Hell's Maw (22 page)

A sudden burst of gunfire shook Cáscara from her trance. Clutched in the dead man's other arm, Grant was holding the trigger of his Sin Eater down, drilling bullet after bullet into his attacker's leg—the only target he could reach.

In an instant, the dead man stumbled, lurching forward on the ruined leg, his grip loosening from around Grant's torso.

Grant slipped from the man's grasp, spun and aimed his Sin Eater at the corpse's head as the man dropped to the floor. “Playtime's over!” he snarled, holding down the trigger.

A moment later, dead Frankie's face had become a mess of ruined flesh and bone, and he lay writhing on the floor like a hooked fish.

Grant stepped away from the shuddering corpse, reaching for Julio where he now lay on the floor beside the open drawer. “Come on,” he told Cáscara. “Let's get moving.”

* * *

T
HE THREE FIGURES
were advancing on Shizuka as she stood on the far side of Maria Zorrilla's vacant bed. There was nowhere for Shizuka to escape—the room's sole window was ahead of her, blocked by the dark-haired man whose nose she had just broken, while the exit door and en suite were next to one another, blocked by the white-haired man who was striding across the room wielding the blood-drenched anglepoise lamp.

Not that Shizuka needed to run. She bent slightly at the waist, bringing her center of gravity down as the menacing figures approached. Then she pounced, moving with the fluidity of a cat stalking its prey.

Zorrilla was the closest to Shizuka, having just emerged from the bed. Shizuka stepped forward, driving her right hand out in a ram's-head punch that clipped the woman across the jaw. She may be an innocent—in theory they all were—but they were caught up in something that went beyond Shizuka's understanding just now, and every moment they delayed her was another moment that Pretor Corcel was bleeding out on the floor.

Shizuka's blow struck the woman like a thunderclap, and she was thrown backward, stumbling against the bed with a shriek of surprise.

The dark-haired man was on Shizuka then, driving one of his meaty fists at her face. Shizuka spun, twisting out of his reach as the blow sailed past, feeling its breeze rush against her cheek.

Now Shizuka was facing the blank wall by the bed, and she kicked out, pressing one foot against it to launch herself in the opposite direction to where Dark-Hair was still recovering from where his attack had missed. Tucking her head, Shizuka struck him with the crown of her head high in his ribs, knocking the wind out of him and driving him back in a graceless stumble of his unsteady legs. The man fell a moment later, three steps into his awkward dance. Shizuka rolled on the floor, flipping up as she untangled herself from him.

Three feet away, the third man swung the anglepoise lamp at her head. Sensing the movement, Shizuka ducked, and the bloody struts of metal raced over her head, momentarily entangling in her hair before tearing free and striking the wall to her left.

Remaining low, Shizuka swung her fist out and up, striking White-Hair in the gut. The blow was poorly executed, however, the angle wrong, and White-Hair just spit out a breath before reaching down for Shizuka with his free hand.

Throat caught in the man's grip, Shizuka found herself being pulled forward, and she lost her balance as she went skittering across the floor tiles. He let go an instant later and Shizuka went flying across the room before connecting with the far wall.

The man with the anglepoise lamp was on her in a second, swinging his makeshift weapon at her head, using the weighty metal shade and bulb like a club.

“Shit!” Shizuka gasped, rolling out of the way of the assault. The heavy lamp struck the wall behind her with a crash, the bulb shattering on impact.

Shizuka moved swiftly then, her body responding to the hours of training she had put in to become a samurai. She kicked out, leg swinging to catch her attacker behind his knees, forcing him to step forward or lose his balance entirely. He stepped forward, arms outstretched to remain standing. The move had forced the man to step closer to Shizuka, meaning he was much less able to use the hefty weight of the anglepoise lamp as a weapon.

Shizuka stepped in closer still, reaching one arm behind the man's head even as her other hand grabbed ahold of the lapel on his pajama top.

Before White-Hair knew what was happening, Shizuka flipped him over, tossing him over her left shoulder so that he slammed against the wall directly behind her, headfirst.

Shizuka scrambled toward the door, halting momentarily to grab Corcel's arm. “Can you walk?” she asked.

Corcel mumbled something incomprehensible and began to push himself up from the floor. There was a lot of blood on his shirt where the glass shard still protruded.

“I'll help you,” Shizuka insisted, tightening her grip on his arm and adding her own strength to his as he raised himself.

A moment later, the two of them were lurching out the door and into the corridor beyond.

Outside, the corridor had descended into chaos. There was blood on the walls and two nurses lay dead or dying, slumped against doors to the patients' rooms.

“What's happening?” Shizuka asked with incredulity. “How—how can this be?”

From the room behind her, Shizuka's three opponents had shaken off her attacks and were striding across the room toward the samurai woman.
“Corpses for our mistress!”
they chanted in unison, the words delivered in Spanish.

With that, all three began to charge toward Shizuka and Corcel, leaving them with no more time to plan.

* * *

D
OWN IN THE BASEMENT
, Cáscara and Grant hurried to the door of the morgue. Grant had Julio over his shoulders in a fireman's lift, his Sin Eater still held in his right hand.

Before they could get there, another figure shoved its way out from one of the wall-mounted drawers, a tall man with long limbs and a muscular torso. He leaped from the broken drawer and barred the way to the doors.

“I think he works out,” Cáscara muttered.

“Or he used to,” Grant said.

Another drawer to their left crashed open, then another, and more animated corpses began to pull themselves out of their would-be prisons.

“We're trapped,” Cáscara stated. She was right—there were too many walking dead in the path to the door for them to exit easily—they would have to plan a route through them. Brute strength alone would not be enough.

“Go back,” Grant suggested, scrambling toward a door on the far side of the room.

Cáscara skipped ahead of him, reaching for the door. It had a large glass pane in it that ran roughly from waist to crown, granting a clear view into the room beyond. It was in total darkness.

Cáscara opened the door and held it for Grant, ushering him through as the animated corpses began to swarm toward them. Another of the morgue's drawers burst open behind them and a pale-fleshed woman came rolling out from within.

Once they were through, Cáscara slammed the door closed, holding it tightly by the handle. “We need to lock this place up somehow,” she said, her eyes on the moving figures in the next room. “Does he have keys on him?”

Grant reached up with his free hand and checked Julio's
pockets. The blood was drying on the morgue tech's neck and he was delirious. “Can't find… No, nothing,” Grant confirmed. “Just pens and cash.”

Cáscara cursed in Spanish, still watching the figures emerging from the drawers in the next room. “If they get free, Grant—”

“Yeah,” Grant acknowledged. “Let me try something,” he said before switching to his Commtact frequency.

“Cerberus, this is Grant. Kane, do you read me? What's your ETA?”

The response from the Commtact was nothing but silence.

“Cerberus?”

Cáscara looked at Grant quizzically.

“I have a radio comm rig-wired in my skull,” Grant told her before trying the frequency again with no result.

“These walls are lead-lined,” Cáscara pointed out. “Will your radio penetrate that?”

Grant grimaced. “Evidently not,” he admitted. “It sometimes has trouble when I go underground, too.”

Automatically, Cáscara reached for the light switch on the wall. The lights flickered on, filling the room with the momentary
tink-tink-hum
of fluorescents. They were in the theater, where the recently departed were examined when there was medical uncertainty about the cause of death. Two metal examination tables dominated the room, and beside each was a podium containing examination implements. A figure was sitting up on one of those tables, a woman, naked with the top of her chest split open and pinned back to reveal the chest cavity. Behind her, a medical examiner in a white coat was hanging from a noose that had been hooked over one of the depending fluorescent lights made from rubber tubing while another man, naked with the skin of his neck pulled back to expose his throat, was standing holding the other end of the noose.

Behind them, through the window set within the door, more drawers were opening, disgorging their once-dead contents, twelve dead men swarming toward the unlocked door.

There were no other exits.

Twenty-seven minutes earlier

Bells were tolling throughout Zaragoza city.

A graveyard stood beside an eighteenth-century church that was more ruin than building now. The graves were overgrown, their stone engravings mostly lost to the ravages of time. The clear blue sky above remained defiant to the rot below.

Amid this scene, a swirling blossom of color materialized without warning. Like the leaves of a lotus blossom, the upended cone of color seemed to bud from the ground itself. And more—a second cone appeared directly below this one, delving impossibly into the earth in a fracture of reality itself.

The cone was accompanied by no noise, except perhaps the excitement of ionized air particles that arrived in its wake. Its depths held every color of the rainbow, swirling amid a black screen like the night sky, where flashes of lightning like witch fire vied for space.

From this double cone, which defied the laws of physics, there stepped two people—Kane and Brigid Baptiste. Both were dressed for combat, sleek shadow suits hugging their taut bodies, jackets with ammo pouches, grenades and knives finishing the ensemble.

Brigid had a weapon at her hip, her trusty TP-9
semiautomatic, held in an open holster where it could be accessed immediately.

Kane, too, had a blaster, though his was hidden in the familiar forearm holster that tucked beneath his jacket's sleeve, awaiting the command that would launch the weapon into his waiting hand.

As they stepped from the swirling coruscation of light, the cones seemed to shrink, pulling back to their meeting point where they intersected on the line of the ground. A moment later they were gone, and all that stood in their place was a silver pyramidal structure, roughly one foot high with a mirrored surface. This pyramid device was the interphaser, and with it Kane, Brigid and the other members of the Cerberus organization could travel instantaneously across great distances by accessing the quantum interphase window it was designed to open.

Kane looked around warily, alert to danger. “Nice place for a vacation,” he deadpanned. “I can see what drew Grant and Shizuka here. Plenty of romance.”

Brigid was crouched over the interphaser, shutting down as it finished its sequence. She had brought a carry case with her, a little like a rucksack but with a molded, padded interior where the unit could rest safely when not in use. She sealed up the interphaser in its case and glanced around the graveyard. “Do you think we should take this with us, or hide it here for now?” she asked Kane.

“Leave it,” Kane said. “Let's explore first, track down Grant and Shizuka.”

A moment later, Brigid had hidden the carry case deep in the overgrown bushes. Then she and Kane made their way through the tangled undergrowth of the forgotten graveyard, emerging through a set of chained and padlocked gates whose hinges were held together by a combination of rust and sheer bloody-mindedness. As Kane
led the way through the rotten gates he used his Commtact to hail Grant.

“We've just arrived,” he said. “Where are you?”

There was no response.

Kane had emerged on a narrow street on the east bank of Zaragoza, at the end of which he could see the River Ebro. The street was abandoned. The river's waters cast dancing lights on the street as they reflected the sunlight from overhead.

Kane tried his Commtact again. “Do you copy, over?”

Then he stopped moving, glancing back at the graveyard as Brigid pushed her way through a gap in the broken-down gates beside a crumbling wall. “You notice that?” he asked her.

“What?”

“The bells,” Kane said, looking up at the ruin of the church. “Someone's working the bells in there.”

Brigid shrugged. “Well, it
is
a church,” she said.

“Yeah, but look at it,” Kane stated with uncertainty. “The place looks like it's about to fall down. Who are they calling to prayer?”

Brigid inclined her head in thought. “This isn't the only church ringing,” she said after a moment. “I can hear—”

“Me, too,” Kane confirmed, first pointing up the road and into the city center, then gesturing toward the river itself. “And there, too.”

“Any word from Grant?” Brigid asked.

“No,” Kane stated with a shake of his head. Then he activated the Commtact once again. “Cerberus, this is Kane. Can you triangulate Grant's current position and guide me there?”

Farrell's voice replied over the Commtact a moment later from his position at the comms rig of the Cerberus redoubt. “Gotcha, Kane,” he said. “I'm bringing up the data now.”

* * *

A
PPROXIMATELY FIVE THOUSAND
miles away, in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana, Farrell tapped out a command on his DDC computer. The screen flashed up the data from Grant's biolink transponder tracking device. Embedded within all Cerberus personnel, the transponder utilized nanotechnology to provide a position locator, as well as reporting back the user's health, including heart rate and brain-wave activity. Cerberus used these devices to monitor team members in the field, and they had been crucial in saving the lives of several agents.