Project Northwoods (64 page)

Catalina nervously laughed. “Wasn’t doing a very good job, anyway.” No one said anything for a moment. “Look, Art, what I said before…”

He cut her off with a brisk, “Save it.”

Another pause. Arthur preferred it that way. He could pretend they were paying respect for the dead.

James cleared his throat. “I’m in the mood for Mexican. Anyone else?” The others gave an appreciative chuckle. Even Mat’s newly gruffed-up voice joined in. Allison turned and smiled at Arthur, who did not return the gesture.

The mob boss turned back toward the road, then lurched forward in her seat. “What the…”

Arthur turned, watching a crouched man stand upright in front of them. Allison slammed on the brakes and pulled the wheel sharply to the right, narrowly avoiding crashing into the figure. With a certainty he wished wasn’t there, he recognized the shape in the briefest of moments it was illuminated in the headlights: Arbiter.

The ambulance sailed past him, the stationary hero skirting by on Allison’s side. A crunch of metal and yelps of surprise bled into the spinning world, top becoming bottom becoming top again. Time slowed as the buildings around them circled. Arthur realized that Arbiter must have simply punched the vehicle into the air. Momentum carried it up, spinning like a toy thrown off a table. And when the buildings disappeared and the gravelly sides of the culvert appeared, Arthur figured they were as good as dead.

Crunching to the earth would have been jarring and painful had they landed right-side up to begin with. The passenger side smashed down first before the ambulance bounced and rolled in the air, then crashed to a stop once more on its side. The sound of shrieking metal finally dissipated, replaced by a shrill silence abated only by the blood pounding in Arthur’s ears.Hanging upside-down, strapped into the seat, Arthur was positive that he was dead. Testing his theory, he was partially relieved when his head obeyed his command to look over at Allison. The mob boss looked like a corpse until she twitched as though responding to something in her sleep. His hands fumbled with his safety belt and found the latch. To his growing irritation, the clasp was unresponsive. He shifted, finding purchase below him. The thing yielded and slapped him in the face as it retracted. He fell onto his shoulder, the rest of his body slumping to a stop on the roof-come-floor. Every part of him hurt in ways he didn’t think possible as he shifted himself upright.

As far as he could tell, the rest of the party was dead, unconscious, or occupied, leaving him to handle Allison. Kneeling awkwardly from his position, he undid her seat belt as she muttered something unintelligible to him. Once loose, he looked out the windshield, the impact having finally done enough damage to rip it loose from its bearings. Gathering up the mobster was much more difficult than he expected, the dead weight much less responsive to his effort than a conscious person would be. After some monumental effort and a strained back, he had Allison in his arms as he leaned against the windshield and, with his legs on the driver’s seat, pushed at it.

The safety glass popped out of its home after minimal effort, partially shattering into tiny, harmless pieces when it hit the ground. Arthur landed immediately afterward, the gravel biting into the back of his head. He stood upright, staggering as he did so, and dragged Allison upright and leaned her against the side of the hood.

“Did I get drunk or did I get drunk?” she muttered. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at Arthur before rolling them. “Please tell me I didn’t sleep with you.”

He stood up and took a step toward the back of the ambulance, wincing with pain as he put his weight on his right foot. Guessing he must have twisted his ankle, he continued to limp toward the back when Catalina stepped out, dragging Mat behind her. For someone who had dislocated her shoulder recently, she could certainly keep going. She looked up at Arthur as Mat twisted in her hands, pulling himself upright. “What was that about?” she asked.

“Arbiter,” he said, hoping the one-word explanation would cover it. He glanced over the culvert, taking in the two sets of railroad tracks the ambulance had mercifully landed between before seeing the maintenance door Allison had mentioned. He motioned toward it. “Get to the underground access.”

Catalina nodded in compliance as he went to the rear of the vehicle and knelt. Talia was crumpled on the floor, James looked like he was resting against the back wall with his head in an awkward position. Arthur bit his lip and crawled inside. He touched Talia’s leg and shook it. “Talia? Talia!” She didn’t respond. He crawled up to her head and pressed his fingers into her neck. Feeling the strong heartbeat still pounding away was a relief, made even greater when he heard James grunt and move.

“I am never taking this taxi service again,” James mumbled. From his prone position, he lolled his head toward Arthur, meeting his gaze. “What happened?”

“Help me get her out of here,” Arthur said, ignoring the question.

James got up, conveying his pain the entire time with a variety of grunts. Arthur took the opportunity to recover his backpack from one of the compartments formerly occupied by weaponry. He slipped the pack on, moved toward James, and nodded as they took positions beside Talia. They lifted her up slowly and carefully moved her outside. “She really shouldn’t be moved,” James said disapprovingly as his feet made first contact with the gravel. “It could be bad for her.”

“And the car accident wasn’t?” Arthur retorted, annoyed.

“Just saying. Spinal injuries…”

“I know, James,” Arthur snapped.

Someone landed beside them. In a moment of supreme horror, Arthur knew who it was. With a casual flick of Arbiter’s hand, he was launched up and away from Talia, landing hard on his shoulder and rolling onto his face near a set of train tracks. “Arthur!” someone yelled.
Allison?

As he was rising Allison skidded toward him, facing Arbiter with her sidearm drawn. James leapt at the hero with the force of a bullet, bowling him over. As James fell, he started screaming, curling into a ball and wailing as Arbiter rose from the ground. Talia was regaining consciousness, shaking her head as Arbiter strode toward her and, in one quick motion, snapped her up one-handed. He held her aloft by her shoulder.

“Drop her, Arbiter!” Allison warned.

Arbiter didn’t even deign to respond to her. “Catalina Capone!” The voice rebounded fiercely off the nearby buildings and walls of the culvert. “Where are the other vermin hiding?”

“Which vermin is that, then?” Catalina shouted. Arthur looked over to her, the woman far enough away to have to shout but close enough to be in danger of Arbiter’s leap. Mat hung limply from her shoulder, half deadweight and half lumbering body.

Arbiter sneered. “Don’t play games!” He tromped back to James and hefted his body into the air with his free hand. His new charge whimpered loudly. “Give me Zombress and the traitor!”

Catalina scoffed. “If I knew where she was, I’d be there now.”

“Let them go!” Arthur shouted. He tried sprinting toward Arbiter but was dragged to the ground by Allison.

“You can’t fight him, Art! He’ll kill you!” Allison was speaking the truth, but in his rage he still struggled against her.

Arbiter turned to look down at Arthur, before looking back at Catalina. “Consider this a reprieve, Capone. Rest assured I will find the others and bring them to justice.” He hunched over. “Your days are numbered!” He leapt, prisoners in tow. It lacked the subtle artistry of James’s leap, but made up for it with thundering power as he landed with a crash on the overpass. Arbiter jumped again, out of sight, no doubt toward an unseen and nearing contingent of heroes.

“Damn it!” Arthur shouted, kicking free of Allison. He scrambled to his feet and kicked at the gravel dramatically. “Damn it!” He was screaming now, the rest of the world drowned out. “Damn it!” The gravel dug into his knees brutally, but treated his knuckles worse as he rained down repeated blows against the unyielding pebbles. “
Damn it!
”

Hands grabbed at him, but he shirked out of their grasp, resuming punching at the ground. Now two hands were on him, a third, and a fourth. Six hands pulled at him as he fought to continue tearing at the earth, ripping into the one thing that wouldn’t put up a fight.

In the split second it took for Ariana to realize she was conscious, she panicked. Her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dim lighting, giving her the impression that she had been rendered blind. Her ears, too, weren’t working immediately, instead offering a high-pitched hum which seemed to diminish in time. The lack of sensation made her bolt upright, desperate to have some command over her body and convince herself she hadn’t died. She made it to the point where she was perpendicular to the bed before pain wracked her head, forcing her eyes shut as spears of agony jabbed at her stomach.

Lurching to one side seemed like the right thing to do in case she vomited. Although the threat was present, after a few dry heaves, she felt comfortable enough to open her eyes again. She was facing the floor, the rest of her on a makeshift hospital bed. Pushing herself slowly up, her eyes flickered around the room and along the rows of cots, maybe eighteen or twenty total. Only seven beds were occupied, including hers. Three former inmates and two mobsters slept fitfully, one muttering about his brothers. The last was an idle body, covered with a sheet, red splotches marring the white fabric in numerous places.

Although she didn’t recognize the place, she was confident she was no longer in the Fortress. It was a cold comfort at best, especially since she felt there should have been more wounded. Quietly, she pivoted on the cot, swinging her feet over the edge and stepping onto the floor. Her thin socks provided no protection from the freezing stone floor, but she couldn’t just stay put. With the same effort that it took to dive into frigid water, she put her whole weight on her feet and carefully, shakily made her way to the covered body.

Having reached the prone form, Ariana’s resolve waned. Her hands began to shake as they moved up and over the sheet. Horrible images flashed into her head as she prepared to yank the shroud away.

Her father, pale and gaunt in a death mask, kindly face contorted to reflect his final moments of agony.

Tim, no longer smiling but eyes vacant and dead, staring up at her, judging her for not being there when he needed her.

Jack Cleese, family friend and now another for the Browns to mourn.

Arthur… dorky, good-for-nothing, cowardly Arthur who never deserved how cruel she had been to him.

She almost considered snickering at her sudden sympathy. But no matter how dark her humor, there was nothing she could find even remotely comedic about what she had to do. She had to know, even though every bone in her body screamed for her to just walk away. Her fingers curled around the sheet, tightly, to the point where it burned her palm just holding it. And, with a final yank, it was off.

A mobster stared up, her blank brown eyes framed by curly blond hair. The cot was sticky with her blood, as the damp red bandages had failed to stem the flow from various wounds. A ragged chunk of her neck had proven too tough to be stopped by gauze, and numerous bullet holes in her chest had been cauterized while others remained untouched. Her lower body had been badly burned beyond hope, the suit actually looking like it had bonded to her flesh.

Ariana felt the nothing in her stomach work its way up. She gagged, collapsing to the floor. The second the sickness passed, she felt a similar wave of guilt tear into her. She had wished it was anyone other than those she knew who had died, and that wish had been granted long before she made it. The woman on the table, looking barely out of her teens, had not deserved that fate. She had an urge to laugh, to offer up Arthur on the table with a jest even after she wanted him spared…

This… is not a pleasant sensation… guilt, pain, and worrying all rolled into one…

She forced herself up again, using the edge of a bed as leverage. Once standing, she turned to leave as quickly as she could, but stopped on the way out. Attacked again by guilt, she squeezed her eyes shut, forcing out a tear, and turned to the dead mobster, kneeling to the floor to pick up the death shroud. She sniffed back more tears and brought the sheet to a rest on the body, pulling it off the girl’s face when it came down. Ariana reached up and shut the mobster’s eyes.

“I’m so sorry this happened to you.” Her words were so quiet that she was barely sure she said them. Not that it mattered. Dead people tended not to be the best listeners.

The hallway was just as cold as the makeshift emergency room. The lights on the wall were dim but offered enough luminescence to make walking along the debris-strewn path less of a peril than it could have been. In the time it took for her eyes to readjust to the light, she realized how well-built the location was. The debris in her way was not from crumbling architecture but human refuse dragged inside: wires, duffel bags, tools, empty food containers. Her hand touched the wall and felt the faintest tremble of pulsing waves, the same kind of rumble a passing train would give. It faded from the already minute tremor when she reached an intersection with a sign dangling from the ceiling. The path to her right led to the ‘Grand Hall/Central Platform’ while the ‘Kitchen’ lay in front of her.