PERSEPHONE GLANCES SIDELONG AT HER MOUSY GUIDE: bellwether, she thinks. The scene is crystal clear. The guards holding the struggling sacrificial victim down wear black wind-cheaters emblazoned with the oracular runes FBI. They’ve got sidearms. There are another twenty congregants—everyone from the course, and a few besides—and the church pastors. Heads are turning. Behind her, a windowless tunnel. Fire doors. Her heart skips a beat as she takes a short step backwards. “Sorry, honey,” she says to Roseanne or Lisa or whoever her guide is, and punches her over one kidney: the woman stumbles into the underground chapel as the struggling victim rams his forehead into his guard’s nose in a classic Glasgow kiss. The other FBI man sidesteps his follow-through kick sharply and is already pulling a pistol as Persephone skips back two steps and slams her elbow into the glass cover of the fire alarm.
The doors slam shut as the siren winds up to a screech. The emergency lights come on, illuminating the route of her sprint.
She makes it up to the first floor in a breathless run and barely breaks stride as she hits the crash bar on the fire exit. The door opens, and she finds herself on one side of the church, on a concrete path winding between deep-frozen snow piles around the side of another windowless building. She trots to the end of the path, then cuts back to a fast walk, composing herself, trying to look unobtrusive. Don’t draw attention. Icy cold, she’s working on her evacuation route. At least sixty seconds before they fan out and start looking for me. The prisoners…she winces. But they’re the least of her problems. She’s blown her cover. What was going on in that chapel was worse than anything even Johnny had feared. Better warn him as soon as possible, before I use the safe house and wheels. Just in case.
The church complex sits at one side of a street. Opposite it squats a two-story building, low and wide, with glass windows through which she can see brightly colored posters on the walls. There are desks and chairs: perhaps it’s a primary school or kindergarten. It’s Saturday, though. Persephone trots across the street, round the unfenced side of the school, and up the wooded slope behind it. There’s snow on the ground which will show her tracks—very bad. She can hear alarms now, and a quick glance shows her the other fire doors opening, people spilling out. She turns to ignore them and slides her shoes off—the two-inch heels are no good off the beaten track—then breaks back into a run.
Elapsed time: two minutes. She’s past the school, coming up behind another building. It’s three stories high with a complex spaghetti-work of gas pipes and ducts behind it, just like a hospital or clinic. A big diesel generator and an enormous tank of fuel sit in readiness behind a chain-link fence, but the rear approach is clear and there are windows at ground level. A couple of them are open. She darts towards them, keeping low and using available ground cover—of which there is much, for the trees come almost all the way up to the building.
Observe, orient, decide, act: words to live or die by. Right now, Persephone is disoriented—on the run, cut off. It’s time to go on the offensive, work out where she is and what’s going on, then get the hell out of this trap.
Unlike Mr. Howard from Capital Laundry Services, she’s seen the things in the silver salver before and knows exactly what they are, and by extension, the unplumbed depths of the cesspool in which she has so abruptly found herself treading water. And her day has just gone from normal to nightmare in sixty seconds.
PICTURE THIS: IT’S EARLY AFTERNOON IN A BLANDLY CORPORATE hotel room in downtown Denver. There are two corpses lying on the floor in the middle of the room. An upturned bathroom waste bin sits on the floor nearby, its former steed’s handgun holding it down. It rattles from time to time as the complaints department within expresses its opinion of the accommodation. I am sitting in the desk chair, drained by my exertions—both physical and mental—and taking a few minutes to assess my options.
Here’s my situation: the bad guys know where I am. This is obviously undesirable. So this is my plan (which is mine, what I invented all by myself): I am going to run away, very fast. Simples!
There are minor complications, of course. First, I’m going to have to notify Lockhart, Hazard, and McTavish. Especially the latter two. Both of whom hung out a big Do Not Disturb sign last time I called them.
Second, there are the two corpses. Housekeeping are going to be very unhappy, and I don’t think tipping high will cut any ice. I feel a bit sick whenever I think about what I did to them. They were, once upon a time, thinking, feeling human beings; by the time they came knocking on my door there wasn’t much left inside them—understatement: they were little more than zombies that hadn’t begun to smell—but that doesn’t make me feel any better. I want to know for sure who sent them, and why.
(And when I find them I want to give the bastard who wrecked their minds a piece of my mind.)
I generally try not to jump to conclusions, but I’m willing to wave my little pinkie in the air and swear that they’re not from the Black Chamber. The Black Chamber isn’t big on Christianity. In fact, they treat it as a character flaw among their employees. Given that I’m over here to ride herd on an investigation into the Golden Promise Ministries, being doorstepped by a pair of armed Christian missionaries is all but definitive. So, I’m working on the assumption that Schiller sent them and that there’s more to GPM than meets the eye.
Thirdly and finally, there’s the thing in the bin—the complaints department. I don’t know exactly what it is, but a quick look in Dead Guy #1’s mouth—quick because I don’t enjoy throwing up—shows that it’s empty: nothing inside but a nub of scar tissue at the back of his mouth. And unless I’m suffering from auditory hallucinations, he did ask me to open the door. So the logical deduction is that the thing in the bucket is some kind of hideous parasite that does double-duty among the Jeezemoids; talk about speaking in tongues.
I need to know what they’re capable of. So I’m going to have to contain it, bind it, and see what, if any, control one of these parasites can exert on a victim.
(Yes, I’ve seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I never imagined I’d find myself having to deal with an outbreak, but there’s a first time for everything.)
First things first: call Lockhart. I reach for the hotel phone and punch in my special calling-card number.
“Hello, Garrison Fitzhugh estate agents. We’re sorry, but the office is closed right now. Opening hours are 9 till 5, Monday to Friday. Please leave a message after the beep…”
Of course it’s closed; it’s 8 p.m. on a Saturday evening back home. I clear my throat. “This is Bob Howard. I’m in Denver and I want to talk to someone about a problem with my property. I can’t contact the tenants and I just had a call from Environmental Health, who seemed to be upset about an infestation of giant wood lice”—there’s no codeword for “alien brain parasite” so I make one up on the fly—“so anyway, I’m not sure how long I can fend them off. Please call back.” I hang up. Hopefully that little zinger will rattle Lockhart’s cage.
I’m busy doodling an intricate design on the inside of last night’s pizza box lid with a conductive marker pen when the phone rings.