Officer Grenham met Byrne’s gaze. “Richard, what’s Thorn doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s holding a candlestick.”
“I see it.”
They were coming to question the Baron, arrest him, and eventually beat the truth out of him. Once they’d assuaged their doubts, they would either hand him over to Malik or kill him.
He looked at the cigar in his hand. It was the only tool he had left in his arsenal, but it wasn’t totally useless. They wouldn’t see it coming, even though it was clearly a dangerous improvised weapon. He lifted it to his lips, pulled out the lighter and started cooking the end. No draw needed.
“Don’t smoke in here,” Officer Byrne said. Richard. His first name was Richard.
Goddamnit. “I’ll roll down a window,” the Baron muttered.
“Something’s really wrong,” said Grenham, squirming around in the back seat.
“Open your doors,” the Baron commanded, “let’s get out and help them.” The cigar was clearly beyond smoking now. It was burned. The car was beginning to smell of ash, not tobacco. The end was a quarter inch of cherry coals. He closed the lighter and put it away.
Officer Byrne followed the suggestion mindlessly. He cracked open the door and grabbed the frame to stand. His head was turned away.
Richard, poor fucking Richard.
Hate to stab you in the back.
The Baron reached over with his left arm and jammed the burning cigar into Richard’s neck. Simultaneously, he reached down with his right, unbuttoned the man’s holster, and got a finger under the handle before everything slammed into a confusion of motion and noise.
Richard shrieked and jerked forward and fell out of the squad car at once, popping the Colt out of its holster. It landed on the seat. The Baron scrambled for it.
The approaching CPUSA trio started running for the car. “Baron!” the lead shouted, throwing back his lapel and struggling to pull a 1911.
The Baron got the gun, saw Richard on his ass. He ought to shoot the man. Instead, he aimed and hesitated. The officer rolled aside uselessly, still an easy shot, but the Baron cocked the hammer and blasted the sidewalk. Then he grabbed the dash and hopped the gear stick into the driver’s seat, keeping his head down.
The armed CPUSA member stopped at the gunshot. The street was filled with screaming, running civvies. Then he steeled himself for the inevitable breach of peace, lifted the 1911, and blasted twice at the Baron, hitting the trunk and the back windshield.
The Baron returned fire over his left shoulder, hitting the cage. Officer Grenham was in the back, shouting obscenities. “Cunt! You fucking asshole!”
The Baron slammed the clutch, turned the keys in the ignition, half-depressed the accelerator, and jammed the starter. The car roared into life. “Out!” he bellowed and shot another two times over his shoulder, aiming well past the man in the back.
Another man he should’ve shot. Another person he couldn’t shoot.
“It’s the cage!” Grenham shouted.
Locked in for the ride. The Baron pulled the driver’s door shut and shifted into first gear, then slammed on the gas. The wheels peeled out. Another 1911 shot, this one slamming into the back of his seat but stopping short. A shiver up his spine. He pulled into the street, heard the engine whining, jammed the clutch, and shifted again.
Civvie vehicles were pulling to the curbs, avoiding the speeding patrol car. The sun was ahead; he was going west. At the end of the block, three Willys MBs flew into the intersection and slammed their brakes, leaving curved trails of smoking rubber. Rifles were raised from the seats, an instant response to gunfire on the streets of Queens.
“Get down!” the Baron roared.
He jammed the handbrake and clutch, slewed around, and jumped the median in the middle of the street. For one stomach-lurching second, it felt like he’d roll the whole damn car up and over, trapping them both in a tumble of glass and steel. Then the front wheels hit the far lane with a metallic grind, and the bumper rammed asphalt.
He let off the clutch; the engine shuddered and nearly stalled, but he downshifted, then touched the gas to accelerate faster and peeled out again. The world could hear his poor driving. The side of the patrol car caught the volley in a series of bullet thunks. The side window shattered, scattering glass over Grenham.
The National Guard must’ve been watching the temple. Shots had triggered their ambush. “You alright?” the Baron shouted.
“Fuck you!”
A 20mm anti-aircraft halftrack rumbled into the intersection at the other end of the block. The mounted gun began the slow swing down to the street. “Fuck off!” the Baron roared, permitting himself to cuss freely at the absurdity of this new threat.
“Flushing armory—” the cop said, peeking through the cage.
One shot from an ack-ack would obliterate the squad car. Ten or so would leave a smoldering wreck. The Baron swung the wheel, pulling a U-turn in lane. He’d rather go west anyways.
With his windshield facing the Guardsmen, they opened fire again, and the glass exploded in his face. He couldn’t help but close his eyes, shield his head. His left arm caught a round in the bone and he ignored the brilliant arc of pain, its baleful light shivering up and down ruined tendons. An instant later, the Cat seized the cables to help him pull. He hadn’t died, but it still helped him in battle. Against such petty wounds, he could move!
At this angle, the halftrack couldn’t fire without hitting the Willys Jeeps. There weren’t enough vehicles to block the road. The Baron slewed through the gunfire, pulled left around them, and kept going in the oncoming lane, fortunately empty.
As he cleared the jeeps, he glanced in the rearview mirror. More vehicles were rushing past the halftrack. Gunfire strafed the front of the theater, showering prone CPUSA fighters in a hail of rounds.
It was a story repeated throughout the city. Communist insurgents could hide in the nooks and crannies of New York City, but they couldn’t fight against secular forces of that scale. They would be locked in the temples until New York could organize and arrest them, or they’d lose their lives in open battle with veterans from WWII.
“Were you shot?” the cop shouted over the wind howling through the vehicle.
The Baron pressed his left arm to the cage; the entry wound visible and bleeding before the mesh. “No rest for the weary,” the Baron shouted. “Keep low, don’t die!”
“Are you the Baron?”
“You’re not sure?” Bullets thumped the trunk of the squad car. They were halfway down the block. The Baron leaned into the horn, trying to scare off traffic. “How do I turn on the siren?”
“Were you planning to steal the car?”
“No! I wanted a ride!” He glanced back. “I need the siren or I might ram someone.”
“Hit the master switch on the console. Then the foot pedal. Deep left.”
The Baron flipped a red switch, then found the pedal with his toes. It was a Q2B, the same siren found on ambulances, fire trucks, and air raid poles. He turned it on, listened to it warm up through a low growl to a deafening howl, and ran the red light at the next intersection, pulling right sharply to change lanes. All around him, civvie cars slammed on the brakes.
The Baron pressed the pedal again, and the siren cut off. “You know the trick to running?” He shifted gears, then pushed on the accelerator.
“What trick?”
“Break line of sight, and there’s a good chance of getting away.”
Grenham sat up a little and stared at the Baron like he was a madman. “What about radios?”
“That’s why it’s hard to break line of sight! But we’ve got to try!”
The Baron accelerated further, glancing occasionally in the door mirror. Two jeeps were keeping pace about half a mile behind.
RKO Keith’s Theater was on the narrower, eastern stretch of Northern Boulevard. Only two blocks up, it kept level while the land dropped away and became a short bridge over the Flushing River, then followed the Flushing Promenade along the bay.
d’Holbach was hitting seventy when the bridge dipped down suddenly, and he nearly bottomed out on the soft suspension after the drop. Flushing Bay was a crescent of dark silver water to his right, like dirty mercury glittering in the afternoon light. Like much of the East River, rainbow streaks of oil and pads of shimmering dark algae mottled its surface.
The storm clouds loomed barely any closer, but at this speed without a windshield, the nor’easter seemed to bear down on them, battering the Baron’s cheeks and lips, drying his squinted eyes.
“Where are you going?” Grenham shouted over the wind.
“You shouldn’t know! For your safety!”
The road cut left slowly, aiming down the heart of Jackson Heights. There was a diminutive Guard checkpoint far ahead, maybe two miles distant, where Northern crossed Broadway. There weren’t any closer checkpoints because there weren’t any points of military interest this far from the bridges or LaGuardia airport. The only reason he could see for Langley to position them here was to cover people leaving the Railyard Temple—just in case.
Along a smooth stretch of road, the Baron took a second to buckle up while the squad car cruised. The officer in the back followed suit. With judicious taps of the horn, he kept the lane mostly clear of slower traffic.
The buildings around them were dense, short, and visually busy, a true urban corridor, a booming stretch of glass-fronted businesses and brownstone low-rise apartments. Even the side roads felt small and incidental to the straight thoroughfare, the artery of commerce and residence.
The checkpoint neared to within half a mile, when the Baron scouted his way through. He pedaled on the siren and picked up speed. The Guard would’ve radioed ahead, but their assumptions were almost certainly flawed. The Baron should be avoiding them. There was plenty of warning, plenty of distance where the Baron could see two more jeeps waiting. They would expect him to break off at any moment, avoiding the checkpoint, but beyond their jeeps, they’d only blocked the lanes with a line of orange sawhorses.
They realized about ten seconds too late that he wasn’t slowing down. Guardsmen waved weapons at him. One fired into the air.
Then the squad car smashed the symbolic blockade by striking the gap between two sawhorses, knocking both to the side with sprays of splinters while nearly ripping off the patrol car’s bumper. Its hood bent up but kept its latch to the car frame, and he shot past the checkpoint, pulling a brief wave of loose splinters in his wake.
Something rattled beneath the patrol car. Steering drifted left. Was that alignment? It hardly mattered. This vehicle wouldn’t last much longer.
It’d been decades since the Baron’s last visit, but it was hard to forget the trainyard. The place was a rusted blight in the center of Queens, historically visible for two miles along Northern Boulevard. The city had recently hidden it behind new construction and lines of trees, but the trains were still there. The main rail loop was about a half mile away.
The Railyard Temple temple—his destination—was at the far north end of this blighted space, hidden in a warehouse near the sunken trainyard’s retaining walls.
Two more jeeps joined the chase behind him, upping the count to four.
The patrol siren cleared the path. When it was time to corner, he swerved onto the largest street south, 43rd. Sure enough, as he pulled away from the main boulevard and rattled down a shallow hill at speed, he spotted familiar terrain, almost unchanged after decades. The road curved right over a long trench, briefly taking a tiny bridge over 4 sets of rail tracks.
The gate to the broader yard was open during the day. He shot through it and into the parking lot like it was an open road, but the end of the lot was hemmed in by 4-inch parking bumpers, long bars of concrete bolted to the asphalt.
“Stop!” Grenham shouted.
The Guard practically nipped at their rear bumper. The only way out was through.
The Baron leaned back against the seat, tight, as if he could pull the front of the squad car up, and pushed harder on the gas. Let momentum carry them forward; let suspension take the shock of impact.
He shot between two cars at the western end of the half-mile long lot, smashed through the parking bumper, and heard a metallic bang. The jerk on the seatbelt was like being slapped across the chest with a crowbar. His stomach ran for his spine; his sinuses emptied like he’d been socked in the face. The siren was instantly dead; a screeching fraction of a second, grinding metal; then the car was off the lot, back end popped up from impact, and it felt as if they were falling or flipping, even though they were just sailing over the surface of a shallow hill, down to the gravel and asphalt of the trainyard.
The officer shrieked in momentary freefall.
Then they landed on a terrace of rails. The Baron’s jaw clapped shut; blood taste. Both front tires burst, and rubber flaps and steel belts whipped into the air at sixty miles per hour. The rims made a horrible noise, scarring the rails and ground, but the patrol car had too much speed to stop. The skidded off the rails, bumping down a final slope towards pavement. The engine whined viciously, but he hadn’t killed the vehicle, and the wheels still turned.
The car drifted sharply left when it caught the road, and the Baron wrenched on the steering to force it straight. This was the car’s final run. The trainyard, his destination. The National Guard wouldn’t follow a suicide jump. They’d have to circle around.
The cop in the backseat was pale. His lip was bleeding.
The Baron shouted into the dusty wind, “We’re almost there!” Ahead, the road opened into a small warehouse district, no more than a dozen metal buildings intended for storage of freight and cargo coming off the rails. They were eternally dusty and tinged with corrosion, moldering in the shadow of a high bridge passing over the yard at street level.
d’Holbach couldn’t reasonably escape his pursuers here, so he hoped to take advantage of occult feelings about sacred ground. If any cultists wanted to keep the Railyard Temple, they’d have to win a fight against the Guard, and that might just be possible.
If the temple’s Oracle was on site with a coterie of his cultists, it’d be easy. If Langley had embedded any cultists in this group of Guards, it’d become difficult again.
Either way, he hoped that Phyllis and the Zombie would find him there. Geographically, it really was the most likely place for the Baron to have dodged.
None of this was a well-formed plan, of course. It was all risks blended with a heady mix of desperation and hope, but it was better than being captured alone at the RKO Keith’s Theater.
The trainyard was about a mile long, east to west, and in a constant state of construction. Gravel piles of various hues shed plumes of thick, choking dust in the heavy winds. Creosote slathered railway ties were stacked in tarry piles. Cranes, bulldozers, backhoes and other mud-crusted monsters of moving earth and stone were corralled in a chain-link pen.
The ramps and silos of a diminutive concrete plant stood like sentinels to the north, stalwart before a storm-crowned horizon. To the south and the middle of the rail loop, the afternoon sun shone across the polished silver skins of trains in storage. The rail cars were lined by the dozens, thin and long like chain-linked bread boxes. Several were in a state of disassembly, some in disrepair, with unfolded sides and gutted interiors accumulating grime, as if they were features of the landscape.
It was a barren, blasted industrial park, sunk a dozen feet into an artificial hole and surrounded by berms and trenches. It was defended by its inaccessibility and its gloom. It wasn’t even beautifully bleak.
The Baron could spot workers in trucks, watching with awe. He could see foremen and accountants standing outside warehouse doors, ties flapping like dark flags over white shirts. There were witnesses. So many had seen him jump, or at least heard it and come running.
He urged the car on, even as the wheels slowed with a squeal, even as the mechanical elements reached the edges of failure. He was driving the vehicle the way he’d been driving his body all afternoon—like he’d stolen it. In a fit of imagination, he wished the Cat could extend its battleready properties to this metal steed, preventing the vehicle’s demise.
He was no more than a hundred feet from the temple when the engine threw something, and after a few half-hearted bangs, the machine stopped. Over twenty feet, the vehicle ceased rolling on the pavement.
The Baron slipped off his seatbelt and shoved the Colt revolver into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. “You back there?”
“I’m alive,” Grenham said gruffly.
“How do I unlock the back doors?”
The officer shook his head and started crawling out of the empty side window, crunching harmless safety glass beneath him. That was fine.
The Baron shouldered open his own door, then turned back to look for the National Guard jeeps. No more than half a mile away, dust blowing off their tires. Thirty seconds out. “Are you running?” the Baron shouted to the officer—to a CPUSA fighter. The man dropped to his knees, sick, and shook his head. He waved the Baron to go on without him.
“No, fuck that.” The Baron sprinted around the vehicle, grabbed Officer Grenham by the shoulder and pulled him onto his feet. “Run you bastard!” He shoved the man forward. “Run!”
The temple wasn’t far ahead—it was the first warehouse on the north side of this road. There was someone sitting on a plastic chair just inside its rolling door, a blue sheet metal affair. He wore glasses that reflected the sky, making his eyes appear as bright as searchlights.
The Baron sprinted. Ten seconds counted off by heartbeats.
The man with glasses stood. “Baron d’Holbach?” he called in an incredulous voice.
It wasn’t anyone the Baron recognized. He was certain they’d never met. Balding, bearded, dressed like an army chaplain but stripped of all insignia. “Who?” the Baron asked, stumbling to a stop, controlling his breathing. “How many of you are here?”
“I’m Dr. Albee, the Oracle of the Railyard Temple. I’m the only one here during this mess. You—”
“Yes, I’m me!” the Baron shouted, “I need armed men!” He gestured. The jeeps were slowing at the squad car. Someone raised a rifle and fired it once into the air.
“Surrender!” came the shout.
“I don’t have a gun,” Dr. Albee exclaimed.
“Get inside!” The Baron grabbed the doctor and ushered him through the door and behind the cover of the walls. Officer Grenham ran after them. A second later, bullets drummed the warehouse walls like someone beating a metal pan with a hammer. Dr. Albee stopped in terror, hands up to protect himself, feet practically under the Baron’s shoes.
“We’re in cover! Just keep going!” the Baron shouted, trying to inspire action, motion, anything. Dr. Albee simply quivered at the shout, unmoving.
d’Holbach darted around the doctor, taking stock of the space. The chamber was lit only by the open door. It was a closed hangar room with no other doors visible. A few large shipping crates were crammed together on the cold concrete, their paintjobs appearing absolutely new. They formed the sanctuaries, inviolable and immovable without destroying the sanctity of holy ground—and that was it. This rented corner, sectioned off, was the entire temple, with none of its usual staff.
Dr. Albee finally assembled himself well enough to ask Grenham, “What’s happening?”
“The Baron dodged to the Theater,” said the officer.
They needed options. “Is there another way out?” the Baron asked, facing Dr. Albee.
“Uh—you could squeeze past the left crate. There’s a small door behind it.” The doctor was pointing to the leftmost crate, running close and parallel to a warehouse wall.
The Baron went for the gap, then paused. “Unlocked?” he asked.
“Yes. It’s right up against the sanctuary.”
“Don’t fight the Guard. Hide, or surrender if you have to.” The Baron fished the Colt from his inner pocket and opened the cylinder. Two rounds left. “I’m going to run.”
“There are six men out there,” Grenham said. “Where are you going?”
The Baron closed the cylinder. “Anywhere. Doc, in case either of you are arrested, pass the officer some prestige. Otherwise, try to hide, and I’ll draw them around the warehouse. Once they’re moving, you might be able to run.”
“What? Why?” Dr. Albee asked.
“Because I don’t have any better ideas!”
Dr. Albee offered his hand to Grenham, and they shook. “Half a day,” he wished.
“Thanks,” Grenham said, mystified that he’d been offered this freedom.
“You’d better be ready to dodge—” The Baron hitched as he glanced at Grenham. “And don’t throw your life away. If I win, Malik won’t be a problem. Okay?”
“Sure,” the officer replied softly.
“Good.” d’Holbach breathed out and jammed himself into the gap between the crate and the warehouse wall. It was a sideways shimmy, slow but easy. The door was only six or seven feet back, and the hinges weren’t visible. That meant it’d open outwards, around the corner from the soldiers.
Nobody would fight here. There’d be no defense against the Guard, nor any fighting to cover his escape. No mass violence, faceless and easy to forget as a statistic. Just a couple of people who couldn’t fight back. Now he was about to run into the open for their sake.
He didn’t even bother to ask for another half-day of prestige for himself. If he dodged, he’d either end up back in the Railyard and under arrest by the Guard, or he’d arrive far away from this probable meetup point, and he’d have to rush back here again.
His hand reached the door handle, and he cracked it open.
“Wait, one more second,” called Officer Grenham. He was at the end of the gap behind the Baron, speaking urgently.
The Baron couldn’t see the officer, and the squeeze was too tight to turn his head.
Grenham continued, “You don’t want me dead?”
“I don’t want anyone dead,” d’Holbach answered.
“But you’re trying to help me? Help us?
“Yes!”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Honestly? Sympathy. You didn’t deserve this. You joined a labor movement. You wanted a better life. None of you signed up to be disposable pawns.”
“No, I mean, why… everything?”
“This whole mess? I’m trying to prevent an occult war.”
The officer laughed sadly. He waited a moment; the Baron waited too. “Good luck, I guess.”
“Thank you.” The Baron slid forward through the open door, pushing out into the wind and sun. When he glanced back at the gap between the wall and the shipping crate, Officer Grenham had already fled. He shut the door quietly and started jogging directly away from the building, keeping it between him and the parked jeeps.
To the northeast, a narrow, high street bridge crossed over the width of the trainyard. It junctioned to another street, maybe forty-feet up, which followed the curve of the yard’s reinforced north wall.
Then and there, the Baron decided that was his next destination. It was the highest barrier surrounding the railyard, nearly forty feet of sheer concrete. He could see a scant rebar ladder built into it, just beside the bridge. It gave access to the railway signaling lights but doubled as a way up to the roads. There was no better way out.
An empty passenger train was making its slow roll along a rail loop, maybe half a mile out. The rumble of the rails would cover his sprint. As it neared the space between the warehouses and the northern wall of the yard, he picked up the pace.
“I surrender!” Officer Grenham bellowed somewhere outside. He hadn’t hidden himself; he’d gone out to sacrifice himself for the Baron’s cause, a small hero.
A myriad of angry voices. “Lie down! Spread your hands!”
The Baron stopped and hesitated. He looked back at the warehouse.
“I’m the Baron d’Holbach!” Grenham shouted.
“The hell you are!”
“I am—”
There were animal shouts. “On the ground! Spread your hands!”
The Baron sprinted full speed. The Guard’s search wouldn’t take long. He could only hope that the sanctity of the little temple survived their incursion. He wasn’t a fan of the New York cult, but losing holy sites hurt everyone in the system of prestige, good or evil.
The oncoming train drowned out any further words. It was fortunate that no guns were fired. Not that the Baron believed the officer was safe, but he understood what’d happened. He’d hoped someone else’s zealotry would waylay the Guard, and it had. The CPUSA had demonstrated a willingness to die, for they had the afterlife guaranteed, and their survival only endangered the things they held dear in this world.
The Baron had saved the officer, and he’d helped the Baron. It was a genuine surprise, and better than anything d’Holbach had hoped for.
Whipping up a bundle of New York soldiers in defense of a temple was an ugly plan; one man, lying about his identity, seeded equal confusion without a bunch of deaths.
Nevertheless, random acts of kindness only bought them time.
The Baron reached the rails beside the retaining wall and waited. The train was only a dozen cars long; the last one would pass in seconds. Then he’d have to rush a climb up forty feet. Five seconds. Three. Two. One. Run!
He darted for the rebar ladder, built into the concrete retaining wall itself. His left arm was injured; his grip felt weak. He shifted the Colt revolver to that hand, then took a good grip with his right arm and started climbing.
He was no more than ten feet up when the first shot was taken. The bullet ricocheted a few feet to the side; the crack of a rifle reached him the instant after. No surrender for him. He glanced back briefly; there were two soldiers at the corner of the warehouse. One was sighting with binoculars—the other a Springfield with a scope.
The Baron scrambled up the retaining wall, climbed faster, trying to hit the rungs with his toes while leaning his chest in close, to favor falling into the wall.
Another shot, this round cracking concrete a foot from his ear. He flinched but held tight. They’d hit him before they reloaded the gun. Five shots in a Springfield.
He had to dissuade them. Holding on strong with his right, he leaned out—body twenty feet over air—and held out the revolver in his shaking left hand. The hammer back with his thumb. He fired and the recoil kicked the pistol out of his hand. It clattered down to the track below.
The soldiers flinched back for only a moment, then settled into place. Sighting. Aiming to kill. The Baron willed all his strength into his left hand and began to climb as if the fractured bone wasn’t there.
He was moving fast. The third round cracked overhead, overadjustment.
There wouldn’t be another miss. Anticipation warmed the Cat in his belly. Lines of fire prepared themselves. They filled his marrow like molten lead. Amazing, what the so-called gods had made in the ancient world. He didn’t stop climbing, but he made every grip deliberate. Every step, direct.
There was a weird punch in his lower back, a puff of slight sensation that disappeared like fog. The crack of the rifle filled his ears. Then his spine exploded into wracking pain; he experienced the shot—but only from the wound on up through his shoulders. His legs didn’t twitch. They were soft, buckling, resting against the concrete.
The world felt as if it was falling away. His wrists snapped tight, filling his arms and hands with ice cold needles and deep ache of soft tissue damage.
He’d known it was coming, and even in the spasm of severe injury, his hands gripped the rebar tighter. His body hung under him, dead weight. None of it felt like him anymore. It was all becoming puppetry under his command. The Cat was a nova of heat and energy, as if it was burning a hole straight out of his body, but he ignored it. He willed his legs to move, and the fire filled them. He pushed up, and his paralyzed body was dragged after him. The fifth shot followed, hasty and sloppy, a confused response. Blood was streaming down the back of his pants. The entry wound must be visible. The Cat ignored the fatal wound.
Ten feet. Five feet of wall remained. He could see the road bordering the pit. Buildings rose on the far side, hiding this place, this sore in the earth.
He reached up with injured hands, grabbed the road’s concrete railing, and hauled his near-corpse over it, spilling down onto pavement in a bloody heap. A couple of futile shots pinged off the concrete, but d’Holbach was completely in cover.
A handful of cars were passing at the moment, all going east. When they saw him flop over the concrete barrier, most accelerated, but one slowed. It pulled onto the narrow shoulder and stopped. The doors opened up.
The Baron turned his head, trying to force himself to move.
“Holy shit, he climbed up.” It was Phyllis.
“Where are they?” the Zombie said flatly, getting out of the vehicle.
“Those gunshots,” Phyllis said, kneeling in d’Holbach’s field of vision, “for gods’ sake, Baron. You dodged into a half-empty temple and still got into a fight?”
The Baron didn’t answer. He didn’t have much breath. He hardly breathed at all.
“I’ll kill them,” the Zombie said without a trace of humor. He was a pair of shoes in the corner of the Baron’s eye. “Tell me. It’ll be fast. I’ll hop the wall and be back in five.”
“Help me pick him up.” Phyllis stood.
“No, I can’t touch him.”
“Just don’t squeeze him or move fast.”
“I could break him. No.”
The Baron pushed himself onto his knees in slow jerks, like a meat marionette half-drained of blood. He had chills sweeping up and down his body. “I got it,” he said in a quiet, raspy voice. The Cat could only push so much air with a paralyzed diaphragm.
“Gods,” Phyllis said.
“I’ll kill them,” the Zombie muttered quietly, now staring the Baron in the face. “I’ll kill all of them. Just tell me and I’ll do it. You know I will.”
The Baron wasn’t sure if he was being offered a choice, but he couldn’t command indiscriminate murder. It wasn’t in his nature. “I can’t,” he said.
The Zombie glowered. “But your back! Your arm!”
The Baron leaned into the concrete barrier for support. “I’ll be okay—”
“Those aren’t accidents!” the Zombie shouted. “They’re attempted murders!”
The Zombie’s rage was an echo out of the 19th century—a time when he still remembered living as the wild stalker of Europe’s forests. It was an echo of the murderous rage he’d felt earlier that afternoon outside of Tammany.
“We’re not here to kill people,” the Baron said, wishing for a better world.
“What does that mean?”
“Exactly what I said.”
“This isn’t about the fun of killing. Does it look like I’m having fun?”
“No.”
“You rarely ask me to kill. I kill for you anyways. It’s necessary—you know it’s necessary.”
“I know.”
“I’m saving your life!”
“I’ll never stop being thankful for that. I won’t ever complain.”
“You won’t complain, but you won’t ask me to kill!”
The Baron took a deep breath with the help of the Cat. “I know—”
“They’re killing you!” the Zombie interrupted, his voice earnest.
“I’m not good at pulling the trigger.”
“That’s why you have me!” the Zombie shouted.
The Baron breathed slowly. “I’m sorry. I like saving people. I know it’s a flaw.”
The Zombie threw up his hands. “Fine, you know what? I won’t kill this lot, but they can’t shoot a man without repercussions.”
The Baron closed his eyes. “Okay.”
“One injury per person. An arm or a leg.”
“Yes,” the Baron said, not wanting to say it but knowing he couldn’t refuse. He’d fought in the Napoleonic Wars. He knew how he should feel. War could scar your humanity if you didn’t lock your emotions away. You needed a utilitarian discipline to kill and survive. He opened his eyes. “I approve, my friend. Leave their prisoners alone. For the rest, do what you think is right.”
The Zombie frowned. “They say you’re supposed to be my moral guide.”
“Sometimes, people are idiots. Look at me, too weak to pull the trigger.”
The Zombie peered over the edge of the road. No shots came. “It’s been a long time since you last fought in a war. You’ll find it in you again.” He looked over at the Baron. “You can’t just die for a principle. Too much rides on your back.”
“I know.”
“Good.” The Zombie vaulted the railing and fell forty feet to the tracks below. He landed as softly as a man who’d fallen forty inches, then sprinted for the warehouse and the milling Guardsmen. The Baron pushed up to his knees, peeking over the edge of the concrete railing. Soldiers were standing around their new prisoners, chatting.
Phyllis had been silently watching the argument. She spoke up. “Why is this hard for you?”
“I don’t know,” the Baron said. “It’s been a long time since we fought.”
“Fought each other or other people?”
“Both. Mostly each other though. It’s different when it’s like this. Normally he wants to be restrained. He wants me to be his conscience. Now it’s pissing him off.”
Phyllis stood by the Baron. “To be honest, it pissed me off a little bit. Scared me too. You hesitated when I offered you a gun.”
“Yeah,” the Baron muttered, looking out towards the Zombie. “You made the right call. Helping me.” The Baron saw the Zombie reach the nearest soldier, who was shouting for him to halt. The Zombie tackled the man, grabbed his arm and twisted it back. When it broke, the man’s screech was ear-piercing. d’Holbach hissed sympathetically.
A Guardsman opened fire on the Zombie, but only for a second. The invincible man rushed him, kicking his legs with invincible toes until one femur cracked open like a rotten log, cutting the soldier down.
The Baron couldn’t stand to watch the rest. He sat down against the concrete railing and took another deep breath. It was easier now. The action of the Cat was becoming refined. Even if he was technically paralyzed and bleeding to death, it almost felt like he was completely alive.
Phyllis knelt before him. “Will you at least kill for your own goals? For other people’s lives?”
“Yes. I’ll have to do it.”
“All right then.”
“I’m not completely innocent,” the Baron admitted.
“The Zombie?” Phyllis asked.
“Yes. He sees me as his conscience, but for me, the Zombie is my gun, my weapon. I pull the trigger by putting myself in danger, and others die. That’s been the case for a long time.” He suddenly felt very thirsty. Strange how the body demanded attention at inopportune times. He ignored it. “That’s why I try to minimize the damage.”
“You can’t do that anymore. Not today.”
“I know.”
“The Zombie was terrifying, after you dodged. Screaming. Killing people with his fists. I left him behind, and ran down to Welfare Island. He jumped off the bridge and caught up to me a little later, and I thought he was going to kill me.”
“Why?”
“I was there when you nearly died. Instead, he wanted my help finding you. He needed my prestige. I hotwired a boat with a wish, then a car. We checked this temple first, and here you were.” She smirked. “For a moment, I thought the Zombie was going to cry.”
“He never does,” the Baron said.
“Right, he only kills when he’s mourning. Baron, you cannot allow yourself to die. More important than this stupid struggle for the Cat, you cannot die. I know—it’s civilization, nuclear war—the stakes are high. But if you die, that’s just as bad as a nuclear bomb. An invincible man will kill and kill until he can’t remember your name anymore.”
The Baron couldn’t answer her challenge, but a question came to mind, a search for a final crack in her logic, irrational and pointless but there just the same. He could be defensive sometimes, he knew it. “What would killing have done to save my life today?”
“These people no longer think of you as threatening. They don’t think of the Zombie’s Pact as meaningful. You’ve been wounded repeatedly, and all they’ve seen is your fleeing back. It wouldn’t have been this way if you would eliminate, if you would terrorize. I think that’s why he held men to the fire in Salem. So they’d fear touching you.” She turned and looked over the railing. “He’s on his way back. Thank him for saving your life, and keep this in mind. Sometimes, you have to be the bully, Baron, and bullies get in fights.”
“That’s grim, but… thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For arguing with me when the Zombie couldn’t.”
After half a minute, the Zombie clambered over the wall. He looked relieved. His left hand was coated in fresh blood. His right hand was only crusted with dry. “Only one died,” he said, not at all sorry.
“Thank you,” the Baron said, “you’ve done me a favor. That’ll put some fear into the National Guard. They’ll know about you—what did they call you on the bridge?”
“Bulletproof,” the Zombie said, with an inkling of a smile.
“The bulletproof man,” the Baron said. “You’re right. This had to be done.”
The Zombie walked up to the Baron, spread the fingers on his right hand very wide, and with his bloodless palm, he very carefully patted the Baron on the scalp. It didn’t hurt. The Zombie grinned and walked towards the idling car. “We need to get moving.”
Phyllis helped the Baron to his feet. “We’re in Queens now, so I’ll call my contacts, and we’ll get in position to prepare for LaGuardia. Alright?”
The Baron nodded. “Thank you. For all your people. For your help.” He put his arm around her shoulder and looked at the storm, brewing on the horizon. “It’s almost time.”
Author’s Note:
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
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