by Rob Thurman
Grabbing the door handle behind me, I lurched to a crouch. His gun was still pointed at me and I could see him pushing aside the waves of agony to focus on his target. I found mine first.
Gutshot isn’t the best way to go. The pain of a torn stomach leaking flesh-searing bile doesn’t begin to cover it. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. For Jericho, however, I wished I had the time to send another slug in there to keep the first company. The close wail of approaching sirens told me that while it was a pleasant thought, it might not be practical. I had to get out of there . . . in one goddamn hurry.
The second time I’d shot him, Jericho had fallen onto his back. This time he had lost his gun, using his hand to try to stem the blood oozing from his stomach. The frozen stare had turned into one glossy with hate. Words, sharp and grating, were pushed painfully between clenched teeth. “I’ll . . . kill you.” Sucking in a breath, he closed his eyes and grinned with all the warmth of a toothy skull. “And if . . . I don’t . . . Michael will.”
Then again, how long did it take to pull a trigger?
The tackle of a speeding whirlwind made the question moot. Michael hadn’t run quite the distance I’d hoped. Arm wrapped tight around my waist, he dragged me along with a strength I wouldn’t have believed was in his slim frame. I was still tempted to take another shot at Jericho . . . the last shot, but as it was, I was lucky to stay upright even with my brother’s help. The bullet wound in my side was taking a backseat to the throbbing in my head. From the dizziness, nausea, foggy vision, it was safe to say I’d bought myself a pretty good concussion when my head had hit that car door. The simultaneous desire to puke and lie on the ground to die wasn’t too helpful in keeping my eyes open for Jericho’s flunkies, but I gave it my best shot. As we moved, from behind I could hear a choked, ugly laughter. Jericho was laughing. Through an agony that should’ve killed anything more coherent than a scream, the son of a bitch was laughing.
The sound was unnaturally chilling, the throaty cackle of a hyena muzzle deep in warm entrails. Trying to block it out, I picked up the pace as best as I could. “I told you to run,” I grunted. “If you think that’s running, you can kiss a track scholarship good-bye.”
“I guess I’ll have to depend on my brain, not my legs.” His breath was fast but even against my jaw. “And I did run—just not very far.”
“Kids these days.” I could see our car. It was barely fifteen feet away. As far as I was concerned, it may as well have been fifteen miles. “They never listen.” My legs buckled as the muscles went from rubber to water. How Michael kept me upright I didn’t know. I had to outweigh him by a good fifty pounds. Add one-twenty to that and deadweight became a very real concept to a skinny teenage boy.
Savagely biting my bottom lip to the salty taste of copper, I straightened and ordered legs I couldn’t feel to move faster. No one was more surprised than I that they actually obeyed. As we fell against the driver’s door, I was already digging in my jacket pocket for the spare key I’d found tucked under the sun visor. Pulling it free, I tried to ram it into the lock. It was more difficult than it seemed as twin images spun lazily before my eyes. Double vision is less fun when it’s minus the alcohol.
Michael snatched the key from my hand and slid it home. Flinging open the door, he stretched a hand to unlock the rear before trying to shove me into the backseat. I grabbed the edge of the door frame and resisted with a growl. “What the hell are you doing?” Icy sweat beaded my forehead and I swallowed convulsively. “You’re all about the theory, remember?” I slurred. “You can’t drive us out of here.”
“Yes, I can.” The next push was more forceful, not to mention more successful. I lost my grip and tumbled in. “I’ve been watching you.”
Oddly enough, I didn’t find much comfort in that. And I knew of a driving instructor whose leg still ached in rainy weather and who would probably agree wholeheartedly with me. Slamming my door shut, he climbed into the driver’s seat. Two seconds later we were hopping curbs with the rest of the rabbits. Monkey see, monkey do might not be the best learning tool out there, but at least we were in motion. I couldn’t guarantee the result would have been the same if I’d been behind the wheel.
As it stood now, I was hanging my head over the floorboards and trying my damnedest not to be thoroughly sick. The nausea was a living, breathing creature clawing its way upward without mercy. Air disguised as ground glass burned my nose and throat as a vise tightened on my head with every heartbeat. I still had the gun clenched tightly in my right hand, but my fingers were losing their grip. They slowly unlocked and the Steyr dropped onto the rubber mat below. I let it. I’d half forgotten what it even was. Something as familiar as my own face had suddenly turned so foreign as to be unidentifiable. That and the warm dribble against my neck and cheek had me blinking in confusion. “Is it raining?” I didn’t need to see the puzzled look of worry that Michael shot at me over his shoulder to know it was a stupid question. Raining? Sure, because it rained inside cars all the time.
The hand I put to the back of my head came away red—poppy red like Natalie’s freckles. Long-gone Natalie and long-gone Lukas; they were two of a kind. Squeezing my eyes shut, I clutched desperately at the raveled edges of consciousness. No. Not gone. Here. Lukas was here, and he needed help—my help. He was in trouble, and this time I could do something about it. This time I wasn’t a boy trapped under a dead horse . . . even though I could feel the sand beneath me, the sun hot and liquid on my head. Sucking in a breath that didn’t seem to want to go down, I opened my eyes and raised my head to see blond hair haloed by oscillating red and blue lights. It was Lukas . . . just as I remembered him.
“Lukas?”
The car jerked to the left as the blazing lights careened off to the right. I went with them, pulled along in their wake until I was lost. They flew around me, brilliantly glowing butterflies. I soared with them long and far until I sailed off the edge of the world. Beyond that, it’s been said, can be nothing good. Beyond the end, I’ve heard, lies only the abyss. Beyond can be only darkness and monsters.
Big deal.
I’d already lived through both.
Chapter 17
In the tenth grade I played football. I wasn’t particularly good or bad, but I was quick. Outrunning slow-witted assholes who wanted to rip me to shreds had come in handy later in life while working for Konstantin. But there had been one occasion, one game where I hadn’t been quite fast enough. For that, I’d paid the price, and it was one that the three-hundred-pound gorilla who sat on my head was more than happy to collect. It was a feeling I would never forget. A giant fist had tightened on my head until I thought I could hear the literal cracking of bone. The pain was so intense that it froze the air in my lungs, turned thoughts into congealed mud, and sent jagged shards of glass splintering through my brain.
I would have given anything to be experiencing that cakewalk again.
“He needs a doctor.”
Insistent; the words were very insistent, with a calm that sounded stretched to a jaw-locking tightness. There was a pause as I floated in an ocean of black agony, and then came more words. “I can’t put him on. Are you even listening to me? Do you need the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of unconscious?”
Lukas. It was Lukas’s voice, and from the sound of it he was giving someone hell. Now who . . . ah. Random neurons collided with a spark. Saul. I’d told him to call Skoczinsky if he ended up on his own. Apparently the situation we were in was close enough to qualify.
I levered up eyelids that fought me every millimeter of the way. The slice of dusty yellow light that rewarded me was a cheerful ice pick drilling through the liquid mush that used to be my brain. Hissing with pain, I tried to cover my eyes with a clumsy and uncooperative hand.
The conversation continued unchecked as my heroic efforts went unnoticed. “He’s been shot and he hit his head. He may even have a skull fracture, and the first aid I know doesn’t cover that.” I could guess how those biology
and anatomy lectures went at the Institute. Here’s the best location to inflict damage; don’t worry about fixing it. It won’t ever be an issue.
From the feel of the surface slick and cool beneath me, I was still in the backseat of the car. And from the sound of Lukas’s rigid annoyance, he was right by my head. He was probably standing in the open door with his back to me, but I wasn’t about to shift the watermelon substituting as my head to see, so I did the next best thing.
Holding up my hand, I croaked, “Phone.”
Instantly Lukas popped into my view, his face directly over mine. From what I could see of the god-awful purple and gold shirt, it was stained to a darker color, almost black, from blood—my blood. He might disparage his medical skills, but it was obvious he had tried. “Stefan.” His face brightened fractionally. “You’re awake.”
“More . . . or . . . less.” Every single word was a molten lava of misery. “Phone.”
He hesitated, then put the cell phone in my hand. “Better you than me.”
Stubborn paranoia meeting paranoid stubbornness; talk about your rock and a hard place. Lukas and Saul were born to butt heads. I fumbled the phone to my ear. “Saul?”
“That is one smart-ass little shit, Korsak.” Saul’s voice, slightly tinny, stung my ear. “Are you sure you don’t want to toss him back?”
“He’s not . . . fish.” I wanted to be amused. I settled on queasy. “Saul, we’re in trouble.” True enough, and the last thing I wanted to do was involve Saul. He’d done more than enough already, gone far above and beyond. Dragging him deeper into this mess was not the way to thank him. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any way around it, not if Lukas and I were going to survive.
“Yeah, I gathered that from the Boy Wonder.” He exhaled and I heard the sound of a hand rubbing over a face. “Tell me, Smirnoff. How bad are you, really?”
“I’m not dying.” At least I didn’t think I was. My eyes were beginning to focus with glacial speed. Through the car windows I could see a low, squat building and weeds as high as a man’s waist. It looked as if Lukas had done a good job of finding us somewhere off the beaten path. “But Lukas is right. Think I need a doctor. Someone who can keep his mouth shut.”
Saul’s network of subcontractors was numerous and far-reaching. If anyone could come up with the name of a competent and ethically flexible physician, it would be him. “That’s a tall order. Let me think a second. Where are you anyway?”
“North. Close to the state line.” My legs were already bent and I used the leverage to try to push myself up. I managed to rise up on one elbow, but the effort had me soaked in sweat. “I don’t know how they keep finding us. It’s been twice now. They come out of nowhere.”
“They haven’t been trailing you?”
“No.” As the arm supporting me began to shake, I felt two hands behind my shoulders bracing and easing me up to a sitting position. Twisting slightly, I leaned back against the seat and gave Lukas a grateful nod.
“The kid’s tagged then,” Saul said brusquely. “Hell, they microchip dogs and cats. It was only a matter of time.”
Tagged. Shit. That was the thought that had slithered away from me when I was stealing our latest car. I’d wanted to avoid anything with a GPS, but here I was hauling around my own walking, talking homing device. “Goddamnit.” And I’d thought my headache couldn’t possibly get any worse. “We’re screwed,” I said bleakly.
“Maybe not. If you can get to a doctor, he might be able to remove the chip as well as fix up your black and blue ass.” I could hear the distant sound of typing. “And I think I have the man for the job. Okay, his name is Lewis Vanderburgh, better known as ‘the Babysitter.’ He lost his license ten years ago and just got out of the joint last February.”
“The Babysitter?”
“Use your imagination,” he ordered curtly over a thick layer of disgust. “Needless to say he wasn’t too popular in the pen. He’s done some research for me, medical crap, and he needs the money. Picked up an expensive drug habit on the inside.”
“He sounds like a real winner.”
“When you can afford to be choosy, we’ll book you into the Mayo Clinic. For now it’s Dr. Degenerate.” He gave me the address. “Keep your eyes open and your back to the wall and you should be okay. He’s a monster, but he’s a weak one.”
Monsters, monsters everywhere. Speaking of which . . . “Saul, I need you to get some information for me.” I was fading, but this was every bit as important as finding a doctor. “Remember the scary son of a bitch from the van? His name is Jericho. I need for you to look up anything you can find about him and genetic research. Anything at all.” I couldn’t be more specific than that because I couldn’t tell him what had been done to my brother. I couldn’t tell anyone about that; not Saul and not my father. Protecting Lukas came first, even if that meant protecting him from the reaction of his own family.
“Jericho? That’s all you got?”
“That’s it,” I confirmed, closing my eyes against the dizzying sway of tall grass bordering the cracked and overgrown parking lot. “I’ll call you back tomorrow and see what you’ve dug up.”
An exasperated growl echoed in my ear. “You’d better not think this is some kind of freebie—you got that?”
I smiled, the barest twitch of my lip. “Never.”
Disconnecting the phone, I let it fall into my lap. I hung for a moment, suspended between consciousness and an endless somersault into the shadows of sleep. A touch on the back of my head brought me around. Opening my eyes, I saw a folded pad of cloth in Lukas’s hand. It had once been a white sock; now it was a makeshift bandage stained beyond repair. It was a practical choice; the material was absorbent if not precisely sterile. Then again, what better place to grow penicillin?
“The bleeding’s almost stopped.” He regarded me gravely. “I should check your bullet wound.”
I watched as he peeled up my sweatshirt with efficient hands meant to heal, not harm. “You did good, Lukas.”
“Michael.” He didn’t look at me as he said it, keeping his eyes on my injured side. I think he knew how painfully sharp the reminder would strike me.
Sharp it was. He had very probably saved my life and at the risk of his own, but that hadn’t changed a thing in his mind. He wasn’t budging on the belief that he wasn’t my brother. I’d come out of an unconscious haze with a lingering illusion that he hadn’t shared. It was hard to let the image go, but I had to suck it up and do it . . . for his sake. “Sorry.” And I was, sorry as hell, but not for calling him Lukas. “Chalk it up to brain damage.”
“Admitting you have a problem is the first step.” He visibly relaxed when he realized I wasn’t going to push him on the issue.
“I don’t think there’s a twelve-step program for stupidity.” But if he knew of one, I was certain he would tell me about it. I looked down at the ugly furrow of raw flesh that rode just under my ribs. The bullet had carved a path that was bloody and nasty to the eye, but in reality only about half an inch deep. Some stitches or gauze packing with a healthy dose of antibiotics should take care of it. As for my head, my choices were more limited—either ingesting massive painkillers or being taken out back to be shot like a lame horse.
“Flesh wound,” Michael murmured, more to himself than to me. “Lost a fair amount of blood.” There were patches of white beside his mouth. After the experiments that had been forced on him, I wasn’t surprised the sight of blood would be upsetting to him.
“It’s not that bad,” I reassured him. “I’ve done worse shaving.”
“Even I know that’s a cliché, and I’ve lived my life in a lab,” he said dryly, a little color returning to his face. Disappearing momentarily, he returned with a shirt hanging from his hand. He folded it and pressed it against my side, although the blood flow was now sluggish at best. “You found a doctor?”
“Yeah, and not too far. Saul came through.” It would be about two hours unless Michael had taken us farther than I’d thou
ght. “By the way, where are we?”
“About twenty miles east. It’s some sort of abandoned storage locker facility.” He turned his head to take another look around. “I think. Things sometimes look different from the pictures and video at the Institute.”
Life itself must look different outside those walls; it had to. As I shifted position against the unrelenting ache in my head, I heard the scrape of cardboard against cloth. Rolling my shoulder, I fished in my jacket pocket and pulled out a battered apple pie. “I almost forgot. Here.”
He hung back in the open door for a second, then sat on the seat beside me. “Thanks.” Taking the pie, he quietly opened it and took a small bite. “Did your friend know how they found us?” he asked eventually after working halfway through the dessert.
“He has an idea. Remember that incision you were telling me about?” I didn’t wait for a response. It wasn’t as if he were going to forget it. “Saul thinks Jericho planted a tracking chip in you.”
“Oh. Like an animal.” He crumpled the cardboard and deposited it with stony care in the plastic bag we’d been using for trash on the trip. “Makes sense.”
It didn’t make the kind of sense I wanted to contemplate, but in Jericho’s eyes, yes, I could see that it would. I was hoping like hell that those same eyes were staring at a morgue ceiling right now. “Don’t worry, kiddo. It’s coming out. As soon as we get to that doctor, you’ll disappear off their radar. For good.”
He accepted it with a nod, then leaned back against the seat. There were smudges under his eyes and lines that didn’t belong on the face of a seventeen-year-old. He looked as tired as I felt and we still had a two-hour trip ahead of us. “But how about we sack out first? Sleep for about an hour. Neither of us is in any condition to drive.” I then added with the measure of pride he deserved, “Not that you didn’t do one hell of a job getting us here. Damn impressive for your first solo attempt.” His response to that wasn’t exactly what I expected. Then again, few of his responses ever were, but knowing what I knew now, that wasn’t surprising.
