Those That Wake (25 page)

"What the hell are you doing?" Mal said, lurching forward instinctively or intentionally. Remak straightened the gun at him, and he froze.

"How did you know?" Remak said to Man in Suit.

"In this building, you are deep inside me," Man in Suit said, "and I am deep inside you. I can see what you think, own you a little bit, even if I can not have you completely. Yet."

"You're out of bullets," Mal said.

"There was a room in the Librarian's house," Remak told him. "The room I escaped through. It had supplies, equipment. This"—he pulled his ragged shirt open to reveal an array of flat gray packs of plastic explosive strapped to his torso—"and bullets."

"And I'm sure you'd kill us, because Brath was no problem. Right, Jon?" Mal asked, but his voice was already hard, and he knew the answer.

"Mal, Brath was gone. He let that thing into him and gave up hope, and with that went the man you knew. What was left in his place would have been sent after us, because he would always be able to get to you."

"Are you going to?" Laura said. "Shoot us? Blow us to hell? Say it!" Laura nearly screamed it, and Mal took another step forward, putting himself in front of her.

"I'm sorry," Remak said, and maybe he was. "Get out now, fast. None of you have to die."

"He's gone!" Mike shouted, and all their eyes snapped over just long enough to see that Man in Suit had disappeared.

"Was that door there before?" Laura asked.

The door she was referring to sat at the far end of the room from the elevator door.

"Go after him," Mal said to Laura.

Laura's eyes flashed to Remak and to the back of Mal's powerful shoulders and to the door.

"You have to go after him," Mal said.

"But"—Laura's voice was small, weak—"if Remak can destroy the building or something, then Tommy—"

"Go!" Mal's voice, usually so controlled, hit all of them like a pistol shot. "I'll take care of us. You save Tommy."

Laura's eyes blurred. She yearned for an authority figure to make this hideous choice for her.

"Don't," Remak said.

Her eyes fell on Remak. Then, decided, she turned and grabbed Mike's hand and pulled him to the door.

Mal stepped between them, intercepting the line of the gun. If Remak moved himself, swung the gun away, Mal could close the distance.

"Uuuuuh," the syllable of uncertainty stretched out of Mike's mouth. His mind was a thunderstorm now. Something was in there with him. He had let it in, with his fear maybe, or simply by coming in here, because he was the weakest of the four of them. Nevertheless, he was pulled to the door, and Laura yanked it open and threw them both into the darkness on the other side.

BEYOND THE DOOR
was a vast hall filled with ruined instrumentation, unidentifiable, like the components of some immense, secret mechanism. Man in Suit stood at its end, facing them.

"Christ," Mike said to Man in Suit, striding past Laura, who had stopped dead upon going through the doorway. "I am so goddamned sick of you." He leaned down as he walked and hefted a jagged metal bar from the forgotten and useless hunks of machinery that were the inner workings of Man in Suit's ravaged world.

"You are not up to this confrontation," Man in Suit said. "I assure you."

"Mm-hmm," Mike said, and whipped him across the face with the bar.

Man in Suit's head snapped around, and he turned back with wide eyes, thunderstruck. Mike went at him again, bloodying him this time. Man in Suit's arm rose weakly to fend off the next blow, but fell away as Mike battered it down.

Mike lit into Man in Suit with blow after blow, cracking bones and separating muscle as he did. Mal and Remak made it in to see Man in Suit torn and open on the filthy, jagged floor.

"Whoa," Mal said. "Look at that."

Remak stared in stark admiration.

Mike looked down at the little black things squirming feebly from Man in Suit's wounds and flopping wetly onto the dirty floor to die. He continued with the pipe until there was only a smear of red and black, feeling an unburdening in his head that he had never known before. Turning around, he could see from the approval in their faces that the others felt it, too. They stood a little taller; their eyes were a little brighter.

"That was...' Mal began, unable to find the right word to end on.

"Astonishing," Remak said. "I think you just saved"—he considered for a moment and shrugged—"everyone."

Laura was staring at him, too, something beyond simple awe in her slightly parted lips.

Who'd have figured?
Mike thought, looking down at the smear.
All you had to do was beat him up.

They walked out of the building to find people in the street staring at it, somehow aware of the thing that had finally left their private thoughts and given them back a sense of promise.

Mal and Laura stepped aside, knowing who these people needed to see. Remak hung back, watching the people approaching Mike, not crowding him, not crushing him with their praise, but silently coming forward and touching him gently, as they might a messiah. What he had done for them was beyond mere words.

A television crew had made it here already, perhaps having been called to the scene when the building had appeared. They accosted Remak, who began a lengthy explanation. Mike saw reporters talking to Mal and Laura as well. But they couldn't reach him yet, surrounded as he was, and he was glad. These people needed him too much. He heard his three companions saying his name, though—saying it an awful lot. And it was the first time that he'd heard the Boothe name, his grandfather the war hero's name, and it didn't echo in his own ears like a taunt.

Exhausted and energized at the same time, Laura suggested that she and Mike slip away. She was understandably anxious to find her family and make them whole again, but there was something she desperately wanted to do with him first. But, heck, she was just a kid. Mike let her down easy, and when he had, she seemed even more in awe of him.

It took Mike about a month to drop twenty, twenty-five pounds, get into fighting shape. Mal offered to help, but as soon as Mike got into a gym it came easily and naturally, now that there wasn't something black in his head holding him back anymore.

He did a lot of television talk shows, because people needed to understand not just what had happened but who Mike was and what sort of a man was capable of doing what he had done. When he walked down the street, people would come up and thank him quietly.

"What you did was so important," they would say. "So important."

They were talking to him about running for office, like mayor, maybe—start small—when one of the five models he was seeing on a regular basis told him she was pregnant with his child.

It was an unhappy shock to begin with. He'd never had kind thoughts for his own parents and thus never thought much of being one. But this wasn't just a matter of having a child. In a sense, this was something for the entire world.

After nine months of running out for ice cream and pickles at all hours, the hero and the supermodel were in the delivery room. The mom-to-be was gasping away, and Mike watched the doctor gently lift a tiny little boy from between her legs.

"It's a boy," the doctor said. Nurses whisked the boy off to a small padded table, where they attended to him carefully. The mother was holding Mike's hand tightly when one of the nurses came over and whispered something to the doctor.

The doctor went over and examined the baby briefly.

"What's wrong?" the mother said.

The doctor looked at her, hesitated, looked at Mike, and made a decision. He stepped to the side, giving the parents a clear view of their baby boy.

"Oh, God," the mother choked out, ripping her eyes away from the child and snatching her hand from Mike's.

"What?" Mike said, stepping closer to look at his boy. "What's wrong?" He couldn't see anything wrong. The boy wasn't even crying, just looking back up at his father thoughtfully.

"I'm afraid your son is..."The doctor breathed in, held it a moment, and let go. "I'm afraid your son is completely worthless."

Mike looked from the doctor to the nurses. They nodded back sadly.

"He's never going to amount to anything at all," the doctor said, shaking his head regretfully and making an irrevocable notation on his clipboard. "Completely worthless."

It was too much for the mother. She insisted on blood tests, knowing that she and her family were all accomplished, decent, and smashingly attractive, which made them incontrovertibly worthwhile people.

They rushed the results through, and sure enough, it had been passed down from Mike's side.

"Why didn't you tell us, Mr. Boothe?" the doctor asked reasonably. "After all this fuss, why didn't you come clean that you were utterly worthless in every way?"

People seemed to know all about it without even being told. They scowled at him on the street now, punishing him for his deception.

After all he had done for them. He could barely even bring himself to be angry at them after a while. In the end, you couldn't hide from your own shortcomings. Whether you saved every human being on the planet or not, worthless was worthless, and the only thing you could really do was just give in to it.

"
I THINK IF YOU HAD
any bullets left, you'd have fired already," Mal said, and he was certainly right. It wouldn't have been a shot in the arm or leg, either. Someone of Mal's stubborn resilience would still be able to make trouble, even with a grievous leg wound, perhaps even with a shattered kneecap.

"Are you sure, Mal?" Remak's face was deader than usual, like a warning set in stone. "Better be sure."

Mal was not sure. He seemed to be figuring on what chance he had of beating Remak hand to hand with a bullet in him. Remak, betting his final chip, cocked the hammer.

"Do it." Mal called the bluff. "If you're going to do it, then
do
it."

Remak threw the empty gun at Mal's face and with the other hand pulled from his pocket the triggering remote for the explosives he had strapped to his torso.

Mal slipped by the gun as if it were a slow punch, and his hand shot out and caught Remak by the wrist. The pressure was immediate and extraordinary. Remak's fingers went numb, still locked on the red and gray device, but unable to flex or maneuver.

"Mal, listen to me," Remak said, but Mal's hand only tightened on the wrist until Remak saw his hand turning red, saw it but didn't really feel it. His other hand came up to transfer the device, but Mal's other hand came up, too, and covered Remak's, so that there was a conglomeration of four hands grasped tightly around each other, straining between the two men.

"Mal, this is outside all human experience. You can't win by punching it. But it's here now, solid before us, and that's why we have a chance. We have to destroy this place. Letting that thing live so that we
might
save your brother and Laura's family? That could end up costing the entire human race its existence. It's a simple equation, Mal. Do the math." He was looking into Mal's eyes over the gathering of their hands. "Just do the math."

"We didn't fight our way here because of math. If you don't know that, it's already too late for you."

Remak sagged down, giving up the battle between them, releasing the device into Mal's hands, but in so doing, he forced Mal's weight forward, just for an instant. In that instant, Remak crouched and swept Mal's ankles from the floor.

Mal tumbled, tossing the device as far from him as he could, and rolled back up to his feet two yards away.

The young body was plagued with wounds. Mal's face was yellow and purple from recent blows. At his hairline, there was a thin crust of blood. One of his shoulders hung lower than the other, his forearms were bloody hash marks, and his knuckles were more scar tissue than flesh. A fractured rib or two showed in his breathing, and he limped when he moved.

Remak himself couldn't straighten out the fingers of his left hand, either, and the only sensation he had in that wrist was bone grinding against bone.

Mal lashed forward with a humming right cross, and Remak went under it, spearing two stiff fingers into Mal's ribs.

Mal grunted, wheezed, and stumbled back against the desk and chair that seemed more a part of this generic backdrop than an actual desk and an actual chair. He grabbed the chair and whipped it around at Remak. Remak went flat to the floor, and the chair spun over his head, shattering something behind him. Only when he snapped himself back to his feet did he see there was a window there, now jagged and open to something Remak couldn't see.

Remak circled away so that the window was at his side, and yet he still couldn't seem to get a clear view through it. He did, however, assimilate the data that no wind was rushing in, no noise was rising from the city to prove that cars and people existed out there. There was just a sibilant crackle, like too many voices whispering. It raised some interesting questions: Where exactly was this building? Was it out there, in the world with everything else? Or was it only somewhat there, intersecting in certain places, but mainly occupying someplace else? If this building was, in some sense, a part of Man in Suit's consciousness, then maybe the window didn't lead
out
at all, but actually farther
in.

A right hook nearly knocked the questions from Remak's head. He darted aside and gouged the nerve juncture between Mal's shoulder and pectoral with stiff fingers. Mal's eyes twitched, but no sound came from him and he shot back with a jab, a jab, a cross. Remak avoided the combination and sent his fingertips for a disabling strike to Mal's thigh. If he could strike deep enough, he could end the fight now.

But Mal shifted just an instant before contact. Remak still landed, but he landed an inch off, striking hard bone, and it sent an electric shock wave up his arm.

Mal was swaying there, dancing wearily from foot to foot, shifting weight and stance back and forth, back and forth. He was near the window, and maybe Remak could maneuver him over another foot or so and upset his weight and put him out.