“Not me.” He put his hands on his knees and gagged.
“What’s going on here?” George asked.
A cold finger of fear skittered up Lisa’s spine as pieces started clicking into place. “Where’s the ambulance?” she shouted, casting about wildly.
“What ambulance?”
“The one with the goddamn bodies in it! The one with the goddamn bodies!” She started pushing through the crowd. There!
The ambulance was driving slowly toward the curb. Lisa shouted, but in the confusion, no one was listening.
Lisa put her head down and ran.
For a second she thought she’d catch up. The ambulance slowed as it bumped down off the curb and into the street, and Lisa put on a burst of speed. The ambulance made a clumsy turn into its lane and Lisa caught a glimpse of the driver.
A kid?
It was a goddamn kid, barely tall enough to see over the steering wheel. An unruly mop of black curly hair puffed out from beneath the blue uniform cap of an EMT.
He was grinning at her.
“Stop that ambulance!” Lisa shouted, but it was no use. The kid flicked on the lights and sirens, and her words were drowned in a flood of emergency noise.
43
“HEADS UP, PEOPLE! DEATH BARBIE’S onto us,” Tank shouted into the back of the ambulance.
Cynthia cursed. “Already?” She was unzipping her EMS jacket, revealing a flak jacket that read SWAT. “Get them out of their bags,” Cynthia said to Kook.
“Kinda of busy saving our asses here,” Kook murmured. She was still in her own EMS gear with her laptop propped on her bloody knees. Her fingers left slick dark stains on the keys as she typed.
Cynthia cursed again. Everything was happening too fast. She went to unzip the pair of body bags, revealing the bloody visages of Alix and Moses.
“Romeo and fucking Juliet,” she scowled.
Kook shot her a dirty look. “Let’s have a little optimism here, all right? I’m trying to work.”
“Yeah. Optimism. Got it.” She started digging in her raid kit for syringes.
Optimism optimism optimism.
The ambulance was slowing. The front door opened and Adam piled into the cab, still wearing his Williams & Crowe SWAT gear, and hauling a duffel bag. The ambulance accelerated again. Adam grabbed for support, nearly falling over as Tank gunned the engine.
“We’ve got Shortstuff driving?” he complained.
“I’ve got my license,” Tank shot back. “Quit whining.”
“Only because Kook hacked DMV,” Adam muttered as he stumbled into the back of the ambulance. They bounced over another curb and everyone grabbed for handholds.
“Watch it!” Cynthia shouted. “I’m trying to work back here!’
“Sorry!” Tank called back.
“What’s the rush?” Adam asked. “I thought you or Kook was going to be driving.”
“Death Barbie’s sending her troops after us any second,” Cynthia said.
“Already?”
“Can’t expect everything to go perfectly,” Kook muttered.
Optimism optimism optimism.
Moses’s zipper was jammed. Cynthia swore. “I don’t have time for this! Adam, get this open.” She turned and went back to rummaging in her raid kit while Adam fumbled and fought with the zipper. “Jeez, he looks terrible.”
“Just get him out of the bag more. I need a shoulder.” She finally found her syringe and uncapped it. Squirted clear fluid into the air. She took a deep breath.
You can do this.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Adam asked.
Cynthia paused with the needle in her hand. “You’re asking now?”
“I’m just the muscle here. You’re the one who read all the drug studies.”
The ambulance squealed around another corner, and they all scrambled for support.
“Sorry!” Tank called before they had a chance to complain. “We’re almost to the Beltway!”
“Is it going to work?” Adam asked again.
“Just hold Moses still,” Cynthia ordered. “I don’t want him bouncing around while I stick him.”
Adam gripped Moses’s bloody shoulders. “Your hands are shaking,” he observed.
Cynthia shot him a glare. “No,” she said. “They’re not.”
She slid the syringe into Moses’s arm. Nice and easy. She pressed the plunger, and fluid flowed out of the syringe.
“How long is it going to take?” Adam asked.
“I don’t know. Probably a couple of minutes.”
“You don’t know? I thought you were the doctor here.”
“I’m pre-med, asshole. Anyway, no one would know. It’s all in the drug interactions and dose.” She was already fumbling for another syringe and popping the cap.
“Get Alix ready.”
Adam unzipped Alix’s body bag the rest of the way and got a shoulder exposed.
Cynthia paused on the verge of sticking her. It was horrifying to see Alix inert and smeared with blood this way. Nothing like the girl she’d known at Seitz. She looked like some kind of corpse bride. So pale.
“Snow White,” Adam murmured.
“Cyn was thinking more Romeo and Juliet,” Kook said.
“Talk about pessimistic.”
“That’s what I said.”
Optimistic, optimistic, optimistic.
“Okay,” Cynthia said. “Let’s see if we can make Snow White wake up.” She buried the needle into Alix’s flesh and shot her full of drugs. She knelt back, waiting. In Cynthia’s mind, all she could see were long biochemical chains interacting. It should work, she thought.
Nothing happened. She checked Moses. No change. She pressed her fingers to his cheek.
Did he feel colder?
“Give them another shot,” Adam said.
“I don’t have any other shots.”
They waited, staring at the two inert and bloody bodies, peeled out of black bags.
Two more casualties they could lay at the feet of the Doubt Factory.
44
ALIX CAME AWAKE RETCHING. SHE rolled over and nearly fell off the stretcher and then retched again. She blinked in the light. She was swaying. No, everything was swaying.
And swerving.
She was dimly aware of someone else gagging and coughing. The sound made her retch again. She blinked in the light and found Cynthia and Adam peering over her.
“What the—?” Alix recoiled.
Cynthia straightened, smiling. “Welcome back from the dead, girlfriend.”
“What are you doing here?”
“We thought we’d kidnap you again,” Adam said. “You know, for old time’s sake.”
A sudden terror made her lurch upright. “Moses! Where’s Moses?”
“Here,” a voice croaked.
Alix whirled to find Moses lying beside her on a stretcher, looking wasted and covered with blood.
“Oh my God, what happened to you?” Alix ran her hands frantically over his body. “Where are you hurt?”
“It’s fake blood,” Cynthia said.
“For effect,” Adam added helpfully. “Needed to make you look good and dead.”
“But… but…”
Alix tried to take it all in. She was in an ambulance, half-zipped into a body bag, and she was covered with sticky blood. Her hands, her arms. Her hair was matted with it.
She stared around herself, trying to put everything together. Cynthia and Adam and Kook, everyone was wearing SWAT and EMS gear. Makeup made them look older.