by Jon Land
“Then I’ll have to finish it another way, won’t I?”
“This is a government installation, Leeds. When the morning shift comes on, you’re finished.”
“That is precisely my hope.”
“That they find the bodies I did?”
“There are more you haven’t found yet.”
Kimberlain tried to make sense of it. Below him the hissing had stopped, the canister’s contents spent. “The authorities get here and find the building ravaged.”
“Security breached, an inexplicable tragedy. But the money, ah the money. They will have no choice, will they?”
And then Kimberlain realized. “It will be shipped immediately to the Federal Reserve Banks.”
“But the banks haven’t the facilities to hold it, so they will have no choice but to put the currency into circulation through member banks ahead of schedule.” Leeds paused and breathed deeply. “The deaths will begin within a week at most. Unexplained, perhaps even unnoticed at first. Then they will multiply. Panic will set in. I will enjoy that.”
Kimberlain’s face wrinkled in disgust.
“You can enjoy it, too. You deserve better than what this world has given you. In my world you would belong. You are an outcast, Ferryman. The old world shuns you. You do the things you do to gain acceptance, but it will never come because you are not one of them.” He gazed behind him at Peet and Tiny Tim. “You are one of us.”
“Sorry, Leeds. The only thing we have in common is we both do the things we do to please ourselves. If we accept who we are, that’s enough. I’m trying to. You can’t.”
“Is that so?” the madman posed, intrigued. “Tell me what you mean. Please.”
“Fear, Leeds. You live and breathe off it because it forms a shield that keeps you from seeing yourself. You don’t see yourself in the mirror; the only place you can see your reflection is in the eyes of your victims gazing back at you. Only when you look into them does your shape please you. You think this new world of yours, this ninth dominion, is going to please you? Forget it. Because you won’t be feared, and without that you won’t be at all.”
Leeds took a step forward. “Why don’t you ask your friend what he sees in the new order? Why don’t you ask what made him see the truth?”
Kimberlain looked at Peet again. The bald giant had moved still closer to Tiny Tim. Why? His eyes seemed to dart toward the canister by the Ferryman’s feet.
“Join us, Ferryman,” Peet said.
“No can do, Winston.”
“Very well,” followed Leeds. “Have it your way. Kill him, Peet.”
Peet started forward, then swung back toward Tiny Tim and smashed him across the face with interlocked fists. Tiny Tim’s head snapped back in whiplash fashion. He maintained the sense to try to resteady his submachine gun, but by then Peet had already slammed against him, going for the trigger himself.
Kimberlain had meanwhile grabbed the backpack full of GS-7 and burst into a rush. He was halfway back to the skylight when Peet’s hand closed on the trigger of the gun still held by Seckle.
“No!” Leeds screamed, realizing at last what was about to happen.
Peet aimed the burst from Seckle’s machine gun forward and down, the heat of the bullets igniting the freed gas. Kimberlain had already thrown himself headlong behind a roof abutment when the shots rang out. The move shielded him from the fireball that blew a hefty measure of the rooftop off. The entire depository building trembled. The percussion of the blast cracked ceilings and walls. Flames from the roof jetted down through the cracks as far as they could reach, smoke billowing ahead of them. The fire alarm wailed. The building’s sprinkler system snapped on to no avail.
Leeds landed near Tiny Tim, who immediately turned his weapon on the fleeing Peet.
“Kill him!” Leeds raged, watching the Ferryman dive through the skylight he had earlier used to reach the roof. “Kill him!”
Tiny Tim emptied his clip in Peet’s wake as the giant hurled himself over the edge of the building.
“No! Kimberlain!” Leeds screamed. His eyes watched the Ferryman disappear through the skylight. “The money!” he followed, turning back toward Tiny Tim. “We’ve got to protect the money! That’s where he’ll go now. Stop him! Do you hear me? Stop him!”
Chapter 38
KIMBERLAIN DROPPED DOWN through the skylight and hit the floor hard. Pain surged through his feet and ankles, adding to the beating his body had already absorbed from the percussion of the roof blast. His ears were still ringing, and he felt blisteringly hot all over. He moved down the stairs, braced against the wall.
Thanks to Peet, there was still a chance to stop the ninth dominion. If Kimberlain couldn’t blow the whole building, at least he could blow those floors on which the money was located. Garth Seckle would be heading that way too, though, and success meant having to deal with him.
And what of Peet? He had glimpsed the giant lunging toward the edge of the building, perhaps to his death at last. He had saved Kimberlain and perhaps much more in the process by giving the Ferryman this opportunity to destroy the poisoned money.
Kimberlain came to a bend in the hallway, groping his way through the smoke, when he spied a huge figure just ahead. Instinct made him lunge for what he believed to be Tiny Tim. Instead a familiar voice found his ear.
“It’s me, Ferryman.”
“You had me fooled, Winston.”
“Leeds, too, fortunately. After his people came for me at the cabin, it was easy to make him think I had joined him, because that is what he wanted to believe. I knew you would be coming wherever he was, and I had to be there, to destroy him and whatever lurks within me once and for all.”
“You jumped off the building.”
“And landed on a ledge.” Peet wiped the sweat and grime from his face. “We are meant to finish this together.”
“The money,” Kimberlain said.
“Leeds showed me. We must destroy it, Ferryman.”
Kimberlain leaned against the wall and stripped the pack from his shoulder, the plan already formed. “You’ve got to go to the lowest level.”
“The ovens?”
“Turn them on. Turn them on so they’ll ignite the aerosol I’m going to finish releasing through the building.”
The difficulty of the logistics was just beginning to occur to the Ferryman. Even if he were able to succeed on the roof in a second attempt, it would take several minutes at the very least for the GS-7 to spread through the ducts. Unless, unless …
Kimberlain reached into his pack and handed Peet one of the canisters. “Release this before you’ve turned the ovens on,” he said. “When it blows, it’ll carry the flames faster up to the aerosol I’m going to release into the building.”
Peet started off, still eyeing the Ferryman.
“Tiny Tim will be down there,” Kimberlain warned.
“I know,” the giant said.
Kimberlain and Peet had each gone their separate ways into the thick haze. The sprinkler systems continued to spray water throughout the building, dissipating the smoke to some degree. Cautiously, Kimberlain retraced his steps back to the roof, amazed when he got there at the damage a single canister had wrought.
The Ferryman found eight ventilation baffles still intact and spent seven minutes emptying his remaining GS-7 canisters into them. He would trust the rest to Peet, while he spent the few remaining minutes searching for Leeds. If the madman survived here today, the risk of the ninth dominion rising another day was all too real. Leeds would disappear into yet another identity and the preparations would begin anew.
The depository was a massive building, and Leeds could have been anywhere within it. But the Ferryman believed he knew where Leeds would head with his operation now in jeopardy, and he started for the stairs to join him there.
The videotape Arthur Whitlow had made had taught Leeds how to operate the massive printing machines contained on the first two aboveground floors of the depository. The entire process was c
omputer keyed and controlled. The presses themselves looked like massive automatic-teller dispensers. Various lights flashed continuously as their huge slots spit out large sheets of bills and fed them toward the automatic cutting apparatus, which in turn passed them along to be stacked and bound.
Andrew Harrison Leeds turned all the switches to ON. A hum filled the air. The machines began to go about their business, as if there were business to do. In his mind, Leeds could see his death-charged money spewing from the presses in blinding fashion. He followed the imaginary process on foot to the cutting station where he envisioned the massive sheets cut sixty-four ways and fed along the belt. Excess edges were automatically swept aside into a shredder. Everything else moved on to be stacked and bound. His mind showed him piles a hundred bills thick appearing by the second and being sent along to be packed in bushels and wrapped in plastic.
Yes, he could see it all. He could smell it. The luscious smell of money that in this case meant death. The bushels the conveyor belt was now bringing to the lower levels were all his. Each and every bill had been touched by the grandness of his vision. In turn, the touch of them would bring on the final demise of the old world.
The smell changed. Suddenly the scent of money was gone from his mind, replaced by another he was coming to know all too well. The machines hid the sounds of the Ferryman’s approach, but he did not need his ears to sense him. Leeds spun, firing his pistol, just as the Ferryman lunged. The bullet that thumped into Kimberlain’s shoulder was not enough to stop his charge. Impact carried the two of them backward, where the conveyor belt transported them down toward the stacks of money clustered on the floor below.
Winston Peet reached the sublevel controlling the ovens by sliding down the shredding chute the dead money was dropped into en route to being burned. He had the sensation of being swallowed by a monster with terrible teeth in the form of the shredder’s massive slicers, smelling of oil and thankfully inactive.
The shredding chute dropped onto a conveyor belt that transported the money’s remains to their final demise. Peet rushed along the black tread in a crouch beneath the low ceiling. Finally he emerged on the bottom level where the shredded currency was equally apportioned toward a series of smaller chutes. These dropped directly into the ovens, which were contained in a subbasement beneath this floor.
Turn them on after first releasing the contents of his canister, and they would ignite the remaining deadly aerosol that, thanks to the Ferryman, would by now be spreading throughout the depository. The building would collapse in upon itself, the poisoned money reduced to dust.
Peet searched about the walls in the dim emergency lighting. The main control box was clearly labeled but locked. Peet shredded its steel bindings and tore the door off.
Inside lay a vast number of switches and knobs. Peet moved them to the ON position, firing up all the gas jets that formed the unseen fire pit below. Finally he twisted the hand-size spigots that released the gas. He imagined he could hear the hissing. Then he moved to one of the chutes that accepted shredded old money for the ovens and dropped his canister down into it. He elected not to turn the valve releasing the aerosol; allowing time for the can itself to explode would provide him with a few precious moments for his own flight.
As Peet turned away from the chute after letting go of the aerosol canister, a clack of footsteps made him duck and plunge himself beneath the cover of a conveyor apparatus. A hail of bullets meant for him slammed into the wall instead.
Beyond Peet’s field of vision, Tiny Tim advanced. His eyes were trained on the machine behind which Peet was concealed, but what he sought lay on the far wall to the left: the controls for the furnace that the bald man had activated. The furnace had to be shut down if the installation was to be saved and the vision of Leeds realized. Seckle’s steps were methodical, deliberate. He knew his foe’s potential and knew enough not to put too much faith in either his weapon or the distance between them. Neither was insurmountable for Peet, just as neither was for him.
When Seckle reached the control board, he was forced to slide his eyes away from the bald man’s perch in order to study the panel. The controls were elementary. He turned back toward Peet one last time before lifting his fingers to the buttons and knobs.
As he turned, a massive fist slammed into his face. Tiny Tim felt his jaw shatter under the blow. He managed to wonder how the bald man could have covered such a distance in only three or four seconds before a pair of powerful hands sought purchase on him. Seckle was able to level his machine gun forward and squeeze the trigger just before Peet kicked it from his grip.
One or two of the bullets grazed the bald man in the side, stunning him. In the time it took Peet to stagger two steps backward, clutching at the blood, Seckle had hit the ground rolling and tried to reach for the machine gun. Before his fingers could close on it, Peet kicked it aside and took a brutal blow to the knee that nearly tumbled him. Seckle found his feet as the bald giant wavered and the two slammed against each other, arms interlocking. Tiny Tim’s eyes glared straight ahead.
Peet was smiling.
Even as Seckle thought one last time about the controls he had failed to deactivate, the can of GS-7 Peet had dropped down the chute was ignited by the rising flames. The explosion was deafening. Beneath the grappling giants, the floor receded to the tide of rising flames, and the two figures dropped toward them.
The bullet that entered Kimberlain’s shoulder shattered his collarbone and left one of his arms useless when even two might not have been enough against Leeds. The madman fought on the conveyor belt like a female animal defending her young. Using his teeth, nails, fists—anything close to Kimberlain’s flesh. Leeds’s pistol had been lost somewhere on the conveyor, but the Ferryman gave up the search for it when it was clear he needed total focus to fend off the madman’s attacks.
The belt dipped into its steepest drop, and the two of them slid off it onto the floor on the first of the two massive storage levels. There was a thud as Leeds’s pistol hit the floor just behind the two men. Leeds thrust the Ferryman aside and lunged for the gun. He had it palmed and coming up before Kimberlain was able to move. His ravaged shoulder kept him from mounting a response. He lay on the floor struggling for breath as his blood spilled on the tile.
“I am destiny, Ferryman,” Leeds said, eyes grasping the stores of money beyond Kimberlain. “I cannot be stopped.”
“You’ll stop yourself, Leeds. You have stopped yourself. It’s over.”
A broad smile glistened on his face. “Do you really believe that? You’re the one who’s failed, Ferryman. I will shoot you again, in the heart this time, and you will die a failure.”
“If you’re going to kill me, then do it and stop your games.”
“Don’t you know when you’re getting complimented, Ferryman? It is so difficult for someone like me to find anyone worthy of my consideration. Perhaps you are the last. Kill you and that ends forever. But I suppose it must end, and I suppose—”
Leeds’s speech was stopped when a thunderous explosion shook the floor. The ceiling blew out and the floor cracked. Walls crumbled inward.
Peet! Kimberlain realized happily. It had to be Peet!
Leeds rose and pressed himself against one of the many ceiling-high stacks of money. Building fragments began to rain down on his cache of death-laden bills. Flames licked through the gaps.
“No!” the madman screamed. “Not now! Please, not now!”
While Leeds’s attention was diverted and his eyes focused on the money, Kimberlain lunged forward. As he reached for Leeds, the madman again pulled the trigger of his gun. But this time a quaking tremble threw his aim off, and Kimberlain smashed into him amid the huge stacks of wrapped bills, which had begun to sway.
Peet felt himself falling, but his feet found some strange purchase in middescent. He realized he had been saved by a crisscrossing section of steel beams forming part of the building’s foundation. But his survival might be short-lived, considering the
certain combustion of the GS-7 Kimberlain had released once the rising flames touched it.
Peet swung to the right in time to see Tiny Tim coming at him with a massive knife glinting orange from the fire. Peet twisted from the path of the first strike and blocked the second with a piece of heavy insulated tubing his hand had locked on. Around the two giants, the jetting flames of the ovens continued to climb and surge. Their battle raged over a river of fire lapping ever closer to where they stood. The crisscrossing support beams formed a catwalk of sorts, and Tiny Tim’s eyes followed it in the direction of the control panel. Despite the collapse of the floor, it remained in reach for a man his size. But to get there he had to get by Peet.
Tiny Tim lashed forward with his knife once more, and again Peet parried with his piece of rubber tubing. His free hand lashed against the burned side of Tiny Tim’s face. Flesh tore, and Seckle screamed in agony. His bandage was gone now, revealing raw, scabby skin burned almost to the bone. His bad eye was half closed. He held his mouth open like an animal.
He came forward again, feinting with the knife to draw Peet’s attention. When the bald man took the bait, Seckle lunged to a neighboring support beam that provided a direct route to the control box.
Peet realized Tiny Tim would succeed in reaching the panel first if he tried to leap across to the beam his adversary was already on and give chase. His only chance of cutting him off was to rush down the support beam he presently occupied, even though it ended several yards short of the one Tiny Tim was on. Peet charged forward, gathering as much speed as possible to fuel the leap now required to bridge the gap. Seven, maybe eight feet from one narrow catwalk to another—and he had to land upon Seckle.
The possibility that he might overshoot or undershoot his target never occurred to him, and he threw himself airborne. He smashed into Tiny Tim at full speed and took him down. Clutching for each other, fighting for control, their upper bodies hung over the side of the catwalk toward the rising flames.
But Peet’s leap had left him on top. Not about to squander the advantage, he jammed a massive hand beneath Tiny Tim’s chin and tried to bend his head back far enough to break his neck. Tiny Tim locked one of his own hands against Peet’s to maintain the stalemate, while his other flailed desperately for the knife he had lost control of on Peet’s impact. Smoke clouded both their eyes and the flames teased their flesh. But neither man felt anything besides the other. Peet continued jamming Tiny Tim’s head back with the same hand still clutching the rubber tubing. He could feel it starting to give. Seckle’s fingers were trembling when they at last closed upon his knife’s hilt.
