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“And that’s all destroyed now,” Benny said, sagging back against the wall. He rubbed his eyes. “We can’t catch a break.”
“How do we know it’s all destroyed?” asked Gutsy. When everyone looked at her in surprise, she said, “I got the impression from Captain Collins that it was a pretty big underground complex. And you just said it was in deep storage. Did you mean actually deep? Like underground?”
“Yes,” said Morton. “There are two main upper levels and four sublevels. All of the Dòmi research and samples are down in the basement. Down in sub-four.”
“Then maybe there’s a chance,” said Gutsy.
“How do you figure that?” Ford asked.
“Fire burns up,” said Gutsy. “Those lower levels might be okay.”
“You couldn’t get to it,” said Morton. “The hot room—the place where many of the most dangerous bioweapons were stored—was on the upper level. The explosions would likely have ruptured that. The air around there must be a toxic soup. You’d need a hazmat suit and probably an armed battalion of crack troops, also in hazmat suits.”
“Don’t we have some of those suits here?” asked Gutsy.
“Yes,” said Flores, “but only a few.”
Alethea wheeled around and glared at Gutsy. “No,” she said flatly. “I know the look in your eye, and I can read you like a book, Gabriella Gomez. No way are you going out there.”
“I never said I wanted to,” Gutsy said quickly. Alethea’s eyes bored into hers for a long time. Then she gave a single firm nod and turned away.
“So… now what?” demanded Chong.
“Now,” said Karen Peak, “we wait until Captain Ledger and Sam Imura get back. If they find Site B, then we don’t need to worry about what may or may not be at the base. We’ll have medicine and weapons and maybe a safe place to hide. And, besides, who better to attempt to infiltrate the base to get the Dòmi?”
“And what do we do if they don’t come back?” Spider asked.
No one had an answer to that. And no one had anything else to say. The meeting broke up, and, in ones and twos, they all left the hospital. Gutsy was the last to leave. She lingered in the doorway of the examination room, looking at the form under the sheet. For just a moment Gutsy felt as if her mother’s ghost was beside her. She looked that way, but there was nothing but a heat shimmer by the window.
Then Gutsy turned away and left.
Interlude Seven In the Court of the Raggedy Man
TWO YEARS AGO
THE RAGGEDY MAN SAT WAITING for them on a throne of skulls.
The throne was on a flatbed truck angled to block the highway. There were no reapers around him, but there were plenty of guards. Those closest to the truck were ravagers dressed in leather and denim, armed with every kind of weapon—knives and swords, pistols and rifles, scythes and axes. Beyond them, and spreading out to fill the fields on either side of the road, were the gray people. Many thousands of them.
Saint John and the two young reapers walked along the center of the highway. Normally it was the chemical soaked into the red tassels each reaper wore that kept the dead from attacking them. Not this time. The gray people merely shuffled aside and watched with dull and hungry eyes as the three uninfected passed.
The three of them stopped fifteen feet from the flatbed. Saint John bowed low, and the reape
rs bowed even lower, as they had been told to do.
The Raggedy Man was naked except for the torn and filthy remnants of a pair of ancient blue hospital scrubs. His skin was a bizarre yellowish-gray patchwork of lighter and darker skin divided by deep scars that ran in lines all over him, as if his body had been blown apart and then badly stitched together using parts from every kind and color of human. It was sickening, and reminded Brother Mercy of the creature from a novel he’d read. Frankenstein. A living thing made from pieces of the dead.
The Raggedy Man’s face was similarly misshapen and scarred. His lips were rubbery, with pendulous strands of bloody drool hanging from them. He had yellow teeth that were sharpened to points, like a shark. His ears were crumpled lumps of gristle, and he had no hair anywhere on his head or body—not even eyebrows or lashes. His eyes glittered like perfect blue marbles, and in those eyes all manner of shadows swirled. Humor and anger, hunger and delight. Those eyes were the worst part of him. They terrified Brother Mercy down to the bottom of his soul.
The saint straightened. “Greetings, my old friend.”
“Been a long time,” said the Raggedy Man. “I heard you were dead.”
“People tell stories,” said the saint, shrugging it off. “And there were those told about you. It was quite a spectacular death, as I recall. Your name was on every reporter’s mouth.”
“I know. Did you see what the Philadelphia Inquirer called me?”
“Yes—‘The Man Who Killed the World.’ Very lurid. All the news services picked it up.”
