Chapter Thirty-Four

 

 

The convention center's underground parking garage was a sargasso of rusting and stripped wags. Remnants of the yellow lines that had once separated the vehicles lay along the dust-covered concrete floor, brought into sharp relief by the oil lantern Jak had stolen from farther down the hall.

 

The albino held up the lantern and turned up the wick. More of the shadows in the garage peeled away. "Wall," he said.

 

Krysty looked a few feet ahead of him and saw the solid concrete wall that ended their tangled journey through the steel husks. They'd gone down the emergency stairs on one side of the main lobby and followed them into the garage. The elevators didn't work, nor did any of the other lights in the building.

 

Evidently whatever the power source the Five Barons had tapped into to establish their private killing ground, hadn't been used to illuminate the convention center. Perhaps they didn't have the power to spare. In either event, the decision worked in the companions' favor.

 

"Doc?" Krysty said.

 

"This is the wall, dear lady," the old man replied. He came forward with the small notebook he'd liberated from Bernsen's pack.

 

On the sheets of paper, he'd carefully penciled in an outline of the building and the path they'd taken to get to the garage. Measurementsas close as he could approximate them by stepping off the distancewere tagged between marked arrowheads.

 

Doc tapped the paper. "I am sure this is it, Krysty, unless I am totally addled and cannot remember simple spatial and cartography skills. This building is not much of a challenge."

 

"This section," Krysty said, "overlooks the pit edge we spotted from the upstairs window?"

 

"A moment to confirm that, please." Doc left her briefly, sliding through the rows of overturned cars.

 

Sentient hair at the back of Krysty's neck coiled defensively. She turned, looking at Bernsen, who'd crept considerably closer while she'd presented her back to him.

 

"Don't even think about it," she warned, moving her hand to the butt of her blaster. "I'd kill you before you could touch me."

 

"I wasn't doing anything," Bernsen said with the most innocence he could muster, but his shoulders dropped in dejection. He stuck out his lower lip and backed off a few feet.

 

Doc returned a moment later. "This is definitely the location, dear lady."

 

Krysty approached the wall Doc had indicated and looked at the cinder blocks it was made of. Some of the mortar had cracked and worn away in places. Hunks and bits of it snapped and popped under her boots as she ran a hand along its surface to get a feel for it.

 

"Won't take much," Jak said. "Little plas ex probably make big hole." He came up behind her and stood at her side.

 

"Think you're right. Let's get to it."

 

Jak unhooked his backpack and started rummaging through its contents for the blocks of explosive.

 

Krysty kneaded the plas ex slightly before pushing it against the rough, uneven surface of the wall. When she had enough little balls in place, she stabbed a remote detonator into each.

 

"You sure Ryan inside now?" Jak asked as they finished blocking out the circular patch of the wall they'd chosen.

 

"Yes," she said. Even though her mind swirled, threatening to conjure up all kinds of possibilities about what the near future might hold, she was convinced of her lover's presence.

 

"Know where?"

 

"Feeling I'm getting from him, I can track it."

 

"Dean there?"

 

"Him, too." She didn't even try to figure out what was going to happen between father and son out on the killing ground.

 

"Where?"

 

"I don't know, Jak. I just know they're close."

 

"Confusing in dark. Could be trouble seeing the other."

 

"I know. Dammit, I know." She inserted the last detonator, then walked back to the nearest empty wag.

 

Jak followed her. "Sorry. Stupe of me. You'd already thought that."

 

Krysty studied the wag. In the past someone had taken the engine and transmission, stripping other parts out of the inside. The windshield was cracked, two holes knocked into it big enough for her to fit her hand through. The tires were flat, but at least they were there.

 

"Give me a hand," she told Jak, "and let's see if we can move it." She grabbed the steering wheel while the teenager slipped in behind the wag.

 

The vehicle creaked and popped in protest, then grudgingly started to move. It took a lot of work to put the wag in front of the area they'd mined with the plas ex. Once they had it there, Krysty looked at the space, figuring it would only take one more wag and at most two more to block the brunt of the blasts against the wall. That way the explosion would be concentrated, hopefully opening up the wall. If it didn't, escape would be even more difficult.

 

 

 

RYAN REACHED DOWN and gave J.B. a hand up into the window on the second floor of the Mirage. Mildred and the others were already behind him, lined up on both sides of the door.

 

The room had once been a storage area of some type. Racks that held barren clothes hangers shared space with cabinets, display counters and shelves.

 

Moosh Wandell, Thompson and Owen guarded the door, anxiously peering into the darkened hallway. The echoes of the explosion had died away less than two minutes earlier.

 

J.B. slithered in over the sill. "Saw a green light a minute ago."

 

"One of the boys is dead," Mildred commented.

 

The Armorer nodded. "Looks that way."

 

Ryan scratched his stubbled chin, thinking about it. "All the green team was inside the building. Means they've got a way of seeing through the walls."

 

"Unless they've got the windows staked out," Mildred said. "Maybe a sec man just looked in and saw the boy down."

 

"And confirmed him dead?" Ryan shook his head. "They've got buildings open all over the pit. Hadn't thought about it before, but they'd probably want a way to check on anybody inside them."

 

"Haven't seen any vid equipment," J.B. said. "Starlight scopes would take away the night, but they wouldn't allow the sec guards to see through the walls. Something else might, though."

 

Ryan looked at his friend.

 

"Thermographic sights," J.B. said. "They register body heat if things between them aren't too dense, or don't carry too much of a heat signature themselves. A barn would have to have serious jack to afford that kind of equipment. Hard to find."

 

Ryan didn't like the idea of the sec guards being able to spy on them at any time. "What about a heat signature?"

 

"Man," Owen whispered harshly, "we're sitting ducks standing in one place like this. That explosion, you know those green-team guys aren't going to stay put. They'll be moving. And with them moving, they're liable to run smack into us."

 

"With us moving," Mildred argued, "there's no less risk."

 

The man shifted nervously. "Moving around some would just feel better."

 

"When the time comes to move," Ryan said in a hard voice, "I'll let you know."

 

Owen's gaze burned for just a moment, then he looked back into the hallway.

 

"Heat signature of the human body is 98.6," the Armorer said. "Nothing else around us burns that hot."

 

"What about the neon lights?" Ryan asked.

 

"No."

 

"But if we got a good blaze going somewhere "

 

J.B. nodded. "It'd blind the sec men's sights for a while, but when we moved from the fire, they'd find us again."

 

"It would buy us some time, though."

 

"Sure."

 

Ryan shouldered the Steyr. "Good to know. There'll come a time we may need to buy a few minutes." Drawing the SIG-Sauer, he started for the hallway. The skin across his neck and shoulders was tight. It wasn't pleasant thinking about the boys roaming around inside the building with them. But they were killers; they'd proved their ability. If it came to it, he'd put them down and walk over their bodies without a second thought if it would put him one step closer to his freedom.

 

 

 

PEERING THROUGH the thermographic sniper sights, Hayden LeMarck saw the human-shaped heat signatures of the green team walk away from the dying member of the team member they'd left behind in the Mirage entrance. The dozens of piranha that had splashed across the floor after the explosion glowed steadily brighter as their body temperature escalated. Some of them still flopped weakly.

 

"Confirmed kill on one of the green team," LeMarck told Hardcoe. "His body temp's dropping." He looked at the baron.

 

"The green team is inside the building?" Hardcoe asked.

 

"Yes, sir."

 

Hardcoe smiled, then rubbed his hands together. "Wallis."

 

"Sir," Thoroughgood replied.

 

"Get a message to tell Phibes to let them go."

 

"Sir?" Thoroughgood looked confused.

 

LeMarck was confused himself. He'd known Hardcoe and Phibes had been working on the traps for this year's Big Game, but none of the details had been released. Phibes was renowned in the seven villes for his vicious, bloodthirsty ways and appetites.

 

"Just get him the message," the Baron said. "He'll know what I mean."

 

Thoroughgood left, moving quickly.

 

Hardcoe looked at Connrad. "It appears good fortune has turned the other cheek on you."

 

"One death," Connrad growled, reaching forward and sliding a bead across his abacus. "You've suffered four."

 

"Not as many as young Francis's team," Hardcoe answered good-naturedly.

 

Giskard made a mock woeful face, then reached for a fresh drink.

 

"What is it you sent your man for?" Connrad demanded.

 

"You're familiar with Phibes?" Hardcoe asked.

 

Connrad gave a short, impatient nod. "Calls himself a physician. A worse joke was never made."

 

"He is somewhatcoarse and ill-tempered," Hardcoe agreed.

 

"The man," Giskard said definitely, "is sick and perverted."

 

Dettwyler leaned forward. "Wasn't he the man who tried to bring life back into corpses, create some kind of army of the undead?"

 

"Yes," Deke Ramsey replied. "He was partially successful from what I was told."

 

LeMarck recalled the incident and shivered. The shambling monstrosities that Phibes had raised were mockeries of men, women and children, torn from the fresh womb of the grave and pieced together in various ways. Mercifully the things had only experienced near life for a matter of minutes and had appeared in no way under control of themselves, much less Phibes's control. They'd been burned so that no one would attempt to figure out what the man had done to raise them from the dead.

 

Hardcoe waved the comment away, not answering. "Phibes is a genius."

 

"The way I heard it," Connrad said, "he's got access to certain predark materials."

 

"I don't ask," Hardcoe responded.

 

"But neither do you deny knowledge of such a thing," Giskard countered.

 

"Forget that," Connrad said. "What is he loosing into the pit?"

 

Hardcoe smiled, a cold effort genuinely without humor. "In his travels in recent days, he came across an interesting strain of beasts created before the skydark. From somewhere along the upper Cific coastline."

 

"What kinds of beasts are they?" Dettwyler asked.

 

"Monkeys," Hardcoe answered.

 

"Monkeys," Connrad scoffed. He slapped his knee. "As a baron, you have a right to include whatever traps you deem necessary in the pit. How the hell can you expect monkeys to be a threat to armed men?"

 

"They've mutated," Hardcoe answered, "just as the big cats we found roaming this burg have."

 

"In what way?" Giskard asked.

 

LeMarck was interested, as well. He didn't like getting cut from the information loop, but he knew it was necessary at times.

 

"I didn't know this at the time," Hardcoe said, "but most primates are carnivorous to a degree."

 

"Primates?" Dettwyler asked.

 

LeMarck knew the term had come from Phibes, and Hardcoe had picked it up. Hardcoe liked appearing educated.

 

"Any kind of monkey or ape," Hardcoe replied. "These are meat eaters by choice. For the last seven months, Phibes has been working with them herefeeding them, making them angry and fearful, starving them sometimes until they almost went insane. Twice they started fighting among themselves, killing four of the weaker ones and devouring them. Over the years Phibes said they've been inbred until insanity is less than a stone's throw away for them."

 

"Get to it," Connrad said.

 

"For the last two months the monkeys have had a constant feeding area," Hardcoe replied.

 

"The Mirage," Giskard guessed.

 

"Exactly." Hardcoe smiled. "They haven't been fed in the last four days and have been secured in a soundproof room near the top of the Mirage. Phibes has an electronic door opener. Those monkeys have been released into that building by now."

 

"They're still just monkeys," Dettwyler snorted. "Not much threat in that."

 

"I seem to recall that you weren't impressed with the piranha in the fish tank at the Mirage's entry," Hardcoe returned. "One of Connrad's prize team members is now dead because of it."

 

"Only one." Dettwyler still didn't appear impressed.

 

"True, but now that team is running scared. They thought to take the high ground, as other teams before them had planned on. Only now they're not as safe as they believed they were going to be. They're going to run into those monkeys." Hardcoe leaned forward in his chair and lowered his voice, drawing in the others to his story. "Those monkeys are meat eaters, as I've said, but they're also little more than a foot and a half tall, much stronger and faster than they appear, and have wings."

 

"Winged monkeys?"

 

LeMarck looked at Dettwyler. The baron definitely looked impressed now.

 

"Can they fly?" Giskard asked.

 

"Not fly," Hardcoe said. "However, they can glide pretty damn good. I've seen them do it myself."

 

A quick, covert glance at Connrad let LeMarck know the baron wasn't receiving the news with the confidence he'd had before.

 

"Something new, eh, Vinge? That's what we wanted for the pit." Hardcoe grinned. "And no matter how well drilled those boys you managed to gather up are, there's no way they could have prepared for this."

 

Connrad didn't say anything; he just lifted his binoculars.

 

LeMarck raised the thermographic lenses to his eyes again, scanning the topmost floors of the Mirage. In a matter of moments he managed to locate the monkeys, dimly outlined by their shape as they scuttled across the floor. They were a horde, their body temperatures considerably elevated from a human's, and even slightly higher than a mutie biped's. It was a certain sign of rad-influenced mutation.

 

The monkeys moved quickly, seeking out the empty elevator shafts and sliding down between the levels to the bottom floor. Some of them unfurled wings almost twice as broad as they were tall, and glided down, bouncing off the walls.

 

"You've never said how many monkeys there were," Ramsey said.

 

"Dozens," Hardcoe replied. "The green team won't get out of that building alive. I'm afraid, Vinge, that your seasoned troopswith their training and their intent to take the high groundare going to find that those tactics have ultimately chilled them all."

 

Connrad paused for a moment before answering. "Getting down to the nut cutting, it's going to matter who's the best chillers. Just like it always has."

 

"A man who's a believer until the bitter end," Giskard said. "Very good of you, Vinge."

 

LeMarck moved the thermographic lenses around, picking up other hot spots. He felt better about the outcome.

 

The green team appeared the only ones who could give the one-eyed man and his party any serious competition.

 

Abruptly he ran the lenses across a heat signature that read human. He brought the lenses back slowly, finding what he was looking for on the second floor.

 

He leaned down to Hardcoe's ear. "Sir."

 

Hardcoe listened.

 

"Our team is in the building, as well."

 

"Where?"

 

"Second floor," LeMarck answered.

 

The muscles along the baron's jawline tightened. "If they've got the sense we've given them credit for, as soon as they hear the monkeys take the green team, they'll leave the building."

 

LeMarck straightened again, hoping it was true.

 

 

 

WITH JAK WATCHING her back, Krysty put the last plas-ex charge in place against the ceiling. On the top floor now, she knew the sec men were only a few feet above her. The only things separating her from them were the crawl space, ceiling, roof and whatever duct work was in place.

 

"Done," she said to Jak.

 

He stepped out of the shadows beside the room's door. He nodded, then turned and led the way into the hall, followed by Krysty.

 

They went down the emergency stairs in a matter of minutes, returning to the first floor. Doc remained in the underground garage with Bernsen, who'd become increasingly nervous as he figured out what Krysty and the others were planning to do.

 

The man might become a problem. In Ryan's place, Krysty thought she might have chilled the scientist then and there to protect the other companions. They owed Bernsen nothing; the man had even tried to kill them.

 

But she wasn't Ryan. So she'd taken the chance that Doc could handle the man.

 

On the first floor, Jak went through the double doors leading out into the main hall. Another two turns put them into a large meeting area. Rusted metal folding chairs were thrown haphazardly about, partially buried by the chunks of ceiling that had fallen over the decades.

 

They stopped at one of the large plate-glass windows overlooking the pit area.

 

Looking through the glass, Krysty saw intermittent gunfire flash yellow and white against the foliage and the neon burn spots.

 

"Ready?" Jak asked.

 

Krysty took a deep breath and nodded. The visions she'd had while in the airwag still made no sense, but her mutie powers told her definitely that Ryan was still in the Mirage and that Dean was probably in there, as well. Her power tweaked suddenly, and the sense of imminent danger for Ryan suddenly increased. "We need to go."

 

Jak removed the window. He'd loosened it earlier, working the dried putty from the framework with a knife. He spit on his hands, then rubbed them against each other.

 

The glass was a three-foot-by-four-foot rectangle. Jak placed his hands against it, using the friction of his moistened palms to draw the window back and prevent it from falling from his grasp when he drew it farther away.

 

Krysty caught the edge of the glass and helped him put it against the wall on the floor. She kept her ears cocked for the sound of a sec guard's shoe brushing against the carpet outside, but didn't think it would really happen. The sec men were too interested in the death being dealt in the pit.

 

Jak shook loose a length of climbing rope with a small grapple already attached. He hooked it to the window's lip, then threw the rope outside.

 

When there was no immediate gunfire in response, he clambered out after it.

 

"Go," Krysty said. "I'll be right behind you."

 

Looking down, she spotted Jak already on the ground forty feet down. He looped the rope around his waist, bracing it for her descent.

 

Breathing a quiet prayer to Gaia, Krysty slid down into the waiting death arena.