Damn Him to Hell sd-2 Page 9

“They don’t. The robot vacuums keeled over or rolled into the harbor. They’ve got people out there now with brooms.”

  Keeling vacuums were normal in my world. Sweeping in the Zone was the anomaly. “Better they kill people than machines?” I asked dubiously. “Why bother sweeping at all?”

  “Paddy says the particles could be dangerous. He couldn’t say whether they’d blow up or turn everyone in town into a zombie.”

  “The particles?” Crap. I’d been ignoring my fear all day. I didn’t want it confirmed while I was down and just about out. “The pink confetti stuff?”

  “Ashes from the new element,” he confirmed, switching a light off in the tunnel as we entered the bomb shelter. “We’ve been washing it down the drain, into the sewer system, into the harbor, no telling where. We could be sitting on Chernobyl.”

  I tried to whistle but my mouth was dry. “It wasn’t a big explosion,” I argued, half running to keep up with his long strides. “A few dust particles here and there can’t wipe out dinosaurs.”

  I’d trailed confetti uptown, through the city, into the courthouse. Police cars, ambulances, all would have carried them to parts unknown.

  “Too late to stop the spread now,” he said fatalistically. “Those of us living here face constant exposure. We can try, but we can’t sweep it all up.”

  “We could all become Sleeping Beauties?” I asked facetiously. I was too tired to imagine all the ramifications.

  He shot me a frown. “Sleeping Beauties?”

  “Like the lady you’ve apparently been hiding. Is she one of Paddy’s magical element experiments?”

  “You won’t quit until you find out, will you?” he asked, stopping in the bomb shelter.

  “You’d rather I never asked questions? Went my own way, kept my head down?”

  “You’d take my head off if I said yes.”

  He was right about that.

  Without warning, he jerked me into the infirmary, where they were keeping Sarah and Sleeping Beauty. Neither appeared to have moved a muscle since I’d seen her last.

  Andre led me to Beauty’s side. I could see the resemblance even before he spoke.

  “Mary Justine Clancy, I’d like to introduce you to my mother, Katerina Montoya. Mi madre, esta es Tina, the Zone’s very own Alice in Wonderland. Or the devil’s daughter, depending on how you want to look at it.”

  The woman in the bed didn’t blink an eyelash. If I were the fainting type, I might have considered a brief bout of vapors.

  Andre had a mother. And a name. And the Montoya rang bells as well.

  Julius Montoya had written some of the law books I’d just finished studying.

  10

  “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Montoya,” I said, patting Sleeping Beauty’s limp hand and glaring at Andre. I’d had a few too many surprises over the last few months. I didn’t appreciate this one.

  His mother was a beautiful zombie. His father had been a distinguished judge and respected legal scholar. And Andre was . . . what?

  Running a neighborhood for bizarro trolls. Neat little piles of evidence sorted themselves in the filing drawer of my mind, but this was real life and I had to deal with it in real time.

  “How long have you and your father been taking care of her?” I asked after Andre adjusted her blanket and we returned to the main hall.

  “Don’t give me any credit. I was overseas at the time. Dad’s been bearing the burden. When I saw her last, she was lashing me for joining the service, telling me to come home safely or she’d kill me, and weeping over losing her only son. Never a dull moment around the Montoya household.”

  He spoke with his usual sarcasm, but now I knew it hid grief. Andre wasn’t all sharp edges, as I preferred to believe. He might actually be human. Ugly thought. I didn’t want to go all tender and mushy around a deceptive criminal like Andre.

  I bet guilt ate at him almost as badly as it ate at me for sending Max to his demise. Guilt, I was learning, is a powerful motivator.

  “What do the doctors say is wrong with her?” I hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. Andre seemed as cool and relaxed as if he’d just risen from a long night’s sleep, although I knew he’d been up as long as I had.

  “They don’t, not anymore. She had cancer. She was dying, with only months to live. I was in a battle zone. When I finally got my discharge, I came home to this.” He started for the stairs. “I’m not sure if her death wouldn’t have been better for all of us.”

  I could hear enough anger and pain in his voice to accept his story. “You came home to a zombie Sleeping Beauty and no explanation?”

  “Experimental drugs, I was told. Old news, Clancy. Go call your friends. See if we can get the patients out of here before Acme comes snooping.”

  “You really think Acme will come after them?”

  “Acme knows we’re here. The cops aren’t about to protect us under these circumstances. They’ll blame us for experimenting on sick people or something equally ugly. We always get the blame—not a good, upstanding, taxpaying corporation owned by a senator’s wealthy, respectable family.” Yup, definite snark in his tone.

  “The zombies are mostly homeless bums,” I protested. “Who would want them? Acme has Bill and bums of their own. They can play with their pink ash and try to figure out how not to blow things up. That’s more than enough to keep them occupied.” I trotted up the stairs behind him, fretting about Bill.

  I really, truly did not want to go back into that death trap again if there was any other way of getting him out.

  “Ask Paddy,” was all he replied.

  “I have to find Paddy before I can ask him,” I grumbled, carrying on as if I wasn’t shell-shocked. Maybe lack of sleep prevented a good panic. “Where did he go?”

  Andre stopped and I almost ran into him in the dark. He grabbed my arms to steady me, held me a moment too long, and there was a heart-pounding moment when I thought he meant to kiss me again. After being good all day today, I really needed a kiss as a reward. Guns and mothers and pink ash flew straight out of my head. I tensed, preparing myself for . . . whatever.

  “Good question, Clancy. Last I heard, he was at Acme with you and Schwartz. You might have to run another rescue mission.” Instead of teasing me with full body contact, he released me and continued up the stairs.

  He didn’t like that Schwartz had saved the day. I didn’t like the idea of running another rescue mission. And my hormones were in full-scale screaming mode.

  “I’m a law clerk, remember? I can’t do anything illegal.” Two could play the snark game. “I’ll camp on Paddy’s doorstep. If he doesn’t come home, I’ll get Pearl to let me in and we’ll see what he keeps under his bed.”

  “Go home, Clancy. Get some sleep. Tomorrow is another day.” He pointed at the front door.

  “Maybe I should go down and see if anything interesting is happening at Chesty’s,” I called over my shoulder as I departed. “Maybe Schwartz will walk me home!”

  I really shouldn’t have taunted a tiger.

  • • •

  Ticked at being abandoned for so long, Milo still wasn’t speaking to me Sunday morning. I fried him a little bacon to top off his kitty food. My orange tabby Manx couldn’t vent his anger by swishing his nonexistent tail, but he had attitude to spare anyway. He ate the bacon, turned his nose up at the healthy food, and leaped to his sentinel position in my front bay window overlooking the street. Everyone’s a critic.

  Checking in with the real world for a change, I signed into Facebook and almost fell over when I discovered a direct message from my mother. She was apparently now in some remote village in Peru where the Internet wasn’t exactly common.

  Mom’s icon today was the Roman version of the goddess of justice, the blindfolded one holding a sword and scales. I’d already done my research and knew the Greek version of the justice goddess was Themis, and Greek Themis was a legendary psychic who didn’t carry weapons or scales. So my grandmother thought she was psychic and my mother tho
ught she was a sword-wielding Justitia. Swell. Where did that leave me? Any goddesses with law books in their hands?

  Congratulations on your graduation, daughter. Perhaps you’ve taken a safer road than your grandmother in your search for justice. I cannot give you wealth, but knowledge is power. Wield it wisely.

  She added a Web address, presumably as my graduation gift of knowledge. I wanted to check on our patients, but my mother communicated so infrequently, I couldn’t resist wasting a little more time. I called up the website.

  A discreet symbol of the Roman god Saturn holding his sickle was the only header on the site. The rest of the page appeared to be more message board than website. I couldn’t find any place where I could leave comments should I want to. I didn’t belong to their sekrit klub.

  Another page gave me links to a couple of dozen websites—some in Arabic and Cyrillic and most of them with foreign domains. This was a pretty worldwide group. I recognized the address for the Themis Astrology and Tarot website and knew it held no surprises. Were these all Saturn’s daughters? I was too excited and scared to hope.

  Fat Chick in Canada’s link was in English and caught my eye. I clicked on the address and called up a blog that seemed to be a dumping ground for rants about injustice. She had a blogroll down the side I didn’t have time to follow.

  The one item that struck me right between the eyes was the photo of Fat Chick. She was indeed large. Not obese, but Viking-warrior large. She looked to be about my age but she’d have made three of me. She held a sword in one hand.

  The other hand was on the wheel of her chair. She was crippled.

  Oh, wow. Oh, crap. She had waves of gorgeous red hair, brilliant blue eyes, a flashing white smile . . . and she was in a wheelchair. Shitcrapfuck.

  Was this how Saturn punished bad judgment calls?

  I was super-glad of my innate caution. I could have had two bad legs by now if I’d blasted everyone I’d wanted to blast.

  So much for reality. The Zone was looking safer than my future. I looked out the bay window over Milo’s head to the gray morning. No sign of green gas. I couldn’t tell if any pink ash littered the square of yard in front of Pearl’s house.

  I didn’t have the education necessary to figure out the explosive capabilities of Acme and pink ash, but I could at least attempt to move some of our patients to better medical facilities. I’d e-mailed my mother’s dubious friends last night. Since it was Sunday, I didn’t expect immediate replies. I wondered if I should talk to Max’s biker buddies. If anyone knew how to dump unconscious victims, they did. But I wasn’t certain our patients would receive the best of care in their hands.

  Maliciously contemplating wishing Acme’s management into outer space, worrying about ending up like Fat Chick, I used chewing gum to stick a message to Themis on my door asking if I would go to hell for visualizing punishment. She’d left me notes that way a few months back. I had no reason to believe she hung out in Baltimore, except the Zone was the only center of weirdness I knew, and even though I’d never met her, Granny rated high on my Wyrd Scale.

  I almost wanted law school back so I could remember what it was like to have a sane day.

  I couldn’t call Jane at this hour on a weekend, so I e-mailed her asking if she’d heard anything more about Acme. Her story on the Internet news site might have broken sooner than anyone else’s, but it didn’t include any new information—like how Acme would prevent a nuclear explosion of zombie gas. I was a wee bit antsy about a repeat of yesterday or worse.

  Next time, it could be nerve gas. Or Agent Orange. Would our new zombies be comatose forever? I needed information that didn’t include chemical formulas.

  I sent four-eyed computer geek Boris a request for a charger for the tablet. I could have ordered one online, but I’d never had a credit card. Now that I had a real job, maybe I should think about getting one. I needed a lot of things if I meant to tangle with Acme.

  Restless, I decided to check upstairs to see if Paddy really lived there. I’d never ventured to Pearl’s third floor, and I was admittedly curious. The old Victorian was sturdy, built with solid wood. The banister hadn’t been polished in decades, but it was still smooth under my palm. These stairs weren’t as worn as the lower ones. Perhaps the third floor had been mostly for storage.

  The stairs ended in a six-panel door with no identifying marks. I rapped my knuckles against it, not really expecting to be heard. As far as I knew, Paddy winked in and out of existence like my granny.

  I was about to turn away when I heard shuffling on the other side. I breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn’t wanted Paddy to be harmed by our escapade yesterday, but the thought of returning to Acme to find him wasn’t a happy one.

  He opened the door and frowned in surprise. “I thought you were Pearl.” He shuffled back into the apartment in old bedroom slippers, leaving the door open.

  Looked like an invite to me. “Pearl can’t climb the stairs anymore. I hope she’s not still in the cellar. Should I check on her?”

  “Don’t believe everything Pearl says,” was his ambiguous reply.

  He had books and papers spread across every inch of the floor, and there were a lot of inches. I’d guessed right. This once must have been an attic. The floors were unvarnished wood. The walls were brick. Bare bulbs hung from the rafters overhead.

  He had a good view for miles inland and toward the Zone if he opened the French doors to the tiny front balcony. Even from up here, the air was a normal gray fog color, raising doubts about the lingering effects of green gas.

  But there were still a dozen or more comatose patients who hadn’t come around. The cloud hadn’t been our collective imagination. Even as I stared down, I saw little Roomba-like devices circling the street, sucking up dirt and presumably particles. Apparently, the machines worked this far outside the Zone. If Acme really was vacuuming the streets, I wondered what they were doing about the harbor. Employing tiny Nemos?

  A plain door on the opposite wall blocked any view of the water. Someone had nailed shelves between the wall studs, from floor to ceiling, and Paddy had filled them with books.

  The only furniture I could see was a top-of-the-line computer desk, chair, and equipment, with thick cables and several large monitors.

  Milo sniffed around and settled down in front of the French doors to keep an eye on activities below.

  I rummaged in my capri pocket for the USB drive I’d copied yesterday. “I liberated this from the head honcho’s office. Don’t know if it’s useful.”

  He was flipping through a book on the desk but glanced up quizzically at my offering. His eyes were clear, and he seemed to be operating on all cylinders, despite his cryptic replies.

  “Head honcho?” He took the drive and plugged it in without asking for more explanation. “You mean Ferguson, the one whose ID tag you stole?”

  Okay, definitely operating on all cylinders. I was starting to enjoy myself. I could have a posse if Paddy was up to speed. “That would be the one.”

  “He’s a pervert.” He opened up the file list I’d copied, scrolling through. “I have most of this. The moron doesn’t know the meaning of password.” He clicked on one that couldn’t have been labeled more obviously: private.

  I had a quick glimpse of way too much gross nek-kid anatomy, before Paddy deleted the entire folder with the push of a button.

  “Maybe I should delete Ferguson like that,” I muttered, not enjoying myself anymore.

  “When we’re ready to dispose of Ferguson, we can call the feds and have him taken out based on the contents of his computer,” Paddy said, unfazed.

  “You’re almost as mean as I am,” I said in wonder. “Why haven’t you shut down Acme already?”

  “Can’t, for many reasons, as you’ve pointed out before. Besides, if I’d reported Ferguson, they would have locked me out permanently. Have you checked on our patients this morning?” He settled into his chair and started studying dates on the files I’d given him.

&nb
sp; “I’ll do that next. Anything else I can do?”

  He glanced up in surprise. “You’re asking?”

  I shrugged. “I do that sometimes. Even surprise myself.”

  He snorted. “And then you do what you want anyway. Keep Andre from killing anyone. It’s not healthy for him.”

  He returned to work as if I weren’t there.

  If I asked about Andre, it would imply I was interested. Not going there. If I meant to be a lawyer, I had to stay away from people who broke the law. Or thought they were above it.

  That was a pretty dilemma for someone considering breaking, entering, and criminal trespass to retrieve Bill. I had justified saving Sarah because she was nuclear dangerous. But could I jeopardize my career for a gentle man who was just a friend? And then callously leave the others? Or was I trying to justify not going back to Acme’s dungeon?

  I let myself out. Milo trotted after me. He’d appointed himself my guard cat, but I’d seen him flung against a wall and almost killed. He wasn’t invincible, but I couldn’t convince him of that. He was as warped as any other being living in the Zone. Take my word for it.

  Checking outside, still seeing and smelling nothing unusual beyond the mechanical critters sucking the street, I let Milo follow me next door. From this vantage point, I could see down Edgewater to the Zone’s business district and ground zero of the barricaded harbor, with its rusted chimneys. Not a creature was stirring, not even pink ash.

  No one answered the bell at Andre’s place. As usual, the front door was unlocked. Since this and the warehouse were the only ways I knew to access our patients, I entered without invitation. Maybe Andre’s security system sent him a Nuisance Alert message when I arrived so he could flip some magic switch.

  If so, he didn’t come out to stop me. I smelled burning toast from one of the kitchens, but as much as I liked Julius, I wasn’t casting myself in the role of domestic goddess. I like to eat, and I’d learned to cook to prevent starvation. Just because I could didn’t mean I was meant to feed the multitudes. I jogged down the cellar stairs with Milo on my heels.