The Everything Box (12 page)

On 12, Eddie had finished drilling six holes around a wall safe in the corner office. He got out the Semtex plastic explosive, which he'd already rolled into long Tootsie Roll–shaped minilogs, and began packing it into the holes. When they were all filled, he nodded to Racer X.

“You're up, new guy. Hand me those caps one at a time. And don't drop any,” Eddie said.

Racer X opened his pack and handed Eddie a blasting cap. He
handed him each cap slowly. Too slowly, he realized when Eddie started opening and closing his hand fast in front of Racer X's face. He was sweating when Eddie took the last cap out of his hand and pushed it into the Semtex. The big man took a timer out of his pocket and attached it to the leads from each cap. He packed heavy soundproofing cloth around the explosives and waved for the others to follow him out.

The three men lay down behind the reception desk just around the corner from the office.

Coop checked his watch again. It was ten forty.

How much longer is that fat fuck going to take?

The others finished their candy bars and were looking at him anxiously.

“That's why you don't eat candy before a job. It makes you antsy,” he said.

“Not me. It calms me down,” said Tintin.

“Well, I'm antsy for you,” said Coop. He checked his watch again. “Any minute now.”

On the elevator, Steve wanted to check his watch, but he couldn't move his arms. When he'd made the whole group agree to come with him on the robbery, he hadn't counted on some of the logistical problems. Like how it would feel to be packed into an elevator with twelve other people, including a nonbeliever who was so scared, he was one hot second from having a stroke. Steve prayed to his malevolent overlord that the elevator move just a little faster so he could get out and breathe some damned air again.

On the twelfth floor, the Semtex exploded with a satisfying thud, muffled by the heavy cloth. A cloud of dust crept from the office across the lobby like a miniature sandstorm. Eddie and the others got up from behind the desk. Racer X looked at Eddie. When he saw the broad smile on the big man's face, he relaxed for the first time that night.

Then what sounded like every alarm in California went off at once.

“We're up,” said Coop. He and the others ran through the ninth floor as alarms whined all over the building. “We still invisible, Sally?”

“As a fat man at a Santa convention.”

Tintin and Coop moved up to the office. The door was already open, so they stuck their heads inside.

“You memorized the room?” said Coop.

“Yes,” Tintin said.

“Look carefully. Do you see anything that wasn't on the plans that the buyer gave us?”

Tintin scanned the space while the sirens wailed.

“No. Nothing. It's just like on the map. Mostly wards and a few binding spells around the display case. I don't see any physical traps. They probably can't use them in an office with so many people going in and out all the time.”

“That's what I wanted to hear,” said Coop. Sally gave him his tool bag and he removed a hammer and a ziplock bag. Coop took one tentative step into the room and felt a cool sizzle in the soles of his feet where he stepped on some kind of curse. He took another step. He felt another slight vibration, this one from the wall. But it didn't hurt any more than the first. Six more steps and he was across the room like it was nothing.

“Wait. Don't touch that chair,” said Tintin. “There's something new there.”

Coop looked and saw a wire, as thin as a single hair, extending from one of the hand rests and disappearing under the desk. Whatever was back there, he didn't want to make it angry. He stepped carefully around the chair, imagining Phil sprinting around in his head looking for a way out.
Working with live people is definitely a big step up,
he thought.

When Coop reached the display case, he tugged the handle on the door, but it wouldn't budge. No surprise there. A case full of valuable antiques? Of course it was locked. But he didn't need Morty to open it up—this one was simple enough for him to get through on his own.

He smashed the glass with a hammer.

After a quick scan for more trip wires, he grabbed the middle box from the top shelf, dropping it into the ziplock bag. When he turned to go back out of the room, he felt his face doing something it hadn't done in a long time. His lips curled up and suddenly he was smiling. So were the others.

As he put the box into his tool bag, Coop heard something strange over the steady sound of the siren.

The ping of an elevator.

From the moment the alarm started, Steve knew what was coming. Worse, he knew there was nothing he could do about it.

The second the elevator doors opened, he was crushed against the wall as Lloyd and half of his people bolted from the car and ran around the ninth-floor lobby like a pack of demented chickens looking for a way out. The ones not running around like they'd lost their minds were still in the elevator, pushing buttons at random. When the doors began to close, Steve put his hand between them. As they opened again, he hit the elevator's emergency stop button, setting off yet another alarm, which, he figured, didn't matter with all the other goddamn noise going on.

He walked calmly to the office Lloyd had drawn on his greasy map. But he stopped at the door. Steve didn't go inside. He didn't have to. From where he stood he could see the smashed display case and the spot where Caleximus's box should be.

“It's gone,” Steve shouted over the alarm. He noticed the shattered glass on the floor. “Someone's taken it. And he might still be here.”

“I found the fire exit!” shouted Jerry from the far end of the floor.

“Good for you, son. You stay there and keep the door open. The rest of us are going to have a quick look around.”

“Dad, we have to go.”

“Not before we look. All of you chickens and slackers, take an office and check inside. The faster you do it, the faster we can get out of here.”

History has shown us that without very specific directions, it's not uncommon for panicked groups of people to become even more
panicked when trying to carry out orders shouted to them over the sound of a burglar alarm. While Lloyd sprinted to where Jerry waited by the exit, all of the other Caleximus worshippers ran for the same glass-fronted office at the same time.

Naturally,
Steve thought, shaking his head. But then he noticed something: they hit something on the way in.

Which was strange, because as far as anybody could see, there was nothing there.

There was nothing Coop or any of the others could do. Pinned against the walls like they were by whoever the hell these people were, he and his crew slid side by side down the lobby, heading for the stairs. That's when the asshole in charge, a redneck Robin Hood to this band of Merry Morons, shouted for his people to search the place.
Good boy
.
This is our chance to get out,
he thought
.
Only it wasn't, because all of the dwarves charged directly at the office they were pinned against. Coop, Morty, and Sally got out of the way in time, but Tintin was caught in the crush. And was pushed right through the office's glass wall.

“Tintin!” Sally shouted.

That's when Coop noticed something even more distressing. All of a sudden, he and the others were visible.

The two groups stared at each other. Sally grabbed Tintin and pulled him to his feet. Before they got three steps Snow White shouted, “Get them!” And the dwarfs charged.

Morty grabbed Sally, and Sally hauled Tintin, who was bleeding. Coop looked around. There was nothing else he could do.

He threw the jar of Jiminys as hard as he could at the floor in front of the dwarfs.

One of them laughed. “Look—he threw grasshoppers at us!”

Fast Eddie was living up to his name. When the alarm had gone off and the elevator doors had shut tight, it cut off the possibility of climbing back to the roof. When he, Harrison, and Racer X found the stairs, they shot down two at a time, Eddie in the lead.

They made it down as far as the fifth floor when he heard the sound of pounding feet headed up in their direction.

“Security,” he said to the others. “Back upstairs.” And they started running again. This time, as they climbed, something was different. Eddie saw that the door to the ninth floor was propped open slightly. Knowing that security was headed for 12, where the alarm had gone off, he ran for 9, with the others right behind him.

The alarm was still screaming, but no one could hear it on 9 because of all the other screaming. The Jiminys had spread out like a mini–biblical plague and scattered the Caleximus worshippers toward the reception area. All except for Jerry and Lloyd, who stood by the fire exit. Coop got on the other side of Tintin and he and Sally fast-walked him in their direction, with Morty in the rear.

It was too much for Jerry and Lloyd. The noise, the bugs, and now these four hard, scary-looking people—one of them bloody—heading straight for them. Lloyd pushed the stairway door open the rest of the way. And was knocked on his ass by three men running into the lobby, one of them roughly the size and disposition of a bear.

The bear looked down at Jerry and Lloyd. When he looked up again he took a step back, startled, and said one word: “Coop?”

“Shit,” said Coop. Then, “Sally!”

She closed her eyes for a second. Coop shot looks at the dwarfs and at Eddie. When Eddie bared his teeth in their direction, they were invisible again.

But where the hell are we supposed to go?

Steve alternated between shouting orders and slapping at the bugs climbing up his legs. The damned things were everywhere. It was difficult to get his bearings. But it hardly mattered. He'd lost control of his congregation. No discipline. Total chaos. They hopped and ran back and forth across the lobby trying to get away from the leaping vermin. He grabbed Susie and Jorge and shoved them toward the
elevators, but the doors closed as they reached them, the building's security system taking them over.

“There!” shouted Tommy. He pointed to the exit, where Lloyd and Jerry lay sprawled on the floor. At the sight of the open door, animal panic took over and all of Caleximus's worshippers sprinted for the stairs at once, pushing a clacking wave of Jiminys before them.

For the first time, Steve noticed strange men standing in the doorway where Jerry and Lloyd had fallen. Before he could say anything, all three of the men ducked into the fire exit and disappeared. The good thing was they left the door open. The bad thing was that it let the bugs come with them down the stairs.
Nothing to be done about that now,
he thought. He ran with the others, not looking back.

Two floors down, Steve rethought his position on the bugs. A group of armed security guards were coming upstairs straight at them. He and his congregation stopped when they saw them. However, the bugs didn't. At the first sight of the leaping, chittering swarm, the guards turned tail and ran back downstairs.

Let your Ravagers do their work, Caleximus.

Steve and the others followed.

Up on the ninth floor, Coop and the others were pressed against the stairway wall until the noise from below grew quiet.

“I think it's clear,” he said.

“You let those things loose,” said Tintin.

“I was trying to save your life.”

“I'll get over the cuts. But I'm not going to sleep for a month.”

“Me, neither,” said Sally.

“Well, I think it was pretty clever,” said Morty. “It got rid of whoever those lunatics were and it even cleared out Fast Eddie.” He looked at Coop. “Do you think he saw us?”

“I don't know. You think it was a lucky guess when he said my name?” Coop said.

“Sorry,” Sally said. “I got frazzled when Tintin fell.”

“Let's not worry about it now. You okay to move, Tintin?”

The big man nodded. “Let's get out of here.”

“That's the best idea I've heard tonight.”

The street was clear when they went out the employee door. A few Jiminys followed them out, flapping happily into the road. The rest clustered around a streetlamp and began eating their way in. The light blinked a couple of times and went out. Coop and the rest went down Fifth Street and helped Tintin into the van.

“You did good tonight,” Coop told him. “I never would have seen that wire in the office if you hadn't called it.”

“Just doing my job.”

Morty had already slid into the driver's seat. Sally sat with Tintin in the back of the van.

“All of you get out of here,” Coop said.

“You going to be all right?” said Morty. He started the engine.

“Just got to make a delivery.” He leaned in through the window and said, “See you two tomorrow at the Grande Old Tyme.”

“You're buying the drinks,” said Tintin.

“Yeah, you are,” said Sally. “But at another bar. A place where humans go.”

“It's a deal,” said Coop. He stepped away from the van and watched Morty drive to the on-ramp for the 110 freeway. Coop checked his watch. It was eleven ten. Plenty of time. The job had gone a little sideways at the end, but they'd gotten the goods and they'd gotten away and that's all that mattered.

But who the hell were Robin Hood and his idiot mob? Another crew sent by Babylon to take them out? No. They were morons. Not pros. Even if Babylon wanted to double-cross them, he would never hire such idiots. So, who had?

Coop shook it off and crossed Flower Street to the Bonaventure Hotel. He went through the lobby and stepped into one of the big glass elevators. As it rose to the penthouse floor he looked out the windows at the city laid out, shining and winking, below him. His face did the funny thing again. It smiled.

He thought,
I'm back
.

THE STRANGER SAT ON TOP OF THE BIG RIG EATING A
sandwich and watching the highway burn. Of course, it wasn't the highway itself that was on fire, merely a hundred or so cars and trucks piled on top of each other like a king-size game of Jenga.

Only with a lot more dead people and insurance headaches.

He'd heard the term
pileup
many times, but he'd never seen one with his own eyes and he wondered if it would meet his demanding tastes in both the fantastic and the disastrous. As the black smoke from the burning engines and tire fires curled into the sky, the stranger finished his sandwich and applauded. For a brief moment, he thought about an encore, maybe a meteor strike or an attack of killer bees on the survivors, but finally decided against it since it would have been, as they said, gilding the lily.

The stranger was on Highway 101 near Ukiah, California. Before the—as he now thought of it—
car-tastrophe,
he'd been riding in the now smashed-up big rig after the driver offered to give him a ride from a truck stop near Willows. He said his name was Bill. Just for fun, the stranger said his name was also Bill.

“Where are you headed?” Bill asked.

“Just south for now,” said the stranger.

“Going down to San Diego or something? 'Cause I don't go that far.”

“Not that far. And I'll be making a stop along the way.”

Bill nodded sagely. “Oh, San Francisco. That's where everybody wants to go.”

The stranger looked at him. “Really? Not, say, the City of Angels?”

Bill made a sour face. “L.A.'s too far. And it's full of nitwits and creeps. You know,
TV people
.”

“It sounds awful.”

“It is. Smog thick enough to slice into a sandwich. Traffic like the end of the world. Weird women who sometimes aren't women, if you get my drift.”

The stranger didn't, but the way the driver said it, he didn't want to inquire further. However, the end-of-the-world comment made him laugh.

“What's so funny?”

He looked out the window. “Everything. It's a funny world, don't you think?”

“How so?”

The stranger turned to Bill. “The things people believe. The things they want.”

Bill shook his head. “You talk sideways a lot of the time, don't you?”

“I suppose I do. I'm not from around here.”

Bill brightened. “That's it. I thought you might be a foreigner.”

The stranger grinned. “A foreigner. That's it exactly.”

“Well, wherever you're from, your English is pretty good.”

“Thanks. I try my best.”

Bill shifted gears and the truck picked up speed. “I wondered why you didn't talk too much. Most hitchers I pick up won't stop flapping their gums. But I had a feeling you'd be different.”

“Thank you. I try not to intrude on people. Even when I do a bit of redecorating.”

Bill was quiet for a minute. “So you're a decorator? Huh. I wouldn't have taken you for one of those kind of people. Not that there's anything wrong with them. I just didn't take you for one.”

The stranger looked at the speedometer. They were doing just under seventy. “Looks can be deceiving, I suppose.”

“Oh boy, do I know about that. Like I said, some of those Hollywood women. There was this one time some buddies and me were partying with some gals back at the hotel, only it turns out . . . Goddammit,” grunted Bill.

“What's wrong?” said the stranger, glad Bill had stopped his story. It was taking a dark turn and was on the verge of ruining his good mood.

Bill pointed to bright red lines on a GPS device mounted on the dashboard. “Looks like there's an accident ahead. And look at the traffic. Miles of the shit. We'll be here all day.”

The stranger shifted in his seat to get a better look at the GPS. “An accident? Traffic?”

And that's when it came to him.

The stranger looked out the window at the clear blue vacation-billboard Northern California sky. It was quite beautiful, but no, it wouldn't do.
Not at all
.

They were still a few miles from the accident, still speeding along at close to seventy, surrounded by other cars and trucks doing the same, when the fog started rolling in. Just a fine mist at first, but it quickly grew thicker and darker. Bill turned on his windshield wipers.

“And now this shit.”

“Are you going to slow down?”

“Not yet,” said Bill. “And don't tell me my job or you can get out and walk.”

“Sorry. I was just asking.”

The stranger looked out the window. They were still surrounded by an armada of vehicles, visible through the fog by their headlights. He looked at the driver's GPS device. It blinked once and went out.

“Oh dear,” he said.

Bill looked at it in frustration. “Now what the hell? I swear this thing is brand new.”

“Maybe if you hit it.”

Bill did, taking his eyes off the road for a few seconds with each whack. While Bill abused his device, the stranger's feet touched something in the corner of the floor on his side of the cab.

“What's that?”

“That's my lunch. There's sandwiches in there.”

“Can I have one?”

“What? No,” said Bill between slaps on the GPS. “I'm giving you a damned ride. Isn't that enough?”

The stranger reached down and opened the cooler as Bill squinted like a mole through the windshield. He turned when he heard the stranger open the cooler.

“Goddammit. I said those are mine.”

“I don't think you'll need them.”

“What? Why?”

They heard the first cars plowing into the stalled traffic a few seconds before the big rig rear-ended a VW Bug that loomed out of the fog directly in front of them. Bill hit the brakes. The freight container behind them swung around, knocking cars and motorcycles off the road. But it was too late for the truck to stop.
Too late for any of them,
the stranger thought. He took a sandwich from the cooler and closed his eyes.

When they hit the back of the pileup, the stranger was jettisoned like a chicken from a cannon through the windshield and into the back of another big rig that had turned over directly in front of them. He hit hard enough that it should have killed him. But it didn't.

And best of all, he never dropped his sandwich.

As the fog began to dissipate he could hear a few cars in the distance still plowing into the back end of the stalled traffic. The stranger shook the windshield glass from his coat and hair. He climbed over the piles of smoldering metal back to the big rig. He didn't bother checking on Bill. He knew what he'd find. He just clambered over the top of the cab and onto the freight container. It was surprisingly quiet up there, he thought. Just some blaring car horns and the occasional scream. There weren't any more cars to add to the pileup, which was a little disappointing. He should have gotten on the roof
while they were still moving.
Now that would have been a show
. Still, he couldn't complain about the climax of his little play. And best of all, the sandwich was good. Chicken salad, and not the awful kind with mustard.

When the ambulances and TV news crews began to arrive, the stranger knew that the fun part of the show was over. He wadded up the sandwich paper and tossed it over his shoulder. When he climbed to the ground, he found a water bottle on the shoulder of the road. Ah, he thought, the play had climaxed while I was on the truck.
But this, this is the denouement
.

He opened the bottle and drank from it as he started south again.