Pandemonium

flat in this section, but still connected to upright posts through strands of wire. A few feet in that direction and I would have run into the wire at full speed.

I stood awkwardly, my right foot and leg still trapped. I carefully pried the wires away until only my jeans were still snagged. I hopped forward and ripped them free. Then it was a long step over a drainage ditch, and I was standing on the road.

The hospital’s peaked entrance was perhaps a hundred yards away, lit by sconces to either side of the double doors. O’Connell’s pickup was parked under it.

I jogged up the road, huffing now, exhaling clouds, my feet slapping the black pavement. I’d stopped trying to think. The top-floor windows watched me approach, unblinking.

Car lights swept up from behind me; I glanced back, then jumped aside as a long black car roared past. The car swung into the hospital entrance and skidded to a stop just behind the pickup. I slowed, catching my breath. Fifty feet away, the driver’s-side door opened. A figure stepped out: gleaming black shoes, razor-creased charcoal pants, black trench coat. He straightened, flexed gloved fingers, and adjusted his slouch hat, each movement precisely choreographed. He slowly turned his head in my direction. A hatchet-nosed man. His eyes were in shadow, but his gaze pinned me like a prison searchlight. I froze, waiting for him to lift those hands, waiting for the glint of pistols.

His head tilted forward in what could have been a nod. Then he spun away from me, the trench coat fanning, and stalked through the hospital doors.

I almost knelt then, my legs spongy with fear and relief. I bent over, hands gripping knees, and breathed deep. It’s only a demon, I told myself. Just like you. Sirens approached from the distance.

I reached the front doors before I realized I was running again.

. . .

To my night-widened eyes, the lobby was lit like an operating room. The front desk was abandoned, but nearby a woman’s voice made a sound like a scream or a squeak. I leaned around the corner. A dozen yards down the hallway a heavy woman in a blue pastel smock tried to press herself into the wall, her head down and arms crossed over her chest. The Truth stalked past her without turning his head. When the demon reached the next intersection of hallways he glanced back, as if making sure I was following him. Fuck you, I thought. I’m not following you anywhere. The Truth disappeared down the side hallway. I ran toward the nurse, touched her shoulder. She cringed but didn’t scream. She was maybe fifty or sixty, with carefully hair-sprayed black hair.

“Have you seen a bald woman?” I said. “Kind of thin and angry?”

She stared at me, then shook her head.

It didn’t matter. I knew where O’Connell was heading. I’d find her on the third floor.

“Call the police,” I said to the nurse. “Then try to keep people in their rooms.”

She shook her head. “I can’t, I can’t—”

I heard someone shout in fear, then the slam of a door. I yanked the woman upright and said, “Where are the elevators?” She gestured vaguely in the direction the Truth had taken. “Okay,” I said. “Now please call the cops.”

I reached the intersection. The hallway to my left seemed to stretch the length of the building. Several people in patient gowns and bathrobes peeked from their doorways. They were looking at the Truth.

The demon strode down the middle of the corridor. He reached the bank of elevators and stopped, turned. He looked in my direction. Waiting.

I ran out of the intersection, away from him. There had to be another elevator, or a set of back stairs. Anything was better than getting into a box with a serial-killing agent of justice. I slowed to a jog, and started looking at signs, trying to find a way upstairs.