Working Stiff

Chapter 12

Bryn made a fast circuit of the immediate area around the address McCallister had given her; it was a residential area, which made her worry. She’d thought these types of potentially explosive things went on in deserted buildings, vacant warehouses, open lots … not on a street with brightly colored playhouses and Big Wheels parked in yards.

There was no sign of McCallister, and she had a horrified thought…. What if he’d deliberately given her the wrong address? And she’d been dumb enough to fall for it? No, he wouldn’t do that. He’d known I was serious. And that I needed to do this.

Parking the van behind a closed convenience store two blocks away seemed the best option; Bryn locked it and stepped out into the cool predawn darkness. It was misting, and threatening to rain, but the hoodie that Pansy had given her was enough to counter that. The thin shoes were a pain, though. It was hard to feel badass in Payless.

At least she had the gun she’d stolen from Pharmadene, and a supply of ammunition, thanks to Joe. Not as well stocked as Manny Glickman in his fortress, wherever it was now, but it would do …

She pulled up short after a few steps, because someone was standing in the light of a street lamp twenty feet away, watching her.

Patrick McCallister.

The damp had matted his hair down in a sleek cap around his head, but she’d know him anywhere; if nothing else, nobody she’d ever met had that quality of coiled stillness to their posture. He was wearing dark clothes and a loose Windbreaker that wouldn’t have looked odd if it came with big reflective governmental-agency letters on it, but this one was unmarked.

“How’d you know?” she asked him, not coming closer. He shrugged and put his hands into the pockets of his dark jeans.

“Where you’d park? It was tactically the smartest choice,” he said. “So I thought you’d find it.”

That spoke volumes about what he thought of her … and made her ask, “So where did you park?”

“Someplace not as tactically sound, but unexpected,” he said. He pushed away from the streetlight and walked toward her, taking his time. “You look good.”

“You should have seen me a few hours ago,” she said. Without conscious decision, she was also walking toward him. I should have my gun out, she thought. I really don’t know what he’s going to do. Maybe he’d knock her out and put her back in the van and go do the meeting himself. That would be typical McCallister.

“How bad was it?”

“Ever seen Night of the Living Dead? Like that,” she said. “Only you’re right. I wasn’t craving brains.”

“At least that’s a bright side.”

And then he was right there, a foot away, in her space, with only the gently drifting mist between them. His eyes were wide and dark, and she thought, He’s going to do it now; he’ll strike, and she was ready for that, ready to block a punch….

... But not, as it turned out, a hug.

She stiffened for a second, then relaxed into the embrace. “I’m sorry,” he said. “By the time I found out they’d taken you, they already had you inside Pharmadene. I didn’t have a chance to intercept. When you didn’t come out, I knew they were going to let you …”

“Decay,” she said, very quietly. “I have to face it. I’m dead. I’ll always be dead. This, all this feeling and looking alive, it’s just … just cosmetics.” She pulled back and stared at him. “You can’t really feel anything for me, can you? Because I’m not really here. Underneath, I’m … that.”

“Underneath, we’re all that,” McCallister said. “Everybody’s dying, Bryn. You’re just maintaining it better than most people—that’s all.”

“You can’t actually believe that.”

“I do,” he said. “I believed it from the moment I saw you wake up. I knew you were a fighter. I knew you’d break my heart.”

He stepped forward, put his hands on either side of her head, and kissed her. His lips were cool, damp, sweet, and urgent on hers, and suddenly Bryn felt wildly out of control, but safe. Safe. It felt like such an amazing relief.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and pulled her into his arms. “I said I’d never let that happen to you, and I couldn’t … I’m sorry.”

“You sent Joe.”

“I should have gone myself.”

“He did fine. I’m out. I’m … as good as new.” She felt a flashback to that awful place, the white room, the sound of primal screams, her own silent, implacable dissolution caught in the staring eye of a camera. “I’m fine.”

He knew she was lying; she could tell from the way his fingers traced damp lines on her cheek, and the gentle way his lips brushed hers. “I know how you are,” he said. “It’s in your eyes. They’re darker now.”

He didn’t mean in color; she knew that. Her eyes were haunted. She’d seen that herself, in the scratched mirror of the safe house as she’d showered off the remembered stink of her own death, again and again. It was hard to feel clean now. Hard not to remember how little separated her from dissolution.

“I can’t think about this right now,” she said. “I’m sorry; I just can‘t. I have to think about Annie. I have to make sure she’s safe.”

He hesitated for a moment, looking into her face, and then nodded and stepped back. “Let’s do it. But, Bryn, let me do the talking, all right?”

She didn’t agree or disagree, just walked with him into the darkness.

The house was halfway up the block, dark just like all the neighbors. There was a play set in the backyard visible through the chain link, and a doghouse, but no dog came out to bark at their approach.

The whole neighborhood seemed eerily silent. Bryn would have expected to see at least one light on, even as early as it was…. Early risers existed everywhere, didn’t they?

This felt almost like a movie set—dressed, but vacant of human habitation.

McCallister mounted the porch steps and held out a hand to keep her on the sidewalk. The front door was open; she could see the black gap from where she stood. She hadn’t seen him draw, but McCallister’s gun was at his side, primed and ready to fire.

She drew hers as he eased the door open and stepped inside.

Bryn followed him. She wasn’t staying on the damn sidewalk, and he must have known that because he didn’t bother to try to tell her again.

“Shut the door behind you,” said a man’s voice from the darkness, and a light flared on, splashing over pale blue, worn carpet, toys spread in a corner in primary-color confusion, newspapers piled on a chair, a faded floral sofa….

On which sat a man with a round, unremarkable face, short graying hair, and cold, ice blue eyes.

“Mr. Mercer,” McCallister said. Bryn shut the door and locked it behind her to ensure nobody would be coming up behind them. Mercer didn’t have a gun visible, and they had two; she wasn’t letting anyone in to start to even the odds.

“Mr. McCallister,” Mercer said, with perfect composure. “I would have expected you to be down at the headquarters getting your shot by now. Surely Irene’s chewing nails over your absence. You know how she is about full buy-in from her team.”

“You should have been the first one she went for,” McCallister said. “If I’d been making up the charts, you would have been at the top of the list.”

“I’m glad you weren’t, then. I had just enough time to get my things together and file for my vacation before Harte thought to order my lockdown. That’s something my good little corporate-citizen act bought me, at least— vacation time. That and free Krispy Kreme doughnuts once a week at the team meetings. But in fact, Harte was too afraid to order me put into the program at first; she knew I could engineer a vaccine to counteract the revival process and make myself useless to her. Effectively, she would be rolling the dice on whether or not I’d wake up, and she couldn’t afford that risk until she was sure she wasn’t dependent on me.”

Mercer transferred that cool stare to Bryn. “You made it out. I heard they were bringing you in for … What do they call it? Observation. Irene likes to have a record of the process on file, to prove that the experimental failures have been cleaned up properly. I’m not really sure she doesn’t keep copies. You know, for fun.”

“You really are crazy,” McCallister said, almost admiringly. “I’d heard rumors.”

“Oh, I’m not crazy. Crazy is sticking a gun in your mouth and blowing a hole in your cerebellum, like my old lab partner. I simply chose to stop counting the cost of what we did, other than in terms of what it could buy me. That’s eminently sane. Thanks for your two hundred thousand dollars, by the way. I’m very grateful. It’s helped me get my new assembly process tooled up in a secured facility. I’m turning out the drug in enough quantities to guarantee steady employment, and that’s all I really want.” He smiled. “Well, that and destroying the company, and particularly Irene Harte. But that’s what I want from you, McCallister. In return, I will guarantee your friend Ms. Davis here a lifetime supply of Returné, as long as she makes her wealthy funeral home clientele available to me as customers, as Mr. Fairview did. I have to look to the future.”

“I’m not your assassin,” McCallister said. “And she’s not peddling your drugs.”

“Wait. Let’s review. You are an assassin, as we both very well know; Ms. Davis is in a particularly nasty situation, because her supply from Pharmadene is gone, and even if she managed to secure some on the way out, it won’t be much. It doesn’t store well; did you know that? Ineffective in the vials after about a week. Fresh batches are important. So really, there’s no bargaining going on here; you’re going to do what I want, and she’s going to do what I want. Because the alternatives are unthinkable.”

“Where are they?” Bryn asked. She raised her gun and pointed it at Mercer’s face.

He cocked his head, baffled. “Who?”

“The people who live in this house. The kids.”

“Oh, they’re in the back,” he said. “You’re free to go check on them if you’d like, but I promise you, their hearts are still beating. They’re just in a very deep sleep.”

“And where’s Annie?”

“Your sister. Ah, yes.” Mercer glanced behind him, toward a rounded doorway that led into a kitchen; Bryn could see a silvery refrigerator and a sink from the angle where she stood. “In there. Go on. I’ll wait here. By the way, the kitchen door has been jammed shut.”

McCallister started to follow her as she moved, and this time she was the one to give the hand signal. He didn’t like it, but he obeyed … mainly, she thought, because he knew Mercer was far too dangerous to leave unobserved.

She crossed to the kitchen and stepped inside.

For a second she didn’t see anything, and then she heard a scrape, and looked to her left. There was a recessed breakfast nook with a table and chairs. One of the chairs had been turned to face outward.

Annie sat on it, hands tied behind her, legs secured to the wood. She was breathing fast, and her hair was in her eyes, lifting and falling with each rapid gasp.

“Bryn, help,” she whispered, but that was all she had time for, because there was someone sitting behind her who slipped a plastic bag over Annalie’s head and twisted it tight at the neck. Annie immediately panicked, twisting against her bonds, the bag sucked tight into her open, gasping mouth.

“No!” Bryn screamed, and raised her gun.

“Careful,” said the man killing her sister. “I’m just making a point. Look.” He loosened the bag, and slipped it up just enough that Annie sucked in a deep, agonized breath. “Play nice, Double Trouble. I’m not going to tell you twice.”

Double Trouble. Oh, God.

The man torturing her sister was Fast Freddy Watson. His smile was like razors, and there was bitter triumph in it. “You fucking lunatic,” she spat. “Take that off of her. Now!”

“Nah, I don’t think so; I love watching you squirm,” he said, and snapped the bag back into place. Bryn watched helplessly as her sister arched against her bonds, sucking plastic as she tried to breathe. “How’s life after death?”

She fired a round right by his head, adjusted her aim. He ducked behind Annie, spoiling the shot. “Let her go,” she said. “She’s your leverage, you asshole!”

“Trust me. It’s not going to kill her. Just fuck her up a little bit.”

“I swear to God I’ll shoot you.”

“Gotta shoot her first!”

Behind her, she heard McCallister enter the kitchen. When she glanced back, she saw he’d brought Mercer, and he had his gun at Mercer’s temple. “Let’s call this a draw,” McCallister said. “I pull the trigger and you get no more antide-cay medicine, Freddy. We don’t want that, do we? Let her go.”

Annie was gagging on the bag. It was misted over from her breath, and Bryn had that double-vision nightmare again. She didn’t blink as she met Freddy’s gaze, just visible over her sister’s head. “I’ll put you down, Freddy,” she said. “Don’t think I won’t.”

“I know you would,” he said, “but we both know I’ll get up again.” He shrugged then, and yanked the bag off Annalie’s head. “Whatever.”

Annie coughed and sobbed and gasped, tears streaming down her face, and Bryn came forward, grabbed Freddy, and shoved him facedown onto the floor. “You got him?” she asked McCallister.

“Got him.” He put a foot on the back of Freddy’s neck, and kept the gun trained on the real threat. Mercer.

Bryn rummaged in the kitchen drawers, found scissors, and cut Annalie’s ties at the wrists and ankles. Annie pitched forward into her arms, sobbing wildly. “Shh,” Bryn said, and stroked her matted hair. “Shh, baby, you’re okay. It’s all okay.”

“No, it’s not,” Annie sobbed. “It’s never going to be okay. Never.”

“She’s right,” Freddy said. His voice was muffled against the floor, but he still sounded creepily sure of himself. “Poor little Annie. Not the first time she’s been through that. Right, Annie?”

“What …” Bryn looked at her sister, scraped the hair back from her face, and looked into her eyes. “Annie?”

Annie whispered, “It happened before. The bag. Coming back. The bag.” She was shaking all over, and her face was ice white. If Bryn’s eyes were haunted, Annalie’s were blind mirrors, reflecting only panic and horror. “He likes it.”

Mercer sighed. “I told you not to play with her, Freddy.”

“I was bored,” Freddy said. “She’s fine.”

“She’s no good to us insane.”

“Annie! Annie, look at me. You’re safe now. It’s all right. Understand?” Bryn hugged her again, and got her to stand up with her. Annie’s skin felt damp and cold. Where she’d been tied, it was …

... Discolored.

“Annie?”

Her eyes weren’t just blind; they were ever so slightly cloudy. The whites were discolored.

There were livid red bruises on her skin where it had rested on the chair’s arms.

“Annie. Oh, God …” Bryn felt suddenly, violently sick, and had to fight the impulse to throw up. She turned, screamed out her fury, and pointed her gun at Freddy’s head. “You killed her,” she said. “You son of a bitch! You killed my sister! You killed her and you brought her back too many times!” Burning tears blinded her, and she came close, so close to pulling the trigger. That was why there were bruises. Why Annie’s eyes were cloudy, even though she hadn’t been long out of revival.

Because he’d been using up the nanites too quickly by torturing her.

Mercer said, “I needed leverage, Bryn. Something you cared about other than your own survival; I couldn’t count on you not being ridiculously self-sacrificing, what with your military service background. Now you’ve got good reason to work with me. Oh, and please don’t shoot Freddy; it’ll be hours before he’s any good to me again.”

McCallister shoved him face-first into a wall and held him there, gun at the back of his head. He was tight with fury, and the look he gave Bryn was black with it. “You want me to do it?” he asked. “Tell me and it’s done.”

Mercer held up a single finger. “As Harte expected, I’ve taken precautions,” he said. “You see, I don’t want to be one of the zombies. I have a counteragent in my system that will destroy any nanites injected in my bloodstream. If you put a bullet in my brain, it’s the end. No revival. No more drugs for your girlfriend or her sister.”

She wanted Mercer dead; God, she wanted it with every aching cell in her body, but it wouldn’t solve anything. Not now. “You can‘t,” she said. “We need him. God help me, we need him. I need him.”

Down on the floor, Fast Freddy rolled over on his back, looked up at Bryn, and laughed.

“But I don’t need you,” she said, and shot him in the face.

Twice.

Annie screamed and covered her face with her hands. Then she staggered away and threw up in the sink. Her shorts revealed telltale lividity bruising all along the backs of her thighs.

Bryn stepped away from the spreading pool of Freddy’s blood, avoided his still-moving fingers as they reached for her, and lowered her weapon. Without looking up from Freddy’s ruined face, she said, “Mr. Mercer. My sister needs a shot. Give it to her.”

“You know that won’t actually kill him.”

“I thought a brain injury renders you unrevivable.”

“Only in your first death. Once the nanites have the template of an uninjured brain, they can always put it back together. It just takes time. Do we have a deal?” Mercer asked. “Irene Harte and Pharmadene come crashing down. You act as my distributor. Deal?”

McCallister looked at Bryn for a silent tick of a second, and then stepped back and holstered his own gun. “Deal,” he said. “But you get to clean up Freddy.” He went into the living room, came back with a soft throw that had been lying on the arm of the sofa, and put it around Annie’s shoulders. “Give her the shot, Mercer.”

Mercer opened his jacket and took out a slim silver tube. He shook out the syringe and injected Annalie, who watched with dull, traumatized eyes. “I’ll need to give Freddy another as well. That’s a serious injury; the nanites will wear out much faster than normal.”

“Or I could cut him apart and dispose of him in landfills,” McCallister said coldly. “I’m leaning toward option two.”

“He’s a good worker.”

“He’s a sadistic, murdering son of a bitch.”

“Well, everyone has flaws. I need someone I can trust to run the lab, and Freddy’s perfect for that purpose. I can control him. Leave him to me. Your problem is Irene Harte. She’s got considerable ambition.”

“Soon.”

“Now,” Mercer said. For the first time, there was the glow of sincerity in his eyes, and real urgency in his voice. “Soon is too late. If you don’t stop Pharmadene now, there’s no stopping them, ever. Do you understand? It’s already gone too far.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the summit meeting Irene Harte is hosting tomorrow,” Mercer said. “At the Civic Theatre. Secret invitations went out last month via the State Department. Pharmadene is paying for the facilities and running the show, but the guest list includes state legislators, governors, judges, the heads of the FBI and CIA. The secretary of state is on that list as a guest speaker. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s the beginning of the end, if they pull it off.”

McCallister had gone silent, watching Mercer. Bryn put her arms around her sister, trying to still her shaking. On the wall, a kitchen clock ticked seconds.

“She’s going to do it there,” Mercer said. “Kill as many as she can. Revive them. Addict the power players. They’ll have no choice but to buy in.”

“She can’t control this once it starts.”

“She can ride the whirlwind, and that’s all she wants. This is how it all starts, McCallister; this is how the end of the world happens for us. Tomorrow. I’m just guessing, but I’d think the most effective way would be gas pumped into the auditorium, mass deaths, mass revivals. The first generation of the new order. She’s got plenty of people to do it now; everyone at Pharmadene, from the CEO to the secretaries, is protocol-enabled, ready to die for her cause. That’s why it has to be now, before it’s too late.” Mercer checked the clock. “In two hours, they’ll be arriving at the Civic Theatre to prep it. You have until people start arriving to take out Harte and stop this.”

“God,” McCallister breathed. He didn’t seem surprised, only resigned; he’d expected this, Bryn realized. He just hadn’t expected Harte to move this fast, or this decisively. “He’s right. She deliberately left me out of this. She suspected me, or she’d have tasked me with security for the meetings.”

Mercer shrugged. “I would have killed her for you, but I believe in employing experts to do these kinds of things. And you’re an expert at this, aren’t you, Patrick? Isn’t that what you did in the bad old marine days?”

McCallister didn’t answer. He glanced at Bryn, a fast and apologetic brush of gazes, and then checked the clock. “He’s right about the meeting,” he said. “I have to go. I have to do this. Take care of Annie.”

Every instinct in her rebelled against that, against sending him out on his own … and against being left here, with the not quite dead Freddy and the not very sane Jonathan Mercer. But Annie couldn’t be on her own. She needed help, shots, and above all, she needed safety. “Take Joe,” she told McCallister. “Don’t go alone.”

He nodded, eyes locked on hers. Then he turned to Mercer and said, “If anything happens to either one of these women, I’ll find a way to keep you alive while I cut you apart. Understood?”

“Sure,” Mercer said. “Why would I kill my own employees?”

“Ask Irene Harte,” McCallister said. One last glance at Bryn, and he was gone.

Bryn pulled the blanket closer around Annalie’s shoulders. “I’m taking her out of here,” she said.

“Well, it’s time we were about our own business, too,” Mercer said. “I suppose I’ll have to clean up Freddy’s brains; I hate to leave a mess for the home owners. Hand me that plastic bag; I need to put it over his head to keep him from leaking Oh, relax, Freddy; I’ll tear an airhole for you.”

Bryn turned to get the bag.

She never saw Mercer’s blow coming, and never knew how he hit her, or what with, except that it had to be with something big and heavy. She heard a sound that might have been Annalie’s choked scream, and then she was down on the cold floor, trying to figure out what was happening, and why, why in God’s name he’d done that….

Mercer thought she was unconscious, Bryn realized. She should have been, but she guessed she had a harder head than he’d expected. Her body wasn’t quite within her control just yet, but she could hear as he pressed buttons on a phone and said, “Irene Harte, please. Yes, I’ll hold…. Ah, Irene, nice to hear your voice. Patrick McCallister will be at the Civic Theatre in about twenty minutes, thirty at the outside if he stops for coffee and doughnuts. I believe he’s going to try to take out your advance crew, and then get you for good measure. That concludes our deal, I believe. You get what you want, and you leave me strictly alone. Bye-bye, Irene.”

“You lied,” Annalie said shakily. “You’re working with her.”

“I’m a businessman, and Irene has no real use for me now; it’s just as easy for her to pay me as kill me. She can always try to kill me later. McCallister, on the other hand— he’s much harder to get, so she’s perfectly willing to trade my life for his. And frankly, Annie, my life is really all that matters to me. Now, be a good girl and hit your sister with this pan, very hard, on the back of the head, and I promise not to let Freddy put that bag over your head ever again.”

“I can’t,” Annie sobbed. “I can’t. Bryn—”

“You will if you want to live,” Mercer said. “I’ll count to ten. One, two, three, four … Oh, all right, I suppose blood really is thicker than water. Don’t cry, Annie; listen to my voice. Condition Diamond.”

Annie abruptly stopped crying. The silence, in contrast, was eerie. Get up, Bryn thought grimly. She tried, and managed to push herself over on her side. Paralyzed nerves were starting to wake up and scream.

Annalie was staring at Mercer, slowly clearing eyes vacant as a doll’s.

“Now,” he said. “Take this pan, and hit your sister in the head with it, as hard as you can, until she’s not moving anymore.”

“Annie—” Bryn whispered.

Annalie didn’t hesitate. She took the pan, braced herself, and swung the skillet with brutal force.

It took three hits to crush Bryn’s skull.

The last thing Bryn heard, a faint and echoing whisper as she fell into darkness, was Mercer saying, “That’s my good girl.”