by Tom Doyle
We made our way to the other wing of the building and found a similar picture of cubicled desolation. The gunfire was muted; the shooters had gone up the stairway. We followed. For five floors, the gun blasts punctuated the echoes of running feet. We were stopped again on the ninth floor.
Someone had tripped the trap, and the way up was clogged with rubble. The door was swinging wide open, and the sounds of the firefight within were unmuffled. We stayed out of any line of fire, backs up against the wall. “Wait,” said Grace.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’m concerned that he’s allowed us to get so close.”
“We still have another floor to go,” I said.
“Not just in the building,” she said. “Did he want us to come to Kiev?”
Like the Russians at Chernobyl, I thought. He would get people to the ground of his choosing.
“Allowed us to get so close?” said Dale. “I was practically carrying the planes on my back.”
I responded to Grace. “You’re wondering if it’s a trap. It almost certainly is. But it does no good to try to dodge his traps. He’s had a century to look at the future. We just have to beat the probabilities he’s seen. We have to be better than he expects.”
As we entered the ninth floor, I saw the message on the door. “Welcome to the ninth circle. No stairway to heaven for you. Please take the elevator.”
Well, if the writer was Roderick, nice of him to make his snare somewhat obvious. Once in that metal box he could do almost anything to us, though each option had problems. Dropping the elevator ten floors might seem the most straightforward path, but that wouldn’t necessarily do much damage to alert craftspeople. Remote-operated firepower waiting for the door to open on the tenth floor would be simple enough, but he’d have to cover the near corners or risk someone getting through. Keeping us locked in for killing at leisure might be his best bet.
We reached the ninth floor elevator bank just in time to see a woman’s body slump to the ground and the doors closing behind someone else. “Rude of them not to hold it for us,” I said.
“Shh,” said Grace. “Listen.”
We stood close to the doors and heard the hum of the elevator moving the short way up the shaft. A muffled chime sounded, and the doors quietly rumbled as they rolled open. Automatic gunfire exploded in a ten-second burst. The doors rumbled shut.
A voice said something, and then we heard the visceral male screams of someone not in terror, but in such pain that they can do nothing else. The screams were muffled, but they continued for five of the longest minutes in my life.
When the horror finally ceased, we stepped away from the doors. “Gunfire, a pause, and then screaming,” said Grace. “Explanation?”
Scherie closed her eyes as if in pain and responded to its cause. “Not this time, motherfucker.”
“What is it?” asked Dale.
“It’s Roderick,” said Scherie, opening her eyes again. “It’s definitely his power up there.”
“You’ve heard about the fight at Chernobyl?” asked Dale. We all nodded. “A survivor of that fight told me that Roderick took hits from seven shooters, then killed six of them. I figure he’s doing the same thing here. He’s letting people come up and shoot, then killing them.”
“So we go up,” I said. “All together, and try to get Scherie close enough to act.”
We pressed the button, the elevator opened, and we went in. The blood was sticky on the floor and splattered like abstract art on the walls, but no bodies. In Ukrainian, a pleasant woman’s voice spoke in the universal reassuring robot tones of automated service.
“What’s she saying?” asked Dale.
“Please touch the biometric lock to confirm your allegiance,” I said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
Grace wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I think I know,” I said. I touched it with my left hand. I felt a dark tingle from my navel through my hand, a bolt of pain like heart disease. The voice said, “Left Hand confirmed. Have a nice day!”
The elevator moved up.
“Nice trick,” said Dale.
“I’ll explain it later,” I said, not knowing whether he’d been in panglossic mode for the elevator’s last words.
The elevator opened. Like the one who’d gone up before us, we fired. It couldn’t hurt. But no one living was there to greet our bullets. We hustled out.
Around the corner, just down the corridor, lay the bodies. They had been butchered—no, ripped apart—and the various parts arranged in piles. A small pyramid of heads looked upon us with flat-eyed stares. Some of the arms and legs still twitched with some little taste of Left-Hand magic that they’d acquired.
Quietly, almost to herself, Scherie had started swearing again.
Beyond the bodies, in a darkened part of the corridor, was the distinctive glow of a smartphone screen, resting against something, upright and above the ground. The phone.
“It appears,” said Grace, still scanning the hall for hostiles, “that these are the remains of the top craftsmen and women of Ukraine.”
“Not all of them,” said Dale. He would be thinking of Roman.
“No,” agreed a male voice in English. “Not all.”
Into the hallway stepped the robed and masked figure of the Red Death. We fired right into him, and he laughed at us as pieces of his robe were blown away.
“Hold your fire!” Dale shouted. I didn’t know why the heck he wanted that, but he was the expert, so I stopped firing. “You,” said Dale to the Red Death. “If you want a fight, take off your damned mask.”
“But these are my party clothes,” said the Red Death.
“We’ve been fooled by this party trick before.”
“Very well, but you won’t recognize me.” He reached up and, with hands in incongruous black rubber gloves, pulled off the mask. Underneath was the face of a golden-haired Slavic angel.
Grace said, “He matches intel.”
Scherie said, “Fuck it, I know his power. Get out, dead man!”
“Fire!” I said.
But Roderick was moving faster than anything I’d seen. He grabbed Dale’s rifle out of his hands and clubbed him aside with it. Then he went for Grace. Even as she rapidly fired the flesh-ripping needles through him, his gloved hand struck out like a cobra for her throat.
“Thou shalt not!” The voice came from me. It was not a prayer.
Roderick’s hand opened, trembling in interrupted rage, and Grace fell back onto the floor. Through gritted teeth, he asked, “What was that you said?”
But Scherie was already there, gripping his extended arm. “Roderick, you sisterfucking parasite from a dollar-store hell, get out!”
An explosion of craft, and the flash of a black-lit Left-Hand spirit. And Roderick, the greatest evil of the age, fell to the ground.
I was on him, hacking him apart with my sword.
“He’s gone,” said Scherie.
“Yes, but you know (hack) these Left-Hand bodies (hack) keep going (hack, hack).”
Grace got up, touching her throat as if it had been contaminated. Dale was more energetically rubbing his clubbed shoulder.
Before anyone else could ask the inevitable question about Roderick’s fate, I said, “That was far too easy.”
Dale said, “Speak for yourself.” But his face had a grim resignation.
“Another second, and I wouldn’t be speaking at all,” said Grace. But she too wasn’t rejoicing at this sudden victory.
“Scherie?” I asked, as I threw the limbs and head as far away as I could from each other.
“I felt him leave, but it was more like driving out a possessor.”
“Shit,” said Dale, hand to his forehead. “It’s the natural extension of the Left-Hand path.”
“What is?” I asked.
Just then, from the far end of the corridor where the phone sat, something groaned.
* * *
We went forward slowly, checking for conventional and
craft booby traps, gingerly stepping over the body parts and pools of blood. As we approached the phone, the view became clearer. The phone was strapped to a groaning body that sat slumped in a leather office chair, its face fallen forward and hidden.
The body was a twisted thing. Like an insect, it had six quivering black limbs, but these were too thin to have ever supported the weight of the torso, which was still all too human. Black chitinous wings extended to the sides, humming with vibration.
“Who … who are you?” asked Dale. But I think he knew. The man-thing raised his head, and Scherie gasped, for it was Roman’s bearded face. His eyes were bloody sockets.
When he spoke, his voice was very weak, but he seemed like the old Roman, unchanged with his Slavic cowboy accent.
“Dale, ol’ pardner, is that you? Howdy, and congratulations. Like the cavalry, yes? But too late this time. I tried to run from my failure and failed at that.”
His eyeless sockets turned toward me. “Forgive me, Father Endicott, for I have worn the black hat. But I paid for it, yes? He blinds me to mock my ancestors, but not before he shows me my new hands and feet. I think—no, I’m sure—he leaves me living just long enough to say ‘howdy’ to you. I am message.”
“You tried to stop him,” I said.
“I drew, but he drew faster. He’ll always draw faster.”
“Why didn’t you wait for me?” Scherie cried.
“Scherie baby, alone, you can drive him from body to body like a cow along the trail, but remember, he’ll always find another.”
As if this confirmed something for him, Dale asked, “Where is he now?”
“Ah, you knew this one here was, how you say, the fake McCoy. He looks more like you now. He said you should have stayed at home.”
Dale nodded as if that were an answer. I asked, “What else can we do to make you more comfortable?” A nice euphemism for what we’d have to do.
“Ask not what you can do for me, but what I can do for you. I have a weapon against him. In last bit of sneaky, I swallow evidence. It is some little needle of his brain. If you can remove his spirit from body, you can bind him to needle. If you can, ha, remove needle from me, you will make me, as you say, more comfortable, and give you box to catch him in.” He waved an insect arm. “But wait … there’s a woman at his house. Lara. Please see to her.”
“Where is his house?”
He recited some coordinates. “I knew numbers in case need to blow him up. You’ll find house at Babi Yar Park.”
“Of course,” said Dale, with real anger. He seemed as disturbed by this address as anything that had happened today.
“Now, everything is clear, yes?”
I brought out my .45. “Are you ready?”
He sighed. “If anyone ever asks, tell them I was very sorry.” His insect arm sketched a rough sign of the cross. “Now, please.”
“Lord, into your hands I commend his spirit.” With that prayer, I shot Roman once in the head.
“I can do the rest,” said Dale, pulling out a knife.
“Thank you, but no,” I said. I didn’t want to burden any of my friends with this. Quickly and coldly, I cut open Roman’s stomach with my sword and retrieved the plastic needle.
* * *
Afterward, we looked at the sheet of paper that had been pinned to Roman’s body above the phone, marked in odd letters.
“That’s Greek,” Scherie said.
“It says, ‘to the fairest,’” said Grace. Like the old myth of Troy, Roderick had left this phone as some kind of apple of discord, dangling some promise of life extension to the first to make the call. Not trusting any of our options for destroying it, we left it there.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
“Are we done here?” I asked. Besides the obvious reasons for haste, some other urgency was tugging like a frightened angel.
“We should get downstairs,” said Dale. “They’ll have the Left-Hand labs in the lowest basement floors.”
“Why?” We needed to get to Roderick’s house, and I could guess what we’d find in this building’s basement. Besides the human simulacra, we’d see the means with which Roderick had transformed Roman.
“Roderick has switched bodies,” said Dale. “We only have a rough idea of what he looks like now.”
“Do you think he’ll try to hide?” I asked.
“From us?” Dale shook his head. “I doubt it. But we may not find him anyway, and other people need to have a clear idea of who they’re looking for.” Before, Dale’s ability to empathize with Roderick and the Left Hand would have appalled me, but now I was grateful someone could guess the monster’s moves.
We went back toward the elevator. Before we could press the call button, all the lights went out, and the emergency LED strips came on. “Shit,” said Dale. “They’ve finally cut off the power.”
“That means they’re coming in,” said Scherie.
“We can try the other stairwell,” said Grace. “The craft traps may have departed with Roderick, or we can try to disarm them.”
But they hadn’t cut off all the power. We heard the distinct hum of elevators moving.
“Sounds like Roderick’s elevator traps and tests are cleared,” said Dale.
“They’ll have the stairwell covered too,” I said.
“Let’s hide out for a while,” suggested Scherie.
Before we could discuss it, the world went fish-eyed. “Thanks, Grace,” I said.
“Wait,” said Dale, as the elevator hum moved closer. “You’re Roderick. You’re a Morton. You’ve killed everyone you could, but you’ve left the building with some of your worst enemies alive inside. As a bonus, more people are coming into the building. What would you do?”
“Try to bury us like Abram nearly buried him,” I said, and the urgency tugged at me in agreement. This building, like H-ring or most any craft facility, would almost certainly be pre-equipped for self-destruction.
“OK, listen up,” I said. “This is an order, Mortons. You’re to run down the intact stairwell. Grace, please go with them and assist with stealth and any remaining traps.” I couldn’t order Grace, but I hoped she’d agree with my plan.
“What are you going to do?” asked Grace.
“I’m going to clear the way out for you by taking command of the security force.” And save the Ukrainians.
Grace nodded, but Dale said, “We need to talk,” worried about either my sanity or the source of such power.
“Not now, Major. Go.”
As they hustled off for the stairway, I cleaned and sheathed my sword, then stood at command ready. Both elevators slid open simultaneously, revealing a mélange of Internal Troops and Militia. More guns were pointed at me individually than ever before in my life, and the bastards weren’t exactly observing trigger discipline.
Here goes nothing. “Attention!” I said. The Ukrainians stiffened upward from their combat crouches. The natural panglossic seemed to be working along with my amplified power of command, but some of their eyes were drifting to the signs of recent violence. The elevators tried to close. “Someone hold the dang doors.”
“Yessir,” they chorused, as one of them complied.
“There is an immediate bomb threat,” I said. “We’re evacuating, and I’m coming with you.”
I stepped into the already-crowded elevator like I owned it. “Press lobby. That’s goes for you in the other elevator too.” I hoped they obeyed. I felt like I was just giving orders naturally now. Someone’s pack kept our door from closing. “Ditch that pack, son.” Another man helped him remove it and threw it out of the elevator. The door closed.
“You there with the headgear,” I said. “Call downstairs and let them know they need to evacuate the building. I’ve sent some survivors down the stairwell. Give them cover as they exit.”
“Yessir.”
Like all elevators, this one took forever. Whatever surprise Roderick had in store could happen any second. Without anything more to order, a voi
ce in my head was giving me suggestions. Take over this country. You can’t do worse than the current government. Then, reassemble the Eastern Bloc, only this time, make it God-fearing under the Covenant. Then …
God help me, no.
We were approaching the bottom, so I finally had something else to think about. “When the elevator opens, you run for the exits. Use all available doors.”
I pressed myself against the elevator wall. The door opened. “Go!” They ran for the exits, where other security forces were waiting for them. I followed at a trot, last in line. Despite having reached the lobby first, the Ukrainians from the neighboring elevator were moving slower, which had been fine to stagger the evacuation, but it was time to tighten things up. “Run, you lazy assholes.” They ran, passing me.
The Mortons and Grace appeared. They looked at the running Ukrainians, stunned. But I was still in command mode. “Get the hell out of here!”
They ran, and I joined them. Outside, the Internal Troops and Militia police were waiting. All of them looked spooked, and some of them looked ready to arrest me, but I didn’t give them a chance. “The building is coming down. Everyone needs to get way the hell back, now.”
Each man and woman in the security forces faced outward again. The Mortons and Grace made for the direction of Scherie’s SUV. Just as the security line was starting to put some pressure on the remaining crowd, I felt the rumble in the ground below me and heard the explosion above me.
Instead of following my friends, I ran straight out, then hit the ground when I felt the building begin to pancake down into collapse.
Glass and debris shrapnelled out at me. I tried to skew the ballistics, but there were too many pieces all at once. A few painful scratches and jabs later, I got up and coughed on the dust. Great, probably the usual mix of asbestos and other poisons. Behind me stood a tall pile of rubble prickly with steel, and otherwise it was as if the building had never existed.
Before I could even check my injuries, the security forces were standing around me, at attention. Their eyes watered and they coughed at the dust, but no one raised a handkerchief or cloth to their face. They focused absolutely on me. So easy to use them.
