Immortality Is the Suck (31 page)

afterward and forcibly removed our shoes from our feet.

“Hey Albert, let's try something.”

“Not again, Demonio. That cholo, he almost broke my neck, man.”

“We don't get out of here, it's inevitable, right? I saw a dead man once; La

Eme had cut off his cojones first.”

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215

Albert grimaced and, reluctantly, stood straight. “Now what?”

“These things run on electrical power, right?”

Albert frowned and shrugged. “Maybe.”

I looked around the room. “This was a bathroom, once,” I said, running

my hands along the tiles. Like everything else in the compound, they seemed to

have been laid rather sloppily. Here and there I could feel an unevenness in the

way they had been plastered in. “There must be pipes still.” In the position one

might find a bathtub faucet, three tiles had been pressed into the plaster, not

quite square to the others. I chipped at their edges with my fingernails.

“Why you want to find pipes?”

“Here, Albert, help me out. We have to knock these out.”

We took turns kicking and hitting the wall. Yelling curse words and, when

the occasional flunky came by to glare and tell us to shut the fuck up, we took

turns standing between the doorway and the damage we were doing to the

tiles.

After a time, we were able to tear a hole and could see the pipe inside, a

metal plug covering the place where the spigot had once been.

“Help me knock this off,” I said to Albert, kicking it hard enough to leave a

bruise on my bare foot.

He pursed his lips and said, “The whole place will flood, man.”

“We'll have to direct the water so it hits the lights,” I said.

He sighed and moved his shoulders in an expressive gesture for

“whatever” and kicked the spigot hard. “Fuck, that hurts,” he said, and did it

again.

Now when we screamed curses they were in earnest.

Soon the water started to dribble out and then I shoved Albert out of the

way as the water pressure shot the cap across the room, smack into the

opposite tiles, which exploded in a puff of plaster and broken ceramic and

spewed all over the room.

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Within seconds, we were two inches deep in water and it was running

toward the hallway. Albert and I struggled to withstand the pressure, using our

hands to redirect the water until we managed a steady fierce stream trickling

down the wall where the lights were.

Sure enough, one of the lights sputtered and went out. Then another.

Then sparks flew from a couple and they spat glass as they went out. Flames

came out of one light, then a flicker of all of the lights, and a moan from the

very walls, as if some great beast were dying.

Which was true, in a sense, because we'd just short-circuited the front of

the compound.

The place was suddenly pitched into darkness.

Albert swore creatively as we slid and slopped across the wet glass and

broken ceramic-strewn floor and skidded into the hallway.

“Which way?” he whispered.

I figured our odds of survival were about 20 percent to nil. “You go east,

I'll go west,” I said. “I've got to get the survivors out.”

“Suit yourself, crazy white man,” said Albert, and took off down the

hallway.

I went the opposite direction, coming out into the main room, where

soldiers, brandishing their heavy swords, were mostly accusing each other of

sabotage. The room was chaotic with big men shouting loudly in two

languages, water pouring across the floor, occasional sparks shooting from

outlets. Nobody seemed to notice another big guy sneaking around the edges. I

followed my nose, finding Peter's scent in a small room near the kitchen. He

had been tied up back-to-back with Drew, who was obviously terrified. I

couldn't see the people whose home we had broken into.

Perhaps because Peter and Drew were humans, and tied up, only one

small thug had been left to guard them. He was easily knocked down. I stole

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217

his sword, decapitated him with it, and then decapitated another thug who

came around the corner.

I used the tip of the sword to cut through Peter's bindings.

“Can you see at all?” I asked him.

“Enough. Did you just cut off a man's head?”

“You have to get out of here,” I told him. I'd released Drew, who was a

blubbering, useless mess, clinging to me and sobbing. I transferred him into

Peter's arms. “There's an exit they leave unlocked, over the kitchen door. To

your left.” And when Peter seemed to hesitate, “Save the geek, Peter. He'll give

you the evidence you need.”

We'd been maybe two minutes and the chaos still raged outside, but

somebody remembered the prisoners and came back to check. He managed to

cry out an alarm and engage my sword in two swinging arcs, the metal

screaming as we clashed.

And then they were all on me.

I was encircled completely by big ugly bikers waving swords with varying

degrees of expertise.

At the edge of my vision, I saw Peter and Drew disappear toward the

kitchen. They'd need as much time as I could give them to get clear of the

compound. I hunkered down in my spot and faced the room. Okay, I'd always

known I'd go out in a blaze of glory. Truth be told, I'd kind of looked forward to

it. A neat end to a messy life. I allowed my face to go into its “demon” mode,

raised my sword.

Bring it.

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A. M. Riley

Chapter Twenty-three

Glory is overrated.

What followed was mostly a lot of work. Blood and pain, as some bastard

got in a lucky stroke and opened up my left biceps. Embarrassment when

another son of a bitch clipped me in the head and I cried out like a kid. A few

dumbass, and in other circumstances, really humorous moves as we all tried to

handle the big, weirdly balanced swords.

I planted mine accidentally in a door frame and that was that, I figured. I

was a goner. Some Angel came at me, laughing. His mouth open so wide, I

could see that the only teeth of his that weren't rotten were the biting ones. I

couldn't help but throw my hands up before me, like that would do any good.

Suddenly I saw a blade cut through his red neck and dirty yellow hair and

he exploded into dust. Freeway stood behind him, looking disgusted. “Mierda,

'mano, why do they do like that?”

“Freeway!”

He ducked, just avoiding a swinging sword blade. His face was all broad

smile and wild eyes. That stupid black sombrero pushed back on his head.

“Get your sword, you pendejo bitch!” he yelled, hopping and swinging his sword

in a wide arch as he yelled, taking a man in the belly.

I planted a foot on the wall and managed to jerk my sword free. “What are

you doing, Freeway?” I asked, jabbing at a biker's woman who had gotten hold

of a sword and seemed to be doing a fairly good amount of damage with it.

“Back off me,” I said, poking at her again.

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219

Freeway grabbed the woman around the waist and threw her across the

room. She fell into a sofa covered with blood and ash. “I got your back, mi

her'mano,” sang Freeway. He spun and caught a big black man in the ribs with

his blade.

It was the last thing I ever heard him say. Because at that moment, Hell

happened. A wall of the compound lit up. As if a light had gone off inside it.

Half a second later, every object in the room near the wall seemed to lift and

float. The light grew larger. A dozen other smaller lights bloomed around it.

And then the lights went out.

* * * * *

with ash. Starlight danced behind his head, the strobe of LAPD and EMT

vehicles throbbing off every surface.

I could feel his hand on my face. No pain, though.

“Am I dead?” I asked him.

“Jesus.” He looked up and away, blinking the shine from his eyes. I felt

his fingers carding through the cowlick at the front of my hair, rhythmically.

“What were you trying to do?”

Had I, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, passed out at the Marina and, just

now, come to? “I just had the strangest dream, Peter. You were there

and…I…fuck, you wouldn't believe it anyway.” I tried to sit up, but a pain in

my chest pressed me back to the ground.

“Don't get up,” said Peter. Turned out the pain was his knee where he

knelt on me to keep me supine. “The medics found you first and when they saw

you weren't breathing they brought you out. I just managed to stop them

carting you off to a hospital.”

Oh. I hadn't dreamed any of it, then. I was lying on my back on the damp

lawn of Ozone's compound. The entire LAPD, it seemed, was working

purposefully around me.

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A. M. Riley

“What happened?” I asked him. His hand was still in my hair, petting. It

was both unbelievably soothing and the most erotic thing I had ever felt.

“Your Asian friend and I fell out the kitchen window right into the laps of a

SWAT team. Seems your friend, Alli, called the troops.” He grimaced. “Top-

notch cop, that woman. Read some file you sent her, did the math, and called

my boss.”

“
Your
boss?”

“Stan set it up,” said Peter, his voice bleak. “This joker, Ozone, was paying

him to tamper with the evidence. It could have been years before we connected

the dots.”

“And by then they would dominate SoCal,” I said. “Where's Stan?”

His jaw clenched. “Dead. He… one of the others bit him.” Peter placed two

fingers on his own neck, in the position of probable puncture wounds. “He was

cold and drained when I found him. But SWAT hadn't secured the area, and I

needed to help them press towards the rooms at the back.” He blinked. “I still

can't believe what we found back there. When I came back to Stan, he was

gone. There was ash everywhere…”

“I'm sorry, Peter.”

“You know, I knew. When you told me Stan was undercover, I knew. It

didn't add up. But I couldn't let myself see it. Instead, well, I figured you were

up to something and I tailed you.”

He petted me, thoughtfully. “I saw you go home with Alli.”

Fuck.

“I needed a place to crash. Nothing happened.”

“You don't need to explain to me.”

“Yes I do.”

He looked down at me and away. Sirens wailed and drifted into the night.

“Stan's wife won't even have something to bury,” he said.

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221

* * * * *

expedite my necessary involvement so that I could leave before the sun rose.

We walked through the scene, examining what was left. The flood water

had washed through the entire front of the compound. Swords and muddy, wet

ash lay all over the gleaming white tile. There was a remarkable absence of

blood, considering.

A uniformed SWAT officer came into the room from one of the hallways,

talking to someone. “…at least a hundred in these rooms. All showed signs of

extreme blood loss.” He stepped into the room, followed by Alli.

“Any IDs?”

“None, and quite a few seemed incoherent.”

“High-grade heroin,” said a familiar voice. Albert appeared behind Alli.

She smiled at me. “Your friend secured the entire back of the compound

and then just waited for us to move in,” she said. “It was very impressive.”

“Can I talk to you a minute?” I said to Albert.

He followed me into the kitchen while Peter chatted with the others. “What

are you up to?” I asked him.

“She's a beautiful woman and she thinks I'm machismo, 'mano. What can

I do?”

“Keep your bloodsucking hands off her, Albert.”

He looked at me with wide, shocked eyes.

“Or I'll march out there and explain why you were able to subdue a room

full of terrified human males single-handedly.”

“Can't a man fall in love?”

“
You
can't.”

“If
you
can, 'mano, anybody can. Relax. She saw me 'el diablo,' shall we

say. In my other face. She didn't even flinch. What a woman.”

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A. M. Riley

“Just remember, anything happens to her and I'll hunt you down.”

“I believe you.”

We joined the others again. Albert showed them through the kitchen,

explaining some of the apparatus there. Peter and I went down the long

hallway, stopping when I indicated the cubby area I'd lived in for all those

weeks. Not much had been touched since I'd dug through the chest of drawers

for Caballo's sword.

Peter's a detective. He looked down at the pile of clean boxer shorts still