low ceiling: tiles and mildewed stretches gave the whole area a greenish cast. Over to the left it became lighter where the sloping access road entered from the rear of the school. You could hear the distant sound of a couple of hundred kids filtering down from above. Still no sirens. Where in Christ were these people?

  'You should go warn them,' Zandt said.

  'I will when we've found Nina,' I said. 'Or you could do it right now.'

  'If Paul's here, the bomb isn't going to go off yet.'

  'You don't know what he's prepared to risk or do. And if he's not here it could go off any second and you're not going to find that out until too late.'

  He just shrugged and ran off to the right. I realized I wasn't sure what John was prepared to risk either. I wished Bobby had been here with me instead. He had been a better man than John and a nicer one than me. He could be trusted to do the right thing, he had always put others before himself without considering the cost, and he had a level of expertise in violent situations that had been frankly disconcerting. I was an amateur and I knew now was not the time to make a single mistake.

  People had to be warned.

  It was going to have to be me who did it.

  I swore and started running towards the slope. I was only a quarter of the way there when I realized a shortish figure was standing in the shadows by the wall down at the far end.

  He shot at me. Three measured clicks from a silenced handgun.

  I was moving fast so I just threw myself headlong across the remainder of the central space into the opposite bay. I hit the side wall hard and crash-slid down onto the floor. I tried to roll out of this and get in a position where I could fire back at the shooter, but he just kept up a steady rate of bullets past the end of the bay.

  'Ward?'

  John's shout rebounded so much off hard, echoing walls that I couldn't tell how far away he was calling from.

  'I'm okay,' I yelled back. 'Can you get him?'

  The answer was a volley of gunfire that went on for ten seconds. Loud claps from John's weapon interspersed with soft clicks from the other guy, the exchange laced with the flick and whine of ricochets.

  Immediately after the last of John's shots rang out, I heard him shout 'Now, Ward!'

  Before I could think about it I ran out of the bay and banked left, holding my gun out to the right and firing again and again. John was providing covering fire. Halfway across the central space I made him out, hunkered down at the entrance to a bay about thirty yards up on the opposite side. The last few feet were accompanied by the sound of the shooter firing at me again.

  Then I was in the bay, bewildered to still be alive. I was surrounded by old desks. My ears were ringing. 'Jesus.'

  'Who the hell is this guy?' John said.

  'No idea,' I panted. 'But we're not getting anywhere near that exit until he's dead.'

  'That's not going to be easy,' John said. 'He knows what he's doing. He very nearly nailed you.'

  'Thanks for the information.'

  'He missed. It's a happy story.' He stuck his gun out of the end of the bay and fired again. The return shot came a second later.

  At the back of our bay was a door. I went over, yanked it wide. Beyond lay a passageway heading left.

  'It's not going to get us closer to him,' I said. 'But it might get us in the other direction. Which frankly suits me fine.'

  I went through first. John followed, backing away from the mouth of the bay, gun held out in front in case the guy decided to run into the bay after us.

  When we were both through I shut the door. We hurried along the narrow passageway, reloading feverishly. About every ten yards there were further doors on the left side: the ones that opened gave onto bays just like the one we'd come from, stacked half full of stuff the school didn't need right now. I opened each in turn but couldn't see any value in going through any of them. Then the corridor ended abruptly in a flat wall.

  'Shit,' John said.

  'I guess we're going out one of those doors after all.'

  'We at least need to know where that guy is now. We're trapped. If he comes across to that first bay and into this corridor then we're fish in a barrel.'

  I opened the final door. It opened onto another bay. When I stepped out into it I saw there was another exactly opposite, and that it did not hold boxes or chairs like the others, and yet was not empty.

  It held a big black car.

  'We've found
it,' I said.

  •••

  None of the car's lights were on. From our position the tinting of the glass and the low light made it impossible to see what or who, if anything or anyone, was inside.

  I stuck a foot out of the bay and jumped back just ahead of a bullet which came immediately down the central aisle. The guy with the gun was holding his position up at the top. Presumably his job was partly to stop us getting to the car, which was why he'd passed up the chance to run down into the passageway and take us out in there. He could see us the moment we tried to break for the other bay. He was some distance away now, however, and if we ran fast enough and asked for luck, we could still make it across. Probably.

  John was already tensed, ready to make the run.

  But I suddenly realized it wasn't that simple. To the right of the bay in the end wall was an arched doorway. This gave access into another section of the basement, under the next part of the building. It was very dark through there and we couldn't see if…

  'Wait a second,' I said. 'Paul must be down here too.'

  'How do you know?'

  'If he got out of the building then this other guy would have left too. So assuming Paul was in that car when it came down here, either he's in it still or he's somewhere down there on the right.'

  John got what I was saying. If Paul was still down here then the car could be checkmated in their lines of fire. Either the guy down the end shot us as we were running across to it, or we ran straight into a trap which Paul had in his sights from a location just the other side of the arch into the next section.

  John nodded wearily. 'We only get one try at this.'

  I didn't know what to do. We were twenty feet from a bomb that might have Nina strapped to it, and we couldn't get out of the building to warn anyone outside. There was no way back or sideways. We were going forward from here. The only question was which direction we took those steps in, and how many we had left. I sent up a thought, a question, hoping someone with more guile than me might see a way ahead.

  Now would be good, Bobby. Now would be really good.