Bzrk Apocalypse (32 page)

every two hundred and forty-one people on planet Earth. Berserk.

Yeah.”

She seemed spent. Drained. But still wondering, still amazed. “It

will take seventy-five days to do them all. But it won’t hold together

for that long, yeah. Governments fall. Religions fail. It all comes

268

BZRK APOCALYPSE

down. Chaos. Mass insanity. The end. How many die in the end?

Don’t know, don’t know, yeah. Maybe all of them, yeah. Whole new

game then, yeah? Whole new game, right?
My
game. Adam and fuck-

ing Eve. Genghis Khan. Hitler. Stalin and Mao and what’s his name?

Fucking Attila.
My
game. Yeah.”

The limo stopped just a block away from the Tulip. Lear bounded

out with Bug Man on her heels. They raced for the elevator up to her

posh apartment.

Bug Man felt a sick dread settle over him.

He didn’t see where this was any kind of game. This was just

plain murder. Murder on a massive scale.

Lystra was excited, fumbling the keys at first. Then she led the

way to the window, tapped the remote that opened the curtains and

did a game-show-model move, like she was presenting the Tulip as

some sort of prize.

Then Lystra fell silent. She was thinking something over. Bug

Man could practically see her arguing with herself as her head tilted

slightly this way, slightly that way.

“Yeah,” she said to herself, finally. “Yeah. Call him. Call him,

yeah.”

Keats’s biot raced away from the partly cut optic nerve, six legs milling

through the fluid, impeded but only slightly by sticky macrophages

coming to dumbly check out the damage he had done.

It was like a wild nighttime drive down a back country road,

somehow. His illumination in fact lit up very little, just the nerve and

a suggestion of deeper brain ahead.

269

MICHAEL GRANT

An artery, that’s what he needed, and there were a lot of them

in the brain. None would kill instantly; that’s not the way it would

work. Instead, blood would pour into the brain itself, depriving some

tissue of oxygen, putting pressure on other tissue. The result would

be a stroke or series of strokes and yes, maybe death, but not quickly.

Quickly enough to stop him blowing up the building? No way to

know. He couldn’t see through Caligula’s eye anymore. Any moment

could bring a fireball, a terrible shudder, and a falling floor beneath

his feet.

They’d been taken to see Jindal, a worm of a man who kept rock-

ing back on his heels, then forward onto his toes, trying to look taller

than he was. He had snapped out a set of superfluous instructions

to his security people, but they were already vectoring armed men

toward the sublevels.

“You need to evacuate the building,” Plath said.

“Hah. Just what you’d want if this were all a ruse. Just what you

could be after, no? I think so. I think we’ll wait until—”

The phone chirped. He grabbed it, listened, face darkening. “The

freight elevators are blown. The doors are jammed. They may be

booby-trapped.”

“I’d bet on it,” Plath said.

“Caligula was keeping the elevators to use for his own escape,”

Keats said, walking it through in his own mind. Elevators stopped at

the loading bays, from there to the alley, and off he would go. In five

minutes he could be clear of the blast and any police cordon.

Jindal’s forehead creased. And he may have started to sweat just

a bit.

270

BZRK APOCALYPSE

“Evacuate the building!” Plath yelled. “We’re not here because we

want to die, we’re trying to save innocent people!”

Innocent people
, Keats noted. So there was still a Sadie some-

where inside Plath.

Jindal shook his head slowly. “If I’m wrong and the place blows

up, I’m dead. If I’m wrong and I evacuated the building, the Twins

will . . .” He shook his head doggedly. “There are worse things than

dying.”

“Yes, but none are really as permanent,” Wilkes said.

“Take us to the Twins,” Plath said urgently. “If you don’t have the

balls to make a decision, take us to the Twins!”

“
Now
, you bloody fool!” Keats added.

When Jindal still stood, frozen in indecision, Plath spun on her

heel and marched for the elevator. “I’ve been there before. I know the

way.”

Four security men trained their guns on her. Plath, without turn-

ing around said, “I’m Sadie McLure. Now, you may be too gutless or

stupid to make a decision, Mr. Jindal, but you know as well as I do

that your bosses would throw you out of that window if you deprived

them of a chance to deal with me themselves. So I’m getting on the

elevator, and I’m going upstairs.”

Wilkes put on a falsely cheery smile and said to Keats, “I think

she’s back.”

Caligula had seated the jack. It was in an awkward position, and he

had to turn the screw using a crowbar that could be moved only a few

degrees at a time.

271

MICHAEL GRANT

His vision had not deteriorated further. Which meant whoever was

running the biot in his head had moved on in search of a faster way to

stop him. And his hand hurt like hell. He’d used the do-rag as a make-

shift bandage, but the blood had soaked through almost instantly.

Well. At this point death was a certainty. Death by brain hem-

orrhage or death by natural gas explosion.
Step right up, ladies and

gentlemen, you pays your money, you takes your
chances.

Remembering the old carnival barker cant made him smile. They

had not been so bad, those days. He turned the crowbar. It had been

lonely a lot of the time, especially after he gave up his daughter. But

he couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t.

When he’d caught his wife in bed with another man, he killed the

man and then, much to his own surprise, let his wife live. He’d even

forgiven her.

He
had forgiven her. Their daughter had not.

His phone buzzed softly. He closed his eyes and leaned back from

the jack. There was only one person who could possibly be calling

him, only one person who had ever had the number.

He pulled the phone from his pocket with his good hand

“Yes, baby,” Caligula said.

“Call me Lear. How many times do I have to tell you that? Call

me Lear!”

Caligula said nothing, just closed his eyes.

“Why hasn’t the Tulip been blown up?”

“Well, I’m working on it,” he said, feeling very weary.

“You’re ruining the timing!”

“Listen, baby . . . Lear. Listen to me. This will be the last time we

have a chance to talk.”

272

BZRK APOCALYPSE

“Are you arguing with me? Are you failing me? Again?”

Caligula sighed. “They tried to stop me. Plath, Keats . . . I can’t get

out of here. I’m going to die.”

At least there was a moment of hesitation. At least there was that

much. Maybe she didn’t really care, but the news at least made her

pause. Made her blink, perhaps, at the other end of the line.

“I guess it’s karma,” Lear said at last.

“What?”

“For you killing Mom. It’s karma. Cosmic justice.”

Caligula hung his head and for a minute could not go on. Could

not speak. “Lystra. Baby. You have to know—”

“Goddamn it, you old piece of shit, call me—”

“I didn’t kill her. You know I—”

“Blow it up! Blow it up!”

“—didn’t take your mother’s life.”

“Shut up! Just shut the hell up and do it!”

“You did, Lystra.
You
killed your mother.”

Heavy breathing at the other end of the line. Then, a weird,

distorted voice, like a child trying to sound grown-up. A whining,

almost singsong voice. “No, I didn’t.”

“Lystra . . .”

“
You
did. You killed her. Yeah, you killed my mother and then

you gave me away.”

“Baby . . .” Caligula’s voice broke. He felt a sharp pain in his head.

Any other time he would have thought it was just the beginning of a

headache.

“How could I? I was just a little girl.”

How long did he have? Minutes or seconds?

273

MICHAEL GRANT

“You’re right,” he said at last. “You’re right, ba— Lear. I did it.”

“Hah! I told you so. Now, do this. Do it and all is forgiven.”

He managed a slight laugh, a hoarse sound. “I don’t think even

God can forgive me all I’ve done.”

“Then it’s no problem, Daddy. I am god now.”

She hung up the phone. Caligula knew it was true. Not about

his poor, mad daughter being god. But yes, he had killed his wife,

her mother. A week after they’d reconciled, he’d been drunk and

angry at what he thought was a flirtation with the carny who ran

the Mad Mouse ride. He’d punched her. He’d punched her hard,

right in the jaw. She had fallen, unconscious, to the floor of their

shabby trailer.

He’d left her there.

When he woke, raging with thirst from all the drink, filled with

remorse, he’d found her still on the floor. But with her throat cut.

The bloody meat cleaver was on the floor beside her.

He had roused a sleeping Lystra from her bed and washed the red

stain from her hands. Burned her bloody clothing in the fifty-five-

gallon drum where the carnies burned trash and kept their hands

warm on cold nights.

It was his fault she had done it. Who had taught her violence?

Who had revealed his rage to the impressionable ears of a young

girl?

And then, cowardly, unable to face Lystra, unable to cope with

the madness that was already a part of her, he had shipped her off.

Caligula did not believe in karma. He believed in damnation. His

own, and hers as well. And the damnation of the world.

274

BZRK APOCALYPSE

He set the crowbar in place and heaved with all his might.

The pipe snapped. Whatever sound it made was obliterated by

the roar of high-pressure gas gushing into the room.

He choked from the smell, reeled back, staggered to the far end

of the chamber, and set the timer on the explosive device for ten min-

utes.

That should be enough.

275

TWENTY-FIVE

Sadie McLure. In person. In the flesh. And the rest of her little crew

as well. Benjamin Armstrong felt disappointed. It should have been a

triumph, but she was walking in under her own power, head held high.

“Someone get me a . . . a knife! Or a baseball bat! Something,”

Benjamin snarled.

“Benjamin,” Charles chided mockingly. “There will be plenty of

time for that.”

“I’m going to beat her bloody and rape whatever is left of her!”

Benjamin saw his own spittle flying. He felt the way Charles drew

him back, restraining him, knowing Benjamin otherwise would have

gone at the girl with his fist until some better weapon appeared.

More and more security men and women were arriving—by ele-

vator, by stair—all armed, all looking to the Twins for guidance.

“The building is going to blow up,” Plath said calmly.

“Of course it is,” Benjamin sneered. “You know, your father was

the smart one, not you, you stupid little bitch!”

“Caligula is in the basement,” Keats said, striving to mirror

Plath’s even tone, despite the realization that one way or the other, his

own time was fast running out.

276

27

BZRK APOCALYPSE

He flashed on a memory of his brother Alex, chained to his cot in

a mental institution in London. Mad. Utterly, terribly mad from the

death of his biots. Of course, Alex had had more than one die. But at

the same time, Alex had been strong.

“It’s Caligula,” Plath repeated.

Charles’s eyes narrowed. “What is Caligula?”

“He’s the one in the basement. Looks like he’s rupturing a pipe-

line. He’ll wait until the gas builds up and—”

“System!” Charles yelled. “System: show all cameras in the base-

ment of this building!”

On the huge screen with its multitude of squares showing the

Armstrong empire, five windows opened. Three were black. But two

were still in operation, one trained on an instrument panel, while the

other was a grainy long shot of pipes and . . .

“There!” Jindal cried, pointing. “There’s someone down there.

You can just see their back!”

“One of the engineers,” Charles scoffed, but he didn’t sound too

sure of himself.

Suddenly the grainy figure reeled back, spun away from whatever

he had been doing.

In Caligula’s head Keats’s efforts were beginning to work. Blood

that had been just a single-cell spray from the throbbing artery had

become a gusher, like a cartoon of an oil well. The clear cranial fluid

around his biot was growing opaque with the floating Frisbees of red

blood cells and the soggy sponges of white blood cells.

The force of the blood knocked his biot loose of its perch and sent

it spinning, end over end. What had been a sort of narrow but calm

277

MICHAEL GRANT

seam of watery fluid was now a turbulent underground river.

He would not make it back to the artery.

“He’s hemorrhaging,” Keats said. To the Twins he explained, “I

have a biot in his brain. I’ve cut an artery. I’ve damaged one optic