Bzrk Apocalypse (35 page)

talking about, you old fool?”

“Their secret weapon. A virus that preyed only on cobra DNA.

Like the cobra DNA that forms part of the biot genome. Ironic, don’t

you think? They were going to obliterate all biots, and now, hah! Now

you’re the one killing biots.”

“Shut your filthy mouth, you disgusting drunk,” Charles said,

now as furious as his brother.

“Oh, I’m sorry, am I embarrassing you, boys?” Burnofsky laughed.

“Don’t worry, the final laugh will be on Lear.”

Bug Man heard shouts and cries in the background. A female

voice was crying, “Noah! Noah!” Then it stopped. The line went dead.

Bug Man could see flames behind windows on the tenth and

twelfth floors of the Tulip.

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On the street below, the first fire engines were pulling up, but

Bug Man doubted there was anything they could do. The Tulip was

doomed.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay what?”

“Okay, I’m wiff you. I’m in. All the way.” What alternative did he

have? “So, I’ goin’ to tell you, Burnofshhky didn’ shound righ’. Too

happy. He’shh got shomething goin’ on, I know tha’ old fart.”

Lear was curious. “What could he be up to?”

“SRNs. The gray goo.”

“No,” Lear said confidently. “We wired him up. Nijinsky wired

him.”

“And Nijinshhky’s dead. So you don’ know wha’ going on in hi’

head anymore. I wired the presiden’ and guessh wha’, shuicide wa’ not

par’ of the plan for her.”

Lear was pensive. She could become coldly rational when she

needed to, Bug Man had learned. She would make a fascinating case

for some psychiatrist some day, he thought mordantly. Or a whole

hospital full of psychiatrists.

Out of her mind but still able to plan the end of the world. Then

again, who else but a crazy person would even want the world to end?

“Charles, Benjamin,” Jindal pleaded. “There’s one stairwell still clear.

But we have to go now!”

“Hundreds of steps?” Charles asked wistfully. “My brother and I,

walk down hundreds of steps?”

“We can carry you,” Jindal said. “We—” He stopped, because his

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inclusive wave, meant to indicate the security men, now included no

one. The security men had fled.

Still left in the Twins’ sanctum were the Twins themselves, Jindal,

Wilkes, and Plath. And the gasping, dying body of Noah Cotton, the

former Keats, now on his back in a wide pool of his own blood.

“Will you drag us down the stairs, faithful Jindal?” Charles said.

“No, I don’t think we’ll allow that. Instead . . .” he shouted, “a drink,

if you please!”

The building was shaking now, successive waves of it—an arti-

ficial earthquake as small explosions and gouts of flame made their

way inexorably upward, floor after floor.

“The gray goo,” Benjamin said. “How many SRNs do you have,

Burnofsky? The flames have not reached your lab yet. Yes, better the

gray goo. The best possible outcome. Apocalypse!”

“Fetch me a bottle, Jindal,” Burnofsky said, “and I’ll tell your

bosses all about it.”

Plath realized she was kneeling in Noah’s blood. She was looking

in horror at his brain, a pulsing pink mass that swelled out from the

bullet’s hole. Wilkes took her hand, but Plath felt nothing. She knew

she had to look away, but it felt like abandonment to look at anything

but her lover.

He had loved her. Had she ever really loved him in return? How

could she know? From memories that had been tampered with, in a

brain still coping with violation? That truth was no longer entirely

recoverable. Nothing was. Everything that she knew and remem-

bered, everything she felt, had to be mistrusted.

On the big monitor, cameras showed gift shops and labs,

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darkened bedrooms and banks of computer servers. The Armstrong

Fancy Gifts Corporation went on, largely untouched, even as its head-

quarters burned.

Plath seemed to make up her mind. “We’re leaving,” she said.

“The hell you are,” Benjamin snarled.

Plath looked at him, not afraid to meet his furious gaze. “I’m

going to find and kill Lear.” But she made no move toward the door.

“Lear doesn’t matter, not anymore,” Charles said. “I’m afraid I no

longer have the will to resist my brother. The self-replicating nano-

bots will be released. They will scour this planet, and sooner or later,

they will find Lear.”

Jindal had found a bottle. Burnofsky uncorked it and took a

drink before offering it to the Twins. “It’s not up to you, Benjamin,

it’s up to me.” He revealed the remote control in his hand. “I push this

button, and the world begins to die.”

“Give it to me,” Benjamin demanded. “We paid for your work.

They’re ours, those little machines of yours, ours!”

Burnofsky laughed. “Hitler’s bunker. I’ve been trying to think

what this reminds me of, and that’s it. With the Russians closing in,

there was Hitler in his underground bunker still handing out orders.

Like he had an army to command. Dead man rapping out orders.”

“You treacherous, degenerate—”

“Shut up,” Burnofsky said. He gave them a wave, a tolerant ges-

ture. “It’s over for you boys. All over but the punishment phase.”

There was an awful groan of bending metal, a shriek that was felt

as much as heard. A crack split one of the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The power went out. The monitor went dark.

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Emergency lights came on, casting dark shadows softened only

slightly by a full moon hovering just over a nearby apartment build-

ing. “Plath, now,” Wilkes pleaded. “You said it. We have to go. Keats

will . . . We can’t help him.”

But still Plath couldn’t move.

“Call that number back! I’ll speak with Lear!” Benjamin cried,

motioning for the phone. “I want to tell her what we’ve done! I want

Lear to know!”

Wilkes grabbed Plath’s arm and began to physically pull her

away.

“We?
We?
” Burnofsky demanded, erupting in fury. “
We
, you

freak? We? No we. No we. Me.
Me!
I did it! They’re mine and they’re

blue, the blue goo not the gray, and do you know why they’re blue?”

He was in Benjamin’s face now, gripping the remote in his hand,

spit flying from his lips.

Charles and Benjamin took a step back.

“Because that was the color . . .” A sob stopped Burnofsky.

“Because . . . her eyes . . .”

“Is this about your nasty little girl?” Benjamin demanded, sneer-

ing.

“Damn it, Plath. Sadie! Come on!” But now even Wilkes could

not look away.

“Did you . . . ?” Burnofsky asked. “Did . . . you . . .?” He got control

of himself again, and laughed. “You make this easy. I have something

for you.”

Burnofsky drew a small object from his pocket. He held out a

glass vial. It looked empty but for a hint of blue.

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Charles knew instantly. “Get that away from us, Karl.”

“These are special,” Burnofsky said. “A special project I’ve been

working on, just for the two of you.”

“Someone stop him!”

“It’s easy to program the SRNs with time codes, kill switches. . . .

Much harder to program them for a particular, um, diet. Yes, a par-

ticular
diet
. But it’s doable. I have them that can eat only steel. Others that consume only hemoglobin. Cool, huh?” Over his shoulder, he

said, “Run away, Sadie. Run while you’re able. I loved your dad. He

was a good man. A good man. So run away. Save yourself if you can.

Get far from here. You may survive for a while, until my babies come

for you.”

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TWENTY-SEVEN

“Now! Now!” Wilkes yelled.

Plath rose from Noah’s blood. Her knees and shins and hands

were soaked, red.

“Noah,” she whispered. She touched his face, still sweating, still

gasping like a dying fish.

“Go,” he said. “For me. Go.”

Plath tore herself away. No way she could survive trying to carry

Noah. They would both die. Someone had to live to ensure that Lear

did not.

Plath and Wilkes fled the room they’d never expected to leave

alive.

“What corner did he say was still clear?” Wilkes asked.

“Southwest,” Plath answered. “Southwest.”

“Which is . . .”

“This way.” Plath led the way, first from the cathedral vastness of

the Twins’ lair and back out into the entryway they’d come through.

She considered the elevators and rejected them. Even if they just used

them to get down a few floors, there was no knowing what they’d

open onto. Past the easy way out, into a stainless-steel kitchen area,

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through a gloomy and oppressive formal dining room that looked as

if it had never been used.

They pushed out through a narrow door into a similarly narrow

hallway, then followed red exit signs to what a push confirmed was a

stairwell.

There was smoke in the stairwell.

“Not too bad, we can breathe,” Wilkes said. “At least up here.”

“No other way,” Plath said, and plunged unhesitatingly down the

concrete stairs.

“Great, seventy floors,” Wilkes said. “Here’s where it would have

been a good thing to work out.”

“It’s all downhill,” Plath said.

They ran and tumbled and occasionally tripped down the stairs,

half a floor, a landing, a turn, down another flight. Over and over

again.

The smoke grew thicker but not yet enough to choke them, just

enough to make their throats raw and their eyes sting.

Plath was quicker, but she waited for Wilkes to catch up when she

pulled too far ahead. Down and down. Then, on the fortieth floor,

a woman banged back the door, took a wild-eyed look at them, and

raced away as though they were trying to catch her.

Down and down and down, and by the twenty-first floor the

smoke was wringing hacking coughs from their throats and watering

their eyes.

A massive shock hit the building and knocked them both off their

feet. Plath came up with a skinned knee and bruised forearms. Wil-

kes was worse off. She had twisted her ankle and could only hobble.

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“You need to go on ahead,” Wilkes said. “Go, go, I’ll be fine.”

Plath took her arm. “I left Noah. I’m not leaving you. Come on.

Run now, hurt later.”

They hobbled and slid and tripped, floor by floor, tears streaming

down their faces. The last six floors were agony. Smoke was every-

where, searing their lungs. The heat of the fire turned the stairwell

into an oven. At some point Plath simply stopped thinking, stopped

even feeling anything but pain.

The last two floors were crowded with people—yelling, choking,

pushing, panicking.

And all at once there was air.

Plath, still holding Wilkes by the hand, fell out onto the sidewalk

and into light; rough hands grabbed her, pulled her away, a voice yell-

ing, “Move, move, move, it’s coming down!”

They staggered on, not even sure what direction they were headed,

stumbling into other refugees. A fire hose was spraying blessed cold

water, and only then did Plath realize that some people were on fire,

their clothing smoking, their hair crisped.

Glass was everywhere on the sidewalk and streets. Red lights

flashed. Smoke billowed, but was caught by a breeze that cleared most

of it at street level.

A block away they stopped, gasping, and sank down onto the

concrete.

“Okay?” Plath asked.

“Alive,” Wilkes answered.

Plath smeared smoke from her eyes, blinked away tears and tried

to look up at the Tulip.

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Fire licked from windows. Smoke poured everywhere, the whole

building a chimney now.

“We have to move farther.”

“Can’t,” Wilkes gasped.

“Like hell you can’t.” Plath stood, hauled Wilkes to her feet and,

taking the girl’s weight on her shoulder, hobbled and ran with memo-

ries, too-sharp memories, of what happened when skyscrapers burned.

“Burn and fall, burn and fall,” Lear crooned as she watched flames

and smoke wreathe the Tulip, dividing her attention between the real-

world vista from her window and the TV coverage.

It was split-screened now on the news: half showed the remain-

ing, yet-to-be rounded up loons from the Hollywood premiere; half

showed the Tulip aflame. The crawl along the bottom was all about

the Plague of Madness.

“Good title, that,” Lear commented. “Makes people think it can

spread. Yeah. And it can, hah.”

Bug Man said nothing. This was his future now. He would live or

die at Lear’s whim. Or she might just let him go crazy.

Three windows were open in his head. None of them showed

much at the moment, just glimpses of the biots themselves. It was

different than twitching nanobots, more intimate. You had only

to think and the biot would move. No wonder BZRK had been so

tough to beat. No wonder Vincent had ended up drooling nuts.

“Oh, look look look!” Lear pointed, as excited as a little child.