The Hysteria: Book 4, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (21 page)

“I’m guessing this place isn’t rigged for wi-fi,” I said.

“I told you not to come looking for me,” Megan said. “Now you brought them all here.”

“I would have found you anyway,” I said. “If I’m affected like you say I am.”

“More likely Pater or Manetti would have gutted you.” She folded her arms. “Like I said, the knifers can spot us early, much earlier than we can spot them.”

Megan leaned against the railing separating us from the rink and watched her people. Her words were harsh but her tone wasn’t. She wasn’t faulting me. She was just laying out a chain of events, cause and effect.

“You knew they would find you,” I said.

“Sooner or later this had to happen.”

“Fate?”

“I don’t believe in fate. But yes. Since there’s no other word for it.”

I watched the skaters too. They were weaving complex patterns out there, no longer content to just do prosaic laps. Some cut across the floor at a diagonal. Others spun in and out of traffic with no problem.

There were no collisions. Everything was smooth. It was like watching the gears of a Swiss watch move in intricate harmony.

I said, “Can we get all these people out of here? Do you have vehicles?”

She shook her head. “Not enough.”

“So save who you can. Send the able-bodied out on foot.”

“You wanna make that call? About who gets in the car and who doesn’t?”

“Leaders have to make difficult decisions.”

She shook her head. “We’re strong here. If we go our separate ways they’ll tear us apart. They have to cross a lot of open ground and the entrances are choke points.”

“Okay, Leonidas. Time you brought me up to speed on logistics. What have you got?”

Megan kept her eyes on her people. “What you see is what you get.”

“This is all?”

She nodded. “Plus twenty on guard duty.”

There were about a hundred people on or around the rink.

I said, “They might have a thousand. Maybe two.”

“Come with me.”

She walked out onto the rink. The skaters were moving so fast it was like Megan had stepped out into traffic on the interstate.

But there were no collisions. Her people danced and slid right by her like they’d been expecting it.

“I’ll take the long way,” I said.

***

“What’s this?” I said.

“The back door.”

I’d followed her down a narrow hall, past the bathrooms to a fire door. She pushed it open and held it like that. It had no handle on the outside. Nobody was breaching the rink here unless they blew the door.

Outside, the rain pelted and the storm thundered. I couldn’t see more than twenty feet out.

Megan said, “You have ten seconds to decide. Stay or go.”

I was tempted. I’d done what I’d been hired to do. I’d found Megan. I’d figured out what was going on. I didn’t owe anybody anything. I had a life to live. This wasn’t my fight.
Et cetera
.

But no matter what I tell myself, no matter what I say to the client or my friends, no matter how much I try to shrug problems that aren’t mine off, at the end of the day, the job is not just the job. The job is figuring out how to solve the larger problem. How to fix things and make the world if not right at least a little better before I ride off into the proverbial sunset.

Walking away now wouldn’t get it done.

“Why not show me your plan first?” I already knew the answer. I wanted to see how honest she would be.

She didn’t disappoint. “Uh-uh. I don’t want you leaving after I give you the plan.”

“Why not?”

“In case they capture you.”

“Why are you offering me this?”

“Because I respect you.”

Outside the rain pelted the pavement. The trees bent to the gale. The sky lit up with snapshots of lightning.

I looked out into the darkness. The knifers were out there. I couldn’t see them but I knew they were there.

Megan said, “You didn’t know what you were getting into when you came out here. My father tricked you. You went above and beyond to rescue the damsel-in-distress and now there’s a very good chance you might die because of it. I don’t want that on my conscience.”

“Make the same offer to your people?” I asked.

“They chose to stay.”

“They like their chances better together.”             

“They do.”

Megan let go of the door and it started closing.

I said, “What’s the plan?”

***

“Our shooters will be up here,” Megan said.

We’d climbed a metal ladder in the boiler room up to the roof. The roof was flat and there was two inches of water everywhere. The drains weren’t big enough to handle the downpour. All around the roof there was a four foot high wall. Someone had built covered areas using tarps where the shooters wouldn’t be pelted by the rain too much. Megan’s team was now sliding those into place. They had wisely positioned the shooters at the four corners of the building and then spaced out the rest to cover as much area as they could.

Megan’s people were carrying spotlights up to the roof. There were about a million extension cords they had to rig against the wall so they weren’t sitting in the water.

“How many guns?” I said.

“Thirty-four rifles, nineteen shotguns, forty-five handguns, fifty baseball bats.”

“Bats?”

“Gotta use something when the ammo runs out.”

“Speaking of which.”

Megan shivered against the wind. She had a short jaw and a button nose. Her hair was soaked from the rain. If you can look younger than your years at twenty-six, Megan was doing it.

“About twenty-five hundred rounds all told.”

“Which means we can’t miss.”

“We don’t plan to.”

“Can any of your people still handle a blade?”

“About fifteen. We’re checking them every five minutes till the big show.”

I gave her a look. “You’re wrong about me being sick.”

“I can’t be.”

“I’ve never liked knives. Not since that fucking kid downstairs murdered my brother and almost punctured my aorta. Maybe that’s what you’re seeing in me, not the actual sickness.”

“I’m not wrong about you. It’s only a matter of time before you can’t even touch one.”

The rain didn’t let up. Megan’s shooters were appearing on the roof now, hefting their rifles. They went to work setting up, arguing about who got the corners.

I said, “So everybody will be on the roof.”

“No. Shorter range firearms will be used from the first floor.”

“How?”

“Windows. Shootouts.”

“And when they get inside?”

“They won’t.”

“Of course they fucking will. What’s the plan then?”

“They won’t.”

“Dynamic systems theory. Things break in ways you don’t expect and can’t foresee.”

“Okay, Michael Crichton.”

I had a chuckle. “I’m serious.”

“Eddie?”

“Yeah.”

She got in my personal space and dropped her voice. “When they get in, all hell is going to break loose, okay? We all know it.”

“Megan!” one of the shooters said.

We sloshed our way over to him. He was manning the shootout in the spot equidistant from the corners. The middle man. He pointed out at the thin tree line separating the parking lot from the road.

“How many?” Megan said.

He handed her binoculars. She glassed the trees.

“Well?” I said.

The shooter folded his arms. He was wearing a rain poncho over his camos. He had long hair and a beard. He gave off an ex-military vibe despite the grizzly man appearance.

“I saw a few. Five, maybe ten.”

I said, “You know how to crowd count?”

He smiled. “Yeah, one of the great many things Uncle Sam taught me.”

Military. That was good. “Teach me.”

Megan answered instead of him. “Jacob’s method. Calculate square feet, figure a minimum space of two square feet a person. That gets you a good estimate for capacity crowd.”

“How wide is the lot?”

“I don’t see anybody.” Megan gave the binocs back to the shooter. “At its widest, six hundred feet.”

I did the math.

Megan gave the shooter the nod of respect and we walked back to the middle of the roof.

“What happens when they get inside?”

“Before that, our people all get to the roof.”

“Okay. Then what?”

“The ladder is the only way up. It’s a choke point. We kill them all in the boiler room. Death from above.”

I couldn’t believe we were game-planning the death of hundreds of people. But we had no choice. I knew they were coming. I knew it.

I said, “And when they get up here?”

“What the hell do you want me to say, Eddie?”

“How are we getting our people off the roof?”

“We have rope ladders. Won’t do us much good, though, unless they’re all downstairs.”

“Megan, it’s a fine plan and the best you could do with short notice.”

“The plan is shit and we both know it.”

I said, “What about the syncope?”

“What about it?”

“The fainting.”

“I know what syncope means.”

Megan’s shooters had settled on their positions and now more people were coming up with the rest of the ammo.

Megan motioned toward the ladder. I followed her down, happy to get out of the rain. The thunder boomed and rattled the building. The rink lights dimmed then came back up.

I saw Mia Turner on the other side of the rink. She had a team of folks distributing water bottles and what looked like energy bars. Then I remembered what Quick had told me: somebody had hijacked a delivery truck. It had been Megan and her people.

Stocking up for war.

I followed Megan into the old manager’s office. She shut the door behind me.

I said, “The fainting. When does it happen?”

“At the worst possible time, usually.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

She made a face. “Most of us faint when we’re around them.”

“No…” It made sense. Megan had been fainting around her old man and her sister.

“We’ve tried to desensitize ourselves.” Megan opened the cabinet by the desk and pulled out a bottle of hooch that had to be ten years old. “Found this. Wanna bite?”

A nice Irish whiskey. The kind of drink I would have fallen into and taken days to climb out of in years past.

“I’m dry.”

Megan smiled. It was the first time I saw her smile and it made her beautiful, in a girl-next-door way. “I know you are. I know a lot about you.”

It almost sounded like she looked up to me. It’s true what they say. There is a first time for everything.

And a last time…

“You’re the hero,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”

“What does that mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. I respect the hell out of you. You could have done anything with your life. You could have done nothing. You chose this and because of it your life’s on the line.”

She actually blushed. “The feeling is mutual.”

I didn’t know what to say.

Megan said, “You’re the guy that always defies the odds, for better or worse.”

“Usually for worse.”

“I’m glad you’re here. We could use a good man in a storm.”

“Literally.”

She was kind enough to laugh at the weak joke.

I said, “How did you desensitize yourselves?”

“We grabbed one of them, kept him tied up in another room, practiced getting closer and closer.”

“Did it work?”

“Worked for me. And nobody fainted around Manetti.”

She tilted the bottle back and drank. She put away a couple fingers with no trouble. Her college days weren’t that far behind her.

“You’re asking all the tough questions,” she said. “And I’m tired of answering them.”

“Any chance you have smelling salts?”

“Now why didn’t I think of that?”

She reached into her pocket and threw a few packs on the table.

“Okay, then. One last question. How do we get out of this?”

She took another sip of the whiskey and said nothing.

“Good answer.” I took the bottle from her. It had been so long since I’d had a taste that the smell of booze was turning my stomach. But still, that bastard weak part of me wanted to hit it.

Megan was right. Us versus them is in our blood.