AfterAge (9 page)

"When will I meet the others?" he asked. "They acted kind of . . ."

"Funny?" Calie smiled and pushed him down on the sleeping bag. He wanted to resist, but it felt good to get off his injured foot. "It's too close to dark for niceties. They'll be more hospitable in the morning. Then you can meet the boss."

He looked up with interest. "The boss?"

"McDole," she said. "He's the one who told us to go and get you."

"Really?" Bill felt a brief rush of alarm. "He knew where I was?"

"Don't worry," she added at the chalky expression on his face. "We know about almost everyone in the area—everyone alive, anyway."

"You mean there're even more besides the ones here?" He couldn't believe it.

"Yes."

Perlman frowned as he carefully tucked his legs into the double-wide bag Calie had provided. "Then why doesn't everyone get together? Wouldn't it be safer?"

"Not necessarily" She studied the chewed ends of her fingernails. "So we wait and see, like we did with you."

"I don't understand," he said sleepily. He snuggled into the warmth of the overstuffed bag.

Calie bent and adjusted his pillows. "I'll explain everything tomorrow. Tonight, you just sleep. The only thing you need to know right now is . . .

"
You're safe
."

REVELATION 3:8
Behold, I have set before thee an open door,

 
and no man can shut it.

~ * ~

The city overwhelmed her.

Louise felt like Jonah, looking into the mouth of the whale and about to be swallowed alive by some great, hungry, and unfeeling monster. That is, if the smaller monsters didn't get her first.

The Vespa was not the great idea Louise had thought, and by the time she reached Belmont it was running like shit. Chugging down the off ramp toward Broadway, she and Beau spent most of the afternoon coaxing the scooter toward downtown, figuring that if the Vespa did quit, they'd be close to the smaller, near north buildings that could be searched quickly before evening. She thought about looking for another scooter, then realized with disgust the one major thing she'd forgotten: while she was surrounded by cars and motorcycles, they all ran on gasoline that had gone stale a year ago.

But at last they were struggling southward along Michigan Avenue with the cheerful yellow Vespa coughing and jerking like some kind of ancient, sickly lawn mower. Poignant Christmas memories resurfaced with each block: twinkling Italian lights entwined in the trees stretching from Oak Street Beach to the river and beyond; holiday shoppers hurrying through the snow; sleek black carriages parked along the boulevard with drivers huddled next to old-fashioned lanterns while horses snorted in the frigid air and stamped their hooves at the curb. She wondered what had happened to the horses.

The Magnificent Mile didn't look magnificent anymore. Beneath the declining sun, it looked empty of everything except spreading malevolent shadows. How much daylight was left? She watched the sky anxiously as they continued south; inside the front of her jacket Beau fidgeted, his dry little nails raking yet another throbbing furrow across her belly despite her heavy flannel shirt. Her chest and rib cage probably matched the striped pattern on the material.

The Vespa died just over the Chicago River and Louise was almost grateful. Next to finding shelter, she wanted nothing more than to get Beau out of her jacket and away from her raw skin. She set him down to pee and hopped up and down to get the circulation going again in her legs, blocking his way to the curb and the six-inch drop to the metal grating of the bridge, where forty feet below the water flowed a dull, quiet green. She still recalled how the City used to dump a hundred pounds of kelly green dye into the river before every St. Patrick's Day parade.

Louise scrutinized the buildings along the river's edge, then decided she would feel more comfortable if she were surrounded by buildings on all sides. In the direction from which she'd come was North Michigan Avenue and a jungle of never-to-be-completed construction sites interspersed with skyscrapers and smaller one- or two-story buildings, but southward and a little to the west were a myriad of huge buildings.

Her direction decided, she picked up Beau and started walking rapidly. It was interesting how differently she viewed the downtown buildings than she had in past summers, when she and friends from her Rogers Park neighborhood had often ridden the L train to the Loop to catch a morning matinee at the Chicago Theater. She turned west on Lake Street, glancing at the old theater as she crossed the cobbled width of State Street (
that Great Street!
). A few years before everything went crazy, a group of developers had renovated the theater and started booking some big names. The final headliner still screamed across the marquee: WHOOPI GOLDBERG—A MILLION LAUGHS! At street level a scarlet curtain covered the glass inside the ticketmaster's booth. What horrors he curled beneath the velvet seats inside?

Louise shuddered and Beau whined as she increased her pace, almost jogging. At Dearborn she went south again, leaving the elevated tracks and its dim stretch of street behind as she hurried away from the decrepit movie houses and low-slung buildings along Dearborn and Randolph, winding her way to the southwest high-rent district. By Monroe, Louise was running and she finally paused to catch her breath in front of a massive white skyscraper.

One Xerox Centre boasted bright white stone and looked as good a place as any. Louise felt herself sliding on the edge of panic as she realized it was past four—by now they should be inside and settled for the night. Buildings towered on all sides and the sky was thick with gathering clouds, another bad break. Rain would chill them good in the dropping temperatures and the cloud cover would bring an early dusk . . . and terrible danger. She stuffed Beau loosely back into her jacket and circled the building, but every door she tried was tightly locked.
Dammit!
She needed more time! Breaking the glass would be a fool's move, yet she didn't have time to devise a more subtle entrance. She had to find someplace quickly, and though they might unwittingly share it with sleeping vampires, any one of these skyscrapers was big enough to house both with a minimum of risk—if she could get in without leaving an obvious trail.

Beau was scrambling around the inside of her jacket like a caged rat and she resisted the urge to rap him on the nose. It was fear that was spooking him, the same fear that was making it impossible for her to think clearly. Jesus, what a mess they were in this time, that same ridiculous presumption that everything would work itself out backfiring on her yet again. Before now, her worst assumption had been toward the end of the month of disappearances a year ago, when she'd gone traipsing off to Elmwood Park to stay with her friend Cindi. Louise had spoken to the girl only the evening before, yet the small suburban bungalow where Cindi lived was unlocked and deserted, the house—the entire empty
neighborhood
—permeated with an ugly undercurrent of sleeping evil that had grown stronger with each flick of the clock toward evening. She and Beau had run out of light then, too, and that was the first night she'd learned to hide. Riding the eerily empty Metra train back to the city the next morning had only been the start of a daymare of discovering her mom and stepfather missing and their apartment a mirror of that same pervasive corruption, with the Chicago Police Department depleted to only a fraction of its former size and so overrun with disappearance reports that they could do nothing but advise her to call it in next week.

But there had been no next week for the city.

The clouds split for an instant, showing the deep, painful blue preceding sunset; Louise knew there was no more time to waste. She turned, heading west toward the last feeble daylight sliding behind the skyscrapers. Her stomach knotted angrily; there was food, a few tools, and an all-but-useless gun in her backpack, but there was no time to eat. There was a hunger far worse that she didn't want to experience. At Clark she went north again, remembering the older government buildings in that direction. They had windows that could be forced open with her hammer and screwdriver, then closed up again with a few nails. City Hall had a high-level first she might be able to reach. She forced herself to jog and conserve energy that might be needed later, though the adrenaline in her blood was making her ears ring. A lifetime ago she'd read an animal-rights pamphlet on people in the Philippines who strung captured dogs from trees before killing them, claiming the adrenaline made the meat taste better. If that was true and her luck ran out, she'd make a tasty treat for some bloodsucker tonight.

Louise was swerving across Madison when something went wrong with her feet and she fell. She had a split second to realize that her rubber soles had caught the edge of some sort of street grating, then her hands shot forward and one knee came up to break her fall. There was no chance to turn; to keep from crushing Beau her hands took most of her weight, like dropping face-forward into a brutal push-up. Agony flared as a hundred tiny metal teeth bit deeply into her palms and fingers, then she was rolling sideways, back onto the cold concrete in a fetal position as she cradled her shredded hands. There was a faraway stinging in her knee and a hard ache in her shoulder joints, but it was
nothing
compared to the pain pulsing up her arms. Inside her jacket Beau gave a frenzied bark and dug a fresh furrow across the side of her left breast, his scrabbling paw slicing bare skin when it slipped into her shirtfront.

Louise groaned and sat up, fumbling with her jacket zipper so Beau could climb out; when she saw her hands, she almost sobbed aloud. In the last ten seconds their situation had plummeted to desperate. Both her hands were a mass of split, bleeding cuts, the deeper ones along the base of her palms dripping with blood. Even if she found someplace within the next quarter hour, the bloodsmell alone would leave an easy trail. The pain was enormous and she shook her head and tried to think around it. There was an extra shirt in her pack; she could wrap—

Beau jumped from her lap and took off.

For a second Louise just sat, staring dumbly as the dog scrambled up Madison, wondering how he could even see where he was going. Then she panicked. That silly mutt was the only thing she loved in this world; she blotted out the pain, clambered to her feet, and chased after him.

"Beau,
heel!
" Five feet and new pain rammed her, this time from her knee, a minor stinging that rocketed into a throbbing jolt every time her weight shifted to that leg. Louise didn't care; that dog meant everything. She'd crawl after him if she had to. If Beau heard he gave no sign, and Louise was still stumbling behind him when he ran full-tilt into a small riser of stone steps. He yelped and stopped, his watery eyes blinking as his old body panted with exertion. Louise snatched him up with blood-soaked fingers, then collapsed on the stairs.

"Are you crazy?" she gasped. "Where were you going?" Hysteria edged her voice as she hugged him. Beau’s tail wagged furiously; he yapped and wiggled again, but this time she held him close as she checked the darkening street. She felt like a bleeding piece of meat in the midst of piranha-filled waters; in only fifteen minutes the fish would begin to bite. But defeat didn't fit into her life, and she hung onto the dog and pushed unsteadily to her feet. Around her were lots of small shops at street level—risky, but better than out in the open. In the heavy dusk she could see LaSalle off to her right, while directly behind her—

—were the doors to St. Peter's.

There was no time to weigh options. She scooted up the steps, wrapped bloody fingers around one of the ornate handles and pulled. Unbelievably, the door opened on silent hinges and she stepped through, moving quickly past the dim foyer into the main room. When the door swung closed behind her, the abrupt blackness almost made her cry out. She took a few tentative steps instead and one wet hand found the cold and not-at-all-comforting side of a wooden pew. Fading light still shone through the vividly stained glass windows above, as though an immense kaleidoscope were suspended just out of reach. In a few seconds she could make out the vague shape of a huge cross at the altar.

Ten more minutes would bring total darkness. Louise's only experience with a church had been months ago, when she'd explored St. Ita's on Broadway and found it filthy and desecrated, the altar smeared with dried waste, the icons torn from the walls and smashed. She'd had no way of knowing if that ruined place of worship could still offer shelter, and hadn't risked staying in another of the huge, dark buildings that dotted the cityscape. If the church in which she now stood could not protect her, she was doomed.

The weak light from the stained glass windows four stories above changed visibly as darkness fell over Chicago. Nestled in her arms, Beau was quiet and calm, a good sign. Feeling her way pew by pew up the aisle, Louise slid stiffly onto the front bench, feeling the deepening cold seep into her butt and the backs of her legs immediately. The temperature had dropped drastically and she set Beau on the floor for a second and eased off the backpack; a little fumbling and she drew out a blanket and pulled it around her shoulders. Now it was time to wait; her hands were tacky with blood and the smell surely surrounded her. Ultimately, if the night beasts could enter St. Peter's, they would find her no matter where she hid. She reached toward her feet, searching the darkness for Beau.

There was a quick scraping in the black void in front of her and a match burst into sudden, blinding light.