Michael A. Stackpole - Dark Conspiracy 01 - A Gathering Evil

Awakening in a speeding ambulance, with the scream

of its undulating siren ripping your brain apart, is not a

pleasant experience. It becomes even less so when you

realize you're in a body bag zipped up tight and you can't

move. Trapped in suffocating darkness, with the rubber-

ized canvas pulling at your flesh, you realize that if this is

death, eternity in a grave will be hell itself.

The strap across my chest and another just above my

knees bound me tightly to the gurney. They kept me with

it as it crashed around in the back, jouncing up and down

or smashing side to side with the fast turns. The driver,

mercilessly pushing the whining engine to its top end,

sadistically pounded his way through potholes as if on a

divine mission to crush them all.

The irritating stink of rubber and the lingering scent of

decayed meat filled my nose. I tried to breathe through

my mouth, but I could not make my lips part. I fought

against the paralysis locking my jaw and quickly discov-

ered the condition extended to my whole body. I could

still feel the straps dig into my flesh and the slick

roughness of the bag against my fingertips, but I could

not make my muscles work. Try as I might, I could not

even open my eyes.

It took no genius on my part to know I was in severe

trouble. Being in a body bag meant the ambulance folks

thought I was dead—and that conjured up all sorts of

horrible images of premature burial or a seriously dis-

tasteful cremation. I started to panic, then fought against

it because a clear head was all I had to get myself out of

this situation.

And getting out of it was even more important that

wasting brainsweat on figuring how I'd gotten into it.

The siren snapped off and the ambulance began to

slow. I heard the crunch and ping of gravel beneath the

tires, then felt the jolt as the gurney clanked against the

inside of the ambulance as we rolled to a stop. The sound

of passenger doors opening and closing cut off the static

from the radio, then I heard the doors in the back open.

I rolled forward, then landed hard on the ground.

"Take it easy, Jack."

"The stiff won't care."

"Yeah, but Harry will charge us for damage to the

gurney." I tagged this speaker as Gruff-voice.

Jack hacked out a cough. "So, we take it out of petty

cash. This guy was loaded. His cards will be worth

something."

"No need to spend what we don't have to." Gruff-voice

took a couple of steps away from the ambulance, his

footfalls moving from my feet toward my head. "Where

are they?"

"They'll be here." Another hack. "See, there they are."

Both men fell silent as I heard another vehicle drive up.

Its engine had a nasty ticking sound and the door slid

open. I immediately imagined it to be a van or delivery

truck.

Jack greeted the newcomers. "Evenin', tulmen."

"The last batch was unsatisfactory." The voice had no

compromise, and even less humanity in it.

Jack managed to keep fear out of his voice, but he

radiated it so palpably that I could feel it from within the

bag. "I know, and I'm sorry about that, but look, this one

will make it up to you."

I heard a pair of clicks and the pressure on my chest

and legs went away. I felt a tug near the top of my head,

then heard the rasping sound of the zipper being undone.

For a half-second the air rushing in felt cool; then it turned

hot and very dry. I smelled dust in the air and the sharp

scent of burned-out engines and steaming radiator fluid.

My nasal passages dried out immediately and I could feel

myself desiccating as they stood there.

Gruff-voice tried to let laughter override his anxiety.

"Look, he's mid-30s, clean and in good shape. No scars.

You can get kidneys, a liver and a heart out of him. His

eyes should be good, too. Hell, you could even take his

lungs and give them to Jack, here."

Panic again surged through me. They're selling off my

parts, but I'm not even dead yet. They can't do this, I have

to let them know I'm still alive!

"Why? He'd just ruin them as well." I felt fingers poke

and prod me. Hands slipped beneath my right shoulder

and lifted me enough to get a brief glimpse of my back.

My head fell back, opening my mouth, and I gasped

aloud. Jack and Gruff-voice jumped back, with one of

them clunking against the ambulance.

"Jesus!"

Yes, there, now they know I'm still alive.

The inspector laughed harshly. "Come now, aces like

you know gasses build up in corpses. Only time you'll

see this deader again is in your nightmares."

My heart sank.

"Well, we don't spend as much time around them as

you Reapers do. We generally get them before they

become spare parts."

"So you do. Still warm. Good. Looks clean. Where did

you get him?"

I heard Jack swallow hard. "Call came in an hour ago.

He was in a squat-shack hotel in Slymingtown. Setup

looked staged, like he had been dumped there. No one

was asking questions, but Scorpion Security was on its

way, so we snatched him and called you. How much?"

"A meg, plus 10% of anything unusual we get."

"A meg? Are you kidding? I could get three megs

piecing him out, and still get a point on DNA applica-

tions."

Jack had sounded angry, but the Reaper called his

bluff. "If you can, do it. You'll find it is a buyer's market,

Jack, not a seller's. I could see going 1.5 megs, but you'll

drop to 7% for exotics."

"With two points on DMA aps?"

"One, and only because I've forgotten how the last two

maggot-ranches you gave me weren't fit for dog food.

Literally, we left them in the desert and the coyotes

wouldn't touch them."

"And we keep the effects?"

"Yes, Jack. We care not for his earthly possessions."

I felt a hand grasp my forehead and work my head side

to side. "Good bone structure and no cranial damage. I

think we can save the brain. This is good. Do we have a

deal?"

"Done. Always enjoy doing business with you Reap-

ers."

"You lie poorly, Jackson, but we tolerate you because

of your product." The Reaper snapped his fingers. "Gord,

Kenny, red tag this one and put him in the back. We want

to do him quickly, before he spoils any more."

The zipper closed again, shutting me away in the

stuffy world of rubber and stale flesh. I sagged into a U-

shape as two people grabbed the handles at my head and

feet. I swayed between them as they carried me along,

then I heard the rumble of a roll-away door sliding up into

the truck's ceiling.

"Which side do we put him on?" one voice asked

thickly.

"You sar him; he's vanilla."

They rocked me three times, then I flew up into the

truck and landed solidly. Something shifted below me

and I half expected to be buried beneath an avalanche of

corpses. I slid a bit sideways, but nothing crashed down

on top of me. The door slammed shut and the engine

coughed to life. Gears ground and we lumbered forward.

I heard another sound in the back of the truck above

the ticking idle of the engine. I first caught it as a cyclical

pinging and noted it remained constant. I wondered what

it was, but not for long: I felt a chill nibbling at my toes and

fingers. The logic of icing down a truck full of corpses did

not surprise me, but the reality of it sent a jolt of

adrenaline through my body.

The cold and adrenaline combined to do what all my

willpower had been unable to manage. I started to shiver.

My limbs trembled uncontrollably. I found myself no

longer locked in the grasp of paralysis.

I tried to move my hand under my conscious direction,

but still found myself unable to do so. Too ambitious, I

decided. I tried to open my eyes, but realized, in the dark,

in a body bag, I could not tell if I had been successful. I

made an attempt at breathing through my mouth, but

found I still could not open it.

Despair opened its jaws wide to swallow my spirit

whole, but the hope inspired by my shivering saved me.

Before you can run, you must learn to walk. Before you

can walk, you need to shiver. Shivering is good. Shiver-

ing is progress. Think cold. Make your body want to do

what you cannot make it do.

I abandoned myself to cold and panic, repeatedly

having to overcome unconscious efforts to control my-

self. I knew each burst of adrenaline that pumped into my

system was helping, yet I felt constitutionally averse to

admitting panic. It represented a total loss of control, and

that spelled disaster. It felt as if part of me believed that

by admitting I was in serious trouble, I would not find a

way out of it.

Though I knew I should have been paying attention to

the motions of the truck, I decided against it. I knew it

would have been simple—a child's game—to keep track

of twists and turns. By counting slowly and estimating

speeds, I could have easily cataloged our journey and

had an excellent chance of backtracking it. I had done it

before, but not knowing where we had started, and

unsure if I ever wanted to return there, I let it go.

I also found, for the brief time I did keep track of things,

that the driver was doing his best to take us through a

very evasive and difficult-to-follow route. We changed

levels several times and traveled both city streets and

highways. We made no more stops, which I pridefully

saw as a reflection of my own value, and ended the

journey with a long downward slope.

My shivering stopped instantly as the truck door

opened. I felt all my senses come alive as if I were trying

to project my mind outside the bag to see where I was.

I could not, of course, and my attempts were interrupted

by the jerk on the handle at my head. My body limply

slithered over other corpses, then I slid free of the truck

and my legs slapped stiffly on the ground.

"Key-ryest, Gord, don't let the legs hit!"

"Geez, Kenny, the guy ain't complaining."

"But the doctor will. Soft tissue damage, she calls it."

There was nothing soft about the way my legs and

heels felt as Gord hefted me up. Hitting the ground had

hurt and I would have screamed had my jaw not been

locked. Anger twisted my belly up and burned like fire.

I wanted to let it run wild like I had the panic, but I

immediately shunted that energy away and calmed

myself.

Then I noticed that the rage—or pain—had caused my

fingers to claw inward. They felt stiff, but they had moved.

One by one I willed them to straighten out again. The

paralysis fought me, but the commands got through. On

my right hand, my little finger snapped to attention first,

then the ring finger and the index. I reissued the order and

the middle finger complied.

My left hand responded more sluggishly, but it did

respond. I tried to curl my toes inward and they also

worked. Concentrating hard, I forced my fingers back in

again and the right hand got almost all the way down into

a fist. The left hand tried, but failed. The fingers did

straighten out again on command, and I managed to flex

all the muscles in my right arm, which gave me great

cause for joy.

So concerned was I with regaining the use of my limbs

that I was unprepared for Gord and Kenny dropping me

on a table. I smacked the back of my head on the surface

and saw stars in front of my eyes. As they sizzled off like

Technicolor comets, I heard the bag being unzipped,

then I was tipped right and left so they could whisk it from

beneath me.

They left me lying naked on a cold metal table.

Despite my eyes still being closed, I could see a golden

glow from outside my eyelids, and I could feel the warmth

of the lights on me. I brushed the fingertips of my right

hand across the surface and felt a shallow groove

running from beneath me toward the edge of the table.

A door opened and I heard a woman's voice. "Oh, this

is a fine specimen. Thank you, tulmen. Andre, roll tape

on this one. We want to document him."

"Yes, doctor."

I heard a wheeled cart roll closer to the table. The clink

of instruments accompanied its arrival and I did not like

how close to my head it all sounded.

From right above me I heard the woman's voice.

"Subject is a white male, six feet tall, approximately 175

pounds, moderate body hair which is dark in color. He is

in excellent condition, with no visible signs of trauma.

Fluids will be drawn and toxicology run to determine

cause of death."

I'm not dead! I made my right hand into a fist.

"Subject shows no sign of male pattern baldness, so

we will attempt to preserve the scalp intact as we go in

after the brain."

I straightened my hand again and slapped it against

the table. There, she has to hear that!

"Doctor, his right hand moved," I heard Andre tell her.

"I think he is still alive."

"Andre, I think you are right. This is a complication."

Had I the ability to do so, I would have smiled.

"Quickly, Andre, over there, the cabinet."

Good, get something to fix me.

"Here?"

Yes, Andre, you idiot, do what she tells you to do.

"Yes, Andre, bring them to me."

"Is this enough?"

"Four? I suppose, but bring a couple more, just to be

sure." I heard her pat the instrument table. "Put them

here. Whenever one is alive there's always more blood.

You can never have enough towels."

The whirring buzz of a bone-saw hovered over me like

a malevolent wasp and wrung the last ounce of adrena-

line out of me. As the saw descended, my eyes snapped

open. The doctor brought the instrument down with both

hands, but my right arm shot up on a desperate collision

course. Forearm to forearm I blocked her, then shoved

back with all my strength.

Her grandmotherly face disappeared in a red mist as

the saw-blade bridged the gap between her eyebrows.

She flew back out of sight with her stool clattering

metallically against the tile floor. I scissored my legs left

over right and pitched myself off the right side of the

autopsy table, then half-collapsed as my legs buckled

beneath me.

I thought that a disaster, but it turned out to be more

fortuitous than I ever could have imagined. As I sank

toward the floor, the snap-kick Andre had aimed at my

head missed cleanly. From below I posted my left leg up

into his groin, and that took all the fight out of him. He

doubled over, moaning. Grabbing a handful of his hair,

I accelerated his face into the tile floor.

I sagged down beside him, almost as limp as he was,

and felt as if I had been de-boned. My limbs moved as if

they were made of lead and powered by the wind, but I

gathered them beneath me. Inch by inch, I climbed up

one leg of the autopsy table and hauled myself back

upright. I glanced over at the doctor. The only sign of life

there was the cutter still whirring away in her right hand.

Andre was out for the count, if not the rest of this

incarnation, which left me safe for the moment.

Now, without knowing where I am or how many

people exist outside, I have to escape. Oddly enough,

quantifying the problem in that way, I did not so much

find it impossible as annoying. It was a time-consuming

complication. Those who had inconvenienced me would

pay.

I stripped Andre of his pants and donned them, despite

their being three inches too short. I likewise appropriated

his shoes—nautical-style loafers that fit after I loosened

the rawhide lacings—and white lab coat. I pocketed the

four scalpels on the instrument tray, then picked up one

of the white towels Andre had dropped.

Crouching next to the doctor, I looked around the

room. Aside from a certain amount of mildew on the

grout between the tiles, the room could have passed for

a hospital emergency ward. The glass-fronted cabinets

housed small drug ampules and stainless steel imple-

ments. Over on a filing cabinet I saw three glass jars with

various organs preserved in them, and noted on a table

back in the corner that four others were open and ready

for filling. The back wall had three rows of small, squarish

doors that I assumed held deaders in various states of

harvesting.

I swished the towel through the doctor's blood puddle,

then pressed the dripping cloth to my head. It obscured

enough of my face that I believed I could pass as Andre,

so I crossed to the door, yanked it open, and slumped in

the doorway. "We have trouble. He was alive!" I shouted

in a voice that matched Andre's with surprising accu-

racy.

People throughout the warehouse-like structure re-

acted. Four steps away a man drew a pistol and sprinted

forward. As he closed, I flipped the towel over his head

and snatched the pistol from him. I snapped the

automatic's safety lever down and pumped a round into

his stomach at point blank range.

The two large men who were unloading bodies from

an ice cream truck onto a cart had started to run toward

me, but the gunshot brought them up short. They clawed

beneath their jackets for weapons, but never got a

chance to complete their draws. Cutting to the left, I

snapped off a shot that sent the one on the right to the

ground clutching his throat. I hit the other in the shoulder,

slowly starting him to spin to the right, then dropped him

with a shot to the middle of his back.

I glanced at the gun to confirm visually what I already

knew about it by feel. Colt Krait. Ten millimeter ammo,

muzzle brake, open sights. Fourteen in the clip, could

have had the first one in the chamber. I'm running four

shy of full.

Above me I heard the hollow clank of a boot on a

catwalk. I dove forward in a somersault, then let my legs

splay out to stop me. Craning my head back, I saw a

woman with a machine pistol sweep a thunderous line of

fire back through where I should have been. Our eyes

met as I pumped one round into her chest and sent her

flying back off the other side of the catwalk.

His black trenchcoat flying open, a slender man leapt

from the driver's seat of the truck. He pointed at me and

yelled in a voice I recognized. It was the Reaper who had

bargained for me. "Shoot him, but not the head. Save the

head!"

What is it about this guy and my brain?

I dropped the Krait on his outline and sent two rounds

into him. They both hit high chest and sent him tumbling

backward. Off to my right two men ran round a corner,

each with a submachinegun in hand, but they discounted

the sight of me because I was in a lab coat. A head-shot

put the first man down and a gut-shot jackknifed the

second man to the slick concrete floor.

I sprinted across open ground to the ice cream truck.

The keys were still in the ignition, so I dropped into the

driver's seat, shifted the pistol to my left hand and

cranked the engine. It sprang to life, still ticking like a

bomb. I jammed the clutch down and forced it into first.

The truck lurched forward and I started it turning in a

large arc toward the ramp and the big doorway that

would take me back up to street level.

Have to get out of this charnel house. Fresh air. The

sky. Life!

In the rearview mirror I saw bodies tumbling willy-nilly

from the back. I also saw two more men with pistols

come running into the area. They triggered off shots, but

I knew that unless they were even better shots than I was,

they had no chance of hitting me. Punching the gas, I

upshifted and steered straight toward the ramp.

I started up the ramp at 30 mph when the Reaper in

black appeared in the driver's-side doorway. Blood

bubbled from the lung-hits he'd taken, but he stood

there, clutching either side of the doorway as if he'd not

been hit at all. He opened his mouth to hiss at me like a

cat and a thin, bloody mist sprayed out. His left hand

grabbed at the wheel and jerked it toward him.

I had no clue as to what this pasty-faced lunatic

wanted to accomplish, but I had plenty of ideas how to

discourage him. I shoved the Krait in his face and stroked

the trigger. His visage disappeared in a cloud of smoke

and fire. He hung in the doorway for a second, then fell

away, anchored to the speeding vehicle by his left hand's

deathgrip on the wheel.

I pressed the Krait to his wrist and fired. The body

dropped away with a thump, but it had hung there long

enough to pull the truck over to the left side of the ramp.

Sparks shot up as I sideswiped a railing, then I jerked the

wheel back to the right. Oversteering, I pulled away from

the railing, but managed to hit a girder stanchion on the

other side at the top of the ramp.

The airbag deployed as the girder crushed the right

front quarter of the ice cream truck. I bounced forward

then back as the vehicle slewed around to the left in a

fishtail that sowed half-frozen bodies all over the ramp

and the landing. The truck hit the closed doors going

backward, which slammed me back into the rear of the

driver's compartment, then I rebounded into the steering

wheel. With a screaming crunch, the roll-away door

snapped off the supports at the top and flowed out into

the street like a metallic carpet.

Shocked and battered, with blood leaking from my

nose, I scrambled back through the truck, over the

bodies and out into the street. Once clear, I turned back

and emptied the pistol into the truck's gas tank. It went

up in a boiling, orange-black ball that rose toward the

sky, but never actually got there.

One hundred feet up the fireball flattened against a

construct of black panels, steel girders and tangled

wires. In its wake it left ablaze a small structure that

looked like a bird's nest built beneath the eaves of a

house. In this case, however, the nest was large enough

to house humans and the eaves were part of a roof over

the whole city. The fire's smoke rolled across the under-

side of the panels like a dark thunderhead, then started

to descend like a malevolent fog.

They roofed over the city! Something inside me

crumpled. The claustrophobic feeling of being inside the

body bag flooded back like a recurring nightmare. The

sky and the sun and the moon meant freedom to me, yet

I found myself trapped like a cockroach beneath a black

steel bowl. How can people exist like this?

I felt a tugging on my pant leg and saw the Reaper's

hand had become entangled in the fabric of Andre's

pants. Revulsed, I shook it free of my leg, then kicked it

back into the blaze choking the doorway into the Reaper's

sanctuary.

All around me the shadows began to move. People

wearing multiple layers of clothing despite the stifling

heat, slowly crawled out of the surrounding tenements.

They shuffled forward, mesmerized by the fire. The reds

and golden yellows provided the only color in this world,

and people stared at it as if it were some mysterious

avatar coming to liberate them from their gray homes.

Where in hell am I? They murder people for their

organs here. They have a roof between them and the sky.

These people are mindless creatures. Why am I here?

As that quandary struck me, an even more horrible

question followed in its wake and left me hollow inside.

My chest tightened and it drove me to my knees in the

stinking street.

Why do I care where this is or why I'm here when I

don't have a clue as to who I am?

I awoke with a start from the nightmare spurred by the

day's events, barely remembering any of it. I had wan-

dered dark, oppressively hot streets. Behind me a roar-

ing conflagration attracted firefighting equipment the

way an open flame attracts moths. Faceless and weary,

with the empty gun tucked in my waistband, I staggered

through the streets and trash-strewn alleys. With each

step I felt the paralysis reassert control over my body

until, stiff-legged and lock-jawed, I stumbled face-first

into a phalanx of garbage cans.

Now, sitting bolt upright, the sheet covering my sweat-

slicked chest slipped down toward my lap. I found myself

lying on an overstuffed couch with crocheted doilies on

the arms and back to hide the spots where the cloth had

been worn shiny and bare. Over in the corner I saw a

television and wondered why there seemed to be so

much cabinet and so little picture tube. The rabbit-ear

antenna hid within a collection of a dozen black-and-

white photographs arranged on top of the TV and a

blocky, black rotary phone sat atop a dais of thick phone

books on a table next to it.

I shivered. I felt as if I had awakened in the first reel of

a 50-year-old cine noir classic film. That impression

deepened as I looked over at a chest of drawers built into

the wall and saw a huge radio with a yellow light softly

glowing in the little window showing a portion of the

tuning wheel. Faint strains of monotone Spanish music

with tinny horns and castanets clicking like the hungry

mandibles of a giant cockroach came from its speakers.

Over on the wall, between two windows with the

shades drawn against the night, I saw a clock. What first

struck me as unusual about it was that it was analog, not

digital. That was not an overwhelming problem. I glanced

at my wrist, where my watch should have been, and

knew whatever I wore there normally had both a digital

and analog readout, so I could decipher the meaning of

the hands and their position. What struck me as abso-

lutely odd was that, instead of numerals, there were little

words at the positions of the clock.

Those words were what made me uneasy. It took me

a second or two to see why. They were in Cyrillic and

corresponded the number at that position on the clock,

which made sense. What baffled me was why whoever

owned the house would have a Soviet clock on the wall.

No one buys Russian if they can avoid it.

In any language, the clock reported it was 11:30.

A giggle caused me to spin and look behind me. A 1ittl e

girl with bright brown eyes looked at me, surprised and

delighted that I saw her. She clapped her hands to her

mouth, then went running back down the dim hallway to

a back bedroom. From my vantage point I could see the

foot of a bed onto which she leaped, then scampered up

toward the headboard. I heard voices but could make no

sense of what I heard.

The bedsprings creaked, then a man of slender build

and average height filled the doorway. He wore a tank-

top T-shirt and was in the process of zipping up a pair of

canvas work pants that were covered with splotches of

brightly colored paints. As he approached, I saw that the

girl's coppery complexion and dark hair could well have

come from him.

He gave me a smile that showed he still had most of

his teeth. "¿Como está usted?"

"Bien," I answered fluidly. "Buenas noches."

"Buenos dias." The man scratched at the thin growth

of beard on his chin. "You have slept for a day and a half.

It is 11:30 in the morning, Señor..."

I concentrated, but still could not recall my name. "I'm

sorry, I'm afraid I don't know who I am. I don't even know

where this is."

"You are in Phoenix." He came around and pulled a chair

away from the wall. My lab coat and pants were folded on it.

The Krait rested on top, but the clip had been pulled from the

gun. "I am Estefan Ramierez. The little girl is my daughter,

Maria. My wife, Consuelo, is still in bed." He set the clothes and

gun on a TV tray and sat down.

"Phoenix?"

What the hell am I doing in Phoenix?

Somewhere in the distant reaches of my mind I knew

there was an answer to that question, but it was beyond

my ability to recover it. "How did I come to be in your

house?"

Estefan gave me a lopsided smirk. "Los Reapers son

muy malos. Word got around fast that someone had

chewed on them real good and many folks thought it was

Coyote. I did not think so, but I went to check anyway,

and I found you."

"Why did you help me?"

He shrugged. "Five years ago I came up here and

someone helped me. 'You don't pay back; you pay

forward,' he told me. I pay forward."

Off to my left, at the opposite end of the house from the

bedroom, I heard a knock at the kitchen door. Estefan

smiled, but after what I had been through, I did not feel

optimistic. I reached for the Krait and he produced a

loaded clip for the gun and tossed it to me. I knew, in the

easy way he did that, he trusted me. As I slid the clip

home and snapped the slide back and forth, I hoped that

whoever I was, I was worthy of his trust.

When Estefan returned to the small sitting room, he

brought with him the tallest man I had ever seen. Ducking

his head to get through the doorway, the African-

American man smiled, then straightened up to his full

height. At least seven and a half feet tall, his loose-fitting

shirt and faded jeans covered a body with enough

Michael A. Stackpole - Dark Conspiracy 01 - A Gathering Evil

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: