Remote (16 page)

Jack held his improvised wooden club in both hands, and when he caught a flicker of movement off the polished chrome surface of the keypad’s frame he instinctively raised it to striking position.  The ceiling panel, dropping straight down, smacked into the top of the post instead of his skull, giving him time to duck. 

He stared up at the white panel now suspended at a height of about five feet.  Painted metal, just like the floor, and just as lethal.  It swayed slightly, bumping into the walls on either side.  It was about six inches higher and a foot away from the keypad.  An electrified deadfall, designed to take out intruders through either blunt force trauma or high voltage. 

“Still there, Closer?” Remote asked.  “Or has your luck finally run out?”

Jack opened his mouth to reply—then closed it. 

He’s asking because he doesn’t know.  The panel’s blocking his camera’s view.
  It was an advantage, but Jack wasn’t sure how to use it. 

He studied the keypad from where he crouched on the mattress.  Plastic keys, small LED screen.  Thick gray plastic edged the rectangular chrome faceplate, marring its gleaming elegance. 
Insulation
, Jack thought.  An idea floated up through his mind, struggling against the fuzziness wrapped around it.  The mattress was soft and inviting under his knees; it would be so easy to just sink down on it and drift off . . .

He crawled out from under the electrified panel, then straightened up and headed for the stairs.  He had a plan.

“Ah—still going, are you?” Remote said.  “But you don’t look well, Closer.  Is it the beanbag round you took to the spine?  Or perhaps you brushed against my trap after all?”

Jack didn’t bother replying.  He lost his balance trying to bridge the hole in the stairs and fell heavily down the last few steps.  His back flared in agony and he cried out.

“I admire your persistence, I really do.  But it’s over.  Accept it.”

Jack focused on the pain.  Used it.  Pain was his friend, he understood it thoroughly.  From its biochemical origins to its many psychological permutations, Jack had learned everything he could about one of Mankind’s most basic warning systems; he’d studied it the way a jeweller studied crystallography, the way a swordsmith studied metallurgy.  Though Jack would have strenuously denied it, in his hands pain was more than a tool; it was an instrument. 

And now it played for him.

He pulled himself to his feet, his face holding an expression half-grimace and half-grin.  He limped over to where the microwave door had landed after the stairwell blast, the power cord still tied around it.  He picked it up, then returned to the stairs.

Remote didn’t comment as Jack carefully navigated his way back up.  Jack wondered if his camera in the foyer had been taken out in the explosion. 

He got a better look at the suspended metal panel once he was back in the second story hallway.  It hung from four heavy duty nylon ropes, one at each corner, with bright orange power cables twined around the two closest to the door.  The copper ends of the cables were securely bolted to the metal plate at one end, the other snaking through holes in the exposed roof. 

Jack bent over, welcoming the surge of pain that went with it, and crawled under the plate.  Once there, he untied the power cord from around the microwave door and began to strip it of its plastic skin with his teeth.

He had almost finished when the gray fog suddenly thickened, blotting everything out.  “
No
,” Jack tried to shout, but all that emerged was a whisper as the world faded away . . .

***

WHANG!

“What the
hell
?” Parkins blurted.  The noise sounded as if someone had just rear-ended them, the whole vehicle shaking with the impact. 

Nikki looked back sharply, but all she could see was the trailer.  “Did someone just ram us?”

“I don’t know!  I didn’t see anyone behind us, but maybe they snuck up behind me with their lights off—“

WHANG! Another jarring impact, strong enough to make the truck veer across the center line. 
That’s impossible
, Nikki thought. 
Not unless we’re being sideswiped by someone driving in the ditch—

WHANG! This time the sound seemed to come from the other side, as if a dragon in flight above them was taking turns slamming its tail against one side of the trailer and then the other. 

And then she got it.

She put a hand over Parkins’ on the steering wheel.  “Take it easy.  It’s just Goliath, getting a little exercise.”

“But—I mean, the whole trailer’s rocking back and forth—“

“Slow down if you have to.  But don’t stop, and don’t let him jackknife us.”

Parkins’ face looked haggard in the faint green glow of the dashboard.  “Don’t
let
him?  What am I supposed to do?  He’s bouncing us around like a goddamn basketball!”

“So bounce back,” she said.  “He’s slamming into the sides, trying to make the trailer shimmy.   He can affect left to right, but
you’re
in control of front to back.  Right?”

Parkins blinked.  “Oh.  Yeah, I guess so.”  He tapped the brake and was rewarded with another impact, this one right behind them and more central.  He followed it with a burst of acceleration, producing a WHUMP! a second later from further back—and then a shout of, “MOTHERFUCKER!”

Nikki grinned.  “See?  We can play that game, too.”

Parkins smiled back, but his eyes were worried.  “Okay, but—is this a guy we really want extremely pissed at us?  Because it doesn’t sound like this is going to exactly calm him down.”

“I don’t think a fistful of elephant tranquilizers would calm this guy down.  If we’re lucky, you’ll wind up giving him a concussion.”

Goliath roared again, an incoherent noise of pure fury.  He slammed into the side of the trailer once more, so hard that Parkins had to jerk the wheel to compensate. 

“Well,” Parkins said.  “Everything’s just fine, then, because I’ve been on this real winning streak lately . . .”

***

Jack opened his eyes blearily.

“Hello, Closer,” said Remote. 

Jack tried to move, wasn’t at all surprised to find he couldn’t. 
Some kind of drug,
he thought. 
Total paralysis, but no loss of consciousness
.  Pancuronium, maybe; he’d been exploring the idea of using it himself, since it did nothing to block pain receptors.

He was flat on his back, staring up at a white screen mounted on the ceiling.  It was one of those old-fashioned roll-up types on a stand they used to use in schools for showing educational films.  He heard the familiar whir of a projector starting up and an image appeared on the screen: his own face.  But not a current image, not real-time; this was a photo from several years ago, from a newspaper story in
The Georgia Straight
about one of his gallery shows.  His wife had taken it.

“I know who you are,” Remote said.  There was something different about his voice now, as if it were being filtered through something mechanical.  “I’ve always known, Jack.  Did you really think you could escape me?”

The image changed.  It showed Jack’s family now, his wife, his son, his parents; all of them clustered in front of a Christmas tree, all of them looking terrified.  Only one person beside Jack had ever seen that photo, and he was dead.  “
Dead
,” Jack whispered.

“Am I, Jack?”  The voice was much more familiar now. 

It was the voice of the Patron. 

The man who’d killed Jack’s family and left their mutilated corpses for Jack to find on that blackest of Christmases.  The one who’d manipulated Jack, taunted him, tried to shape him into the same kind of monster he was.  The inhuman thing that hid behind an ordinary face, the demon that chose artists like Jack to be transfigured through horror and suffering.  Most didn’t survive the process; the few that didn’t self-destruct or retreat into madness sometimes went on to produce extraordinary work.

But not Jack.  Jack had become something else entirely.

“You remain my finest creation,” the Patron murmured.  “You show such
purity
, Jack.  Your commitment to your projects is total.  But you still need guidance; you always did.  Your mastery of technique is flawless, but you’re in danger of becoming a mere craftsman.  You need to loosen up a little, go with the flow.  Listen to your instincts.  You’re a creator—so
create
.  Your best work is still ahead of you, you know . . .”

“That’s not who I am,” Jack whispered.  “Not any more.  I don’t—I don’t
make
things any more.  I
break
them.”

The image changed again.  Now the screen showed him pictures of his past subjects—killers he’d tortured until they’d given him every detail of every murder they’d committed.  The pictures had been taken at the end of the process.  “A good start,” said the Patron.  “But here’s the canvass you should really be working on . . .”

The screen showed him a collage of snapshots: his own body, in its present condition.  The burns, the cuts, the ruins of his ears.  “Every great artist does a self-portrait sooner or later.  Keep up the good work . . .”

And then the table Jack lay on began to sink.  The screen on the ceiling got further and further away, dwindling to a bright white point far overhead, a single star surrounded by darkness that whispered and screamed at him at the same time . . .

***

 “Okay,” Nikki said.  “Take the next left.  It’s a logging access road.”

“Are you sure?” Parkins asked.  “We could get stuck.”

It had been snowing since they reached the foothills, fat wet flakes that would have been pretty under other circumstances.  The tumult from the trailer hadn’t stopped.  Goliath had apparently decided to treat it as a game, alternating battering the sides with slamming against the trailer’s door and opposing wall.  Nikki wondered just how long it would take before he crashed right through one of them.

“We’re already stuck,” she muttered.  “Just a question of where we stop moving at this point.”

Parkins slowed down and turned onto the access road.  It probably wasn’t paved, but the snow covering it made it impossible to tell.  Nikki had no idea where it went or what condition it was in—it was isolated, that was all she cared about. 

She wondered again why she was going to these lengths.  Goliath was a dangerous liability—maybe she should just kick him out the door in the middle of the woods, throw a key out the window while she drove away.  Let him die of exposure while trying to pick a fight with a grizzly.

But she couldn’t do that, and she knew it.  It would just be execution by another name--and now Nikki had to worry about Parkins’ involvement, too.  Besides, in Goliath’s present state he might just kill the first human being he ran into.

They drove slowly into the snow-shrouded forest, towing a caged madman behind them. 

***

Jack sat bolt upright, gasping for breath.  He almost scrambled to his feet before he remembered where he was, that electric death hung only inches above him.

He shook his head groggily. 
Just a dream.  The Patron’s dead and I’m locked in the house of a completely different maniac.

 He wondered how long he’d been out.  Not long enough that Remote had ventured out to lock a bomb around his waist, that much was obvious.  Minutes, maybe?  No, it had to have been longer than that.  The benzo would have taken at least an hour or two to wear off. 

He looked up and realized what had saved him.  The panel suspended above his head blocked Remote’s view; he had no idea that Jack had passed out, just that he was camped out on Remote’s doorstep clutching a weapon and had stopped communicating.  Fear had done the rest—or perhaps Remote had simply decided to wait him out.  Any good panic room had enough food and water stockpiled to outlast a siege of several days length.

Jack didn’t intend to wait that long.

He finished putting together the simple device he’d been working when he lost consciousness:  one end of the power cord tied to the wooden post, with exposed copper wire jutting out.  The other end was knotted into an easy-to-grip ball, with a short length jutting out from the end.   Exposed copper gleamed at the tip. 

Jack gripped the knotted ball and carefully touched the exposed wire to the plate overhead.  He used the club to poke the other end of the cord against the chrome faceplate of the keypad.

Sparks flared and sizzled.  The LED screen of the keypad flickered with gibberish symbols, the electronic equivalent of an epileptic seizure.  Jack figured the voltage running through the trap had to be rigged to deliver a constant flow of current without blowing a breaker; as long as he kept the connection intact, electricity would keep pouring into Remote’s high-tech lock.  It might be insulated against a surge, but Jack didn’t think it would stand up to a steady, high-intensity barrage of power. 

He could smell hot metal and burning insulation.  The power cord heated up, greasy black smoke rising off it.  The plastic outer coating melted and dripped like wax, spattering on the mattress Jack crouched on. 

He heard a loud click.

The door slowly swung open.

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

Crouched below the electrified plate, Jack knew he was too easy a target—which is why he backed out from underneath it, taking the post with the smoking power cord still tied around it with him.  

Jack peered over the top of the hanging panel and through the now open door beyond it.  He could see a room lit by multiple flatscreens that covered the far wall, each showing a different image—some of them were of the rest of the house, others were of the exterior or places Jack didn’t recognize.  There was a large, overstuffed white leather chair on wheels parked in front of a wide desk of bleached white wood below the screens. 

The door had opened to the left, until it stopped against a wall that ran the length of the room.  To the right, the room widened out past his field of vision.  Remote was nowhere in sight.