Hellboy, Vol. 2: The All-Seeing Eye (28 page)

The windows of many buildings had been blinded — some with steel shutters, some with curtains, some merely with sheets of paper — to conceal the inhabitants from view. Those buildings whose frontages were almost
all
glass — department stores, restaurants, coffee shops — often had interior barricades of stacked furniture and boxes to provide an extra layer of protection. Now and then Liz saw wide, fearful eyes peeping out at her. Sometimes she heard noises — muffled sounds of movement; even, in one instance, voices raised in furious argument. But for the most part there was silence. And with no one left on the traffic-choked streets to obstruct the progress of emergency vehicles, even the overlapping blare of sirens had been stilled.

Liz didn’t see Duggie until he detached himself from the gloomy corner created by the station entrance and the WHSmith store which jutted out to the right of it. It was almost five p.m., but already the graininess of approaching dusk was in the air, and shadows were blooming and darkening in the city’s numerous nooks and crannies.

“Hey, Duggie,” Liz said, “how you doin’?”

Duggie’s eyes flickered around. He clearly felt exposed and vulnerable out in the open. “Okay,” he said, “but I don’t like this. It’s weird.”

“Isn’t it?” said Liz. “How far’s the refuge from here?”

“A couple of streets away. Less than five minutes’ walk.”

“In that case ...” Liz opened the white plastic bag which contained her purchases and pulled out the coat and balaclava. The coat was big and baggy and came down past her knees. She dragged the balaclava over her head, tugging strands of hair out from the sides to cover as much of her face as she could. She considered rubbing some dirt on her face as well, to further reduce the risk of being recognized, but then decided that that was overdoing things. Although Duggie was unshaven and had an overall look of bedded-in grime, he didn’t have streaks of dirt on his face like some kid playing a Victorian street urchin in a school play.

Hoping that merely keeping a low profile would be enough, she followed Duggie to the refuge. It was an unprepossessing red brick building tucked away down a grubby back street. It was hard to tell what the building’s function might originally have been. It could perhaps have been the premises of a small manufacturing company, or even a modest school. As Duggie knocked on the door, Liz hunched over, keeping her chin tucked into her chest. She was not as famous as Hellboy, but it was still possible she
might
be recognized, particularly if their enemies had been keeping tabs on them.

The door was opened by a thin man with black-rimmed spectacles and a blond beard. His long hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He was wearing a light gray sweatshirt with a faded Oxford University logo on it, and baggy, frayed jeans.

“Hey, Duggie,” he said, as if he were genuinely delighted to see him.

Duggie nodded with rather less enthusiasm. His voice little more than a mumble, he said, “Can me and my friend come in?”

“Well, sure,” said the man. “We’re not turning anyone away today. But I’m afraid all the beds are taken. With what’s been going on outside, the last of them were snapped up by three this afternoon. We’ll be turning the dining hall into an extra dormitory after supper, though. You’re welcome to stay there, if you don’t mind sleeping on the floor.”

“No, that’ll be okay,” Duggie said, and slipped inside.

Liz shuffled after him, still hunched over. A hand was thrust into her vision. She looked down at it.

“Hi there,” said the voice of the man above her head, “and who might you be? I don’t think we’ve seen you before.”

“Annie,” Liz muttered, hoping her attempt at an English accent was not too much of a giveaway.

“Annie?” said the man. “Annie what?”

Liz shrugged.

Ahead of her she heard Duggie say, “Her name’s Annie Davis. She doesn’t say much. She’s shy.”

“Is that so?” said the man. “She a friend of yours, Duggie?”

Liz guessed that Duggie must have nodded, because after a pause the man asked, “How come she hasn’t come around here before?”

There was a longer pause this time. Then Duggie said,”She had somewhere, but the landlord kicked her out.”

Liz hoped that Duggie’s explanation didn’t sound as flimsy to the man as it did to her. Apparently not, because he said, “Oh, that’s too bad. Well, you’re welcome here, Annie. We might not be able to promise you a bed on this occasion, but at least you’ll get supper and a roof over your head.”

Liz nodded and shuffled after Duggie. However, the man was not yet finished with her.

“My name’s Alex Hipkiss, by the way. I run this place with my wife, Jess. You’ll be meeting her soon enough.”

When Liz failed to respond, he said, “So tell me what’s going on out there, Duggie? I’ve heard all sorts of stories — from wild animals to terrorists to monsters. What have
you
seen?”

Liz raised her head a fraction and chanced a peek at Duggie. He shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” said Alex disbelievingly. “Are you telling me that none of the rumors are true?”

“Don’t know about that,” Duggie mumbled. “I just haven’t seen anything, that’s all.”

“Hmm,” said Alex, and turned to Liz, who instantly cast her eyes downwards once more. “What about you, Annie? Have
you
seen anything?”

Liz gave a brief shake of the head.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Alex good-humoredly, “maybe everyone’s making a big fuss for no reason, eh? Maybe it’s just mass hysteria. What do you think, Duggie?”

Duggie shrugged.

Alex sighed, evidently exasperated that his attempts to strike up a conversation were proving unsuccessful. The tone of his voice changed, became more businesslike. “Well, you know where everything is, Duggie. Perhaps you’d like to show Annie round? Supper will be at seven thirty, as always.”

Liz spent the next couple of hours getting to know the place, and trying to keep as low a profile as possible. There were three floors to the building, though Duggie told her that the top floor, which apparently consisted of two sizable attic rooms, was never used. The ground floor housed administration offices, a kitchen, a dining room, male and female toilets, and a medical room, all of which, aside from the dining room and toilets, were generally kept locked. On the second floor was a pair of dormitories (one for men, one for women), two bathrooms (ditto), a shower room, and a games room.

Looking around, what immediately struck Liz was that the refuge was dying on its feet. The blankets on the beds were rough and full of holes, the toilets stank, the taps dripped, and the walls of the shower room were running with condensation and thick with mold. Indeed, the facilities throughout were minimal. The games room contained nothing but a rickety table-tennis table, a few secondhand board games, and an ancient black-and-white TV, which was attached to the wall by brackets and a chain.

Huddled next to Duggie in the dining room, waiting for supper to arrive, Liz asked how long the refuge had been up and running.

“About six years, I think,” Duggie said.

“And how is it funded?”

He shrugged, a gesture which Liz had come to recognize as an autonomic response to virtually every question he was asked, even those to which he knew the answer.

“I think the Hipkisses sunk a lot of their own money into the place when they set it up,” he said, “but I think they find it hard to keep it going. I suppose they rely on charitable donations and the occasional pissy government handout.” He gave her a sidelong look. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m just trying to work out their part in all this,” Liz murmured. “Either they’re philanthropists, who have no idea what’s going on under their noses, in which case one of the staff- — and most likely one of the kitchen staff — is in league with the Eye. Or they’re so desperate for funds that they’re accepting payment in return for turning a blind eye to kidnapping and murder.
Or
they’re in it up to their hippie hairdos, which probably means they’ve been working towards this day for years, and set this place up purely to provide the Eye with victims when the time came.”

Duggie looked shocked. “You really believe they’ve been planning this for as long as that?”

“I’m keeping my options open,” said Liz, “but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. Believe me, Duggie, plans of this kind are frequently set in motion decades, sometimes millennia, before.” She nudged him. “Here comes the food.”

Liz kept her head down as the food was served, but watched the servers closely. As well as Alex and Jess Hipkiss, both of whom seemed infinitely cheerful, there was a hefty, sweating woman with pasty skin and stringy hair and a tough-looking man with grizzled, close-cropped hair and fuzzy blue tattoos on his sinewy arms.

The food consisted of two dollops of fish pie with a potato-and-grilled-cheese topping, and a spoonful of mixed vegetables which had been bleached almost colorless by overboiling. As each portion of food was slopped unceremoniously onto a resident’s plate, the recipient attacked it without preamble. Liz noted that almost all the residents ate ravenously, hunched over their plates and shoveling food into their mouths, as if they expected their meals to be snatched away at any moment.

It was the tough-looking man who served Liz. She kept her head down and muttered, “Cheers,” but he didn’t respond.

Liz was concerned that her and Duggie’s reluctance to eat would be noted, perhaps even commented upon, but she needn’t have worried. As soon as everyone had been served, the hefty woman and the tough-looking man exited the dining room, pushing trolleys stacked with now-empty serving dishes. Alex and Jess Hipkiss hung around to chat to residents, but they were on the far side of the room, laughing with a big guy in beat-up biker’s leathers and a bandanna, whom they seemed to know well. All the same, Liz kept a forkful of food ready, just in case, and even put it in her mouth at one point when Alex glanced in her direction. As soon as he had turned away, she took it out again.

Eventually the old man on her left tapped her arm. “You gonna eat that, darlin’?”

“Er ... no,” said Liz.

“Pass it over here then.”

She hesitated a moment. If the food was drugged, she wouldn’t want to be responsible for providing the old guy with a double dose of whatever it had been laced with. Then again, if the worst that had happened on the previous occasions was that people had woken up the next morning feeling groggy, she guessed the dosage couldn’t have been
too
high. And what couldn’t be denied was that swapping plates with the old man would prevent her having to answer awkward questions as to why she hadn’t eaten her meal. She pushed her plate across to him.

“Share it,” she said in the closest thing to an English accent she could muster. “I’m sure some of the others will want some too.”

As the old man shared out her portion of food with his immediate neighbors, she glanced at the clock on the wall. Almost eight thirty. If all was well, Hellboy and Abe would be moving into position soon. It reassured her to think of them outside, watching over the place, but she couldn’t help feeling a little anxious about the overall situation. She hoped the three of them had made the right decision in staking out the refuge. She had the sense that time was running out, and knew that an error of judgment at this stage could result in the loss of countless lives.

“How can you be so freakin’ calm?” Hellboy asked.

He and Abe were sitting in a darkened car across the road from the refuge. They had been here for over an hour now and Hellboy was ready to explode. Since receiving the phone call from Cassie’s kidnapper, he had felt torn apart with rage, anxiety, and guilt. The creatures he had battled since the call had been no match for his blistering fury, and even Abe had been subjected to the sharp edge of his tongue on several occasions.

Not that Abe minded. He understood Hellboy’s anguish. He sympathized with his desire to be
doing
something, rather than just sitting around, waiting. Even though Hellboy knew their current course of action (or inaction) was their best shot at tracking the Eye members to their lair and recovering Cassie, it didn’t help. Hellboy was a doer, and sometimes, for him, the logical choice was also the most excruciating.

His latest outburst had come after he had said, for approximately the tenth time, “This is pointless. We should be in there, breaking heads.”

Abe had known he was just letting off steam. Hellboy was to the point and often hotheaded, but one thing he was not was reckless, particularly when lives were at stake. Even so, Abe felt duty bound to give a variation on his standard reply:

“Our target is the big fish, not the minnows. You know that. Be patient and the minnows will lead us to the main catch. Disturb the water now, and the minnows will scatter.”

Hellboy glared at him. “Is that some kind of amphibian philosophy?”

“No,” said Abe mildly, “it’s just an observation.”

It was at this point that Hellboy asked Abe how he could be so calm.

Abe said, “It’s just my way of staying focused. If I get angry or upset, I make mistakes. And in our job, if we make mistakes, people die.”

Hellboy was silent for a moment, glowering at the closed door across the street, which stood in a cone of light from the lamp affixed to the wall above. Slowly his brow unknitted and he sighed.

“Yeah, you’re right, buddy. I’m sorry.”

“No problem,” said Abe.

“It’s just ...” Hellboy’s face contorted with anguish “...if Cassie hadn’t met me this morning she’d be home now, watching TV or eating dinner or listening to some music. Instead of which, she’s ...” He waved his hand to indicate he had no idea where she was or what was happening to her, but that he was sure it was nothing good. “Why do these creeps have to go after my friends all the time?” he said. “If they want a fight,
I’ll
give them one.”

“But that’s the point, isn’t it?” said Abe. “They
don’t
want a fight. They go after your friends in the hope you’ll go away. They do it because they’re scared of you — which means they’re vulnerable.”

“If I ever get my hands on them, they’ll be scared, all right,” Hellboy said.