Electric Church

XXXI THE MELTING ASPHALT SOUND

The alarms were everywhere. I was breathing alarms, inhaling the noise and exhaling the noise, the air thick with it. In the near distance, I could hear steady gunshots, punctuated by occasional shouts-my team causing a professional-grade ruckus. The hall was narrow and made of plain gray concrete, lit by bare bulbs at regular intervals. We walked; me, then Gatz and his luggage, then Kieth, occasionally finding Monks slumped on the floor, their heads exploded, evidence of Canny Orel’s Merry Pranksters. I felt disoriented. When I closed my eyes I could picture our location on the mental diagram of the complex, a red dot moving slowly but steadily. But with my eyes open, I was lost-every hall was the same gray stone, the same bare bulbs, the same damp, heavy feel. It wasn’t a place for humans.

At every intersection, Kieth called out a direction, shouting over blaring alarms and the sparkle of gunfire. When we came to the first door, I had Gatz pull the hover containing Dawson forward. As soon as we got Dawson within a foot of the door, it snicked open, and we resumed our ordered march.

“Ave, you okay?” Gatz ventured in a low, strained voice, like thumbtacks in my ear.

“Fuck no,” I said without looking back at him. “I’ve been dead, you cocksucker. Cut me some slack.”

There was an explosion of distant, echoed gunfire and screams. I didn’t pause. We were so close, so fucking goddamned close. I wasn’t going to get this close and fail. I wasn’t going to go down with Barnaby Dawson’s digital laughter ringing in my ears.

“Keep going straight, Mr. Cates,” Kieth shouted. “We’re very close. This whole place is in chaos, if I’m sniffing these packets correctly. There’s activity everywhere.”

“Ever see a thousand wolves tear a rat apart, Cates?” Dawson cackled in his bubbly, engine-oil voice. “It’s really, really entertaining.”

We were sloping downward, and the chilly damp feel of the upper areas of the Abbey compound was giving way to heat, heavy and resisting. “Kieth, what the fuck’s going on up there?”

Kieth pressed his hand against his ear. “Tanner! Milton! What’s happening?”

We walked a few steps. My hand was aching, so I tried to loosen my white-knuckled grip on my gun.

“They’re stuck,” Kieth said breathlessly. “Penned in. A lot of Monks. It-it-” he paused. I just kept moving. “I’ve lost contact. All I can hear is noise-shouting.”

“Someone’s still alive, then,” I offered. “Which way?”

“What? Left, then straight toward another doorway-wait!”

I stopped, staring straight ahead at the door we were approaching. The walls were perfect gray concrete. They joined the floor and ceiling with computerized precision. The door was like all the others we’d passed by or through; steel, dull, with no handle or obvious way to open it. We’d moved away from the ruckus Orel and crew were causing, and I could barely hear the gunshots. I waited a count of five.

“What is it?” I said, gritting my teeth against the urge to scream. I felt trapped. Tons of stone and metal on top of me and a thousand murderous cyborgs all around. Every muscle was tight, every pore open, desperation and terror leaking out. A mile above, London ground along unawares. I didn’t know what time it was, but I knew there were faded, thinned men and women standing on the Dole Line, while sleeker, sharper men and women moved through them, picking them off. While fat, expensive cops grabbed everyone by the ankles and shook vigorously to see what would fall out of everyone’s pockets.

Underneath, we had screams and gunshots and the echo of my ragged breathing.

“Mr. Cates, Ty doesn’t pretend to know everything, but Jesus, something’s going on right behind that door.”

The melting asphalt sound of Dawson’s laughter bubbled up again, and I closed my eyes and tried to grit my teeth harder in response, the sound slicing up my spine. My teeth, I imagined, would shatter at any moment.

“You made it, Cates,” Dawson gurgled. I stared at the door and imagined his voice as dark fog, spilling over the edges of the hover crate and pooling on the floor. “That’s the only entrance to the Inner Sanctum. The Holy of Holies where Brother Squalor contemplates his slice of forever and counts the heads as they roll in!”

I opened my eyes and stared at the door.

“I can’t open it,” Dawson continued, managing somehow to convey glee through his warped digital voice. “Only Squalor and his Cardinals can. Have you ever met a Cardinal, Cates? I’ll bet you haven’t. If you had, you wouldn’t be here.”

“You can’t open it?” I asked.

That dripping cackle again. “You can’t either. Right about now there are five hundred Monks homing in on you. You’re trapped like, dare I say it, like a rat!”

I turned around and looked at Dawson, who lay smiling in the portable coffin, a mess of wires and insulation and coolant fluid. I shifted my eyes to Kieth, who stared back with pop-eyed nervousness, clearly terrified of what I would ask him to do next. “Can you pry this fucking door open?”

He leaned sideways to run his eyes over the door. He shrugged. “Maybe. Ty’ll have to do some scans, trace some wiring. Might need some spare parts, which Ty did not bring. He might also just as easily fuse everything shut pretty solidly.”

I nodded. It was always some fucking thing. I couldn’t believe it hadn’t even been a month since Dick Marin had scooped me off the streets of Manhattan and ruined my fucking life. “Kev, make sure Captain Dawson is telling us the truth, okay?”

“Right,” Gatz whispered, turned, and leaned down over the Monk, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead. After a moment, he straightened up, putting a hand out to the wall to steady himself. “Go ahead, ask,” he gasped, breathing hard.

“Can you open that door?”

Dawson shook, his whole torso vibrating. “No,” he finally oozed. “Can’t.”

I nodded, reached out, and grabbed Kieth by the shoulder. I spun him around so that he faced the mutilated Monk. “Anything in that motherfucker you can use? Monks are just crammed full of interesting tech, aren’t they?”

Kieth nodded, his shaved head reflecting the dull white light. “Yes. Very possibly.”

I nodded. “Rip ’im up, Ty. Take whatever you need.”

“Hey, Avery,” Gatz said between loud breaths. “They’re getting’ closer, huh?”

I paused, listening. Kieth started to say something about the door, so I reached out and clamped his lips shut with one hand.

The shouts and gunshots were getting closer. Fast.

“What the-”

Before I could finish, Canny Orel suddenly appeared around the corner, guns shining in his hands, running full-tilt. Seconds later one of the twins followed. Orel actually looked disheveled: hair mussed, coat torn, a large dark stain spreading through his shirt on one side.

“Well, Mr. Cates, I hope you no longer need a distraction,” he said, skidding to a halt in front of me. “We did our best but there are a large number of the infernal machines hot on our trail.”

Despite his appearance, he wasn’t out of breath at all, and calmly flushed his used ammo clips and began reloading.

“Ms. Milton,” he added casually, “did not survive the onslaught.”

“Jesus fucked,” I swore. “How-”

“No time!”

As if they’d been drilling for years, Tanner dropped to her knees below Orel and they both opened fire on three Monks who raced around the corner. The Monks went down one, two, three, each a headshot, each from Canny, who moved his gun with surgical precision: Bam! A tic to the right bam! A tic to the left bam! I couldn’t help but admire it.

For a moment, it was quiet, except for the latex sound of Dawson’s melted laugh. Canny turned his head slightly to glance at me.

“Don’t relax,” he advised with a wink. “There are more coming. Mr. Kieth,” he added, louder, “I forgive you your debt.”

“Why the hell did you come here?” I demanded. I was ready to let it roll over me, the huge, incomprehensible wave-just close my eyes and let it smother me-but Canny Orel got on my last nerve and I was damned if I was going to let him just do what he liked. This was my job. “You’re supposed to be the goddamned distraction.”

“We didn’t have a choice, Mr. Cates!” Orel snapped back, eyes fixed on the intersection and the three felled Monks. “We were fucking herded here.”

“It’s true,” Tanner said, her voice cracking and shaking. I looked down at her sharply, noticing for the first time that her face was a rictus of emotion, her body stiff and shaking, as if she’d physically felt the death of her twin. “Everywhere we turned, they pushed us back-except one direction. They came and came at us, and we fucking took dozens of those fucking Tin Men out, Cates, but if we fell back in the right direction, they let us.”

Two Monks flitted through the intersection like insects. Orel and Tanner tracked them, pumping shells, but missed, the Monks disappearing on the other side.

Anger flooded me. My hands spasmed, trying to clench into fists; it took all my concentration for a moment to stop myself from firing a shell into the floor, to keep my hands under control. I wanted to throttle Orel where he stood, so calm, so capable-probably the only one of us with a chance to fight his way out of this. I hated his competence, hated the fact that he was better, tougher than me. If I was going to die inside this fucking tomb, it was going to be my decision. I’d been dancing for Marin and Moje and everyone else for too long. I didn’t give a fuck about the cash-which I doubted I’d ever see, anyway-I wanted to put a shell into Dennis Squalor’s head because I’d come this far and I wasn’t going to get stopped now.

I whirled on Ty Kieth. “Get that fucking door open!”

He swallowed and glanced down at his handheld, pointing it at the door and prodding its screen with his thumb, a practiced, smooth gesture. Licking his lips, he nodded.

“I can probably do it, but-”

“Do it,” I snapped. “Or we’re all dead, right here, in this fucking hallway.”

He nodded, prodding his screen madly.

“Cates!” Orel snapped without turning. “It doesn’t matter.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

More Monks appeared at the end of the hall. A volley of shells from Tanner and Orel, and two fell into a heap.

“Cates, we were herded here. On purpose. Did you encounter any resistance? No,” Orel said slowly, eyes fixed on the sights of his guns. “I think that door is going to open soon, all on its own. I think you’ve been played. I think that opening that door is the last thing we want.”

I stared at him for a moment, thinking. Then I turned and looked at the door, smooth, unmarked, implacable, just as another volley of shots announced more Monks. What it came down to was, you always had a choice. There was always something you could choose to do.

I turned and looked at Kieth. He looked back at me. He was shaking.

“Mr. Kieth,” I said steadily. He jumped a little. “Get the goddamn door open.” I smiled, the familiar crazy laughter catching in my throat. “Let’s fucking surprise them.”

Kieth didn’t hesitate. He seemed almost happy as he pulled his small bag of instruments from his jacket. A slight smile played on his lips, and he didn’t even flinch when a fresh wave of Monks at the end of the hall brought on another volley of bullets from Orel and Tanner.

“Two more!” Orel shouted. He sounded almost happy, too. I was surrounded by madmen. Madmen of my own choosing.

Kieth began scanning the door with his little handheld device, running it up and down the thin, faint lines outlining the opening. While bent over scanning along the bottom, he paused suddenly.

“Huh,” I heard him say quietly. “That’s-”

The door suddenly emitted a loud, hollow banging sound. Kieth stood up instantly, and Gatz and I turned as one, me with my gun held out, Gatz with a shaking hand on his glasses. Behind me, there was more gunfire, and a stream of curses from Orel. I squinted down the sight of my gun, hand hurting from gripping it so tightly.

The door banged inward as if a silent, dark explosion had propelled it, knocking Kieth back hard into Dawson’s temporary coffin. I glimpsed the figure revealed in the doorway for just a split-second, because in the balance of that moment I ticked my gun’s muzzle to the left an infinitesimal amount and pulled the trigger twice, turning his head into cheese.

Dennis Squalor stood there for another moment as we all stared, and then fell forward, leaking coolant and insulation.

For a moment, there was nothing. Then, rising like sour steam, Dawson’s terrible ruined laugh.