Alpha (23 page)

ATHENA IS
tasting her own blood, salty and warm and wrong. It’s running from her lip, and she wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand, sees it bright red on her skin.

They’ve stopped, and she’s not sure why, just stopped all of a sudden in the middle of this tunnel. The one who hit her, Vladimir, he’s standing to her right, keeps looking from the direction they were heading in to the direction they came from, looking at the man who was dressed as Pooch. That one, the one who made Vladimir stop hitting her, he’s a little closer to her left, looking back the same way as well. The stairs they came down, maybe fifty feet away, and Athena can’t see anyone there. But the man who was dressed as Pooch, his chin is raised slightly, and the gun in his hands is pointing down a little bit, and she knows he’s listening to something.

The look on his face makes her think he’s going to cry.

Vladimir keeps looking back at them. Keeps looking back at him, really, only ever barely looks at her, and when he does, she can tell he doesn’t think she’s worth the trouble at all. She can tell he wants to kill her, that he’s thinking about doing it. Her chest hurts, and her head, and it’s not just from being hit.

She saw Uncle Freddie and Uncle Jorge and she saw Dad, and none of them came to get her.

She understands that she is going to die, maybe die right here, and the terror of it makes it hard to stand. It takes the strength from Athena’s legs, and makes her sink against the cool concrete wall of the tunnel. Opposite her, there’s a painting of Gordo, grinning and happy, pointing in both directions, the way they came and the way Vladimir is supposed to be looking when he’s not looking back at the other man.

Gordo looks so happy, Athena thinks, and it’s so a lie. All of it is a lie, everything WilsonVille is a lie. Friends and fun and sun and rides, and Mr. Howe died right in front of her, she saw his brains. Joel on his side, shaking and crying, maybe dying, too, and all the other people, the bodies. Her mom, they took her mom away, and she can feel the tears trying to get out again, and she hates that, she’s fighting that. She doesn’t want to cry. But they took her mom, and for the first time, Athena thinks that means she’s dead.

And now Athena is going to die, too.

And she is so scared.

She knows she was angry before, wonders when that left. Was it when Vladimir hit her, and hit her again, and then hit her again, and wanted to keep doing it? Was it when he picked her up and made her come with them? Was it when Uncle Jorge fell down, and she was sure he had been shot?

Or was it when she saw her dad, and he didn’t save her?

The man who was dressed as Pooch moves, takes a half step in the direction of the stairs. She wishes she knew what he’s hearing, what Vladimir is hearing. Now Vladimir is looking back at him again, then to her, just for a second, then down the tunnel once more. His shoulders shift, rise slightly, then fall.

Suddenly, Athena understands the phone call she saw Vladimir make back in Hendar’s Lair. She understands the words she read on his lips, and understands that she was wrong about them. Maybe whoever he was talking to, maybe he was telling Vladimir to kill her and Dana and the others. But it is more than that, and she can see what Vladimir is about to do before he does it, the start of the movement.

She doesn’t want to die.

Athena screams, uses the last of the strength in her legs to throw herself at the big man, throws herself off the wall and into him, trying to hit and bite and everything at once. He’s bringing his gun up, starting to turn, and she’s not large enough and she’s not strong enough to move him more than a step or two back, but it’s enough. She feels the vibration of the world, the feeling of gunfire, and Athena is clawing at him, clinging to him, hanging on that arm with the gun. He hits at her, and a flare of light and heat crosses her vision, blinds her, and she feels him hit her again, and she’s losing her grip. Then she’s falling back, flailing. Her back collides with someone, the man who wore the Pooch suit, she thinks, and she knows it’s over, that Vladimir is raising his gun and will kill them both.

She feels the air shake with gunshots, and her vision resolves, and Vladimir is standing in front of her, only a half dozen steps away. Pointing his gun at them, just as she knew he would be.

The top of his head is missing.

Vladimir falls down, and Penny Starr is standing there with a gun in her hands. The man who was Pooch pulls Athena against him, and she sees his gun come up, and Penny Starr is shouting. Athena feels something hot and hard hitting her cheek, spitting from the side of the man’s gun, feels the vibration in the air one more time.

Penny Starr falls to her knees. Her mouth is open, but she’s not making words that Athena can read.

Then the man who was Pooch is shoving Athena away from him, and he’s running, running away, down the long tunnel, and Athena’s legs finally abandon the last of their strength, and she falls to her knees, too. Penny Starr is trying to get up again, but she can’t do it, leans against the wall instead. Athena pulls herself to her, sees that the woman’s eyes look flat, like they’re cooling.

Penny Starr opens her mouth, and bright red blood runs out of it. She’s trying to tell her something, but Athena can’t read it. Shakes her head at the woman. Penny Starr tries again, then points past Athena’s shoulder.

Athena looks, sees what Penny Starr wants her to see. Understands the word she was saying.

Dad
.

SHOSHANA NURI,
call sign Angel, is dying when Bell reaches her.

Slumped against the side of the Gordo Tunnel, blood slicking her form-fitting flight suit, the last trickle escaping her mouth, her eyes are open, fixed on his approach. Athena sits before her, still and silent, and Bell stops another ten feet past them, in time to see Gabriel Fuller rounding the corner onto the Flashman Tunnel, heading east and out of sight.

He doubles back, and Dana Kincaid is coming down the stairs, rushing toward them. Bell takes a knee beside his daughter, reaches out for Angel, but the woman shakes her head weakly, blinks with what appears to be a supreme effort. Her mouth works.

“Hold on,” Bell says. “Hold on.”

Cherry-red blood froths over her lips. She’s saying something, the same thing, over and over again, weaker and weaker as she stares into Bell’s eyes.

“Didn’t,” she says.

She says it four more times, until it is her last word.

Bell reaches out and closes her eyes. He looks at his daughter, and Athena answers with an expression that breaks his heart, that will haunt him for the rest of his life. It is the look he has seen on children all around the world, on boys and girls, young men and women, who have seen too much and felt too much and suffered too much. The light and joy that was his daughter is gone.

He puts a hand to his daughter’s cheek, puts his lips gently to her forehead. Meets her eyes again.

“I am so sorry,” he says, because in this moment, his duty will not allow him to release the gun in his other hand. In this moment, he cannot sign. He says it again, and he says, “Mom is safe. I love you.”

He gets to his feet, hoping that she understands why he cannot stay with her. Hoping that she will not think him the monster her mother does. Hoping that somehow, someday, she will forgive him.

“Get her out of here,” Bell tells Dana Kincaid.

He heads down the tunnel, after Gabriel Fuller.

AT FIRST,
he’s just running, he doesn’t even know where he’s going. Painted park characters flash past him on the walls, and his legs keep pumping, and he turns, turns again, until he realizes he’s coming up on Agent Rose’s Safe House, the entrance to the Speakeasy. He pushes through the door, stumbling, knocks over one of the tables, nearly trips himself against first one chair, then another. Makes it to the stairs and stops, leaning against the rail fixed to the wall. The MP5K is still in his hand, and he pops the magazine reflexively, replaces it with the last of his fresh ones.

He should have just surrendered then and there, Gabriel thinks. He should have just given up when Penny Starr saved his life, just as he should have given up when he heard what Dana was saying to him.

Everything he had, he realizes, is now gone.

His phone is ringing.

His hand shaking, he pulls it from his pocket, puts it to his ear.

“Arm the bomb,” the Uzbek says.

Gabriel’s pulse is beating so hard he feels his temples throb.

“Vladimir told me everything, Matias. It was his job to tell me everything. I can get you out. You need to arm the bomb.”

“You can get me out?”

“We put you in,” the Uzbek says. “Of course we can get you out. Out of the park and out of the country and out of this pretend life you’ve been living. But you must do your part, and you must do it quickly. I am watching the news, and they have heard the gunshots, they are coming. You are almost out of time.”

“How?” Gabriel swallows. “How will you get me out?”

“Helicopter.”

He closes his eyes. A helicopter.

“Put the device in position, arm it, and we will lift you out. It will be…” the Uzbek pauses, then continues. “Eight minutes. You have exactly eight minutes. Can you do it?”

Gabriel looks back down the stairs, to the bar, the open door leading back into the tunnel. To where Vladimir, who would have killed him, is lying without his brains. To where he repaid Penny Starr’s rescue with murder. To where Dana has been abandoned, and with her, this life he has deluded himself into believing is his own.

To where Jonathan Bell is surely coming for him.

“I can do it,” he says to the Uzbek. “Eight minutes.”

“I will see you soon, then. Good luck.”

Gabriel closes the phone, then tosses it away in a fury. He pushes open the door, steps out into the early evening of the park. He knows—he
knows
—the Uzbek is lying to him. There is no helicopter, there is no escape, there is no return to the old life.

But he doesn’t care.

His life has ended here in WilsonVille, and his only hope for a new one is in choosing to believe the lies. In choosing to believe that somehow, some way, if he does as ordered, the helicopter will come.

If he does that, he can believe he will live.

If that means killing WilsonVille, so be it.

BELL RACES
down Flashman East, hearing broken bursts of static in his ear, the transmissions all but murdered by the layers of concrete and steel that make up the tunnels.

At first, he thought that Fuller was trying to escape, to get out of the park, but that would’ve required sticking to Gordo or at least looping back around to it at the first opportunity. Cutting beneath the river, perhaps, hoping to come out on the north side of the park, the employee lots. He’s at the juncture of Flashman and Pooch when he hears something clattering, plastic meeting wood, and he zeroes in on it, advancing up Nova, finds himself at the entrance to the Speakeasy once again. A cell phone on the floor, abandoned, and he picks it up, pockets it before climbing the stairs and stepping cautiously outside.

Fuller is nowhere to be seen, but immediately, he can hear Chain in his ear once again.

“—lock respond, Warlock, please respond.”

“Go for Warlock.”

“You get him?”

“Negative. Nobody’s seen him?”

“Nobody has eyes. Could be he’s out.”

“Could be.”

Bell turns in place, scanning, thinking. Gabriel Fuller, alone. Gabriel Fuller, who promised him his daughter’s life, who promised him the dirty bomb, if only they would let him go.

“He’s going for the device,” Bell says.

“We have no eyes, no contacts,” Chain says. “Bone has been evacuated, I’ve got Board with me. Where do you want us?”

“It’s a DB. Where do you place a DB to do the most damage?”

“Highest point, best wind dispersal of the fallout. You’re damaging property, people are incidental.”

“Highest points in the park.” Bell turns in place, looking at the WilsonVille skyline he’s been living within for almost two months. “Cardboard, take Mount Royal, west side of the park. There’s a ride goes up to the summit, you should be able to reach it via service ladders.”

“Roger that.”

“Chain?”

“Terra Space,” Chain says. “Would make sense, that’s where he wanted us to stage, the top of the Clip Flashman Rocket is almost as high as Mount Royal.”

“Go.”

Bell stops, staring at the big wooden roller coaster smack in the heart of WilsonVille. Pooch Pursuit, the fastest, tallest wooden roller coaster in the world.

There’s a single train of cars parked at the apex, at the very top of the ride.

Bell looks to the east, toward Soaring Thyme, sees none of the chairs on the line, all of them presumably parked. He looks west, and sees the same is true at Nova’s Tower, and as he does so he remembers that all the rocket sleds at Terra Space were likewise grounded. His eyes go back to Pooch Pursuit, and the single train, motionless, at the top.

He’s been stupid, he realizes.

He starts running for the fastest, tallest wooden roller coaster in the world.

IT TAKES
Gabriel two minutes and forty-three seconds by his watch to reach the control room at Pooch Pursuit. The same idiotproof console still on power, registering Train One locked at the top of the lift hill, at the summit of the first peak. He looks out the Plexiglas window of the booth, and, yes, the cars are there—224 feet above the ground.

It’s going to be a long climb.

He raises the MP5K, fires a burst into the console, killing the controls. Glass shatters and metal tears, sparks spit and fly. He lowers the weapon, moves to exit, crossing the platform and jumping over the parked cars, one to the other, until he can drop down onto the wooden track. It’s a gradual slope at first, wooden coasters not as radical or tolerant of extremes as their metal counterparts, and the first forty feet or so are an easy ascent, enough for Gabriel to remain upright.

He’s at sixty feet, and the going is becoming rougher, when he glances down and sees Jonathan Bell on the platform, coming after him. Gabriel swings the MP5K off his shoulder, into his hand, drawing the strap taut, trying to sight him. He fires a burst, and the man jumps down between the parked cars. Gabriel takes the opportunity to climb again, fast as he can, and the slope is now more cruel, more than forty degrees, and he has to let the submachine gun dangle from its strap, needing both his hands.

“Gabriel!” Bell shouts at him. “Gabriel Fuller! Stop!”

He keeps climbing, swings out to the edge of the track, reaches around to pull himself into the snarl of support scaffolding. He can see Bell starting to climb the track after him, but now Gabriel has cover, and he leans out, freeing a hand and firing once again. The man drops prone on the track, and for a moment, Gabriel believes he may have hit him, but then Bell is up, coming after him still.

Gabriel pulls himself back into the scaffolding, reaches up, uses his arms, then his legs. It’s a faster ascent this way, but more perilous, like climbing a ladder. His lungs are beginning to burn with the effort, sweat starting to spill down his back. He swipes his hands on his shirt one at a time, keeps climbing. When he looks, Bell is still on the track, now scaling hand over hand, perhaps no more than eighty feet below him and off to the side. The wooden slats provide cover, but that works both ways, and neither man has a clear shot.

Gabriel climbs. He climbs, and he wants to laugh.

Because this is madness, and to participate in it, he must be mad. And he knows he is, he knows he was. To ever have imagined a happy ending to this day, to ever have imagined that the Uzbek would let him go, that the Shadow Man would release him. To ever imagine that the boy from Odessa who murdered Old Grigori with a tire iron could ever keep and hold Dana, and make a life that didn’t need death to pay for it.

Sweat stings his eyes, blisters form on his palms, and still, Gabriel climbs.

And Jonathan Bell, damn him, is climbing with him.

Gabriel reaches, and suddenly there is nothing more for him to grab. He’s at the top of the lift peak, his arms aching, his legs trembling from the effort, and he pulls himself the final inches, grabbing hold of the side of the parked car, and heaves himself inside. Gasping for air, and the duffel and the device are exactly where he left them, and he pulls the device from where it has been waiting on the floor, moves it onto the seat beside him.

He looks for Bell, can’t see him because of the angle. Frees the MP5K from his shoulder, leans out and forward, trying to locate the other man.

From beneath, Bell’s arm shoots out, up, grabs hold of the weapon, twists, pulls. Gabriel feels the gun tear from his grip, almost taking his index finger with it, as the weapon is yanked free. Then he’s lost it, and Bell has tossed it away, straining to reach the side of the car, to pull himself the rest of the way up.

Gabriel leans back, kicks at Bell’s fingers, a bandaged hand, once, twice, a third time, and the man’s grip slips away, vanishes, leaving a bloody smear on the side of the car. He hears something clatter beneath them, leans over to see Bell hanging on to the scaffolding fifteen feet below.

His attention goes back to the duffel bag. He runs the zipper open, shifts the device into his lap. Slides his hands along it, searching for the wires he has to connect to the battery. Finds the first, wraps it to its post, securing it, then the second, repeating the procedure, and the timer face suddenly lights up, blinking at him. Gabriel is surprised to see that it’s set for one hour, a full sixty minutes. More time than he imagined the Uzbek would have given him, and even as he thinks that, he knows that what the clock is telling him may well be a lie.

He hears a helicopter, looks up, and is shocked to see one circling the park, coming in lower.

The thought occurs to him that he might live through this.

He’s turning his attention back to the device and Bell is there, coming up over the front of the car all at once, one hand pulling him up, the other bringing his gun into line. Gabriel lashes out blindly, the duffel falling back into the footwell as he tries to get hold of the weapon, manages to just knock it askew as it goes off. The round sears his shoulder, cutting a furrow in his skin, and Gabriel roars with a new fury, smashes Bell’s wrist against the edge of the car again and again until the gun is gone from his hand.

But he’s still coming, still pulling himself up, and Gabriel punches at him, hits him across the nose, feels it give. Blood splatters, and still Bell won’t let go. Gabriel punches at him again, and again, and again, and then Bell has caught his fist, yanks, twisting, and Gabriel has to push himself back with his legs to keep from toppling out of the car.

He falls backward, into the next set of seats, struggles to right himself, to get his feet beneath him again. The helicopter above swings in closer, lower, the roar from the rotors deafening, buffeting Gabriel with downdraft. Bell is in the front car now, bloody nose, and shouting at him, something that’s lost in the engine whine. Gabriel scrabbles backward into the next car, nearly loses his balance, nearly falls again, manages to swing himself around.

Bell doesn’t pursue, reaching for the device.

Gabriel goes for his pocket, finds his knife, the same knife he used when he was Pooch and had to kill that man. Draws it, flicks it out, and Bell is still hands-deep in the duffel, and Gabriel lunges, cutting at him. The other man sees it at the last moment, jerks back, catches the blade across his forearm, and Gabriel feels it dig deep.

Then Bell’s grabbed his wrist, forcing the blade free from his arm, and both their hands go for it, and Gabriel screams, rage and fury and desperation, throwing all his weight forward. Bell topples backward, doesn’t let go, pulling Gabriel down with him. Hits the front of the car, and Gabriel is on him, literally, trying to shove the knife in and up, and Bell is holding him back. Gabriel can feel it, gravity, so much gravity, and it’s on his side, and he can feel the older man’s strength giving way a fraction at a time, knows it will take just a moment more before it breaks, and steel will slide home between flesh and bone.

Then Bell kicks, rolls, and Gabriel feels gravity betray him, sees a dusk-lit sky and the helicopter swinging around. Feels himself sliding free of the car, losing the knife, bouncing off the edge of the track, wooden slats digging into his back.

He sees the helicopter, and now he can see someone leaning out the side. Someone leaning out the side, with a television camera at his shoulder.

The Uzbek lied.

Gabriel Fuller closes his eyes.

Gabriel Fuller falls.