They crept up the stairs. Finn was having a hard time without his rubber booties. Finn, protecting the womenfolk and all that, emerged first from the stairwell and saw - a hall. It looked like any other hall in any other office building. Finn realized he was holding himself so tensely that his muscles were aching.
"Which way?" he whispered to Clara.
"Turn left at the end of the hall. That'll take us to reception. It's about twenty feet to the front doors."
From behind one of the closed doors which lined the hall Finn heard a low, hopeless, terrified sobbing. He didn't investigate. Joan headed out down the hall, Clara following. She looked back when she didn't hear the clop of his hooves on the linoleum floor.
Finn stepped to her, gripped her shoulders, turned her around, laid a hand between her shoulder blades, and pushed. "You and Joan go on. Call the cops. I gotta get Faneuil."
"What?"
"He killed thousands of people. He made me an unwitting killer. He's got to pay for that."
"We don't have the luxury," Clara said.
"This is a necessity. Does he have a lab? Where does he work?"
"You'll never reach him alone," Clara said. She turned to Joan. "Go on, Mother." Joan hesitated, regret and fear showing on her face. Then she went. Clara darted past Finn back into the stairwell. He followed.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
They made it to the third floor without incident. Clara was right about him needing her help. Access to all the labs was through negative pressure clean rooms, and an access card and voice print were required. Clara's got them through. Faneuil wasn't in his office, or in the lab with its detailed maps of world cities. The only one Finn recognized in the brief seconds allowed to him was New York.
"He's not here. Come on! Let's go!" Tension thrummed in Clara's voice.
"How big is this building?" Finn asked as he pulled open another door. Closet. Faneuil wasn't in it.
"Too big for us to search. Maman's toxin will only last so long."
Finn pulled open a final door, and discovered a bathroom, and Faneuil seated on the shitter. His pants were down around his ankles, the bowl filled with his diarrhea. The paralysis induced by Joan's venom had finally hit, but it was too weak a dose to completely freeze him. He was struggling, moving like a man under water. Finn reached in, grabbed the man by the shoulders, and yanked him out of the john. With Clara's help they got him tossed over Finn's back.
Out of the lab. Back into the hall. Racing for the stairwell. People were starting to recover from the effects of the venom. Sensation returning to their limbs, rational thought to their brains. A couple of them clung to door jambs, and called garbled questions to Clara.
Through the door, and down the stairs. It was a bitch going down. Finn's hooves kept slipping on the metal stair nosings, and Faneuil was an awkward weight on his back. The French doctor's struggles were becoming more violent.
"Punch him!" Finn ordered.
Clara pulled back her arm, and drove her fist into Faneuil's temple. He quieted down substantially.
Suddenly a voice from below called out. "You joker-fucking bitch."
Finn risked a glance over the railing. A burst of automatic weapons fire came back in reply. The sound was terrifying in the enclosed space, and bullets were whining and spanging off the metal banisters. One of the ricochets gouged a line of fire across the top of Finn's haunches. Clara hunkered down, her arms protectively covering her head. "It's Johnson Security. We're fucked."
The situation had clearly become desperate. Retreat was impossible. Walking down the stairs into that withering fire was equally impossible, and standing still was also impossible. There was only one thing to do - punt.
Finn reared slightly, sending Faneiul sliding off his back. He then gathered his hindquarters beneath him, tensed the muscles, and leaped. The man's mouth was a dark, stretched "O" as he watched four hundred pounds of palomino centaur descending from heaven on top of him. His gun was pointed straight into Finn's gut, but fortunately the sight of a flying joker made him hesitate, and in hesitating he was lost.
Finn came down on the man, heard bones cracking, a pathetic wheezing sound as the air went out of the guard. There was another gun-shot loud crack, and fire washed up Finn's right front leg. He went down in a welter of legs and arms. He craned up to see his foreleg. From the middle of the cannon bone it was flopping. He struggled onto three legs. Rambo was out cold on the stairs. Pieces of him were bent in funny directions, too. Finn looked up to see Clara, hands tangled in the lapels of Faneuil's coat, dragging him down the stairs. His head bumped on each step, and his trousers and shorts were pulled almost completely off his legs.
Thanking God they were at the first floor (Finn could not have done stairs on three legs), he hobbled to the door, pulled it open. Clara dragged Faneuil through. Down the hall. Finn wished he could help Clara with Faneuil, but knew he couldn't. With each limping step he could hear the bones in his leg grinding across each other.
"Do you know if they still shoot horses?" Finn asked hysterically. Clara grunted, kept pulling.
They reached reception, hobbled and lurched past the gaping secretary, a phone up to her ear, and into the street. In the distance were the sounds of approaching sirens. Joan slithered over to Clara, and rearing up, embraced her. Faneuil lay forgotten on the pavement. The first fire truck arrived.
Joan was a clever woman. Knowing a call of "jokers in distress" would arouse nothing but apathy, she had literally yelled fire!
Clara pulled free of her mother's embrace. Walked over to Finn. "I didn't get it all. They removed some of it." Finn just stared at her. "But it's a weaker strain. It falls dormant after three transmissions." The words emerged in a desperate rush.
"Yeah, that's great. I'm sure that'll really comfort the three deaders who get hit before dormancy is achieved."
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
An ambulance - a real one - took Bradley to the hospital. Meanwhile, a nearby cop loaded Clara and Joan into a patrol car. Hartmann was long gone.
Clara slouched against the door handle and looked out at the streets of Manhattan. It was twilight. Sodium, neon, and mercury fluorescents illuminated the many thousands of people spewing from the buildings and crowding the sidewalks of midtown. Traffic crept down Lexington. Horns blared and engines roared. The air smelled of ozone. Clara glanced over and saw Joan nervously eyeing the cop beyond the thick mesh. He was listening to the police radio, which spat police codes and static. At Clara's questioning glance, Joan leaned toward her and spoke in a low voice.
"Darling, do you still have your scrapbook - the one I gave you when you were little?"
"Yes. Why?"
Joan was wringing her hands - and her coils of snake flesh were wringing themselves. "This will seem rather an odd question, but - is there a picture of your father with a man of Mediterranean descent?"
Clara frowned at her. "What on earth is this about?"
"There is something I left out when I told you how I contracted the wild card," Joan said. "Something important."
"Oh?"
Joan nodded, looking miserable and flustered. "It's about your father, and, well, if I don't tell you now I may not have a chance later, and ... I don't want you to think I deceived you in any way...."
"Of course not."
"I would have told you when you came to see me, but that didn't seem to be the right time. But after all, I told that lovely young lady arson investigator, and I'm sure she told Senator Hartmann; I can't imagine why he didn't investigate further, but perhaps it's for the best, in a sense."
Clara frowned. Joan's flutterings were starting to grate. "Would you please just tell me, Maman?"
Joan looked at the cop again and lowered her voice to a whisper. "Back in 1968, Pan Rudo arranged to have Bobby Kennedy assassinated. And Brand paid off Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin. Brand was the - what do they call it? - the bag man."