Reapers (Breakers, Book 4)

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Incoming!"

  A fax machine tumbled past Lucy, deflected from a railing, and smashed into the stairs directly below her. People screamed. A tail of debris clattered after it, peppering the troops, who leaned over the railing and shot up at the unseen assailants. In the tight space, the gunfire was so loud it hurt. Coffee mugs sailed from above, exploding in ceramic shards. Keyboards clattered down, spraying plastic keys. Lucy pressed herself against the walls and covered her head.

  Feet pounded up the steps above her. Shots crashed back and forth. The gunplay ended quickly. A man's moan drifted down the stairs. The troops climbed on. Three landings later, Lucy walked past a tangle of bodies. A man and a woman pressed bloody cloth to the chest of a Fed soldier whose white-gray camo was stained red.

  A few floors up, and a telephone fell from above, the receiver swinging wildly from its wire tether. Binders fluttered from the darkness and landed with heavy whacks. A whole tray of dishes descended in an icy shatter of porcelain. Half a plate sliced past Lucy's cheek, drawing blood. She pressed her palm to the wound. Above, the frontline soldiers charged up the steps but were forced down by gunfire. The defenders retreated a few floors, then resumed throwing debris. The rattle of kipple was too loud to hear the orders Ash shouted from above. At one landing, Lucy stepped over a body, its head mashed beneath a busted TV. The wounded sat against walls and put pressure on the flow of their blood.

  A frenzy of shots battered down from the stairwell and ceased abruptly. The climb continued. A couple floors up, six Kono lay dead across from just three defenders. Lucy hadn't fired her assault rifle since the salvo they'd let loose after the general's death. There had been no targets. The stairwell was a grade-A chokepoint. She began to doubt.

  But things got quiet for a while, relatively speaking. Feet smacked steps. Hard breathing whooshed from all sides. Spent brass clinked underfoot. Lucy climbed and climbed, thighs burning. Each level was identical to the last, a monotony of white walls and gray steps.

  Above, runners sprinted ahead, returning minutes later to report in to Ash and the acting Fed commander, both of whom were too far ahead for Lucy to hear. That was all right by her. She didn't need to know the ins and outs. She just needed to find the civilians—and she had a pretty good idea they'd be hiding behind the defenders. If she turned out wrong, and she had to search the building floor by floor, office by office, she'd probably take a flying leap from the top deck.

  Sixty floors up, Ash called a rest. According to the soldiers beside her, the scouts had met no resistance on the staircase ahead, but had heard men shouting behind the door to the 86th floor.

  "Top of the main structure," the trooper said. "Observation deck. Suppose Distro's plan is to let us climb ourselves to death?"

  Too soon, Ash called down from above, ordering them on. They took the remaining floors in under ten minutes and bunched up on the flights leading to the 86th, Lucy's face pointed at the ass of the man ahead of her. The troops fell quiet. Men whispered above. Hinges creaked. And then the world exploded.

  Grenades banged outside the stairwell. Machine guns opened fire with crashing drumbeats. Men yelled in shock and pain.

  "The burner!" Ash hollered, his knifelike voice slicing through the ruckus. "Bring up the burner!"

  Yellow light flared above. The whoomp of flame was followed by rising screams. Feet thumped away. The gunfire faded, muffled by the walls. The troops above her jogged up the stairs. She followed.

  Blood slicked the 86th floor landing. Past the doorway, the ground was snarled by a makeshift, torn-down fence of the extendable, seatbelt-like tape they used to shape lines of people at airport counters and had most likely used to corral the lines to the observation platforms. Bodies sprawled in the toppled poles, belts of fabric tangled around their limbs. The room was a yawning lobby enclosed with windows on all sides. The floor was scorched. Blackened bodies lay twisted on the marble, hands crisped into claws. It smelled like burnt fuel and charred hair and skin.

  Lucy swung to the right of the door and scanned the grounds. The main fight was shaping up around the south side of the tower. The enemy had retreated to the observation deck, firing through doorways and windows on the advancing Feds and Kono, turning the lobby into a killing field. Fed soldiers took cover behind a ticket counter and pounded the windows with fire, allowing Kono to rush through the doors on the east side of the lobby to circle around on the Distro resistance.

  All of which was very interesting, in a gruesome, terrifying, stenchy sense, but what really caught Lucy's attention was the women and children beyond the north windows. She ran to the northern doors and exited onto the platform. Bitterly cold wind slashed across her face. A bullet crashed into the limestone frieze behind her. She flung herself prone onto the bare deck—the wind had torn the snow away—and snapped off a shot at the old man who'd fired on her. He gasped and staggered into the wall fencing off the deck, which was waist-high stone topped with a tall metal grille that curved inward at the top. Civilians shrieked and fled down the deck.

  "Lucy?"

  Lucy whirled. Tilly tottered alone across the painted concrete. Her gaunt face had a yellow bruise below the left eye.

  Lucy ran to her and grabbed her arm. "It's time to get out of here. I'll roll you down the stairs if I have to."

  "I know," Tilly said vaguely.

  "I mean the whole damn city. Distro and everyone in it is going down. And if the truth gets out, this won't be the last of the fighting."

  Tilly nodded and turned for a last view of the city. For the first time, Lucy saw how high they'd climbed. The city rolled away to the north, mile after mile of sky-climbing towers, a patchwork of gray stone, black glass, and white spires. Streets carved straight rivers between the urban canyons in a lattice of snow. At the horizon, the towers faded into the wintry mists, giving Lucy's eye the idea that it might be endless, stretching forever into the fog, a globe-wrapping sea of buildings. And all those people, lost. It was so beautiful and sad it made her heart hurt.

  Shots blared from the south. Lucy guided Tilly to the doorway and peeked inside. Bullets crossed between the Feds holed up behind the counter and the Distro troops beyond the windows, but the Kono were about to pincer them. If it worked, the fight wouldn't last much longer. She took Tilly's hand and crossed the lobby in a dead sprint. Bullets whirred off the concrete floor. She threw herself through the stairwell door.

  Inside, the landing had been converted to a triage center. Doc looked up at her, glasses smudged with blood, then returned to his patient, whose neck spurted blood with each pump of his heart. Lucy ran down the stairs, Tilly's feet slapping right behind her.

  Lucy didn't talk for a good long while. Isolated in the stairwell, with the gunfire a faint crackle overwhelmed by the sound of their shoes, it was as if she'd been caught up in a dream or a spell, one that might snap if she were to interrupt it with speech.

  "I've been waiting for you to come back," Tilly said finally. "He's been beating on me ever since you tried to take me away."

  "Why didn't you just run?"

  "I wasn't allowed out by myself. I tried to talk to the guards, but he'd scared them too bad. They wouldn't even talk to me."

  "He comes off like he's got a level head, but he's a psycho." Lucy shrugged her pack up her shoulders. "Probably have to be to run an organization like this, but he takes it to another level. First time I met him he was happy to execute me. And he did business with aliens. Can you believe that?"

  "He said he'd killed you," Tilly said. "But I never believed him. I told him, 'Then show me the body. Because people been wanting Lucy dead for years, self included, and she always gets out fine.' And he wouldn't. So I knew you were alive." She jabbed Lucy in the ribs. "So what took you so long?"

  "He shot me, for one. Then it took a couple weeks to convince the rest of the city to burn Distro to the ground. Next time, I'll try to move my ass."

  Tilly laughed. It sounded good. "What did I do to deserve a friend like you?"


  "Your dad's the only one who ever cared whether I made it to the next day. You want to thank somebody, thank him."

  "All these years I thought he wanted you there because you were pretty. That you were trying to take him away from me. Why do we think such dumb things when we're young?"

  "We start off thinking the whole world is about us," Lucy said. "Once you learn how little it cares about you, that's when you stop taking things personal."

  Bodies littered the next landing. They stepped around them, shoes squicking in the blood. For several flights afterward, the stairs were a mess of broken glass, busted laptops, shattered monitors, and loose paper. Lucy kept her head on a swivel to watch above and below, wary for Distro snipers looking to score a cheap kill, but they were alone together. They reached the ground floor landing without bumping into a living soul.

  Tilly was unarmed. Lucy unstrapped her new pistol from her ankle and handed it over. She turned the handle of the door and eased it open, keeping her body back from the gap. At the other end of the corridor, two Kono aimed their rifles at her motion.

  "It's Lucy," she said, ducking from sight. "Got someone I need to question."

  "Come on out," a man said.

  Lucy stepped out, gun at hand, then gestured Tilly after her. She walked down the marbled corridor, ready with a cover story, but the soldiers said nothing. Tilly crunched over the broken glass and held open the front door.

  The cold street never smelled so good. From the sidewalk, a smattering of Fed troopers watched them walk away. Lucy headed up Fifth Avenue and made a left on 34th, meaning to get away from the tower as quick as she could. Tilly's grin was as broad as the street. The few Fed soldiers holding down 34th eyeballed them, but offered no challenge. At the intersection, Lucy crossed Sixth and hooked up Broadway past an itty-bitty park separating the diverging boulevards. Trees hung over their heads. Lucy stopped and turned for a last look at the tower. The building thrust above the neighboring structures, head held so high you could hardly see the smoke wisping from its upper deck. Gunshots cracked the sky. Distro must have been putting up a pretty good defense.

  Footsteps crunched from the park. Tilly's head snapped back. Nerve's hand clamped her mouth shut. He grinned and put a pistol to the side of her head.

  30

  The bleacher staircase descended to a deeper darkness than the night. In the concrete cavern of the stadium interior, Ellie stopped to let her eyes adjust to the starlight trickling through the high windows on the outer wall. It was a world of silhouettes and suggested shapes, so dim she could hardly make out her feet against the bare floor. After a minute, she resumed walking, moving so slowly her shoes made no scrape at all.

  Concession stands lined the walls. The air was frigid and smelled of dust. Ellie didn't know the stadium or where they were going, but by all indications, the Kono had stashed a few hundred refugees here. It was the heart of winter. Six hours to search before dawn crashed the party. Assuming they weren't caught and killed first.

  She crept along the inner wall. Starlight shined on refrozen patches of meltwater. Ahead, dim light glowed from beyond the curve of the wall. She touched Dee's arm, pointed. Dee nodded. They edged closer. Metal buttons on Dee's coat were rubbing together and Ellie had half a mind to stop and cut them off, but the noise was so soft it was often lost in the whine of the wind outside the stadium.

  The light grew until she could nearly read the signs above the concessions. Around the bend, it glared from the lantern of a soldier standing in the middle of the floor, back turned.

  Ellie shrank into the frame of a closed door, pulling Dee down beside her. Dee's buttons clicked. The guard glanced over his shoulder, lantern shifting. He held position, frowning vaguely, then walked away down the wide corridor, taking the light with him.

  Ellie let out her breath and planted her hand on the concrete beside the door. A warm draft moved over her fingers. She bent her face to the sill.

  "What are you doing?" Dee whispered.

  Ellie lifted her other palm. Dee went quiet. A thin, warm wind touched Ellie's cheek. She got up and pressed her ear to the door, but heard nothing.

  "It's warm in there," she said, practically mouthing the words. "Warmth means people."

  Dee cocked her head and nodded once. Ellie reached for the handle. It moved. She turned it inch by inch until it disengaged with a click. She paused for any response from inside, then swung the door inward.

  It opened to a pitch black tunnel. Lukewarm air washed past her face. Dee moved past her. She guided the door closed, sealing them in blindness. She grabbed the hem of Dee's coat and walked forward, trailing her fingers along the wall, shuffling her feet in case they bonked into something solid.

  Her fingernails ticked against a frame. She pulled Dee to a stop and put her ear to the door. Muffled snores sounded from inside. Ellie groped for the handle and entered. To the side of a door, a lantern burned with just enough light to navigate the room, which was filled with single beds. These in turn were filled with bearded men and middle-aged women. Directly to her right, Mr. and Mrs. Talcott slept in neighboring beds.

  She exchanged a look with Dee, then began moving row to row. Ellie recognized a few of the faces. Farmers they'd questioned in the park. With no sign of Quinn or the sheriff, they returned to the tunnel, shuffled forward, and encountered another door, which entered to a room identical to the last: bare concrete—former storage, maybe—and crowded with beds. Halfway through the search, Ellie bent over an old man for a better look at his face. He sat straight up.

  "Looking for something?" he whispered.

  "Our room," Ellie said, adrenaline booming through her veins. "It's so dark we got lost."

  "Wrong one."

  "Are you sure?" Ellie stalled. She glanced up and was heartened to see Dee continuing to go row by row, but there were still multiple beds to check. "I don't know anyone they housed us with, but we talked to a couple people on the walk in. Quinn, a young man. And Oliver, an older fellow. Are they here?"

  "I don't know them," the man said. "Now hush up so I can sleep."

  Dee reached the end of the room and gave her a thumbs up. Ellie smiled politely at the old man and left, easing the door closed. They continued down the black tunnel. Ellie's fingernails scraped across another door, but she could feel a wall right ahead of them, too. An exit.

  She entered the side room. It was utterly dark. Ellie knelt with her back to the room, got a candle from her bag, and lit it with a Bic. The low orange light showed a room identical to the two others, but half the beds were empty. A woman turned in her sleep, disturbed by the light. Metal clanked. Her wrist was handcuffed to the frame of the bed.

  Ellie's heart climbed in her chest. She moved from prisoner to prisoner. They ranged in age from a young man no older than Dee to a bald geriatric with a face like a potato. Strangers, all of them. She gritted her teeth and stepped back.

  A cane was propped against the foot of the old man's bed. Ellie blinked, strode up to it, and brought the candle close. The cane was plain dark wood with a curved handle, but instead of a rubber stopper, its tip was tapered. She'd once seen it impale leaves in the woods of Saranac Lake.

  They'd shaved his head, his white goatee. In the darkness, she hadn't even recognized him.

  "It's the sheriff," she hissed. Dee crossed the room in a blink. Ellie put her hand over his mouth and gently shook his shoulder.

  His eyes popped open. Without his beard, the lines in his face stood out starkly, making him look ten years older. But the light in his eyes was as sharp as ever.

  "Oh," he said. "There you are."

  "Are you okay?" Ellie said. "Have you seen Quinn?"

  Hobson rubbed his eyes with his left hand. His right was cuffed to the bed. "These fellows aren't fans of the Geneva Convention, but if your girl can pull her tricks on this bracelet, I ought to be all right. As for Quinn? No. But I have an idea."

  The man in the bed next to him stirred. Ellie pressed her finger to her lips
. Dee set down her pack and got out a hairpin. She popped the cuffs in seconds. Hobson shook out his wrist, grimacing angrily, then pulled on his shoes and coat. He took up his cane and stood, knee buckling immediately. Ellie swooped in to catch him.

  "Thank you," he murmured. "I believe they've outsourced their nutrition program to the Viet Cong."

  "Outside," Ellie said.

  She moved for the door. He leaned on her for support, but there was no weight to his frame. She'd noticed him shedding pounds on the walk down from the lakes, but in the few days he'd been imprisoned, he'd become downright gaunt. In the hallway, Dee closed the door behind them.

  "I'm surprised they didn't kill you," Ellie said.

  "They had a mind to," Hobson said. "Until I let slip that I was a former airplane mechanic."

  "You were?"

  "Heavens, no. But I imagined they'd have a hard time throwing away a resource like that." He blinked at her in the candlelit tunnel. "How'd you get in here?"

  "Standard 'hose-rake grappling hook into the outfield bleachers' maneuver. You think you know where Quinn is?"

  "My captors brought me straight here. Under less warlike conditions, it's a sort of POW/labor camp; for the first few days, it was pretty quiet. Except when they were shouting at me about you two and our interest in their mandatory labor program. But I was able to take a look around. Then, this morning, they employed me in setting things up for the new arrivals."

  Footsteps clumped behind one of the doors. Ellie gestured to the exit. It fed into another tunnel. Gently, she closed the door. Another creaked open in the hallway they'd just left. The steps faded the opposite way.

  "As I was saying," Hobson whispered peevishly, "due to my mechanical 'expertise,' I was set to work reversing a lock—so it could only be operated from the outside."

  "Bit thin," Ellie said.