For a moment, it was quiet, except for the latex sound of Dawson’s melted laugh. Canny turned his head slightly to glance at me.
“Don’t relax,” he advised with a wink. “There are more coming. Mr. Kieth,” he added, louder, “I forgive you your debt.”
“Why the hell did you come here?” I demanded. I was ready to let it roll over me, the huge, incomprehensible wave-just close my eyes and let it smother me-but Canny Orel got on my last nerve and I was damned if I was going to let him just do what he liked. This was my job. “You’re supposed to be the goddamned distraction.”
“We didn’t have a choice, Mr. Cates!” Orel snapped back, eyes fixed on the intersection and the three felled Monks. “We were fucking herded here.”
“It’s true,” Tanner said, her voice cracking and shaking. I looked down at her sharply, noticing for the first time that her face was a rictus of emotion, her body stiff and shaking, as if she’d physically felt the death of her twin. “Everywhere we turned, they pushed us back-except one direction. They came and came at us, and we fucking took dozens of those fucking Tin Men out, Cates, but if we fell back in the right direction, they let us.”
Two Monks flitted through the intersection like insects. Orel and Tanner tracked them, pumping shells, but missed, the Monks disappearing on the other side.
Anger flooded me. My hands spasmed, trying to clench into fists; it took all my concentration for a moment to stop myself from firing a shell into the floor, to keep my hands under control. I wanted to throttle Orel where he stood, so calm, so capable-probably the only one of us with a chance to fight his way out of this. I hated his competence, hated the fact that he was better, tougher than me. If I was going to die inside this fucking tomb, it was going to be my decision. I’d been dancing for Marin and Moje and everyone else for too long. I didn’t give a fuck about the cash-which I doubted I’d ever see, anyway-I wanted to put a shell into Dennis Squalor’s head because I’d come this far and I wasn’t going to get stopped now.
I whirled on Ty Kieth. “Get that fucking door open!”
He swallowed and glanced down at his handheld, pointing it at the door and prodding its screen with his thumb, a practiced, smooth gesture. Licking his lips, he nodded.
“I can probably do it, but-”
“Do it,” I snapped. “Or we’re all dead, right here, in this fucking hallway.”
He nodded, prodding his screen madly.
“Cates!” Orel snapped without turning. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
More Monks appeared at the end of the hall. A volley of shells from Tanner and Orel, and two fell into a heap.
“Cates, we were herded here. On purpose. Did you encounter any resistance? No,” Orel said slowly, eyes fixed on the sights of his guns. “I think that door is going to open soon, all on its own. I think you’ve been played. I think that opening that door is the last thing we want.”
I stared at him for a moment, thinking. Then I turned and looked at the door, smooth, unmarked, implacable, just as another volley of shots announced more Monks. What it came down to was, you always had a choice. There was always something you could choose to do.
I turned and looked at Kieth. He looked back at me. He was shaking.
“Mr. Kieth,” I said steadily. He jumped a little. “Get the goddamn door open.” I smiled, the familiar crazy laughter catching in my throat. “Let’s fucking surprise them.”
Kieth didn’t hesitate. He seemed almost happy as he pulled his small bag of instruments from his jacket. A slight smile played on his lips, and he didn’t even flinch when a fresh wave of Monks at the end of the hall brought on another volley of bullets from Orel and Tanner.
“Two more!” Orel shouted. He sounded almost happy, too. I was surrounded by madmen. Madmen of my own choosing.
Kieth began scanning the door with his little handheld device, running it up and down the thin, faint lines outlining the opening. While bent over scanning along the bottom, he paused suddenly.
“Huh,” I heard him say quietly. “That’s-”
The door suddenly emitted a loud, hollow banging sound. Kieth stood up instantly, and Gatz and I turned as one, me with my gun held out, Gatz with a shaking hand on his glasses. Behind me, there was more gunfire, and a stream of curses from Orel. I squinted down the sight of my gun, hand hurting from gripping it so tightly.
The door banged inward as if a silent, dark explosion had propelled it, knocking Kieth back hard into Dawson’s temporary coffin. I glimpsed the figure revealed in the doorway for just a split-second, because in the balance of that moment I ticked my gun’s muzzle to the left an infinitesimal amount and pulled the trigger twice, turning his head into cheese.
Dennis Squalor stood there for another moment as we all stared, and then fell forward, leaking coolant and insulation.
For a moment, there was nothing. Then, rising like sour steam, Dawson’s terrible ruined laugh.
XXXII
YOU DID THIS FOR MONEY. YOU KILLED YOURSELF
There was only Dawson’s terrible laughter for a moment. It went on and on without pause for breath, without inflection, a tape loop. I didn’t feel anything except the buzz in the bones of my hand, recovering from the gun’s recoil. I had seen his face, but I couldn’t believe it. It had been him, Dennis Squalor, and I’d killed him. But it wasn’t real. I stared at the slumped form in the doorway and didn’t move a muscle.
Behind me, shots continued to ring out in waves, punctuated by Canny Orel’s growled expletives. Kieth moaned and struggled to extricate himself from Dawson’s floating coffin, and Gatz was a statue next to me. I imagined I could hear the sizzle of my sweat on the gun’s muzzle, that I could smell the coolant leaking from Squalor’s metal body.
I opened my mouth to say something over Dawson’s endless laughter, but as I did so a second figure filled the doorway, and I froze again.
It was Dennis Squalor. Again.
“Avery Cates, shitbag,” Dawson’s ruined voice rumbled up from beneath Kieth. “Meet the Cardinals.”
The face was exactly as it had been shown on the Vids. Round, loose-skinned, and jowly, a ring of friarlike hair on an otherwise smooth, red scalp. Small, delicate-looking ears and a flat, broad nose. He looked about as old as anyone I’d ever seen, maybe sixty, and wore small round dark glasses molded to his face, hiding his eyes entirely. He wore a blindingly white shirt, buttoned to the top, and a suit of black clothes, the coat trailing along the floor like a fitted robe. He looked entirely human, standing there, and I would have thought he was human except I’d shot him in the face just seconds before, and yet he was standing there, over his own dead body.
Behind me, I heard Orel bellow something almost inhuman, a sound that was just pure frustration, as an endless volley of shots rang in the hallway, Tanner and him firing in waves.
“Cates!” Tanner screamed above the din. “Here they come!”
I didn’t turn around. I kept my eyes on this… thing, the doppelganger. With Orel’s yell in my ears like cotton, with Tanner’s words still hanging in the air like shattered glass, Squalor moved. It was just the subtle shift of his arms, a movement of millimeters by his coat. Old, burned-in instincts took over, bypassed all my higher functions. Before I consciously realized Squalor-or whatever it was-was going to draw and fire, I was moving. I threw myself back and to the side, taking Gatz off his feet as I pushed myself into the air, aiming for the floating coffin containing Dawson and Kieth.
In midair, I heard the sound of more bullets. When I crashed into the coffin awkwardly, half-in and half-out, the breath knocked out of me, I was followed immediately by a thunk-thunk-thunk of bullets hitting the metal casing.