Deadstock

CHAPTER SIXTEEN all of them

Javier Dias had awoken to a raging headache and tears and curses and missing friends.

Now on his feet again, he took in the faces of the survivors: Patryk, Nhu, Tabeth. And of the Tin Town Terata, there were Mira Cello, Satin, Haanz, and Barbie. Eight. But the question was, how many of the Blank People were on the other side of the basement door?

"Maybe all of them," Barbie said in the overlapping voices from two of the smaller of her five jumbled faces. "I mean, maybe there's a way they can get inside the cellar from outside. So that would mean all of them could come through that way."

"She's right," Nhu said, pacing madly up and down the dimly lit hallway with tears shining on her cheeks. "We can't risk opening that door again."

"But how would they be getting in there from outside?" Javier asked. "Patryk, you see anything?"

Patryk was examining the blueprints for Steward Gardens again on Nhu's wrist comp. "No. But I'm not sure of how well I understand everything in the blueprints."

"I don't think they have access from outside," Mira said to Barbie. "That dead homeless guy we found in here when we first broke in-do you remember where we found his body? In the hallway right above us." She pointed toward the door to the stairs. "He must have woken these things up somehow, by poking around down here. Maybe tampering with the brainframe to turn the utilities on. He managed to lock some of them in the basement, but others caught up with him and killed him, or else he just died from his wounds."

"Yes." Barbie nodded her amalgamated heads. "Yes, that makes sense."

"But even if there's only a limited number of them left in there," Tabeth said, "we don't know how many. And if we try to go back inside, we'll probably end up like our friends."

"We'll go in shooting like crazy," Satin growled. "All of us shooting in there at once."

"No!" Nhu cried, pacing, pacing. "I won't do it! You saw what happened! We have to go out one of the windows-it's the only way!"

"And you saw what happened to Clara," Tabeth reminded her. "Almost all the Blank People are still outside. That much is for certain."

"But it's only a short run to the street. Do you think they'd all take the risk of leaving the property like that? By the time they responded, we could be on Beaumonde Street already!"

"Maybe they won't stop there," Tabeth argued. "Maybe they don't care if they tear us apart right in front of the whole street. And we might not make it that far, anyway. These things move fast."

"Mira," Javier said, in a thoughtful voice. "You said you think you've been hearing the thoughts of the computer brain in here, a little." He motioned toward the door marked RESTRICTED AREA.

"Yeah. The encephalon. But I told you, I'm not powerful enough to tell it what to do."

"Could you at least try to concentrate on it, and see if you can find out how many Blank People might be left in there? If it's their server and they're linked into it, maybe you could count the connections?"

Mira nodded slowly. "I could try. I'm closer to the brain down here." "Give it a shot."

"Don't even think about going in there again!" Nhu said. "Look, when we first came here and Patryk broke us in, did all the dozens and dozens of Blank People attack us outside then? No. Only when we stepped inside did it trigger their programming. When you Terata broke in, I bet it was the same. You approached the building, and they didn't wake up. But once you broke in, they did. They poured in, and you fought them back and locked them out. But think about it! They want to get in here and kill us because we're inside! If we're outside, they'll lose interest. Even Clara-think about it-Clara wasn't outside when they killed her. They pulled her out from inside."

"A good theory," Javier said, "but what about Brat? They killed him outside."

"Mira said the trash zapper did it."

"What's the difference? The brain is linked up to that, too."

Mira said, "Look, you can't predict these things-they're too erratic. Their programming is shot; it's like they're insane. Okay, maybe they didn't react to us at first, until they knew we'd broken inside. But now they have us targeted as criminals. If we go outside, they won't ignore us this time."

"Fine. Fine. Don't listen to me. Open that door again and die like the others did." Nhu stormed off down the hallway, threw open the door to the stairwell. They heard her clomping up its metal steps before the door swung shut again with a clang.

"Go after her," Javier told Tabeth. "Keep an eye on her."

"I'll go, too," said the cadaverous, quadrupedal Haanz, and he crawled off for the stairs like a daddy longlegs.

Mira approached the metal door that led into the basement, laid her small hands upon it. Then she rested her forehead against its cool surface as well, and closed her eyes. The others hushed as they watched her. Javier thought that the veins at her temples looked darker, maybe even thicker. He thought he even saw the flesh pulsing there subtly.

"Mm," she grunted distantly, as if dreaming.

"Are you on gold-dust right now?" Tabeth called, chasing after Nhu down the first floor hallway. "You are, aren't you?"

"It keeps me sharp, and I seem to be the only one around here whose brain is working right, if you ask me." She walked with brisk determination, turning into the lobby at its far entrance. At the lobby's back wall was a door into the maintenance area, which-like the basement-the Terata had not been able to access. At the front of the lobby were, of course, its double glass doors.

Tabeth saw that Nhu was heading straight for them, and reached out to snatch at her arm. "Stop it! Hey!" To Haanz she cried, "Go get Javier- quick!"

Nhu broke into a run, but called back, "Haanz, if you're smart you'll come with me! Come on!"

Haanz's expression had been one of desperate concern, but now the desperation took on another quality. A desperation not to be left behind by pretty Nhu. One of his long-fingered hands grabbed Tabeth by the ankle, and he caused her to fall forward onto her elbows. Then he was leaping past her, loping after the small Vietnamese woman.

Scrambling back to her feet, Tabeth began to draw her handgun. "Stop it!" she yelled. "You'll get us all killed!"

Nhu almost collided with the doors, stopped herself with her palms against them. There was a control strip alongside the frame, and she immediately jabbed at the big green button with the word OPEN stenciled on it in white. The security glass had been tinted an opaque black on the outside, but from inside she could see the fountain in front of the building. And beyond that, at the end of the wide walkway, distant hovercars gliding along the street. A short run. She could flag a vehicle down. She was attractive, someone would stop, and then she'd pull Haanz along after her.

At the touch of her finger, the double doors had begun to part open with a whisper, sliding along their tracks. Nhu was greeted with the smell of outside city air and the chill bite of autumn. And then, like a diver into a pool, she plunged through. She was aware of Haanz galloping through the opening doors in her wake.

Tabeth charged after them, pistol in her hand. But now she was less concerned with calling them back, and more intent on hitting the big red button labeled CLOSE.

Haanz heard Tabeth running behind him, running surprisingly fast, almost catching up. His head turned on its long, serpentine neck to see the gray figure sprinting after him. And launching itself into the air.

Nhu heard Haanz's cry, looked back, stumbled on a few more steps until she was at the scummed fountain. Haanz was howling now. The gray creature had him pinned to the walkway, one arm locked around his neck. Behind her, Nhu heard a hovercar beep its horn at another on the street.

"Dung," she hissed, ripping her pistol out of its holster. Even as she did so, she saw the Blank People popping out of their niches in both wings. On all three floors. One here, two there, three more on this side. Leaping down to the overgrown lawn.

She met Haanz's eyes, wide in his skull-like face, his Choom mouth opening huge to cry, "Nhu… run!"

"Fuck that," she said, and shot the being who had pinned Haanz through its faceless face. Its head jerked back, and its arms slipped from around the mutant. His head fell forward, his neck drooping limp. Broken. Haanz's eyes and his mouth did not close as his face thudded into the walk.

"Blast, blast, blast," Nhu sobbed, whirling to run toward the street again.

From inside, Tabeth saw her friend go down in the middle of a dozen gray bodies. Nhu got off a few shots. Two of the Blank People rolled away, dead. The rest hunched around her obscured form like vultures over a lion's kill.

Tabeth had not touched the button to shut the doors. Instead, she had entered a marksman's stance, extending her gun in both hands. She began picking off the Blank People around her fallen comrade. She didn't realize she was weeping and shouting obscenities at the same time. But when she saw the heads of the hunkered Blank People begin to turn her way, and more and more of them drop down from the balconies, icy terror overrode her concern for her fellow Snarler and she reached out to the red CLOSE button.

The man-like creature that stepped around the edge of the doorway to stand face-to-no-face with Tabeth was exactly like its many brothers, except for the number engraved into its forehead: 12-B. And the giant red penis spray-painted onto its front.

It seized her by the throat, and began walking her backwards. Tabeth fired her gun into its mid-section, the muzzle pressed right up against its gray flesh. The creature flinched with the detonations but kept walking her, and kept squeezing. Finally, though, it loosened its hold and slumped dead upon Tabeth as she herself fell onto her back, half unconscious from lack of oxygen.

The dead being with its mock phallus lying atop her like an incubus, Tabeth lifted her head to see the flood come crashing through the open front doors. A flood wave of gray, living flesh.

Then, before she could raise her gun again, the living wave descended upon her.

Above-outside-the Snarlers and the Terata on the basement level heard the distant crackle of Nhu's and then Tabeth's gunfire. At once, Javier and Satin had their own guns out and were moving toward the stairs.

"Don't!" Mira screamed, jolting back from the metal basement door as if an electric shock had gone through her. Eyes bulging, she panted, "I was connected to the brain; I heard it. They've come through. The front doors are open. The Blank People are coming through."

"What about Nhu and Tabeth?" Javier asked.

"Dead. I felt their screams. Haanz, too. And now the Blank People are coming."

"All of them," Satin said, eyes hard and ready for a fight.

"All of them," she confirmed.

Even as she said it, they could hear the thunder of their footfalls upstairs. They heard the stairwell door fly open with a boom. The metal steps start to clang.

"Get into the elevator!" Patryk yelled, rushing to the nearest one and stabbing its OPEN button. The door slid aside without hesitation. He shoved Barbie inside, then Mira, and ducked in after them. Javier followed, and Satin last, whipping around to fire a few shots from his Decimator revolver as the first of the Blank People reached the basement level and flung open the stairwell's door. Splashed with hungry green plasma, several of them went down and impeded the others long enough for the elevator door to slide shut.

They heard hands without fingernails, hands without fingerprints, claw and bang at the closed security door as the elevator itself moved upward.