The elevator doors closed over smeared blood.
Billy popped the clip from the gun, counted the bullets and said, “I don’t think there are upgrades or reloads in this game.”
It struck Keats that if he had ever found a match for Caligula, it was this sad, sick little boy. It was not a good thought. His stomach was empty, and the smell of his vomit filled the padding-walled elevator as it dropped beneath them.
Keats had kept his place on Caligula’s optic nerve. He saw the sudden cessation of hammering. The visual field swirled as Caligula moved quickly.
“He’s heard us!”
“Up against the walls, hide under the blankets!” Billy yelled in high-pitched excitement.
The blankets were the padding hung to protect the elevator walls. Wilkes and Keats dived under. Too late Keats saw that Plath hadn’t moved.
Billy stood waiting, gun drawn and leveled.
Keats saw Caligula rushing toward the elevator, stopping, ducking behind cover. And then the peace of the game descended on Keats. It was live-or-die time. Win-or-lose time.
All his gaming life Keats had had this other place he could go, except that he didn’t quite go there as an act of deliberate choice, it would just happen. It would come down over him—a calm, a control, a speed of perception, an ease of decision making—blessedly blanking out fear and self-loathing.
“He’ll be to your left, Billy,” Keats said. “Behind a thick vertical pipe painted orange.”
Billy shifted stance without a word.
“He’s expecting an adult, someone tall,” Keats said, still deadly calm.
Billy nodded and squatted. His head would be lower than a grown man’s belly. Caligula would be quick, but he might hesitate on seeing a child.
“Wilkes. Give me your gun. As soon as the door opens, scream, really loud,” Keats ordered. “Like you need help.”
Caligula’s eye was steady now, lid drooping just a bit, unafraid surely, confident that no one could beat him. Keats’s biot was already busy sawing away at the massive optic nerve beneath its feet. Cutting, cutting, like trying to slice through a bridge cable with a hacksaw, but nerve fibers popped and coiled away, wildly whipping wires, and each taking with it a tiny part of Caligula’s visual field.
The elevator stopped.
The door was loud as it opened.
Wilkes screamed, “Help! Help me! Help me!”
BANG!
BANG!
Billy and Caligula fired almost simultaneously and out came Keats from behind the hanging blanket and fired wildly, BANGBANGBANG! with bullets ricocheting off pipes.
Keats’s biot sawed madly and now more shooting, and Keats was on the floor of the elevator now, crawling on his belly, aiming, squeezing off rounds, gun bucking in his hand until it banged open, out of bullets.
Billy, still standing, advanced in quickstep, running for cover, and Keats saw Caligula’s eye tracking him, saw the butt of Caligula’s gun as it bucked from recoil and heard the loud BANG! and saw Billy the Kid’s neck suddenly no longer all there.
The boy fired again as arterial blood sprayed like a cut fire hose, until his head, no longer supported, fell to one side and hung limply, and Billy fell, knees hitting the floor, then onto his back and his head bounced, barely tethered. His gun twirled across the floor leaving a blood trail.
Caligula emerged from cover. He holstered his now-empty gun. Calm. No hurry. He drew his throwing hatchet, and Keats could see the killer’s eye on him, on a pitiful crawling wretch, saw the way it focused on his upturned face.
Alien, the sight of his own face as he waited to die. Strange and alien. Keats knew the face, knew it was him, but how could that be? The blessed peace of action had faded, and now he was a bug, a worm waiting to be crushed by the boot of the human god.
The hatchet flew.
It grazed Keats’s shoulder and clattered to the floor of the elevator.
Was Wilkes still screaming? Someone was.
Caligula blinked. Stared.
Knew. Understood. Because Caligula did not miss, not with gun or hatchet. He did not miss, and he knew then it could only be some fault in his vision.
Keats’s biot sawed and more nerves parted.
Caligula drew a knife and bounded, like some bizarre kangaroo, rushing with unnatural speed. Keats saw the distance shorten in a heartbeat, saw the killer’s focus, saw his own scared face, Wilkes’s open mouth, a flash of Plath’s hand pressing down on the door’s Close button, and the elevator door closing too slowly.
Caligula reached the elevator when the doors were still six inches apart. He thrust in a hand to stop it.
Wilkes was on him like an animal, biting the hand, snarling, shaking her head like a terrier with a rat.
Caligula yelled in pain and rage.
Keats saw the door from the inside.
The door through Caligula’s eyes.
The knife dropped from Caligula’s bloody hand, but he did not withdraw, would not let the door close.
The hatchet was in Keats’s hand before he knew it. He observed it through Caligula’s eye, saw the killer seeing him, saw the killer track the hatchet as it went back and came down fast and hard and Caligula tried to pull the hand back now, but Wilkes still had it in her teeth and the hatchet blade hit with a cleaver-on-bone sound, barely missing Wilkes’s nose and biting deep into Caligula’s flesh.
Wilkes recoiled then, the hand pulled away, pumping blood from the gash.
Keats saw the doors close from both sides.
He saw the killer stare at his mangled hand, then through his own eyes saw the little pink curls of fingers on the elevator floor.
The elevator rose.
“Billy,” Wilkes said. Her mouth was smeared with blood, forming a terrible rictus smile.
“Up,” Keats said, and punched the button for the highest floor available, the third floor.
“What are we going to do?” Wilkes asked and there was a sob in her voice.
“Surrender,” Plath said.
TWENTY-FOUR
Suarez was handcuffed. The handcuffs went through a chain that in turn went through a massive steel ring set into the wall at head height.
The wall was in a dungeon.
The dungeon was both frightening and absurd. There were mossy stone walls. There was straw on the stone floor. She’d been left with a rusty pail in which to do her business. The door was too low and made of flaking, unfinished wood. There was a narrow window, but when she dragged her chain over to it she saw that it was fake. The scene visible through the window was a matte painting of a medieval village.
“Cute,” she said dryly.
It was like a movie set, or something out of a video game. Someone was having fun with the whole idea of a dungeon. Which was absurd.
The scary part came from the fact that the cuffs and chain and even the ring in the wall were all of very high-grade steel.
A man who had the bearing of a former cop or soldier, a beefy, steroided thirtysomething with a crew cut, brought her dinner after a while. The tray was plastic and flimsy, no use as a weapon. The cutlery was plastic as well, and not the good kind. Water was in a plastic bottle. Wine was in a paper cup.
Wine, because it was quite a good meal, considering the location. Better than airline food, in any event. Wine in a dungeon.
“You have a name, soldier?” Suarez asked as he set the plate carefully on the floor, five feet from where she sat.
“Yes, sir,” he said reflexively. So (a) he was an ex-soldier, and (b) he knew that she’d been an officer.
He flushed, realizing his mistake. Then said, “You can call me Chesterfield.”
“That’s not your name. It’s a brand of cigarette.” When he did not demur, she said, “So, I’m guessing the other guards will be Marlboro and Lucky Strike?”
“Eat your food. Ma’am.”
“Looks good. And I am hungry.” She crawled to the food. Took a sip of the wine. “Know what the wine is?”
??
?It’s French.”
“Expensive, too, I’d guess. No point paying to ship cheap wine all the way here. Of course I’m more of a whiskey drinker.”
“So’s the boss.”
“The boss,” Suarez said pensively. “The one who thinks civilization is about to crumble so she built Crazy Town here. You’re not crazy, though, right? You’re just here for the money? Bad economy and all, a former serviceman has bills to pay like anyone else.”
“If the boss says it’s all coming down, it’s all coming down. I mean, she’s probably the smartest person in the world, smarter than Dr. Stephen Hawking.”
Dr. Stephen Hawking? Suarez rolled that around in her head. A strange way for a guy who looked like this to put it. Doctor?
“Okay, well, what do you do for fun around here while you’re waiting for the apocalypse?”
“It won’t be an apocalypse for the people here; it will be a rebirth.”
No irony in his gaze. He was dead serious. Someone had definitely sold this boy a complete bill of goods.
“Okay, which still leaves the question of what you do to pass the time?”
He shrugged, and Suarez detected a softness in him. I’m going to try not to kill you, she thought.
“I don’t suppose there’s any way I can get a shower? You know, hot water? Soap?” She mimed it for him, mimicking the movements of a bar of soap over her body, not lasciviously—that would be too obvious and set off alarm bells. Just … enough. She just wanted him to connect his boredom with the mental picture of a reasonably attractive woman taking a shower. Let him stew on that for a while. Activate the twin male instincts of protection and predation.
Later, when the time was right, there would be the metal pail.
“No shower,” he said in a voice just a tiny bit lower than it had been. “I could maybe get you a deck of cards.”
“I would be very grateful.”
The explosion came as the elevator rose, an impact that knocked Keats, Plath, and Wilkes to their knees. Not an explosion that would bring down a building. Smaller.
But the elevator stopped moving, and the door did not open. The backlit buttons went dark. The overhead light snapped off, replaced by an eerie emergency light.
“He blew up the elevator doors down there,” Keats said, offering his hand to Plath.
She spurned it and jumped to her feet. “We have to get out of here.”
A second explosion, more distant this time. The second elevator.
“He’s cutting himself off,” Keats said.
“He’ll die with the explosion,” Plath said. Then, softly, “Maybe that was the plan all along.”
Wilkes had started trying to pry open the elevator doors. Keats and Plath jumped in, jamming splintering fingernails into the gap. Slowly, inch by inch, the door opened. They were between floors, but with an open space of several feet.
Plath went through first, boosted by Keats. Then Wilkes. Together they hauled Keats after them.
They were on the ground floor—the lobby floor, polished marble. Security guards were a swarm of uniforms and plainclothes tourists from Denver, though minus the parkas. All were armed. In seconds there were a dozen weapons pointed at the three of them.
“One move and we shoot,” a woman snapped.
“No need,” Plath said. “I’m Sadie McLure. We need to talk to the Twins.”
“And in the meantime, there’s an assassin down in the basement preparing to blow this whole place up,” Keats said.
Nervous glances went back and forth.
“Hey, dumb asses,” Wilkes said. “Shoot us or beat us up or whatever, but there is an honest-to-God stone-cold killer down there.”
“He’s wedged a car jack behind a gas pipe,” Keats said. “In a few minutes high-pressure gas is going to start pouring into the basement.”
“Leave his eye,” Plath ordered. “Find an artery.”
Keats’s eyebrow shot up at the tone of command. Plath, who had seemed almost to be comatose, now sounded like her old self.
“Kill him?” Keats asked. He searched her eyes, not sure what he wanted the answer to be. In this very building Plath had refused to kill the Twins. She had refused to commit cold-blooded murder.
Many had died since then. Much had changed.
They had just ripped m-sub yards of wire from Plath’s brain, and parts of her gray matter were as raw as a skinned knee. If she gave the order, who and what would be behind it? What would be her motivation? How much responsibility would she bear in the end?
And if she said—
“Kill him,” Plath said.
And if she said, Kill him, would he obey?
“Get them up to Jindal. Cuff ’em, keep guns on them, any bullshit, shoot ’em,” the woman in charge snapped.
The three remaining, active members of BZRK New York were cuffed and hustled to the main bank of elevators.
“Has he blown the pipe yet?” Plath asked Keats.
“I don’t know, Keats said. “I’m no longer on the optic nerve.”
Plath and Wilkes both knew this meant he had sent his biot to kill Caligula.
“And the last of the righteous succumbs to the darkness,” Wilkes said mordantly, and added, “Heh-heh-heh.”
· · ·
Lystra Reid laughed like a mad thing, and to Bug Man’s amazement actually executed a somersault, as crazy as the terrifyingly unhinged actors and producers and agents and whoever now baying like wolves in the streets of Manhattan, chased by cameras that broadcast the images all over the world.
She led the way to a limo and held the door open for Bug Man, who tumbled in, shaken.
“Jefuf Chri’!” he cried.
“No, no, no, no goddamned made-up, bullshit divinities!” Lystra yelled exultantly. “Jesus Christ and Zeus and Mohammed and whatever the hell you want, yeah, they didn’t write this game!” She fell into the seat beside him. It was as if she was drunk or high. She was cackling. “Fuck your gods, Bug Man, I’m god now! Yeah! This is my fucking world!”
Bug Man had seen some crazy in his life. He’d spoken with the Armstrong Twins, and those boys were crazy. He’d hung out with Burnofsky, not exactly a paragon of sanity. But, he thought, this chick is nuts. Once you start calling yourself “god” you’re all the way into crazy.
Berserk.
BZRK.
He was crying without quite knowing why, unless it was just some kind of overload. Too much. Too much crazy. The whole world was going crazy, and this madwoman was making sure of it.
“Wha’ nef?” he asked, both to humor her and because he needed to know.
“Stop mush mouthing,” Lystra snapped. “I’ll tell you what next, yeah. Next, we get back to the apartment to watch the Tulip blow up,” she said, and winked conspiratorially. With her hands she made a sort of finger explosion and said, “Boom! Crash! Tinkle tinkle tinkle. Woosh! Screams! Cries! It’s Nine/Eleven all over, but now, yeah, the whole fucking world is going nuts! Crazy president. All the big brains? Crazy! Crazy prince. Crazy Pope! Everyone you know, yeah, is insane! And then, ah-hah-hah!”
“Then … what?” Bug Man asked.
“Then the Tulip comes down. And then, yeah, then, yeah, then the rest of them. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. The code is all laid in. The crèches are ready. Grow ’em, kill ’em. Grow ’em, kill ’em, yeah. Biot fucking apocalypse, Bug Man! Madness! Have you had blood drawn? Then I have your DNA, bitches. And, yeah, I have your biot. We can do sixteen thousand at a time. Sixteen thousand an hour. Day one? Three hundred eight-four thousand! A million, yeah, in sixty-two and a half hours. Everyone from big to little. Everyone from great to small. Everyone from rich to poor. The grocery clerk? Berserk! The train driver? Berserk! The guy, yeah, in a missile silo somewhere in Shitheel, Nebraska? Berserk! Cops? Berserk!”
She reeled back against the leather seat. Took a deep breath. Like she was overwhelmed by the vision in her head. “Every continent. Every country. I have twenty-nine million samples, yeah. One ou
t of every two hundred and forty-one people on planet Earth. Berserk. Yeah.”
She seemed spent. Drained. But still wondering, still amazed. “It will take seventy-five days to do them all. But it won’t hold together for that long, yeah. Governments fall. Religions fail. It all comes down. Chaos. Mass insanity. The end. How many die in the end? Don’t know, don’t know, yeah. Maybe all of them, yeah. Whole new game then, yeah? Whole new game, right? My game. Adam and fucking Eve. Genghis Khan. Hitler. Stalin and Mao and what’s his name? Fucking Attila. My game. Yeah.”
The limo stopped just a block away from the Tulip. Lear bounded out with Bug Man on her heels. They raced for the elevator up to her posh apartment.
Bug Man felt a sick dread settle over him.
He didn’t see where this was any kind of game. This was just plain murder. Murder on a massive scale.
Lystra was excited, fumbling the keys at first. Then she led the way to the window, tapped the remote that opened the curtains and did a game-show-model move, like she was presenting the Tulip as some sort of prize.
Then Lystra fell silent. She was thinking something over. Bug Man could practically see her arguing with herself as her head tilted slightly this way, slightly that way.
“Yeah,” she said to herself, finally. “Yeah. Call him. Call him, yeah.”
Keats’s biot raced away from the partly cut optic nerve, six legs milling through the fluid, impeded but only slightly by sticky macrophages coming to dumbly check out the damage he had done.
It was like a wild nighttime drive down a back country road, somehow. His illumination in fact lit up very little, just the nerve and a suggestion of deeper brain ahead.
An artery, that’s what he needed, and there were a lot of them in the brain. None would kill instantly; that’s not the way it would work. Instead, blood would pour into the brain itself, depriving some tissue of oxygen, putting pressure on other tissue. The result would be a stroke or series of strokes and yes, maybe death, but not quickly.
Quickly enough to stop him blowing up the building? No way to know. He couldn’t see through Caligula’s eye anymore. Any moment could bring a fireball, a terrible shudder, and a falling floor beneath his feet.