Dead Mann Running (9781101596494) (21 page)

“Stop!” I growled.

“I will if he will!”

To his credit, Booth didn’t counter. The thought of what might already be happening to the wounded officer sobered him. He sat on his haunches, rubbing his jaw.

Penny squirmed away the three feet that the chain allowed, huffing and puffing as she went, out of breath.

And I finally noticed something I should’ve spotted a long time ago. If I hadn’t caught it while I was worried about my own disguise, I should have while we were hiding in the cabinets.

“Fucking chakz!”

“Tom, look…”

“Fucking, goddamn, shit-ass chakz!”

“Look at her! She’s panting.
Breathing.
She’s not a chak. She’s a liveblood. I think there’s a bruise swelling on her cheek.”

Penny laughed hard, but with all that skin missing from her face, it came out more like a rush of air.

Booth stared at her. “But her face, her shoulder…”

“Chemical accident,” she explained, a half smile on her half face. It wasn’t like Maruta’s. A half smile was the only kind the kid could manage.

I stood up. “Who the hell are you?”

“Like I’m going to tell you?” She laughed again, then used a piece of her sleeve to wipe off some of the makeup that kept her face white. I’d met a chak who’d made himself up as a liveblood, but never the other way around.

Booth was so shocked, he actually talked to me. “Where do you know her from?”

“She was at the site where Chester died, at the motel Misty and I were hiding in, then at the exam center, and in the camps,” I said. “Christ, I’m a complete fool. She’s been following me. She’s after the briefcase, too.”

She tapped her temple. “Now there’s the brains that got you here.”

“Then you killed Chester on purpose.”

“No,” she said, her young voice full of aged contempt. “Haven’t you been paying attention? I thought the briefcase
was in that car. You, of all people, should know what a fucking
accident
is.”

“But you’re working for the same people who chased us?”

“Please.”

“Who were they?”

“I don’t know. I’d say military if they weren’t so stupid, shooting at the car carrying the only sample of Travis Maruta’s final project.”

“Maruta’s final project,” I repeated. If those were the only samples, maybe they couldn’t replicate it. No wonder everyone wanted it, whatever it was. I looked at my old boss. “That news to you, Tom?”

He shook his head, no. “I’m hoping it’s a way to send you all back to the grave.”

“Most of us probably wouldn’t mind. Penny, do you know what it is?”

Her eyes twinkled. “Sure, and I’ll tell you if you tell me where it is. Doesn’t matter much with us all stuck here.”

“You’ve got a point. Okay, deal. I put it in a locker at the Fort Hammer Plaza Station. The key’s back in my office.”

“Great. My turn. The vials contain a new natural flavor of Kool-Aid, no HFC, no unhealthy additives, no calories, and it even cures diabetes.”

We looked at each other a while. She spoke first. “Is it safe at least?”

I shrugged. “Safe as things get.”

She scanned my eyes, like they were going to tell her something, then gave up. Something sharp and silver slipped into her hand, from where I couldn’t tell. As she
used it to work on the lock that held her ankle, I got a closer look. It looked like it was made out of cheap cafeteria silverware, sharpened and welded together.

“We’ve all shared beautifully, but, seeing as how Rebecca also has no idea where the briefcase is, the only things I’ll get from sitting around here are bored, dissected or both.”

The ankle brace dropped away.

“Why didn’t you do that while we were fighting?” Booth asked.

“Didn’t want you to know I could. Could’ve killed you anytime, by the way, but I wanted the decaying dick here to like me a little longer.”

She walked to the door and worked the makeshift tool into the lock. Once the door was open, she peered outside. “Now
that’s
interesting. Come look.”

As she held the door a little wider, Booth and I got to our feet and approached. The long hall was white and sterile as a brand-new Apple gizmo, except for one thing: there were corpses in the distance. Like living stains on a clean kitchen floor, chakz wobbled and moaned. Between the white of the walls and their gray, the yellow tags on their wrists stuck out like traffic lights.

“Ferals,” Booth said. His hand reached for his holster, but they’d taken the gun while he was out.

A series of sharp snaps and crackles told me there were more than we could see, and that Maruta’s little men were using their MP5s on them. The ferals rocked and turned in the direction of the sound.

“Jonesey’s cell phone network,” I said. “The pictures must’ve gotten around. The ones still in orientation probably freed the others. It’s what I would do. Anyone
have any idea how many chakz they keep here at a time?”

“Two hundred and thirty-seven,” Penny said matter-of-factly. “A nice cover for my escape.”

When she moved to exit, I grabbed at her, forgot the missing shoulder and wound up holding the cloth of her coat. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

She shook her head. “No.”

I pointed at the chains still on our ankles. “You’re going to leave us like this?”

“Why not?” she said, sliding her tool up her sleeve. “Consider it payback for using your cell phone in a public place. There was a file I wanted to find before I broke you out, but you screwed all that up, didn’t you? Besides, the more noise you two make, the easier for me to get away. You survived this far, I’m sure you’ll make it.”

“Unchain me!” Booth screamed. He jumped at her. She leapt back easily and blew him a kiss.

“Aw. You missed! So long, handsome.” Still looking at Booth, she bobbed her head toward me. “And try to be nice to stupid over here. He saved your life.”

She flew down the hall, away from the ferals, moving faster than any chak or liveblood had a right to. As soon as she vanished from sight, I realized who she was. She’d been holding back the two times I grappled with her.

“That,” I said, more to myself than Booth, “was a Red Riding Ninja.”

J
onesey used to say that if you truly wanted something, all you had to do was act “as if” it was already true. That’s what Tom Booth did. Acting as if I weren’t chained to his ankle, he headed after Bad Penny, almost pulling me off my feet with his first step. Forget about keeping up with him. Even free I had a limp. As he pounded after her dust, I focused on remaining upright, but it didn’t go well.

He turned a corner hard and stopped. Scattered in the open cafeteria space ahead of us were about twenty ferals. They were tearing at the walls and serving counters, attacking chairs and tables. A soda machine got the worst of it. The only sign of Penny was a door clicking shut at the far end of the space.

I was trying to see if there was anything resembling a path through them, when Booth headed for the door and this time did pull me off my feet. Next thing I knew, I was sliding across the floor, looking up at ceiling tiles and the crotches of the living dead. The extra weight didn’t seem
to slow him. The stairs beyond the exit door would hurt, but we never got there. Penny had somehow managed to lock the door.

Booth pounded at it and growled with his nice, wet, liveblood voice.

“Quiet! They’ll hear you!” I said.

“So what? They already see me.”

“Liveblood screams attract them. At least let me up,” I said. “No way you’ll get past them dragging me.”

That didn’t stop him from trying. Using a plastic chair as a shield, he shoved his way into the throbbing cluster of dead flesh, trying to go out the way we came in. He clonked a head here, smashed a chest there, and screamed every time he swung.

Whenever he howled, a few snatched at the air like they could grab the tasty sound and pop it, dripping, into their mouths.

I didn’t consider things completely desperate until a few more staggered in from the hall we’d just left. Now we were cut off, and unless Booth had it in him to cripple them all with that chair, our options were limited.

I grabbed the side of a water cooler to slow us, then tugged the chain to get his attention. Booth swung the chair my way, looking like he was going to crush my head with it.

I covered my face with my hands. “Don’t they teach you anything?
Stop
screaming! You’re bringing them from all over.”

Instead of barking some clever response, he looked at the newcomers and brought the chair around in a wide arc. His swing threw a blond chak in a nurse’s outfit into what looked like a dead tree trunk wearing a business
suit and tie. They both went down, and this time, Booth didn’t scream.

We still made great targets. Booth did anyway. All I had to do was moan and groan and they’d take me for one of them. Dodge as he might, a few got close enough to rake their nails, in some cases their bones, through his clothes. Drops of his blood hit the tiles. My back smeared them as we went.

We were heading for the open hall, but that wasn’t a good thing. Booth, wounded, was slowing down and the crowd ahead of us was getting thicker. I looked around, then back at the far end. Crap. We’d missed it at first, because we were kind of busy, but next to the door Penny disappeared behind, was a cabinet with a hose, a fire extinguisher, and an axe.

I shouted “Tom, there!” about five times before he decided to pay attention. Hearing me, the dead looked around, but never thought to look down.

“Even an axe won’t kill them all,” Booth said.

“Not for the ferals, for the door!”

Moving with the crowd, we went a little faster, but his bravado and adrenaline were waning, and now I was slowing him down. Worse, every yank of the chain sent a bone-deep throbbing through my ankle. But, back to the wall, chair holding the dead at bay, Booth made it to the cabinet. And I’d been stepped on only ten or twelve times.

“You going to let me up now?”

“No!” he said loudly. They all moaned in unison at the sound. He shoved the chair’s four legs into the nearest one, whose overalls made him look like a plumber. But there was something else about that one. As Joe the plumber tumbled over me, I noticed his skin was plump,
thick with a puddinglike sheen that was very different from the typical desiccated chak look. It made me think he might be one of ChemBet’s latest experiments. When the big son of a bitch fell on me, I found out the hard way that he was heavier than most chakz, too.

Crunched by his squirming chest, I called to Booth. “Don’t
say
anything, okay? Just think. By the time you drop the chair, open the cabinet and grab the axe, it’ll be over. You can’t make it without me.”

His face shivered, like he’d been electrocuted. I thought he’d been bitten deeply, but somehow I knew he was wrestling with the idea of dealing with me.

“I know you still think I killed Lenore. But as much as I swear I would have died for her, that I’d still die for her, I can’t anymore. Neither can you.”

He tried to swallow his next scream before it got too loud, then shoved Joe the plumber off me.

“Get up,” he said. “Fast.” He looked tired, as if he were about to drop the chair.

I bolted onto my good foot, opened the cabinet, and grabbed the axe. With whatever he had left, Booth cleared enough of a space for me to take a swing at the door handle. Unlike what I did to Flat-face in one swing, this time my first shot barely made a dent. The second knocked the handle off and set the door swinging inward.

Dropping the chair, Booth collapsed into the stairwell beyond. When the chair landed upright in the cafeteria, the feral in the business suit fell into it. Crazy in that special feral way, he looked around like he was wondering where the hell his desk was. I leaped over Booth, pushed the door shut and braced it with the axe.

Through a little window in the door, I saw the other
ferals push against the guy in the chair, trying to get to the door. I kicked the axe in tighter, the blade against the handle, the bottom against the floor. It held.

“I was going to use that to cut your foot off,” Booth said, nodding at the axe.

Our positions had suddenly reversed. He lay at my feet, panting, his blood staining the floor.

“Gee, sorry. If I’d known I’d have tried to use the chair.”

A quick blast came out of his nostrils. A laugh, or close to it.

Tom Booth and I were never friends, but when I was alive, we’d respected each other. My memory used to be photographic, and my instincts weren’t half bad. He trusted both. Ridiculous as it was, even though he’d slept with Lenore, part of me wanted him to look at me like I was a still a cop.

“How’s the bleeding?” I asked.

He looked at his arm, then tore some of the sleeve away. There were scratches on his skin, some deep, but most weren’t seeping anymore.

I held my hand out to help him up, but he huffed and puffed his way to his feet on his own.

“Do exactly what I say until we’re out of here and I won’t crush your fucking head in,” he said.

Below, we heard moaning. Above, moaning mixed with gunshots.

“Fine,” I said. “But you do realize we’re not getting out of here, right?”

Booth nodded. “Yeah.”

A tall window in the stairwell gave us a view of the world outside. Below, two squad cars were parked in
front of a marble version of the ChemBet logo, their motto carved beneath: Q
UALITY
, S
ERVICE
, C
LEANLINESS, AND
V
ALUE!
Beyond a parking lot was a half acre of manicured green, a few abstract statues that looked like a bronze giant had taken a dump, then hills covered with junk pines. There were no other buildings in sight.

I pressed my hands into the glass. “Too thick to break. Gunfire’s upstairs, so that’s where Maruta’s security men are. The chak dorms are in the basement. Assuming everyone got a gander at Jonesey’s pictures by now, it’s full of ferals. Which way do you want to go?”

“Wherever there’s a phone,” he said.

I felt in my pocket for mine, then remembered he’d tossed it to the rookie.