Department 19: Zero Hour (35 page)

“There’s someone on the roof!” he yelled. “He jumped to the next building.”

A burst of static howled through his head, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the pain.

“Come in,” he said. “Come in, anyone, come in.”

There was a hissing crackle, then Major Simmons’ voice came through, sounding as distant as a radio transmission from the moon.

“Browning? Come in?”

“On the roof, sir,” Matt shouted. “Bell’s on the roof.”

A second burst of static filled his ears, followed by the Major’s garbled voice.

“Give … pursue … reinforcements.”

Matt bellowed with frustration. There was no sign of anyone in the lobby, where Major Simmons should have been, no sign of movement anywhere in the building. Through his earpiece he heard what sounded like running footsteps, and looked up at the roof again. The figure had reached the edge of the next building; as Matt watched, he hurled himself on to the adjoining roof and disappeared. From somewhere high above, he heard the thump of a closing door.

Do something. Make a decision, for God’s sake. Do something.

Matt swore loudly, then took off along Balboa as fast as his legs would carry him. His hair rippled back from his face as his feet pounded the pavement, his arms pumping up and down. He didn’t risk so much as a look over his shoulder to see whether any of his squad mates had appeared; his attention was focused entirely on the building in front of him. It was a red-brick cube, tall and wide, with an unmarked pair of double doors standing at the back of a small parking lot. Matt raced across the tarmac and reached for the handle. As his fingers touched the smooth metal, the door burst open with a loud bang and slammed into his face.

The impact broke his nose, sending a firework display of red and white light across his vision. His legs gave way beneath him and he crumpled to the ground, his mouth open, pain thundering through his head. He hit the tarmac on his back; blood poured down his throat, hot and metallic, as a groan emerged involuntarily from his mouth. Something passed above him, followed by the sound of running footsteps. The noise clattered into his skull, slicing through the thick fog of pain, and he forced himself to sit up, blood spilling from his nose and splattering on to the tarmac, startlingly red.

Matt raised his head and saw a man sprinting across Balboa, heading for Third Avenue. He staggered in the same direction until he reached the pavement, and looked down the street towards SafetyNet, hoping to see Danny and the others coming to his aid.

There was no sign of them.

“Hey, man.”

Matt spun round, his heart pounding, and found himself looking into the wide-eyed, earnest face of a teenager clutching a skateboard under his arm.

“Man, are you all right?” he asked. “You’re, like, covered in blood, dude.”

Matt frowned, then shoved past the kid without answering and broke into a shambling run. Behind him the teenager shouted, ‘Hey!’, then muttered ‘asshole’ under his breath. Matt ignored him; he urged his shaking legs forward, and was rewarded as he turned the corner on to Third Avenue.

The running man was still in sight, barely a block ahead.

Matt took a deep breath and ran down the street, gritting his teeth against the pain that radiated from his broken nose every time his feet thudded on to the pavement.

The man had reached Anza and was hopping impatiently from one foot to the other, waiting to cross the road; a long orange and white bus was slowly making its way across the junction with Third. Matt ran down the sloping street, grateful for the contours that made San Francisco so distinctive. He was closing on the man, could see brown hair reaching down to the collar of a yellow T-shirt, jeans that were fluttering above battered Converse. He was barely ten metres away when the man darted out behind the bus and sprinted across the road, sparking a furious cacophony of car horns and shouts of angry surprise.

Matt redoubled his efforts. He had never been any good at sport, preferring to spend his time curled up with a book or leaning over a keyboard, but he had regrettably extensive experience of running away from people; as a result, he was light on his feet, and possessed unexpected reserves of stamina.

This is weird,
he thought, as he neared the wide lanes of Anza.
I’ve never been the one doing the chasing before.

The thought made him grin, despite the hot ball in his chest that was threatening to turn into a stitch. He glanced to his left as he approached the road and saw that it was empty. The far lanes, the ones running west, were hidden by the bus that had now stopped; he was just going to have to hope for the best.

Matt belted out into the road without slowing and looked to his right as he passed the wide rear of the bus. Anything coming at speed was going to hit him; there would simply be no avoiding it.

The road was clear.

At the junction of Second Avenue, a block to the east, Matt saw lines of traffic held on a red light and breathed a sigh of relief. Then he refocused his attention on his target; the man was running for his life towards the wide, bustling expanse of Geary, a block to the north.

Not going to catch him,
thought Matt.
He’s too fast.

He tried to dismiss the thought as a relic of the old version of Matt Browning, the version who had only ever doubted himself, had always believed that he would fail, but realised it wasn’t his subconscious trying to sabotage him.

It was simple fact.

The man was sprinting with everything he had, his feet flying across the pavement. And slowly but surely, the gap between them was widening.

If he gets across Geary, I’m going to lose him.

Matt reached deep into his reserves of strength and demanded everything his tiring legs had left. They responded; the gap began to close, but not fast enough, nowhere near fast enough, and he realised with sudden clarity what he was going to have to do. He reached beneath his arm and drew the Glock that he had tried to refuse in the Dreamland hangar, insisting that he wouldn’t need it.

He pushed himself for ten more steps, then skidded to a halt and raised the gun. What he was about to do was madness, he knew; he was a mediocre shot at the best of times, when his chest wasn’t heaving and his legs didn’t feel like jelly. But if he was going to do it, it had to be now; the block was deserted, apart from himself and the running man.

Geary, on the other hand, would not be, and Matt knew he could not discharge a firearm on a busy San Francisco street, no matter how urgent the operation. He would probably not get into trouble for doing so, such was the air of panic that was permeating the supernatural Departments, but he would simply not be able to live with himself if he hit some innocent bystander.

If he was going to shoot, he had to shoot now.

The man was twenty metres from the junction as Matt sighted down the pistol’s barrel and squeezed the trigger. He was aiming for the legs, hoping to bring him down without killing him, but as the gun bucked in his hand and the deafening metallic bang removed the sound from his ears and replaced it with a high, screaming whine, he saw that he had missed. A cloud of dust burst from the wall of a building five metres behind the target. Matt swore and aimed again. He took a deep breath, held it, then pulled the trigger a second time.

An explosion of concrete burst up behind the man’s sprinting feet; his legs twisted, collided with each other, and sent him into the air in a graceless spiral of flailing limbs. He crashed to the ground with a thud, and began to crawl.

Matt wasted no time on pity; he ran down the street, the Glock swinging in his hand. As he closed the distance, the man lurched to his feet and turned towards him. His face was incredibly pale, his eyes wide and staring, his mouth tight with pain as blood poured from a dozen small holes in his legs. Matt stopped and levelled his pistol.

“Don’t move,” he said.

The man took half an unsteady step backwards.

“I said don’t move,” said Matt. “I’m not here to hurt you. But I need you to stay where you are.”

“You’re with them,” said the man.

Matt nodded. “I’m with them,” he said. “And you’re John Bell. Or should I call you Adam?”

The man’s face wrinkled with disgust. “Don’t call me that,” he said. “My name is John.”

Thank God,
thought Matt.

“Listen to me, John,” he said. “I know what happened to you, and I’m sorry. You can believe me or not, but I really am. And I’m not here to make you go through that again, I promise. I’m here because you might be able to save millions of lives.”

“I can’t,” said John Bell. “I can’t do anything.”

He took another step backwards, on to the corner of Third and Geary.

“Please stop moving,” said Matt, taking two quick steps forward, the Glock trembling in his hands. “I really don’t want to shoot you.”

“I can’t,” repeated John Bell. “I can’t go back there. Do you understand that?”

“I do,” said Matt. “Honestly, I do. This isn’t about that, you have my word on it. No one is going to hurt you again. I know you talked to someone in the desert, someone who was looking for answers. You want to help, John, I know you do. That’s what working at SafetyNet is, right? A way for you to make amends?”

Bell’s face crumpled, as tears brimmed in his eyes.

“I thought I could do something,” he said. “I thought that maybe I could help. That I could be free. But I can’t, can I?”

“You can,” said Matt, his voice almost a shout of desperation. “Yes you can, John. I need to examine you and take some of your blood. That’s all, I swear. After that, you can come back here, back to work, back to your life. I promise you.”

Bell glanced over his shoulder, then produced a heartbreakingly gentle smile. “You believe that, don’t you?” he said. “You really think they’ll let me go when you’re done with me.”

“Yes,” said Matt. “I do. Please, just come with me.”

The man glanced over his shoulder again.

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

John Bell turned, far faster than Matt was expecting, and shambled out into the road as fast as his damaged legs would carry him. Matt screamed for him to stop, and was tightening his finger on the pistol’s trigger when the truck that Bell had seen rumbling along Geary ploughed into him.

There was a thunderclap of blood and a deafening squeal of brakes as Bell was sent flying into the evening air, then disappeared beneath the truck’s wheels.

The bear rose up on its hind legs as it lumbered forward, and even as terror crashed through him, a tiny part of the man’s brain was able to marvel at its sheer size. Its head was almost three metres above the snow, its legs as thick as tree trunks, its coat a deep, dark brown soaked with melted snow. It peered down at him, breath billowing in white clouds from its open mouth, then roared, a terrible, earth-shattering sound that drove the man back half a step.

The bear instantly came forward, closing the distance between them to less than five metres as the man raised the shotgun, suddenly so small in his hands, to his shoulder. His breath was coming in sharp bursts – in, out, in, out, in, out – and the gun barrel was shaking in the night air.

It isn’t even going to get through his coat,
thought the man.
Not unless it’s point-blank.

He risked the quickest of glances over his shoulder towards the fence, then checked the GPS locator on his wrist, not taking his eyes off the bear for more than a millisecond each time.

Eighty-seven metres.

So close. I was so close.

Moving incredibly slowly, the man slid to his right until his back was facing the fence; his gaze remained locked on the huge brown eyes, which were regarding him with what looked like curiosity. Carefully, he raised a foot and placed it back down behind him, keeping the shotgun aimed at the animal’s head. A low growl rumbled from the bear’s throat, but it didn’t move.

The man took another step backwards, then another, opening the gap between himself and the animal. Growling steadily, the bear watched as he backed away, and for a moment, the man allowed himself to entertain the prospect that he might still reach his destination in one piece.

Then the bear lumbered forward and roared again, spit flying from its mouth in thick ribbons. It pawed the snow-covered ground, its eyes narrowing and fixing directly on the man. He took another step backwards, but the bear had clearly decided not to let him go; it loped towards him, its huge body swinging from side to side, its mouth hanging open to reveal rows of teeth the size of shot glasses.

The man raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger. The blast was deafening; it echoed through the dark forest like a clap of thunder, causing the man to grimace with pain as the sound reached his ears.

The effect on the bear, however, was far more pronounced.

The huge animal’s eyes widened, then it turned tail and disappeared into the forest so quickly that the man momentarily wondered whether he had hallucinated the entire encounter. Then he saw the footprints the bear had left in the snow, footprints as wide as dinner plates, and laughter burst from his mouth, a cackle of triumph that was dangerously close to hysterical.