Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) (37 page)

Farther on, groups of tight-faced people hung about on the glass-bejeweled sidewalks, clustered in tense circles, glancing nervously over their shoulders this way and that with fear-haunted eyes. He saw three women standing around a doorway sobbing as a sheet-covered body was carried out. The people on the streets looked like ghosts.

“It’s falling apart.” Carol had her arms crossed in front of her chest as if to ward off a chill. “Just like Nelson said it would.”

As Bill was slowing for a red light at 63rd—habit, pure habit—somebody shot at them. The bullet punched through the rear window and smashed the right rear side pane on its way out. Bill floored the gas and sped uptown, ignoring traffic lights the rest of the way.

He double-parked in front of Carol’s apartment building and led her toward the shattered front door. Inside, she gasped when she saw a body on the floor. Someone had covered it with a drape from one of the ruined windows.

The elevator ride was slow and rough, as if the motors weren’t getting enough juice. As soon as the doors opened on her floor, Carol bolted from the car and ran down the hall. Bill noticed some drying brown stains on the carpet and what looked like a trail of the same leading past her apartment but said nothing. She had her door open by the time he caught up with her. He stayed close behind as she entered.

He bumped up against her back when she stopped dead inside the threshold.

“It’s a wreck!”

The windows were broken, the furniture gnawed and gouged.

“Good thing you weren’t here.”

If Nelson hadn’t run off, they might have stayed here last night, and might have ended up like that corpse in the lobby.

So damn it all, Bill was glad he’d taken off. Because it meant one less barrier between him and Carol. He loathed himself for that. But he wanted her. God, how he wanted her.

He forced himself to pull back and take her arm.

“Let’s move it.”

She led him to a storage closet where they each grabbed a suitcase, then to the master bedroom. She pulled clothing out of drawers, handed it to him, and he stuffed it in a suitcase. Then she opened a closet. She stopped and touched one of Nelson’s suits.

“I still can’t believe…”

“Do you hate him?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think much of him now, but I can’t bring myself to hate him.”

“I don’t think you’re capable of hate, so I’ll hate him for both of us.”

She turned and looked at him. “I’m the one he ran out on.”

“No, he ran out on
us.
”

Carol stared. “Us?”

“All of us. Now’s the time when we have to stick together, help each other through this catastrophe. Doing what Nelson did, that just makes Rasalom stronger. It’s another brick in the walls going up between people. Don’t you see what’s happening? All the intangibles that link us are being destroyed. Love, trust, brotherhood, community, camaraderie, neighborliness. The simple everyday things that make us human, that make us more than just a pile of organisms, that make us larger than ourselves—they’re all going up in smoke.”

“It’s fear, Bill. Everyone’s afraid. Death is everywhere. Up is down, down is up—nothing’s sure anymore.”

“That’s
outside.
Rasalom’s wrecking everything outside. He’s calling all the shots out there. But inside”—he pounded on his chest—“inside you’ve got who you are, and you’ve got the bonds you’ve formed with other people. That’s where those bonds are anchored. Rasalom can’t get inside unless he’s allowed in. You let that fear in and it will destroy those bonds. And that’s the beginning of the end. For without them we divide into small, suspicious enclaves, which soon deteriorate into warring packs, which finally degenerate into a bunch of backstabbing lone wolves.”

“Nelson would never—”

“Excuse me, Carol, but I believe you’ve got a knife in your back. One with Nelson’s fingerprints all over it. As far as I’m concerned, running off like this is aiding and abetting the enemy.”

Carol didn’t argue.

They finished packing what they could, then headed for the elevators. They descended in silence and didn’t talk much as they started the ride back. More traffic about now, but scattered and fitful. Bill headed west toward the park on 72nd. As he slowed for a passing truck on Madison, three tough-looking Hispanics, either high or drunk or both, stepped in front of the car.

“A car,” the biggest of them said, slurring his words. “I could use me some wheels.”

Bill pulled out the pistol and pointed it through the windshield at one of the men, hoping the bluff would work. He knew he couldn’t pull the trigger. The big man smiled sheepishly, held up his hands, and the three of them staggered away. Bill glanced at Carol and found her staring at him.

“A pistol, Bill? You?”

“Jack’s idea. I don’t even know how to fire it.”

Carol held out her hand. “I do. I spent fifteen years roaming around the South with Jonah and … that boy.”

She took the gun, pulled the slide back maybe an inch, and looked inside.

“One in the chamber. All set.”

She flicked a little switch on its side, then held the pistol up in plain view next to her window.

Speechless, Bill drove on. They had no trouble the rest of the trip back.

Jack pulled into a no-parking zone on Seventh Avenue in front of a battered hospital and hopped out of his car. The West Village had taken a beating last night and he was pretty sure an illegally parked car would be low on the police priority list. He wasn’t staying long anyway.

He saw a slim brunette using a cordless drill to screw sheets of plywood over broken windows. Something familiar about her. A second look and he recognized her.

“Alicia?”

She turned, squinted at him with her blue-gray eyes. Her black hair was pinned up, making her look younger than her thirty-something years.

“Jack? What are you doing here?”

Alicia Clayton, M.D., pulled off a work glove and extended her hand.

“Came by to see if you needed a safer place to stay.”

She shrugged. “Don’t we all. But I’m bunking here. The kids, you know.”

Yeah, the kids. Alicia was a pediatric infectious disease specialist. She ran the Center for Children with AIDS.

“Listen, the place I’m talking about has lots of space—empty apartments galore. You could move the kids—”

She shook her head. “No way. Some of them are too sick to be moved anywhere without a full hospital setup. This place of yours have that?”

“Well, no. But … it’s going to get uglier, Alicia.”

Her mouth twisted. “I don’t see how—”

“Trust me, it will. You need to get to a safe place.” She was good people. Jack was one of the few who knew the hell she’d lived through growing up. Yet she’d overcome all that. Most of it anyway. “We’re going to need doctors.”

“I appreciate the offer, Jack, but these kids are stuck here, and that means I am too.”

Jack hadn’t expected any less, but he’d felt compelled to offer.

Just then a dapper fellow in green scrubs stepped through the entrance carrying a toolbox.

“Raymond,” Alicia said. “You remember Jack.”

“Of course,” he said and shook hands, but Jack knew the guy had no clue who he was.

“How come two of the medical staff are out here boarding up windows?”

Raymond fluttered a hand in the air. “Because the maintenance people didn’t show up this morning. Somebody’s got to do it.”

Alicia smiled. “But this is the last board. After this we’ll be sealed in safe and sound.”

Jack doubted that, but said nothing. He knew Alicia’s type. No way she’d walk away from a responsibility—and those sick kids were a responsibility she lived for. And would die for.

He said his good-byes and headed for his next stop, knowing he’d likely never see her again.

New Jersey Turnpike

Clear sailing on the blacktop. Hardly any other cars. Hank had most of the six southbound lanes to himself.

He wondered why more people weren’t on the move, then realized that gas was probably in short supply—all the service areas he’d passed so far had been deserted. And where was there to go? According to the news reports, hell was everywhere. It might be a horror show where you were, but you could be fleeing into something far worse. And what if dark fell before you made it to where you were going? Better to stay where you were, hunker down, and try to hold on to what you had.

He saw the sign for exit 11—the Garden State Parkway. That was his. The Parkway would take him down the coast to the shore towns. Just past the sign was another for the Thomas A. Edison Service Area. Under that, on the shoulder, sat a sheet of plywood, hand painted:

WE HAVE GAS

DEISEL TOO

Yeah, but can you spell?

Hank checked his gas gauge: half a tank. They were probably charging an arm and a leg per gallon, but who knew when he’d get another chance—if ever?

Ahead he saw a beat-up station wagon turn off the road onto the service area approach. Hank decided to follow.

As he approached the gas lanes he saw one of the two overalled attendants leaning in the passenger window of the station wagon. He straightened up and waved the wagon on.

Probably doesn’t have enough money, Hank thought.

He smiled and clinked his heel against the canvas bags stowed under the front seat. He had something they couldn’t refuse: silver coins. Precious metal. Always worth something, but more in bad times. The TV had said silver was going for eighty dollars an ounce. And the worse things got, the more it would be worth.

He slowed, reached down, and pulled out a handful of coins; he shoved them into his pocket, checked that both door locks were down, then headed for the gas lanes.

The two attendants were clean-cut and clean-shaven, one blond, one dark, both well built, each about thirty. The blond one came around to Hank’s side.

“You’ve got gas?” Hank said, rolling his window down a couple of inches.

The fellow nodded. “What’ve you got for it besides plastic or paper?”

Hank pulled out his quarters. “These should do. They’re all pre-1964—solid silver.”

The blond stared at the coins, then called to the dark-haired one.

“Hey, Chuck. He’s got silver. We want silver?”

Chuck came up to the passenger window. “I dunno,” he said through the glass. “What else you got?”

“This is it.”

“What you got in the back?” the blond one said.

A trapped feeling had begun to steal over Hank. He grabbed for the gearshift.

“Never mind.”

His hand never reached it. Both side windows exploded inward, peppering him with glass; a club came in from his left and smashed against his cheek, showering cascades of flashing lights through his vision. He heard the door open, felt fingers clutch his hair and his shoulder, then he was dragged from the van and dumped onto his back on the pavement.

Pain shot up and down Hank’s spine as he writhed, trying to catch the wind that had been knocked out of him. Above he was dimly aware of one of the attendants reaching into the van’s cab and turning off the engine, then taking the keys around to the rear. He heard the doors swing open.

“Holy shit!” said Chuck’s voice. “Gary! Take a look! This guy’s loaded!”

Terrified, Hank struggled to his feet. A part of him wanted to run, but where? For what? To be caught out in the open when dark came? Or to starve to death if he did find shelter? No! He had to get his supplies back.

He staggered to the rear of his van and tried to slam the nearest door closed.

“That’s mine!”

The fair one, Gary, turned on him in red-faced fury and lashed out with his fists so fast, so hard, so many times in rapid succession that Hank barely knew what hit him. One moment he was on his feet, the next his head and abdomen were exploding with pain and his face was slamming onto the asphalt drive.

He used to be pretty tough, able to hold his own against anyone, but this guy was tough and fast, and the good life Hank had been living the last year had left him soft and slow.

He raised his head and spat blood. As his vision cleared, he saw a white car speeding toward them from the highway. He blinked. Something on top of the car—a red-and-blue flasher bar. And the state seal on the door. A Jersey State Trooper.