Pussnado hesitated, then chose her words carefully. “We believe we know where to find the creature that is behind all of this, yes. We believe we know how to kill it.”
Also true.
“Why did you take Maggie?”
Again, she chose her words carefully. “You are aware, Mr. Knoll, that the enemy is a shape-shifter—a being that has perfected camouflage. Examining Maggie was the only reasonable course of action, and there was no way to convey this without alarming her mother.”
Ted stared, trying not to show any change in expression. He swallowed. “And?”
“We found that Maggie had not been replaced by a doppelganger.”
Again, technically true.
Ted nodded. “See? That wasn’t so hard. So, how do we kill it? The thing that’s behind all this?”
“We just finished a device. It’s in the back, in the armory. Take it to the creature’s nest—those three know where it is—and set it off. And when I use the word ‘nest,’ I want you to understand that this nest contains larvae. That is, this creature is about to multiply. At any moment.”
Ted said, “Outstanding. You’re going to take us to the armory.”
He handed John a heavy white plastic zip tie and said, “Bind her hands behind her back, and lift her to her feet.”
John had no idea if the agent was planning an ambush here or if the device she spoke of was even real. He could read the same doubt on Dave’s face. Amy, on the other hand, was just staring at the dead man on the floor. The look on her face said something different:
It’s all falling apart.
Blood-splattered NON agent Josaline Pussnado led them past the cells, through the STAFF ONLY door and through another enormous steel door that she apparently opened with her mind. Inside, among five hundred objects that looked like spare parts for Satan’s robot army, was a ribbed stainless steel box the size of a steamer trunk.
Pussnado said, “It’s inside. Spherical casing, explosively formed penetrators all around the outer shell, at the moment of detonation it will throw waves of molten metal over a hundred yard radius—thermite and sulfur. No remote detonator, you’ve got three minutes on the fuse.”
She nodded to John to open the case, making him wonder if it was booby-trapped. John considered making her open it, but he supposed that would mean untying her hands and for all they knew, the box was full of weird guns she’d whip out at them. John looked for a latch, but found none—there was just a hole at the front of the lid, about big enough to get two fingers into.
The agent said, “You need a special tool to open it. On the lid you’ll see a hole about two inches wide. It leads to a shaft about eight inches deep. You need to insert a rigid object to depress the latch.”
John said, “Don’t worry, I have just the thing …
Me
“Here,” I said, “we’ll use this broomstick I found.”
I unlatched the lid and inside was the bomb—a flat black sphere the size of a basketball, a thick foot-long fuse sticking out of the top. Along the front in white letters was stamped the word BOMB.
Ted yelled for his army buddy, who came and scooped up the device, then jogged off with it.
Ted pointed his gun at Tasker and said, “One last question. If I leave you here, can you guarantee that neither you or your people will come after Maggie?”
She paused, but not out of fear. Steeling her resolve.
“Mr. Knoll, I can guarantee that we will come after her. I’m sorry, but we don’t have a cho—”
He shot her right in the heart.
27. THIS WOMB OF MINE
Outside the front door was waiting a camouflage pickup truck, Ted’s army buddy at the wheel. Ted jogged toward it, making like he was going to leave without saying a word.
John said, “Wait! The woman who was driving your car—who is that? What’s her deal? Or, just, what’s the deal in general?”
“I hope you don’t get offended, buddy, but communication within your chain of command is shit. Joy found me right after I left the cannery, said you sent her. Said Maggie was gonna get taken to this facility and that she had a way into the guard room. Acted like you people had been settin’ it up for a while.” He climbed into the pickup and nodded back toward the bed. “I’ve got the asses.”
In the bed of the truck were the boxes of silicone butts that had been in my apartment.
I said, “Uh, good.”
“Where’s the nest?”
“The what?”
“The nest of the thing. The Batmantis.”
“Oh. Right. Tell you what, I’ll ride with you, I can show you. Speaking of which, where is, uh, Joy taking your daughter?”
“They’re on the way to meet Marconi at the Walmart. Joy said she’d be safe with him.”
“Oh. Yes. Right. Good.”
I felt a pair of small moons roll off my shoulders.
Marconi will know what to do. And maybe we don’t even need to be there to see it.
If, that is, Maggie doesn’t hijack his brain.
Of course, we had no guarantee Joy was actually taking her there, or that she wasn’t in cahoots with the thing in the mine. Or that Maggie wouldn’t hatch on the way.
The pickup had a back seat; I climbed in and John and Amy ran off toward the Jeep. Ted nodded to the man in the passenger seat—the guy was holding the bomb in his lap like he was bringing home a watermelon from the supermarket—and said, “This here is Philip, everybody calls him Shitbeard.”
“Good to meet you.” He did not have a beard. “We’re going to the pond at Mine’s Eye. It’s where we found Maggie. You’re going to turn up here at the—”
“I know where Mine’s Eye is. Been out there before.”
“You have? When—”
My phone rang. It was Marconi.
I answered, “Yes, Doctor.”
“Mr. Wong, I have received a very frightened little girl, her panicked mother, and a Korean woman who insisted I call you right away.”
“Sure. The young girl and her mother are”—I glanced at Ted—“uh, in a similar situation to Mikey. The Korean woman is adult film star Joy Park, you’re surely familiar with her work. Make sure Maggie gets, uh, treatment. Immediately.”
“Treatment?”
“Yes, we were able to treat Mikey, he’s all good now.”
“He is? In what way?”
“Right, right, I’m in the car with Maggie’s father right now. “
Hesitation.
“I see. Loretta Knoll is here in the room with me, in fact.”
“Remember how Amy and I proposed two possible options? They went with my suggestion, not hers. It worked.”
“I see. Our friends discovered a method, I take it?”
“Yes. You know what, call John, he can fill you in. There’s something in the trunk of Joy’s vehicle, it will require some explaining. Quite a bit, in fact.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, I just want to be clear that you definitely shouldn’t keep her waiting. In a situation like this, every second counts.”
“Are you and Mr. Knoll heading my way?”
“No. We’re on our way to Mine’s Eye. We’re going to finish this.”
Amy
Night had fallen by the time they arrived at Mine’s Eye. The pond had turned into a popular gathering spot; motorcycles were parked along the hilltops and people were prowling around the cabins and the church, searching for the supposedly missing kids. Amy figured there were two ways to look at it: it was bad news that so many people were in contamination range of what the Millibutt was presumably about to do, but it was good news that they were still searching—it meant the kids hadn’t been “found” yet. John parked a ways away from the church—its lot was full—and she wondered how they were going to deal with all the bystanders.