Dead Mann Running (9781101596494) (22 page)

Booth headed down, slow enough for me to follow. Our chain sounded like a Slinky as it tumbled on the steps. The office space on the floor directly below looked vacant, so we stepped out. We heard moans, but they were distant, rooms away.

“Where are we?” I asked. “What city?”

Booth thought a second before deciding to answer. “We’re about ten miles north of Chambers.”

“What brought you?”

“I said I wouldn’t crush your skull. I never said we’d swap tips.”

A few seconds later, in a particularly plush office, on a desk full of flowers and cards, we saw a landline.

“Somebody had a birthday,” I said.

“Shut up,” Booth answered.

As he grabbed the receiver, I picked up one of the cards. Dated November twelfth, it was addressed to Rebecca Maruta, best boss in the world.

Before Booth got the receiver all the way to his ear, he chucked it onto the desk.

“Dead.”

Like a bad horror movie cue, the moaning got louder, as if a wall between us and the ferals had suddenly crumbled. They were nearby.

“It’s not the only thing.”

Exiting the office, we saw how bad it was. Out of nowhere, scores of dead, maybe fifty, came from both directions, filling the space. We barely made it back to the stairwell. When we closed the door, instead of being muffled, the sound echoed louder. They were coming up from below, too, fast.

I shook my head. “It’s like they’re coordinated.”

“Up,” Booth said, like there was a choice.

We picked up our pace. By the time we passed the door held by the axe, we were taking two steps at once. On the next floor up, there were more shots than moans, so we stopped for a look.

In the center of a mezzanine, the best boss in the world was standing on a table, looking down at the terrified group of boffins beneath her, clearly annoyed by their weakness. Her NFL-grunts stood in a semicircle around them, shooting anything that moved.

And there was plenty moving. Shredded body parts lay all over. Legless ferals pulled themselves along by their hands as their fellows clambered over them, straight into the gunfire.

The ferals looked like they were trying to get to Maruta and the boffins, as if they knew who was responsible. It was a plan. Not a very good one, but a plan.

How many chakz did Penny say they kept here? Two
hundred thirty-something? The livebloods would win easy, if their ammunition held out.

I heard a rush of air next to my ear, then saw the neat hole the bullet had left in the glass. Booth and I jumped back at the same time. We kept climbing. The last door locked, we both threw our shoulders into it until the latch broke, then fell onto a wide plain of black tar, feet tangled up in chain.

“Fuck,” Booth said.

There were chakz on the roof. Maybe twenty. But they weren’t moaning. They’d been talking. Seeing us, they looked up, as if we were interrupting a secret meeting.

Booth tensed, ready to run back. I put my hand on his shoulder, which only made him tense more. “Hold it. They’re not feral.”

When a few shambled toward us, their formation broke, revealing someone at the center.

“Jonesey!” I shouted. “You damn son of a…”

He held up a finger, handcuff dangling from one wrist. His other hand held a phone.

“No, I don’t have the photo anymore. I already told you, this isn’t my cell. They took that. I had to grab whatever I could.”

Booth rushed toward him. “Give me that fucking phone!”

Ten chakz blocked our path.

Jonesey flipped it shut and eyed Booth. “I don’t think so.”

Booth reared. “You’re not feral, listen to this. Give me that phone or I’ll have you all arrested. I’ll cremate you myself.”

An airy rush came from their all their mouths.

Booth made a face. “What the hell is that supposed to be? Are you deflating?”

“No,” I said. “They’re laughing.”

Booth moved for Jonesey again, but this time four chakz grabbed his arms and held him. He was too tired to put up much of a fight.

I looked at my resurrected friend. “Jonesey, what the fuck is going on? You faked the feral?”

“Worked, didn’t it?” he said. “Look, a lot
did
go feral when they saw that photo. About half. That’s real. This is sort of the command center for the rest of us. I’ve got some of the others trying to secure the perimeter.”

“Secure the what?” Booth said.

Jonesey ignored him. “It’s a revolution, Hess. The dead aren’t lying down anymore.”

I shuddered in disbelief. “You’re going to take over the country with a hundred chakz? You’ll be sliced into pieces by Maruta’s men, or wind up gnawing on each other.”

Jonesey lowered his voice. “It’s not just here, I got word back to the Bones, to Bedland, to at least four of the camps. Not everyone’s great at working the phones, but it’s spreading. Organizing is keeping some of them from going feral.”

“They’ll cut every last one of us down!” I said.

He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “They’re already cutting us down, and worse. But there’s always other possibilities, right? We’ve all got parts to play, especially you.” He smiled and pointed toward another stairwell entrance on the opposite side of the roof. “Follow that down to the bottom, and it opens up out back. You can take one of those squad cars. Oh, wait a minute.”

He thought a moment, mumbled a mnemonic and pressed redial on the cell.

“Bill? Remember those cars I asked you to put out of commission? Can we belay that order? Belay? It means stop, don’t do it. Yes, that’s right, don’t destroy the cars. Got it? What? Oh…”

He walked to the edge of the roof and looked down. I followed. An angry Booth was dragged along beside me. Below, I saw the cars, hoods open, chakz ripping whatever they could from the engines.

“Never mind then. No. You’re doing great. Thanks.”

Jonesey hung up and walked us to the stairwell. “Well, you’ll have to hoof it.”

“Hoof it where? Where do you think I’m going?”

“To get Kyua,” he said. “You’ve got to. The cure is our only chance.”

Booth smirked.

“Kyua? Jonesey, you can’t still think…even after seeing what they did to Hudson…?”

He shrugged. “Satan is often God’s companion. It was
his
project, right? Not hers. Of course I still believe.”

I was speechless. Booth couldn’t care less. He tried to look sincere as he asked, “How about helping us get these chains off and we’ll do whatever you like?”

Jonesey gave him a benign smile. “You’re lying. It doesn’t matter. Can’t help. No keys, no tools, just good thoughts.” He held the door open for us. “Now, I’ve got a lot to do, you’ve got a lot to do, so…go!”

I
f we’d been outside, or riding in a car, say, Tom Booth’s agitated muttering might’ve been quiet. In the high-ceilinged stairwell, his voice echoed louder than a shock jock.

“Revolution?
I’ll
give them a fucking revolution.”

His feet hit each step with increasing speed and fury, making it hard to keep standing again.

“Whatever happens to the LBs, it’ll be worse for the chakz,” I said.

“Poor babies. You already had your chance when you were alive. Screw this ‘lab’ and everyone in it, but in the cities? Those’re
real
people your compañeros will be hurting, like the ones who died back in the plaza.”

He hit the landing and spun for the next set of stairs. The chain taut, I had to grab the banister for balance. “What do you expect us to do?”

“I expect you to stay dead!”

I kept hold of the banister. The sudden halt didn’t make him fall, but it stopped him.

I stared into his steely blues. “So did we! How many times do I have to spell it out? You want to get out of here, shove your fist in your piehole and slow the fuck down! The building’s full of ferals and people,
real
people, as you like to say, who’ll
really
shoot us. Jonesey’s corpse commandos couldn’t protect us from a girl scout with a slingshot. They’re not going to last long. Neither will his revolution.”

“Soon as the chain’s off,” he said, “neither will you.”

“Christ, Tom, were you
this
much of an idiot when I was alive? What happened to you?”

He went back to the stairs, moving slower and without a word.

Jonesey hadn’t lied. At the bottom, the fire door opened easily onto the back of the building. The day slapped us with one of its better versions of fresh, cold air. Past the parking lot was the pine forest I’d seen from the window.

“Road or woods?” I asked.

Booth felt in his inside jacket pocket. “Still got my badge, I can flag a car down.”

“I call shotgun.”

He looked at me. “A joke,” I told him. “To lighten the sexual tension?”

Out of the lot, we followed a road that curved past the front of the building. We’d nearly reached the main road when the sound of speeding cars had us diving behind the hedges. When we heard sirens, my dance partner looked relieved.

“Police,” he said, rising.

I tried to pull him down. “Yeah? Who called them? Maruta?”

No sooner did he grudgingly crouch than three unmarked SUVs sped by. Top of the line and recently waxed, they made Fort Hammer’s squad cars look like go-karts. Keeping formation, they squealed to a halt in front of the building. When the doors popped open, ten more ChemBet linebackers leaped out. They carried machine pistols like the others, but they also wore body armor and carried shields.

“So much for coming back with just the cops,” I said. “Your men are still stuck with peashooters, aren’t they? Last I remember, we only had six sets of body armor, too. You’re going to need the guard or the army.”

When he looked at me again some of the anger was gone, but only because he was using part of his brain to think.

“There may be more coming. Woods, then,” he said. “At least until we’re a mile away.”

We left the road for the pines. I hate undergrowth, and there was plenty. The live branches, too stupid to realize winter was coming, caught at my face and sweater. The dead ones grabbed at my pants. Booth, his scratches no longer bleeding, had gotten a second wind. He pushed through like one of those big machines they use to gobble the rain forest. I kept expecting him to run into a tree trunk and try to knock it over.

When he kicked a grapefruit-sized stone, he didn’t even wince, he just bent over, picked it up, and carried it with us.

“What’s that for?”

“What do you think, asshole?”

I decided not to guess.

Eventually we hit an open spot. I wouldn’t exactly call it a clearing, more like the overgrown remains of a farmstead and the fieldstone foundation of the main house. All that remained of one corner of the house was a single boulder with a tree growing from under it, snaking around before heading skyward. The tree left a little cranny at the base of the stone, just big enough for a small mammal to nest in.

Booth put his foot on the boulder, tugged the chain up and started slamming it with the rock he’d been carrying. His blows were slow, powerful, reminding me how easily he could crush my skull. Not the chain, though. Six or seven strikes later, he was getting winded, the rock had impact streaks, and the chain stayed shiny and new.

I sat on the other side of the boulder and watched. He kept at it, growling, screaming, slamming, a King Canute commanding the ocean to recede. His sweaty grunts were no longer a danger, and kind of small compared to the woods. The absurdity of it was peaceful in a way. A couple of squirrels watched, too, taking us for nuts, wondering if we were too big to stuff into their nests for the winter.

Bored after a while, I picked at my cracked, yellowed nails, hoping I wouldn’t accidentally tug one off. After a longer while, Booth, red-faced and sweating, looked like his heart would burst. The sky was still glowing but our surroundings were dimmer.

“Had enough yet?”

He tightened his grip, pulled the stone halfway back, then dropped it. Arms hanging, he slumped to the
ground, panting. I didn’t tell him, didn’t dare, but he reminded me of me.

“I liked it better when people just died,” he said.

“You and me both.”

Before he caught his breath would probably be a good time to try to talk to him. “Whether or not you want to tell me what you know, you might want to listen to what I do.”

“Go on,” he said, sounding kind of defeated.

I walked him through my last few days. I didn’t look at him as I spoke, just rubbed my nails against the rock like it was an emery board. Nails and hair keep growing even after you die. Yeah, in a normal body they stop after a while, but it’s just another way chakz are lucky, I guess.

I was surprised how much I remembered without my recorder. Poor Misty’s lessons were more useful than I thought. I was also pretty surprised that he didn’t flinch when I brought up the arm.

How much
did
he know?

When I finished, I hoped I could get him to fill in some blanks. “I know you don’t think me or Misty had anything to do with Chester’s death. Half the force
saw
us being chased. Calling us suspects, putting us on the run, was too insane even for you. So, someone high up had to yank your chain for you to fuck with an investigation into the death of an officer, right?”

No answer. I rattled off the few possibilities.

“Our beloved police commissioner McLaurin is a stooge. Mayor Kagan’s in the governor’s pocket, so it’s all six of one, there. Even that slimy crew would be hard-pressed to mess with things this much. If it ever came
out, it’d be worse than photos of them chakking up. But someone big wanted a cover story for all the noise, didn’t want anyone else knowing that briefcase was out there before they could get to it. That leaves Rebecca Maruta and the toad. One or another twisted Kagan’s arm, he twisted yours. That explains the cover story and why you weren’t too eager to catch us, otherwise you could have gotten the guard to track my phone. Did you investigate the real culprits or did Kagan make you stop that, too?”

Booth’s breathing had steadied. I vaguely remembered what it felt like to take long, steady breaths. “Not at first,” he said.