"Eating. Us." Josephine is looking a little glassy. "Did I tell you that I don't do headhunters? That's Recruitment's job."
"Look," I say gently, "have you ever seen Night of the Living Dead? It's really not all that different-except that I've got permission to be here, and you've got a temporary warrant card too, so we should be all right." A thought strikes me. "You're a cop. Have you been through firearms training?"
Click-clack. "Yes," she says drily. "Next question?"
"Great! If you'd just take that away from my nose-that's better-it won't work on the guards. Sorry, but they're already, uh, metabolically challenged. However, it will work very nicely on the CCTV cameras. Which-"
"Okay, I get the picture. We go in. We stay out of the frame unless we want to die." She makes the pistol vanish inside her jacket and looks at me askance-for the first time since the car pound with something other than irritation or dislike. Probably wondering why I didn't flinch. (Obvious, really: compared with what's waiting for us inside a little intracranial air conditioning is a relatively painless way to go, and besides, if she was seriously pissed at me she could have gotten me alone in a nice soundproofed cell back in her manor with a pair of size twelve boots and their occupants.) "We're going to go in there and you're going to talk our way past the zombies while I shoot out all the cameras, right?"
"Right. And then I'm going to try to figure out how to take down the primary switchgear, the backup substation, the diesel generator, and the batteries for the telephone switch and the protected computer ring main all at the same time so nobody twigs until it's too late. While fending off anyone who tries to stop us. Clear?"
"As mud." She stares at me. "I always wanted to be on TV, but not quite this way."
"Yeah, well." I glance up the side of the building, which is windowless as far as the third floor (and then the windows front onto empty rooms three feet deep, just to give the appearance of occupation). "I'd rather call in an air strike on the power station but there's a hospital two blocks that way and an old folks' home on the other side… you ready?"
She nods. "Okay." And I take a step round the wheelie bin and knock on the door.
The door is a featureless blue slab of paint. As soon as I touch it, it swings open-no creaking here, did you think this was a Hammer horror flick?-to reveal a small, dusty room with a dry powder fire extinguisher bolted to one wall and another door opposite. "Wait," I say, and take the spray paint can out of my pocket. "Okay, come on in. Keep your warrant note handy."
She jumps when the door closes automatically with a faint hiss, and I remember to swallow-it only looks like a cheap fire door from the outside. "Okay, here's the fun part." I give the inner door a quick scan with a utility on my palmtop and it comes up blank, so I put my hand on the grab-bar and pull. This is the moment of truth; if the shit has truly hit the fan already the entire building will be locked down tighter than a nuclear bunker, and the thaumaturgic equivalent of a three-phase six-hundred-volt bearer will be running through all the barred portals. But I get to keep on breathing, and the door swings open on a dark corridor leading past shut storeroom doors to a dingy wooden staircase. And that's all it is-there's nothing in here to confuse an accidental burglar who makes it in past the wards in hope of finding some office supplies to filch. All the really classified stuff is either ten storeys underground or on the other side of the cellar walls. Twitching in the darkness.
"I don't see any zombies," Josephine says edgily, crowding up behind me in the gloom.
"That's because they're-" I freeze and bring up the dry powder extinguisher. "Have you got a pocket mirror?" I ask, trying to sound casual.
"Hold on." I hear a dry click, and then she passes me something like a toothbrush fucking a contact lens. "Will this do?"
"Oh wow, I didn't know you were a dentist." It's on a goddamn telescoping wand almost half a metre long. I lean forward and gingerly stretch the angled mirror so I can view the stairwell.
"It's for checking the undersides of cars for bombs-or cut brake pipes. You never know what the little fuckers in the school playground will do while you're talking to the headmistress."
Gulp. "Well, I guess this is a suitable alternative use."
I don't see any cameras up there so I retract the mirror and I'm about to set foot on the stairs when she says, "You missed one."
"Huh…?"
She points. It's about waist level, the size of a doorknob, embedded in the dark wooden wainscoting, and it's pointing up the stairs. "Shit, you're right." And there's something odd about it. I slide the mirror closer for an oblique look and dry-swallow. "There are two lenses. Oh, tricky."
I pull out my multitool and begin digging them out of the wall. It's coax cable, just like the doctor ordered. There's no obvious evidence of live SCORPION STARE, but my hands are still clammy and my heart is in my mouth as I realise how close I came to walking in front of it. How small can they make CCTV cameras, anyway? I keep seeing smaller and smaller ones…
"Better move fast," she comments.
"Why?"
"Because you've just told them you're coming."
"Oh. Okay." We climb the staircase in bursts, stopping before the next landing to check for more basilisk bugs. Josephine spots one, and so do I. I tag them with the mostly empty can of paint, then she blasts their lenses from behind and underneath, trying not to breathe the fumes in before we move past them. There's an unnaturally creaky floorboard, too, just for yucks. But we make it to the ground floor landing alive, and I just have time to realise how badly we've fucked up when the lights come up and the night watchmen come out from either side.
"Ah, Bob! Decided to visit the office for once, have we?"
It's Harriet, looking slightly demented in a black pinstriped suit and clutching a glass of what looks like fizzy white wine.
"Where the fuck is everyone else?" I demand, looking round. At this time of day the place should be heaving with office bodies. But all I see here is Harriet-and three or four silently leaning night watchmen in their grey ministry suits and hangdog expressions, luminous worms of light glowing in their eyes.
"I do believe we called the monthly fire drill a few hours ahead of schedule." Harriet smirks. "Then we locked the doors. It's quite simple, you know."
Fred from Accounting lurches sideways and peers at me over her shoulder. He's been dead for months: normally I'd say this was something of an improvement, but right now he's drooling slightly as if it's past his teatime.
"Who's that?" asks Josephine.
"Who? Oh, one of them's a shambling undead bureaucrat and the other one used to work in accounts before he had a little accident with a summoning." I bare my teeth at Harriet. "The game's up."
"I don't think so." She's just standing there, looking supercilious and slightly triumphant behind her bodyguard of zombies. "Actually the boot is on the other foot. You're late and you're out of a job, Robert. The Counter-Possession Unit is being liquidated-that old fossil Angleton isn't needed anymore, once we get the benefits of panopticon surveillance combined with look-to-kill technology and rolled out on a departmental basis. In fact, you're just in time to clear your desk." She grins, horribly. "Stupid little boy, I'm sure they can find a use for you below stairs."
"You've been talking to our friend Mr. McLuhan, haven't you?" I ask desperately, trying to keep her talking-I really don't want the night watchmen to carry me away. "Is he upstairs?"