by Marcus Sakey
Brody gasped, jerked like he’d fallen asleep in the bathtub. He reeled backward and up, standing fast, wanting to get away from the woman with the caved-in skull. That had been her. Raquel.
He had been her. Impossible. But he knew it, could still feel it.
“No!” Metal screamed against metal. The Scarecrow jerked the security gate hard enough the whole store seemed to shake.
Brody went automatic. Dropped the fire extinguisher and picked up the knife, holding it with a hammer grip and assuming a triangle stance like he’d been trained, his shield hand up. Knowing it was pointless, but unwilling not to fight.
The tweaker stopped yanking on the gate. His eyes narrowed as if in calculation. Beside him, the baseball player sucked air through his teeth.
What are they waiting for?
The tweaker looked at the woman on the floor, then back to Brody. “We can take him.”
“Nah.”
“But he killed Raquel.”
“Look at him.” The Baller shook his head. “I’m out.”
The thin man rocked from foot to foot like he needed a bathroom. His lips twisted in a snarl. Finally, he shouldered his machete. “See you around, maybe.”
The two turned and walked away.
Brody lowered the knife. Took a deep breath that smelled of dust and urine. Raquel’s bladder had cut loose when she died.
He stared down at her. It was all impossible. The men bending the bars, the speed and power of Raquel’s attack. But most of all, what had just happened. He possessed two sets of certainties. Both were absolutely true. And completely contradictory.
He’d never seen the woman before; he’d felt her grow up. She was a complete stranger; he knew her most intimate thoughts. He was Will Brody; he had just been Raquel Adams.
What the hell was going on?
He’d been Raquel Adams.
Ridiculous, but true.
He’d been her. He’d smelled the lilacs, felt hands on his breasts, watched the blood pool. That had been her birthday, her virginity, her death. But of course it couldn’t have been her death, because if it was she wouldn’t have been running around the streets of Chicago with a knife—
Shock. He was in shock, and hallucinating. Okay then. Help was on the way. In the meantime, he should sit down, take deep breaths. Improvise a bandage to minimize blood loss.
He lowered himself to the ground. Setting the knife down, he pulled up his pant leg, gritting his teeth as he eased it over—
Over his perfect, unblemished knee.
TEN
Claire stood very straight and very still. Her only motion was the slow rhythm of breath and the slight yielding of her skin as she dug a thumbnail into her palm. The pain felt like it belonged to someone else. She kept pushing.
The table in front of her was spotless metal, cold and brilliantly lit. High-wattage bulbs glared down from multiple angles, erasing shadows, casting everything into surreal clarity. The chemical tang of formaldehyde stung her nose, almost strong enough to mask the smell of burned meat.
The corpse on the table didn’t look much like Will. It bore only a passing resemblance to a man.
The Evidence Response Team was still analyzing fragments, but the device had been smokeless gunpowder in galvanized steel piping, triggered by a cellular signal. Classic pipe bomb, crude by the standards of even a middle-of-the-road terrorist, but effective. Especially when buried in a pile of broken glass. As the gunpowder ignited, the pressure had built until the steel pipe shredded from the inside out, the shock wave turning the glass into a tornado of whirling razors.
Like a blender twenty feet across.
Claire had seen plenty of bodies, people cut nearly in half by shotgun blasts, victims of torture, the burned remnants of murdered children. You did get used to it, strange and horrible as that sounded. It was the disconnect. The thing that had made them a person was gone. Call it a soul or a spirit or a consciousness, bring in religion or see it as pure biology, it didn’t matter. In the dead, something was missing, some ineffable person-ness. See it a few times, and bodies became things. But it was different when it was someone you knew. Someone you might have loved.
Loved. Love-d. Past tense. Will Brody had become past tense.
“Ma’am—oh god.” Agent Huang jammed the back of his wrist against his mouth and turned away. “Oh god.”
Claire stood very straight and very still and drove her thumbnail into her palm.
She’d been watching. The leader of an FBI task force observing a routine raid had been a bit out of character, but one of the nice things about being the boss was not having to explain yourself. She hadn’t been worried—okay, sure, maybe a little, which was why office romances were not a good idea—but she’d still been pleased to hear Brody radio the all clear. Claire had removed her earpiece, thanked the team for their work, and headed for the exit.
Then came his yell, and that boom, not a seat-rumbling cinematic explosion but just a sort of dull pop, and a moment later dust was pouring out the doors.
When she arrived at the church twenty minutes later, it looked very different. Hundreds of cops locked down the neighborhood. Blue lights strobed off every faded frame house. A line of officers held back a crowd out for disaster porn, half of them shooting video on their phones. Three of the tactical cops were on the way to the hospital, all expected to survive; none of them had been as close as Will. An officer named Kurtz had actually been closer, but Brody had knocked him aside, his body absorbing the glass meant for the cop.
Kurtz himself told her that. Sitting on the curb, a dazed expression and blood running down his cheek. “I didn’t even know the guy.” He held an unlit cigarette. “I didn’t even know him.”
In that instant, she had hated Kurtz with furious intensity. Then hated herself for wishing him dead and Will alive.
Claire stared at the ruins on the autopsy table. This was what was left of the man who had teased her about having no food while managing to cook something amazing for her every night. Those shredded mittens and limp sleeves had been the hands that traced her body, the forearms that caught her eye. That ruined face and shattered skull—
“Ma’am?”
They hadn’t known each other long but they had known each other well, had clicked on some deep level, and now he was gone. Her chest felt too frail to contain the rage and grief. They twisted like saw blades. But she made herself stare, and stand very straight and very still.
“Ma’am?”
Agent Huang had arrived moments ago. Unbidden, her memory supplied relevant details from his file: HUANG, EDWARD “EDDIE,” law degree from Wharton, married no children, good reports from supervisors . . .
Without turning, she said, “Did you find the phone?”
“Yes. The nearest tower shows seven calls to cellular numbers within that area in a ten-second window. Six have been accounted for. The seventh belonged to a pay-as-you-go, and the pings are coming back negative.”
“The detonator.”
“There’s more.”
Something in his tone caught her. She tore her eyes from the table, met his gaze.
“The call that triggered it relayed off the same cell tower. Also a prepaid phone, and neither had GPS, so we can’t pinpoint it. But towers are everywhere these days. Which means—”
“He was there.” Three words. But Claire didn’t think she’d ever said three words more loaded with hatred. “He was watching.”
Huang nodded.
On one level it didn’t matter. Killing from up close wasn’t really any different than killing from half a world away. Except . . . it was.
It wasn’t just that the sniper had claimed an eighteenth victim. It wasn’t just that the victim was a cop. It wasn’t just that the cop had been a man she might have loved. It wasn’t just that Brody was there on her orders. It wasn’t just that he was dead because he’d saved someone else.
The man who had killed Will Brody had wanted to watch him die.
Caref
ul to keep the fury out of her voice, she said, “Purchase data on the phones?”
“Both bought nine days ago, from a convenience store on Elston. Buyer paid cash, and the store security system is multiple cameras sharing one hard drive, new files overwriting old ones. It only goes back about three days.”
Like every other piece of physical evidence so far. They had rifle casings, footprints, even DNA from hair follicles and cigarettes, and none of it was worth a thing. Again she had that feeling that he couldn’t be working alone. The sniper was being protected, guided in some way.
“Ma’am, we can’t be certain this was the sniper. The other attacks have all been with a rifle. It could be a copycat, someone—”
“It was him.” Claire knew it with perfect certainty.
“Behavioral Science says maybe, maybe not. They’re waiting for DNA—”
“And when we find it, it will match. This was him.”
“Okay,” Huang said. “Well, if you’re right, it supports the profile of a veteran. Making an IED would be in the skill set of a soldier who had seen action.”
“Except that this was obviously a trap aimed at killing cops. And if he’s an angry vet wanting to stick it to authority figures, he would have been killing cops from . . .” Claire trailed off. There was something there. Some connection she had missed.
It only took a second. “Wait. This was a trap.”
Huang said, “Yes, but the point—”
“No, you’re not getting me. It was a trap.”
“So?”
“You have to bait a trap.”
Huang hesitated, following her thinking. Then his eyes widened. “Oh.”
Claire whirled and took off at a run.
ELEVEN
Brody sat and stared at his knee for a long time. Remembered pulling a dagger of glass out of it, the slippery sick pain of that. He hadn’t imagined it—his pants were soaked with drying blood. And yet the skin was unbroken, and he could move his leg through the whole range of motion without a twinge.
Stomach too. His shirt was slit edge to edge, but though Raquel’s knife had parted his belly like a scalpel, there wasn’t a mark on his flesh.
Come to think of it, he could breathe easily, and the razor-fine cuts on his lips and tongue weren’t bothering him. In fact, physically he felt kind of . . . well, kind of great. Like ten hours of dreamless sleep followed by eggs Benedict and a blow job. His body was limber, muscles strong and ready. He wanted to move, stretch, go for a run.
He started with standing up.
Raquel’s body lay where it had fallen, splayed out in an awkward position. Brody stood looking down at her for a long moment. He’d killed before, he was pretty sure, but that had been in war; chaos, smoke, insurgents ducking out from alleys and the roofs of mosques, the crack of his M4 making his ears ring. It had been different. He thought about saying something, couldn’t think what.
Instead he turned and walked to the security cage. The way the thick metal was bent looked like a cartoon, the bars bowed sideways in the center. Brody stuck his head and shoulders through, then wriggled the rest of the way out.
The neighborhood was silent. It wasn’t just that there weren’t police; there was no one at all. No gawkers, no corner kids, no older folks chatting. No traffic. No distant honking. No rattle of the train. No buzz of electricity. No hip-hop anthems blaring from houses, no television voices drifting through an open window.
A shiver ripped through him, one of those that came from nowhere and made his whole body twitch. Brody took a deep breath, and another.
The clouds were low and thick. Wind ruffled leafless trees, stirred trash on the street. Windows were black eyes peering at him. A swing wobbled in the breeze, the chain creaking.
A silver Honda Civic was stopped at a stop sign, and for a moment he let himself hope, but the car was empty. It sat in the right-hand lane, bumper just past the line. As if the owner had parked in the middle of the street, turned off the engine, and climbed out. When he tented his hands over his eyes against the window, Brody could see keys in the ignition. The seat belt was locked across an empty chair.
A block north, a weatherworn F-150 was similarly abandoned. To the south, he could see a line of three cars, all in the correct lane, all frozen. The bodegas and fried fish places and barbershops were empty and lost to shadow. The world had stopped and everyone in it had vanished.
He’d had dreams in his life that felt truly real. In them he’d been able to see the stitching of his jeans, the hair on the back of his hands. He could feel emotions and frame thoughts. Everyone had dreams like that occasionally.
But he couldn’t remember a dream where he’d felt real pain; it was more like the idea of pain, a notional counterfeit his mind treated as currency. Slamming three inches of glass into his knee had fucking hurt. Besides, he was positive that he’d never had a dream where he asked himself if he was dreaming and then stood around debating it.
Okay. You know what’s happening. You haven’t wanted to admit it, but there’s an explanation.
It went like this: he’d been beside the bomb when it blew, yet he’d woken without a scratch.
Which meant he hadn’t actually woken up. Instead, he’d suffered serious wounds and been rushed to the nearest hospital. He wasn’t wandering an empty version of Chicago; he was undergoing emergency surgery.
This was an anesthetic-induced fantasy. A lucid dream spun by his own mind.
He’d have preferred something in the Arabian harem style, fluttering silks and girls feeding him grapes. Or better yet, Claire’s bed on a Saturday morning with nothing to do but make love and breakfast. But his subconscious had the wheel, and it employed the materials at hand: a city gone empty and strange, people killing each other for no reason. Nightmares tended to be rooted in reality. That was what made them frightening.
Nonetheless, note to subconscious: Go fuck your hat.
Brody couldn’t say how long he’d been walking, but it had to have been an hour or more. Past gas stations and grocery stores, bars and restaurants, offices and El stops. As he drew closer to downtown, there were more cars stopped in the middle of the street. Empty, they waited at stoplights that did not shine, beneath grey skies in which no planes flew.
He had no destination. He was walking because he couldn’t think what else to do.
The skyline grew closer, the Willis Tower, the Chase, Franklin Center, scores of others huddled together like children’s blocks. The offices and homes of a million people. Not one light in one window.
After crossing beneath the eerily silent Dan Ryan Expressway—packed with unmoving cars, a traffic jam from hell—he reached the southbound leg of the Chicago River. The Cermak Bridge was an industrial expanse of metal gridwork painted the color of rust. To camouflage the actual rust, he supposed. The sound of his footfalls changed as he stepped onto the bridge. Lines of empty cars in both directions. He walked to the halfway point and leaned against the railing. The murky water looked cold, and the air smelled faintly septic. A cluster of branches speckled with sodden leaves drifted lazily. Had to give it to the subconscious; what it lacked in taste it made up in detail.
Brody didn’t like his theory, but he liked having one. A significant part of him wanted to freak out and start screaming. Having a theory helped keep that tamped down, even if it didn’t change anything. Lots of prevailing theories didn’t. Take the Big Bang:
So there’s literally nothing, not empty space but not-space, and then poof!, a singularity of infinite density just sort of happens, an unquantifiably small point that contains every scrap of everything that will ever be, every mote of dust and every sprawling galaxy, every piece of matter that will burn in the heart of a star, even time itself, and it explodes outward in all directions and 13,800,000,000 years later a boy is born to Sue and Glenn Brody, and they name him William. Pretty neat, but not useful when it came to making decisions.
When he looked up from the river he saw a cluster of figures at the far e
nd of the bridge. Relief washed over Brody. He wasn’t alone.
Then he saw that they were armed. Knives and bats and hammers, the same makeshift melee stuff as the strangers who had attacked him. Only this time there were ten of them—
No. Not just ten.
On the roof of a squat brick building, a line of armed men and women stood silhouetted against grey skies.
More watched from the balconies overlooking the river.
One even rose atop the bridge operator’s tower, a teenaged boy with long hair and a faded canvas duster. He had a bow in one hand, a quiver of arrows slung over his shoulder.
Brody turned, knowing what he’d see.
Another group stood at the other end of the bridge.
Idiot. He’d been caught up in his thoughts and let himself get surrounded. The moment had a cinematic surreality to it. Like an ambush in an old Western, the hero riding a dusty canyon with silent enemies lining the rim.
There have to be twenty of them. Maybe more.
They weren’t real. He was on an operating table. Doctors were working feverishly to save his life. There were machines humming and fluids in IV bags and anesthetic. He didn’t have to be afraid. These people were no more dangerous than daydreams.
Of course, it would suck to find out you’re wrong when one of them buries a claw hammer in your skull.
Brody spun in a slow circle, tried to think through the pounding of his heart. They all stared at him. Their clothes were dirty, their faces smudged. He still had the knife, the grip sweaty in his fingers, but what good would it do? He glanced over the railing, considered the drop to the river.
A man at the east end of the bridge raised a hand. Slowly, palm out, like a student in a classroom. The others waited.
Whatever was going on, the rules had shifted seismically. When the rules shift, you shift with them, or you lose. Brody returned the wave.
Through cupped hands, the man shouted, “Come say hi.”
“How about you come here?” Brody paused. “Just you.”
That caused a ripple, people muttering and shaking their heads. The man said, “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen, not the way you shine. How about a couple of us?”
