Other lights were moving up there. He looked up, counting two traces, then a third, coming his way. They must’ve been waiting, thought Deckard. Then she called them in.
A rational part of his head was almost glad the gun had been lost, knocked from his hand out in the woods. Otherwise, he might have been tempted to do something stupid with it. Like try to put up a fight.
He was sitting in the cabin’s single chair when the agents, in their grey, insignia-less SWAT suits, shoved open the door.
“Deckard?” The leader—there were half a dozen behind him, sheer overkill—aimed an assault rifle’s short barrel toward his chest. All the men had buzz cuts and hard, machinelike faces; they could’ve been LAPD elites, but he didn’t recognize any of them. Before he could answer, the leader smiled and pointed the weapon toward the ceiling. “Good. You’re being smart.”
He sighed. These gung ho types had always given him a cramp. “What did you expect?”
“You’re coming with us, Deckard.”
“Can’t.” He tilted his head to indicate the coffin beside him. “I’ve got to take care of her.”
“She’ll keep.” Two of the other agents had stepped behind the chair, yanking him from it by his arms pulled to the small of his back. “This won’t take long.”
The spinners were unmarked as well. “Are you guys Tyrell?” He studied the team’s leader as the canopy swung down into place. On the man’s breast pocket was a name tag that read ANDERSSON.
“You don’t need that information.” The leader hit the cockpit’s PURGE button. The ground fell away.
Deckard leaned back, turning his head to watch the other spinners pull into flanking position. “Where we going?”
“Don’t be stupid.” The leader didn’t take his eyes from the controls. “You know.”
He did know. His hands drew into fists. “Why?”
A sharp glance. “You know that, too,” And a sneer. “You left too much unfinished business there. That’s why.”
Deckard closed his eyes. He was going home. To L.A.
3 . . . . .
“How’s the patient doing?”
The nurse looked back over one of his broad shoulders at the questioner. A man in an identical set of green scrubs, sterile disposable wraps over his shoes, smiled at him. “Who’re you talking about?” asked the nurse. He didn’t recognize the guy; either new staff or from a sector of the hospital that he didn’t get to on his rounds.
“The cardiopulmonary case up on the eighty-third floor.” The man indicated the floor immediately above them with a tilt of his head and a quick upward glance. “How’s he getting along?”
“Okay, I guess.” The nurse shrugged. “I mean . . . he can breathe. As long as nobody unplugs him.” More to it than that: inside the equipment-laden cart, the chrome assemblage he’d pushed up to the elevator doors, was a ten milliliter jar filled with red sputum that he’d just suctioned out of the doped-up patient’s bronchial tubes. If that little chore wasn’t done every couple of hours, the poor bastard with the fist-sized hole shot through his chest could still strangle to death, no matter how many high-tech pumps and hoses were hooked up to him.
“Why you want to know?”
The other’s turn to shrug. “Just curious.” The smile remained switched on, accompanied by sharp-focused eyes that didn’t smile at all. “Seems like a lot of fuss—you know? Locking off the whole floor and everything. And all those cops standing around.” The man did a mock shudder, while his gaze narrowed, from stilettos to probing needles. “Creepy, huh? Who is that fellow, anyway?”
“Beats me.” The nurse thumbed the elevator call button again, glancing up at the blank number panel above the doors. Like a lot of things in the hospital, it didn’t work, or never had.
“Just meat on major life support, far as I’m concerned.” Grinding noises echoed in the shaft, and the elevator doors finally drew open, revealing a space littered with broken syringes and scraps of red-soaked bandages. “Not my business.” He pushed the equipment cart in, stepped behind it, glass crunching under his feet, turned, and hit another button. “And guess what—it’s not your business, either.” Another grind as the doors slid toward each other.
The guy with all the questions reached out, his white knuckled hand grabbing the dented stainless steel of one door, not just stopping it, but forcing it back into its vertical slot. He leaned inside the elevator, glare alone fierce enough to back the nurse and the equipment cart into the corner. Then he smiled again.
“You’re right.” He nodded slowly, pleasantly. “It’s not any of my business at all. You just remember that.” He let go of the door and stepped back. He was still smiling when the doors closed all the way and the elevator started down.
Talk about creepy—the nurse pushed himself away from the equipment cart. The hospital administration would hire just about anybody, it seemed.
Colonel Fuzzy and Squeaker Hussar marched across the sideways world, carrying their fretful burden with them.
“Careful—you’re gonna drop me!” Sebastian wrapped the crook of his arm tighter around the colonel’s neck. In thin starlight, steel and Teflon showed through where the teddy bear’s brown woolly coat had worn away. “C’mon, fellas. I put you together better’n this!”
Shiny button eyes looked back around at Sebastian; the raggedy uniformed teddy bear snarled, neck twisted, chrome fangs revealed in its snub muzzle. He knew that Colonel Fuzzy always got crotchety when its gut-load of batteries started to run down. Sure better’ve been some fresh ones in this drop, he worried. It would be tricky enough to deactivate the teddy bear—he’d long ago had to wire in a self-defense drive, for Colonel Fuzzy to have a chance of surviving out here on the sideways. The colonel had claws longer and sharper than a real bear’s, and it wasn’t fun trying to get past them to the shutdown relay underneath the faded Napoleonic jacket. It would be even less fun to have the lighter, faster but weaker Squeaker carry him back to their nest.
As the animated teddy bear plodded forward again, Sebastian hitched himself around in the leather-strapped papoose carrier, looking back the way the three of them had come. This was all new territory, someplace he and the colonel and the hussar had never been before, or at least not since they’d all fled from the canyons of downtown L.A., where the buildings still stood upright. He’d had his own legs back then, otherwise he’d never have made it.
There were some sections around this zone where the fallen office towers weren’t lying perfectly flat on the ground, but were cracked up at various difficult angles. Most of the windows, that at noontime shone up at the hammering sun like smooth, white-hot anvils, had been shatterproof tensile laminates, so there weren’t many chances of dropping inside and finding a route through the cockeyed law offices and depopulated bankers’ suites. If Colonel Fuzzy had to be taken off-line, Squeaker wouldn’t be much help in getting across that slick, tilted terrain. He didn’t relish the prospect of crawling all the way home, using just his own remaining hand and arm to pull himself along.
Please, dear God, he prayed as he rode on the surly teddy bear’s back. Let there be batteries. That’s all I’m asking, at least for right now.
“Sebastian! Over here!” Squeaker’s high grackle voice came from beyond rubble and twisted rebar. “I found it, I found it!”
Without any prodding, the colonel picked up its speed, claws of mitten hands scrabbling at the broken concrete rising before it. As they crested the ridge, Sebastian pushed himself higher on the colonel’s shoulder, scanning to where the hussar was jumping up and down and pointing. A soft-edged star, bright international orange, radiated from the welfare bundle’s impact point.