Hellboy, Vol. 2: The All-Seeing Eye (32 page)

“Hang on,” he had said quietly.

Abe had turned to him. “What’s wrong?”

“Things may not be as straightforward as they seem,” Hellboy said.

Seconds later the driver’s door and the passenger door had opened and the two men had emerged.

Hellboy looked at Abe, his golden eyes shining in the gloom. “How many paramedics do
you
know who wear suits and ties?” he had said.

The three agents sat tight as the two men went into the refuge. Then they watched as the men loaded their victims into the ambulance one by one. Once the fourth victim was aboard, the men slammed the back doors shut and climbed into the driver’s cab.

“Here we go,” Hellboy said as the ambulance’s engine turned over and its headlights came on. Tony Mancini twisted the ignition key of the black Rover 3500 that the Brits had provided them with, and they eased out, headlights off, in pursuit of their quarry.

At first everything ran smoothly. The Eye guys in the ambulance did not seem to realize that they were being tailed, and Mancini drove with skill and precision, tucking neatly in behind the leading vehicle, matching its speed, its occasional sudden turns, its progress through lights and intersections. They headed north, up through Camden, passing Holloway Prison on their left. It was when they came to Holloway Road that things began to unravel.

The only army checkpoint they had encountered until now had waved them through without any problems. Hellboy and Abe had been a little tense, wondering whether only the ambulance would be allowed to proceed, but either the army guys must have assumed the two vehicles were on the same mission, or they had spotted Hellboy in the back seat of the Rover.

Unfortunately the B.P.R.D. agents did not have the same luck with the next patrol. This one, comprised of police officers, was positioned at the junction between Parkhurst Road and Holloway Road. This time the ambulance was waved through, but a police officer pointed to a space between a police van and a patrol car, indicating that the Rover should pull over.

“Idiot,” Hellboy muttered. “Just ignore him.”

Mancini nodded and maintained his speed. Angrily the policeman stepped forward, raising a hand, forcing Mancini to swerve and miss him by millimeters.

“What are you doing, you moron!” Hellboy yelled at the officer, though his window was up and there was no way the man could hear him. Turning to Abe, he muttered, “Jeez, don’t these guys
have
brains? Isn’t it obvious we’re trailing the damn ambulance for a
reason?
“

Abe turned and looked through the back windscreen. “Oh, great, now they’re following us,” he said wearily.

Sure enough, two officers, including the one they had almost mown down, had run across to the patrol car parked by the curb and leaped in. The car was peeling out into the road now. Almost immediately it began to flash its lights at their rear bumper, its siren blaring.

“Hey, let’s stop!” Hellboy said brightly. “Then we can tell those halfwit cops they’ve just wrecked our last slim chance of saving their city.”

Abruptly the ambulance put on a spurt of speed, drawing away from the Rover.

“Either we’ve been spotted or they think the cops are after them,” Mancini said calmly.

“Just keep with them, Tony,” said Abe.

Mancini nodded. “Do my best.”

The next few minutes were like a scene from one of the seventies cop-show reruns —
Starsky and Hutch
or
The Streets of San Francisco
— Hellboy liked to watch late at night with popcorn on the rare occasions when he got to relax back home in his quarters at B.P.R.D. HQ in Connecticut. There were plenty of hairpin bends taken at high speed, plenty of near misses and squealing brakes and gouts of rubbery smoke kicking up from scorched tires.

Despite the very real risk of losing their quarry, Hellboy found himself enjoying the ride. He leaned forward as they skidded round corners, felt a rush of excitement each time they swerved around an unexpected obstacle.

Abe, by contrast, who was more vulnerable to physical injury than his friend, was pressed back into his seat, clinging on for dear life. His skin had turned a pale and slightly sickly blue, and the ruff of fins around his neck fluttered in alarm.

On a straight stretch of road, Hellboy leaned forward to speak to Mancini.

“Fun as this is,Tony, there’s no way these bastards will go back to their HQ if they know they’re being followed — which means that we’re gonna have to catch ‘em. Think you can force ‘em to stop without anyone getting killed?”

“I’ll try,” Mancini muttered, eyes fixed on the road.

He put his foot down, coaxing a little more speed from the car.

Abe hunched up his shoulders and closed his eyes, bracing himself for the collision, as the Rover roared right up to the ambulance’s rear bumper, its white double doors filling the windscreen.

Just as the two bumpers seemed destined to touch, the Rover peeled off to the right, looking for a space wide enough to overtake. A split second later Abe was gasping, thrown to his left, as Mancini swerved back in to avoid a traffic light mounted on a concrete island.

Behind them the patrol car was still flashing its lights, its siren screaming like some enraged animal.

Mancini tried again, putting on another spurt of speed, easing the Rover again to the right. The patrol car behind them aped their actions. Clearly the police driver believed they were trying to escape by overhauling the ambulance, perhaps intending to use it as a buffer between themselves and the pursuit vehicle.

The road they were on now was lined by tall Victorian houses. It had once been a residential area, but the buildings had long ago been converted into offices. There were cars parked on either curb, but no further obstacles immediately ahead. The Rover’s engine began to scream as Mancini coaxed yet more revs out of it. The car pulled out wider to overtake the ambulance, its nose edging along the ambulance’s flank, the hot metal of the two vehicles no more than a millimeter or two apart.

Hellboy wound down his window, and Abe half expected him to reach out and dig his fingers into the side of the ambulance as they eased past, perhaps in a crazy attempt to slow it down by sheer brute strength. Before he could ask him what he was planning, however, the ambulance sashayed sideways, its solid back end clipping the passenger side of the Rover.

Inside the car, the bang of impact sounded like a small explosion. The car skidded and slued sideways as Mancini hauled on the steering wheel, trying desperately to bring the vehicle under control. However, instead of stabilizing, it went into a screeching spin, its speed and momentum sending it careering towards the cars parked on the opposite curb. Mancini tried to prevent an impact by stamping on the brakes, but this simply locked the wheels, exacerbating the problem.

Abe was hurled sideways as the Rover crunched side on into the front wing of a parked BMW. He was only prevented from landing in Hellboy’s lap by his seat belt, which clamped across his chest with bruising force. He was vaguely aware of Mancini also being thrown sideways and banging his head on something, and of the ambulance veering wildly for a moment, before regaining its equilibrium and streaking away up the road. Then his senses were overwhelmed by the screech of tortured metal and the stink of burnt rubber. By the time it stopped, so abruptly that it was like jerking awake from a bad dream, Abe’s ears were ringing and his brain felt as if it had been rattled loose in his skull.

“You okay?” Hellboy’s voice seemed to echo up from the blanketing silence of an incredibly deep well.

Abe opened his mouth, his jaw aching from clenching his teeth so tightly, and instantly his ears popped.

Sound and clarity rushed back in. He heard a hissing like escaping steam, groans from the front seat, the siren of the police car whooping, as if in triumph, then falling silent.

He looked around, and for a moment was disoriented. Everything looked different, back to front somehow. Then he realized that the Rover must have spun all the way round in a circle, and had come to rest facing back in the direction it had come. The police car was now parked nose to nose with them. He saw the policemen get out, placing their peaked caps on their heads and pulling the brims firmly down, as if to cement their authority.

“Dammit,” Hellboy muttered, and reached out to open his own door. However, it was buckled with impact, jammed in the frame. With a snarl, he pistoned out his stone right hand and the door not only flew open, but was knocked clean off its hinges. The two policemen stopped and gaped as the door shot out into the road, pirouetted for a moment, then toppled over with a resounding clank.

As soon as Hellboy unfolded himself from the back seat and rose to his full height, the officers’ faces changed from grim intent to childlike shock. Through the cracked front windscreen, Abe saw them blanch, saw one of them take an involuntary step back. He undipped his own seat belt, scrambled across the back seat, wincing at the pain of his injuries, and climbed out through the frame of buckled metal where the door had been.

“Thank you
so
much,” Hellboy said heavily. “Do you morons realize what you’ve done?”

Evidently stung by the insult, the officer who had taken a step back now stepped forward again.

“With all due respect, sir, we were just doing our job,” he said.

“Your job,” Hellboy muttered. “Well, thanks to you guys, you won’t
have
a job tomorrow. And do you know why?”

The two policemen looked at each other. The one who hadn’t spoken shook his head.

“You won’t have a job because you won’t have a city. This time tomorrow there’ll be nothing left of London but a big smoking hole in the ground. So congratulations, gents. Nice work. Now get out of my sight before I
really
lose my temper.”

———

Liz knew that ringing Hellboy was a risk, but a calculated one. Like her, he hardly ever had his phone on when he was working. He’d only turn it on when he wanted to
make
a call, was specifically
waiting
for a call, or if he wanted to check his messages. However, she also knew he’d have been worried by her nonappearance after the Eye guys exited the refuge, and that he would call to check on her the first chance he got. She was not surprised, therefore, when she punched in his number and got his automated answering service.

“Hi, HB, it’s me. Just calling to let you know I’m okay, and on my way to meet you at the house in Ranskill Gardens. I had a little trouble at the refuge, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. Turned out the Hipkisses, who run the refuge, are Eye members. Surprise, surprise, huh? I managed to persuade Mrs. Hipkiss to give me the Ranskill Gardens address. Plus she lent me her car and a London A-Z. Isn’t that nice? If all’s gone to plan at your end, I guess you must be nearly at the house now — that’s if you’re not there already. Call me if you get a chance. See you guys later.”

She dropped the phone on the passenger seat and concentrated on where she was going. She didn’t expect Hellboy to call her back anytime soon, and so was surprised when the phone bleeped three minutes later.

She picked it up. “Yeah?”

“Liz, it’s me.”

“Hellboy. What’s happening?”

“We lost ‘em,” he said tersely. “But you know where they’re heading for, right?”

“44 Ranskill Gardens, Crouch End,” Liz said. “That’s where the final ceremony will take place.”

“How sure are you of that?”

“Put it this way — -Jess Hipkiss wasn’t lying when she gave me the address. I was very persuasive.”

“I’m sure you were,” Hellboy said. “So where are you now?”

“Driving up Camden Road. I’ve just come through the army checkpoint. They stopped me, but I showed them my pass. One of the army guys told me the ambulance had gone through ten minutes before.”

“You should be with us in a few minutes then,” Hellboy said. “We’re on Holloway Road, not far from the Royal Northern Hospital. Can you pick us up?”

“Sure. What happened to your car?”

“It got kinda totaled. Long story.”

“Are you guys okay?” “Yeah, we’re fine.”

From the background Liz faintly heard Abe say, “Speak for yourself,” which made her smile, despite the situation. Hellboy went on as if Abe hadn’t spoken.

“Our driver’s gone to the hospital with a concussion, but he’ll be okay. See you in a few minutes.”

“Not if I see you first,” Liz said.

Even though the ambulance had given Hellboy and Abe the slip, it cheered Liz to think that the three of them would be together for what might turn out to be the grand finale. Sure enough, a few minutes after talking to Hellboy she came across a mangled car on the road, and her two friends standing on the pavement a little way beyond it. Solemnly Hellboy raised a thumb in the traditional hitcher’s manner.

Liz eased to a stop beside them and wound down her window. Adopting a southern-belle accent, she asked, “Where you fme-lookin’ boys headed?”

“Apocalypse Central,” Hellboy said.

“Well, fancy that. That’s where I’m headed too. Hop in.”

Hellboy climbed in beside her, pushing the seat in the little Metro as far back as it would go to give himself some legroom. Liz noted how gingerly Abe moved as he eased himself into the seat behind her.

“How you doin’, Abe?” she asked.

“I’ve been better,” Abe said, “but it’s nothing terminal.”

They drove on, Hellboy navigating. “So what did you do with the couple at the refuge?” he asked.

“Tied them up, called the cops and left Duggie standing over them with instructions to bash them over the head if they tried to escape. They won’t phone ahead and warn the Eye we’re coming, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“
They
might not, but thanks to the cops, the guys in the ambulance now know we’re onto them,” Hellboy said.

From the back seat, Abe said, “But they only know we know about the refuge, and they must have guessed we’d make that link sooner or later. From what we know now, tonight’s visit was clearly going to be their last. They must have decided it was worth taking the risk.”

“Won’t they worry that we’ve found out about Ranskill Gardens from the Hipkisses, though?” Liz asked.