“I’m guessing, in this neighborhood that’s a pretty rare sight,” Julia told him.
“Keep an eye out anyway.” Chapel flexed his shoulder. It had been a long time since he had knocked a door down with brute force. He had little choice, though. He grabbed the doorknob, intending to lift the door in its hinges and then ram it with his shoulder.
Except the knob turned freely in his hand.
The door swung open. It wasn’t locked.
Something here was definitely not right.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+19:12
Chapel drew his weapon and stepped inside the dark house. He motioned for Julia to follow him, then pulled the door shut behind him. “Look for a light switch,” he told Julia. Then he turned to face the darkness and called out, “Mr. Funt? I’m a federal agent. I’m here to protect you.”
He didn’t expect a response, and he didn’t get one.
Behind him he heard a click, and then the lights came on.
The house was tastefully, if plainly, furnished. The front door opened on a living room with a large television set, a comfortable-looking sofa, and a beaten-up coffee table that might have been an antique, once. Bookshelves lined the far wall, but they were half empty.
Two archways led off the main room, one to what looked like a kitchen — he could see a refrigerator and a stove through the arch — and one to what presumably was a bedroom. A curtain of beads hung down from that arch. Chapel pointed his weapon toward each arch and called out Funt’s name again.
It was possible this was a colossal waste of time. Maybe no chimera had come to Atlanta at all. Maybe all three of them were in Chicago already and were beating Eleanor Pechowski to death while he stood here, wondering what to do next.
That kind of thinking didn’t help at all. “Stay close to me,” he told Julia, but she was already walking over to the coffee table.
“Does this guy look like a slob to you?” she asked.
Chapel wondered what she was getting at, but he glanced around the room. There were coasters on the coffee table, and no empty cans or glasses lying around. “Not at all,” he said. “The opposite, in fact.”
Julia ran one index finger along the top of the coffee table. She held it up where he could see it — it was covered in dust. “He hasn’t been here in a while.”
Chapel frowned. That had to mean something important, but — what? Even if Funt had vacated the house as soon as he got the call from Angel, that was still less than twenty-four hours ago. Dust didn’t accumulate that quickly.
“You have a list of addresses for the people the chimeras want to kill,” Julia said. When he started to protest, she held up both hands. “I’m not asking any questions, don’t worry. You can keep your secrets. I just wanted to point out that maybe your list isn’t up to date. Funt might have moved out of here a while ago.”
“Maybe,” Chapel agreed. “I’m going to check the kitchen. Stay here.”
Julia looked annoyed at being ordered around, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. He didn’t have time to ask her permission every time he needed her to do something. Civilians were fine in principle, he thought, until you needed them to follow orders.
He went into the kitchen and found another light switch. The kitchen was as Spartan as the living room, with a small table pushed up against one wall and only one chair. There was thick dust on the table, but when he checked the stove and the countertops they were clean. No dust on them at all. Funt might have moved out weeks ago — but he had come back at least once.
“I’m going to check the bedroom,” Julia called.
“No! Wait for me,” he shouted back, but he knew she wouldn’t listen. He turned to leave the kitchen when he caught another look at the table — and the dust on top of it.
Someone had written a message in it, presumably using his finger. Chapel bent low to get a look at it in better light.
IF YOU WANT TO FIND ME
I’VE GONE UNDER
THE UNDERGROUND
“Oh shit!” Julia called.
Chapel ignored the message in the dust and raced back into the living room. He saw Julia standing in the beaded curtain, holding it back with one hand.
“I think we’re too late,” she said. “I think he’s dead.”
ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+19:46
Chapel raced over to her side. He put an arm out to stop her from going any farther, then peered into the darkened bedroom. Like the rest of the house it was only semifurnished. There was a single bed up against the far wall, and a dresser standing next to the window.
The sheets of the bed had been pulled up over a human-sized form. It looked very much like someone had died in their sleep and had the sheets drawn over his face.
Chapel noticed a strange, acrid smell in the air. At first he thought it had to be the stench of decay, that the body had been left there long enough for it to start rotting. But he knew the smell of death, and this wasn’t it. This smelled more like benzene or maybe diesel fuel.
“Just like my mom,” Julia breathed. She sounded like she was close to going into shock — or maybe like she would start screaming.
Chapel stepped toward the bed, intending to throw the sheet back and see if it was really Funt lying there. Something about the position of the body seemed wrong. The body had been lain out carefully, its legs together and its arms at its sides. The way bodies looked when they were lain in their coffins.
The chimera he’d fought in New York wouldn’t have bothered to do something like that. He’d made no attempt to pose Helen Bryant — he’d just killed her and then left her in a heap.
That smell. It was very strong over by the bed. Chapel reached down and touched the sheet near the body’s head. He grasped the edge of the sheet and started to pull it down.
Behind him he heard a click as Julia switched on the bedroom light.
Two things occurred to him in that moment. One was that the form under the sheet was too lumpy. Up close it didn’t look so much like a human being anymore.
The other thing was that he distinctly heard some kind of fizzing sound. It had started the same moment Julia switched on the lights.
He yanked the sheet back and saw what was really there.
Red plastic canisters, the kind used to store gasoline. Or diesel fuel. There were eight of them in the bed, grouped together to resemble a human body. They had yellow plastic screw lids. Chapel unscrewed one and the smell nearly overpowered him. It wasn’t just diesel fuel in there — the diesel had been mixed with fertilizer.
He was looking at a homemade bomb.
That fizzing sound…
It had to be the noise of a burning fuse, which was lit when Julia flipped the light switch.
“Get out! Front door! Now!” Chapel shouted, turning around and pushing Julia ahead of him, through the beaded curtain. He caught her wrong and she nearly went sprawling, nearly fell right onto the coffee table. Chapel grabbed her around the waist with his artificial arm and bull rushed the front door, slamming up against it because he’d forgotten it opened inward.
Behind him he heard a fwoosh as the fuse burned down and set the first canister alight.
The bedroom window exploded outward in a gout of flame and smoke, glass and wood bursting outward in a cone that shredded the hedges and set fire to a tree ten feet away. A billowing wave of smoke came rushing out the front door, and with it a shock wave that smashed Chapel’s face to the side as pieces of burning and broken furniture stormed past him. He slammed his eyes shut to protect them even as the heat hit him, making him feel like he was being roasted alive.