All that was behind the freak.
The freak was leaping, hauling Tice—or Tice’s body—with it. The freak landed on a display case. Shattered glass sent gems flying, scattered sunlight through the diffused space.
Pretty.
Then the freak leaped again, leaped for McCrae. Moving too fast for Raddatz to keep a bead.
Then it was bloody hell.
Bare-handed, the freak tore, literally tore into McCrae. Fingers like hooks. Arms spinning like blades. Old-school Warner Bros. cartoon Tasmanian. Without the funny. Tore up McCrae, tore up what was left of Tice at the same time.
Fountains of crimson.
Chunks of meat.
Walls got painted.
Slaughterhouses were more genteel.
Screams coming, seeming to come from everywhere. Screams of death, of rage. Wails that begged God and woke the devil.
The freak was strong, was fast. Impossible. Freaks didn’t own multiple abilities. One. All they had was one. If they had more than one . . . straight fear talking to Raddatz: If freaks had more than one ability, how was a cop supposed to have a chance in hell of going against it and living?
Carmichael held fire, didn’t want to hit Tice or McCrae. Bad-cop fidelity. What was left of the cops was dead.
Raddatz jerked his trigger two, three times. The bullets took the target. Raddatz saw the hits, saw flesh rent, blood spurt.
To the freak three bullet wounds were nothing. Interfered with his continued violence none.
Carmichael got over his concerns, got to shooting. The low boom, the deep roar of his Benelli. Hell coming for the hellion. Came too slow. By the time his slugs got to the freak, the freak was gone. The slugs beat the shit out of a wall. The freak was taking air, arching for Carmichael. A whoosh, a streak as it slashed an arm forward. Then Carmichael’s head, separated from his body, was shattering through a glass display case. Coming to rest among a collection of eighty-plus-carat diamond pendants. Carmichael’s body did about five seconds of a headless-chicken dance. Dropped to the floor. Danced a little more. Purged some more blood from the top of its empty neck. Joined Tice and McCrae in being dead.
Strength, speed. Nearly invulnerable. Freaks didn’t have multiple abilities, Raddatz told himself. How was a cop supposed to have a chance in hell of going against it and—
The thing put feet to a wall, sprang off. Arching again. Arching for Raddatz.
Raddatz’s finger jerking the Colt’s trigger. Three more bullets for the freak. Two more hits. Same as before. No difference. The freak was not stopped.
The freak landed. The freak was right in front of Raddatz. Looking human, but so far removed from humanity. Chest blowing, eyes burning, bleeding but not dying. Hell-born, but a thing hell wouldn’t want.
And then it moved. Fast, like before. Violent. With its hands it grabbed. With its teeth it bit, cracked. Tore away the bones of Raddatz’s wrist. A sucking, popping sound.
And a scream from Raddatz. He saw his own hand, gripping his gun, flipping through the air.
And the freak: blood flesh-spilled from its mouth that curved with a smile.
Raddatz stepped back. Thought he was. Thought he was stepping back. He was falling backward. Took the ground hard. Instinct—a cop’s instinct, plain survival instinct—told him to get up, get back into things. If you’re gonna die, die. But die fighting. Die taking the thing with you. So Raddatz tried to scramble off, push himself back up. He slipped on his own blood. His stump useless for helping out in the effort to stand. Good for nothing except causing him pain, bleeding massively.
No getting up. No getting back into the fight. The next couple of seconds held nothing but the remainder of his life. Just time enough to consider: eyes closed or open? Does he go out like a man, watch death coming? Does he shut his eyes and pick that one last image to ride to eternity with?
Eyes closed. He conjured his wife, his boys.
Please, God, let ’em know my last thought was of them.
He calmed none. Held his family tight in his mind. Took a quick hit of every emotion he’d ever felt.
Please, God.
Please . . .
Thunder is its own thing, he’d always thought. When Raddatz was a boy, when his father taught him, as good fathers do, to count the seconds between lightning and thunder to figure how far off a storm was, Raddatz just got it into his head thunder is different from lightning. And it is. But they’re partners. It takes lightning to make thunder—the sound of a vacuum collapsing when air is riven by electricity. So when he felt it, when Raddatz felt the sharp bite of charged particles racing above him, he knew it was lightning when he heard the thunder. Heard the animal scream of the freak as it fried. Smelled flesh that was bone-roasted.
Then there was nothing but the sound of breathing.
His own. His own was all that remained.
His shaking, convulsing diminished. Volition returned. Raddatz used it to open his eyes. The world swam around him. A mile away, maybe just ten feet, was the freak. Burned, obviously. Skin charred where it wasn’t just cooked away. Probably dead. It was motionless enough to be dead. There were bodies about, body parts about. Blood everywhere. All that remained of his former fellow cops. Raddatz’s head moved in some direction. Actual geography was lost to him. Upside down to him was a woman. A female anyway. She was little older than a girl. A teen. She wore a shirt that both quoted some urbanism and showed midriff. Baggy pants that peekabooed the thong her parents must have hated her wearing. Such a normal girl. Other than the arc of electricity that crawled around her clenched fists. Three cops dead. Raddatz dying. The freak that had done all that stopped by a youth with tricky fingers.
Her mouth moved. She spoke to Raddatz, her voice lost to him. His senses failing him.
Fading. He was fading. Blood was flowing from him. Life was slipping from him.
As he traveled on, Raddatz caught up with the words of the girl as both her voice and his life headed for eternity.
The girl had said: “Don’t be afraid.”
There’s something about dying, Eddi. There’s something about it that—”
“That drives you insane?” Eddi talked through the pain in her head, the pain in her wrists; the cuffs biting into her flesh. “You didn’t die.”
Raddatz didn’t take Eddi’s acid as insult or sarcasm. He took it as point of fact.
“I died, Eddi. I did die. If not technically, then I had the NDE that changes you. How could I die and not get changed?”
“You’re not changed. You’re fucked-up!” Words delivered with a spray of the blood that filled her mouth.
“You’ve never been pushed to a state above and beyond every other thing you used to believe, Eddi?”
“Stop saying my name!”
“There’s never been a time you’ve done things never mind the consequences, others might find . . .” From a picket: Eddi’s .38. The gun that was meant to kill Raddatz.
“You deserve to die.”
“I do.” No argument from Raddatz. Just an expression of sadness. “But not how you think. I deserve to die because . . . They aren’t freaks, Eddi. They are different than us. They’re—”
“They’re fucking mutants!”
“They’re not afraid.”
“They ought to be scared. Kill me, but that’s not going to stop us from taking out every last—”
“They’re not afraid as we know fear. That girl: If she’d been identified by the police, what would have happened to her? A warrant would have been issued. She would have been hunted. Maybe killed. Her family sent inside just for being her family, for never having turned her in to the cops. but she knew she had to try and stop the metanormal that was in the middle of killing me. That is, if it didn’t kill her. If the police didn’t kill her. There’s a difference between us and them. Not in their abilities. Not in being genetically better. What sets the best of them apart from us, sets them to a degree above us, is so basic, but beyond you and me. Metanormals, the ones who
believe in good aren’t scared of doing what’s right. Facing persecution, without regard to self, no matter the law, they’re not afraid of serving a higher cause. Serving mankind. Isn’t that what lifts our species above common animals; to do good without regard? And isn’t that what holds our species back; the inability to give selflessly? And I know you’re thinking: Cops; we do that. Give of ourselves. We put our lives on the line to fight them. But we fight from a place of fear. Stop them, or they’ll destroy us. Stop them, or they take over. Stop them.
“They don’t fight from fear. They fight for right. For all. They fight to end fear. That young girl, when she gave me life, she took my fear.”
“You’ve got no fear. That makes you a, a traitor now? She saved your life, so you kill cops.”
“They’re using you, Eddi. Do you understand? They used Soledad, now they’re using you.”
Just the mention of her name. Soledad. Enough to slow Eddi down. No matter she’d been pummeled, no matter she was on the floor cuffed, for the first time since she’d gotten her sense back Eddi listened.
“What do we fear?” Raddatz asked. “What are we all scared of? A return to the days before San Francisco. The metanormals—the good, the bad—going at each other in the middle of Downtown LA, or New York, or Atlanta. We’re scared of this ’cause we’ve been told to be scared.”
“Because more than half a million people got killed on May Day.”
“And do you think if Pharos hadn’t gone after Bludlust, things would’ve turned out different, the city wouldn’t have been torn in half? When that happened, we said to our leaders: Not again. Do what you have to, but never again. So there was the Executive Order, there were the MTacs and the deportations and the SPAs. The government could do what it wanted, when it wanted, in the name of security. I know, Eddi, I know what you’re gonna say. It was, it is, a time of war. We need to protect ourselves and do so extraordinarily against an extraordinary enemy. But do you think the desire for power is limited to metanormals? Ordinary people want to be extraordinarily. What genetics hasn’t given them, the law grants them. The Executive Order gave men power.
“But memories fade, Eddi. Every day the past slips farther and farther away. People don’t remember May Day as much as they recall the sight of cops with HKs taking out metanormals in the middle of the street. You’ve seen it, the rise of what’s called freak fuckers; the liberal fringe. How much longer before their voice takes hold, the Excecutive Order gets rescinded? Metanormals get rights again? There is that fear. It cuts deep among normal men who value their power. It’s why someone like Soledad got persecuted for taking half a step outside the law.”
“She got roasted because the brass was trying to cover up kickbacks.”
“They tried to punish her to hide others’ crimes. So you get it? People in power will do what they can to keep their power. Power never cedes except by force.”
Eddi was getting the feeling she was going to be where she was for a while. She was losing the feeling in the arm she was lying on. She rolled, tried to find comfort. All she found was more hard floor. More hurt.
“I’ll tell you honest, Eddi. I’ve used my position to advance my objectives. I won’t participate in hunting metanormals anymore. Not ones who aren’t a threat.”
“They’re all a threat.”
“If they were, I wouldn’t be standing here.”
“And you decide that, you and your cadre? Which ones are trouble and which aren’t.”
“If we knew of a metanormal who committed a crime, was in the act of planning the commission of a crime, then we processed him. Got that intel to MTac. Otherwise, we lost a number of metanormals in mountains of paperwork.”
“You’re protecting them.”
No denial. Not even a modifier. “Yeah. Myself, a few others I was able to persuade.”
He was doing a lot of talking. Giving up a lot of information. Eddi knew things were heading in one of two directions. Raddatz was going to offer her some kind of a deal, or he was going to kill her. As she wasn’t dead yet, as Raddatz was rapping like a Buddhist monk on E, Eddi held out hope.
Raddatz: “Careful as we were, we couldn’t keep ourselves off the radar forever. People were getting suspicious.”
“People?”
“The department. IA.”
For Eddi IA equaled Tashjian. She was hurting again. This time in her gut.
“And then,” Raddatz went on, “the killings started. Metanormals, sympathizers. Fernandez, maybe.”
“That wasn’t your people?”
“No.”
“If you’re going to tell me it was IA . . .”
“It’s not them. This is . . . we are on the edge of a whole other destiny.”
“Quit fucking around!” Hurt. Humiliated. Whatever was coming Eddi was ready to get to it. Enough with the setup. “What’s the situation?”
“Someone’s killing metanormals. Those I’d call innocent. Harmless. But as harmless as they might be, they’re not defenseless. It’s a single perp. As far as I believe, one-on-one, it takes a metanormal to kill a metanormal. But if this went public—”
“Freaks going to war again.”
“The fear of another San Francisco. That’d be the end of the liberal voice and the push for the return of metanormal rights. It would give more power to the guys in power.”
“You, your little cadre: You hid this info.”
“And we tried to find the killer. But somewhere, someone started to see a pattern: intel they weren’t getting, information that was being misdirected. They couldn’t prove anything. They seemed to believe they couldn’t put any of their people inside to watch us.”
“But Soledad was at DMI.”
Raddatz nodded. Up and down, but the motion was sideways to Eddi’s skewed view of the world.
Raddatz said: “She got the charge to get evidence, to shut us down. Or, better, if things worked out that way, to stop us with force.”
“To kill you.”
Nothing from Raddatz this time.
From Eddi: “That’s bullshit. That’s the most fucked-up . . . I’ve had perps popped red-handed who could spin better lines.”
For a minute, for nearly that, Raddatz stood. Just stood. He took Eddi’s words, her crack about all he’d said being bullshit, about as well as a boxer—beaten, beat up, struggling through round fourteen of fifteen—would take a long-delayed but well-laid blow. He was done. He was through. A husk that’d just had a hole riven through it exposing it as the empty vessel that it is. Raddatz could not reach Eddi, and that finished him.
He put Eddi’s gun down on the floor. “Do you remember”—Raddatz empty in spirit, empty in voice when he spoke—“how you felt the day after May Day? The hate I had is still so clear to me.” With his hook Raddatz pushed Eddi’s piece toward her. “When the girl saved my life, everything I used to believe was taken from me. But what I believed in was hate. My hate was replaced with the burden to . . . not to do what the law said was right, but to do what I knew was right. I fucked that up, and my fucking up cost people their lives. Now I’m alone in my efforts. Maybe I’ve got a chance to make things correct, but if it’s a chance at all, it’s a slim one. Before the guys in power can make a grab for more I have to buy the metanormals time.”
“Time for what?”
“For the truth to come. For revelation to set them free. But now’s the time to do something, or do nothing. To do right or just let evil play. What’s it gonna be, Eddi?” With her gun still lying on the floor before her Raddatz stepped around behind Eddi. She felt him work her cuffs. She felt the metal give up its bite.
The gun right there. A trick. Had to be.
“What’s it going to be, Eddi?”
“I pick up the gun, I try to shoot you, what: Your superfriend’s going to crush my skull?”
Ra shook his head no.
The gun.
“Maybe all this is just to test me, to see if I’d flip over to the freaks’ side.”
&nbs
p; “Or maybe all this is the truth. Maybe, crazy as it is, you and me ended up here for a reason. Even if the reason is just to kill me. And if that’s the way things are,” nodding for the gun, “pick it up, do your job. Tell your bosses you got a freak fucker. An insurgent. You’ve preserved the order of their world for them.”
Eddi picked up the gun, couldn’t feel it. Just the throb of blood pumping back into her hands. Pumping hard. Her heart was exhausting itself. She was swimming in gore. Eddi was, in her head, back in the alley on the edge of doing what she’d come to do. Make things right, yeah, but make things right for Soledad.
The blood in her hands felt like it was going to purge from her flesh. Bust right through it.
Raddatz stood where he was. Gave off nothing. If this was it, this was it. Whatever was coming he was ready to take.
Not a trick. He was okay to die.
Kill him. For Soledad, kill him.
Her head, hands ached. Fucking ached. Eddi felt her hurt so clear . . .
But she did not feel . . . she could not sense what was outside, what was a mile away. She couldn’t smell the fragrance of a freshly perfumed girl sitting in her car on Beverly Boulevard, or hear the whisker-snap of a shaving guy in Torrance. All that was lost to her. She was just in a little dark room somewhere. She was not hyperaware of anything. She did not sense or feel death. For the minute there wouldn’t be any killing.
“One more time, Raddatz. Tell me everything.”
She sat looking down at the tabletop, staring at it. Through it. It was glass. So, really, it was the floor at which she was staring. The kitchen floor. A stain from some Chef Boyardee ravioli that one of the kids had spilled onto the tile and she’d managed to miss since . . . Raddatz’s wife asked herself when was the last time the kids had eaten Chef Boyardee?
She was calming down. But still she asked: “Why?”
“Same as always. Nailing a perp is only half the job. It’s the paperwork that—”
“Why now?”
There was some world-saving to be done. Double-dealing by the establishment had to be put down. But before all that, Raddatz had to do some damage control with the missus. He was only supposed to have walked a few blocks to grab some magazines. A couple hours had passed. A couple of hours Raddatz had spent doing a nasty dance with Eddi Aoki in the basement of a half-built/never-finished apartment building in Studio City. A cop’s wife, her man all of a sudden does a fade, no matter how many years she’s been living with possibilities, it’s understandable if she goes a little nuts. So Raddatz had to tell a few lies about an incident that’d gone down in plain view. Lies about having to step in, assert himself as the law—as cops are never really off-duty—until some uniforms hit the scene.
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