"I won't allow this ... this travesty!" the doctor said. "I'll - "
"You'll what?" Ray said, picking him up one handed and slamming him against a wall. The doctor fell silent. Ray dropped him.
Quasiman seemed to rouse himself as Ray unstrapped the canister from his back. "Hannah," he said distinctly. "Don't!" And he vanished.
Ray was left holding the canister of the Overtrump.
"Don't what?" Sheila Davidson asked.
Ray turned to her. He noticed for the first time that her perspiration was tinged with blood. "Uh ... don't waste time. Spray everyone. Listen, why don't you take some of this stuff yourself? It couldn't hurt."
She smiled at him, but it was a pained, wan smile. "No. I don't suppose it could ..."
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Hannah sank down, sitting with her back to the ugly device. She seemed empty. There were no colors around her at all.
"We've got company," the Black Dog said from alongside the door. They could all hear it: muffled shouts, and hammering on the warehouse doors. The doors bowed, and they could glimpse torchlight between them, and the front rank of a crowd. There were angry faces there, joker and nat alike, and their fury swelled like a red wave, threatening to tear down the doors all by itself. Gregg shivered with the power of the crowd-emotions. "The locks aren't going to hold."
"Stay back!" Hannah shouted at them, her voice small against the growing roar outside. Something hard rammed the doors, bending them. "There's a bomb in here! Get away!" Hannah glanced at Gregg. She's mine! Mine! "They could still stop us," she said. "I wish the damn thing would hurry up!" Then she laughed, almost hysterically. "Listen to me," she said. "Rooting for a damn nuclear explosion."
Gregg looked around the room; the curved steel plates that had once covered the nuke were leaning against the walls of the room. Gregg went to one of them and sniffed its delightful sheen. "Hannah," he said. "Grab these. Put them in front of the door. That's it - jam them in tight. Here, take this bar and stick it on like a brace ..." Gregg directed the building of a loose barrier of metal around the door. In a few minutes, they had an impressive heap in front of the door.
"That's not going to keep anyone out," Hannah said. "None of it's attached to anything."
"Give me a second...."
Gregg scrambled up until he stood on top of the heap. He looked at the metal, let its delicious tang fill him.
And he vomited, carefully, again and again, as he moved around the mess. In a few moments, the metal began to sag and fuse, the plates melting into each other, the bars and braces fusing into the adjoining pieces. The biological welds created a massive unit of steeclass="underline" plates, bars, hinges and locks, all lumped around the wood and effectively sealing them in.
"There," Gregg told Hannah and Puppetman. "Now it's over. Forever. No way out, no way in." And there's nothing you can do about it, he told Puppetman. Nothing.
Inside, Puppetman fumed. Gregg huddled by Hannah and wondered what death would feel like. He snuck a glance at the LEDs.
6:00
5:59
For four minutes now, they'd had time to contemplate their lives, and their deaths. There was nothing to say. None of them spoke. Gregg wondered if there was silence in Hannah or the Black Dog's minds. There certainly was none inside his.
There's still time to stop it! Still time!
All of Gregg's strength went to keeping Puppetman down. He had nothing left for anything else.
"Hannah?"
The voice startled all of them. Hannah scrambled to her feet, trying to bring the Black Dog's Uzi to bear, Gregg skittered reflexively back several feet until he bumped into the wheel of the bomb trailer. Hannah fumbled with the safety, then laughed. "Quasi!" she shouted, dropping the Uzi and hugging the joker. Then the laughter died. "Oh, Quasi, you have to leave here. Now."
"Hell, yes," Gregg said excitedly. Optimism suddenly flooded through him. We're going to get out of this! We're going to LIVE! "And he can tale us with him." Inside, Puppetman suddenly yammered in hope.
"One at a time. That's all I can do."
"Hey," Gregg told the hunchback, and a voice echoed him from inside. He's got to take you first. Chances are he'll take Hannah somewhere else and then totally forget what he's doing. He'll never make it back in time. You first ... US first.... "No problem. One at a time, then."
"Gregg," Hannah said. She waved a hand at the bomb, at the timing mechanism. "Remember this?"
"So what?" Gregg told her. "It's all set. We're not infected Hannah. There's no reason we have to die here. Not now. The bomb will go off on its own. Let it do it while we're somewhere else."
"No," Quasi said.
I'll goddamn MAKE you ... Puppetman seethed. Let me have him, Greegie. Almost, Gregg let the power loose, but he held it back another moment. "Quasi, we don't exactly have a lot of time for discussion here."
"Someone has to stay. I've seen it."
"Why, Quasi?" Hannah asked far more gently than Gregg would have. "Why does someone have to stay?"
"The Overtrump," Quasiman answered. "I brought the ..." He seemed to forget the word, then his face brightened. "... stuff. From Mark." Quasiman stopped. His left hand disappeared and his gaze went vacant. A thin line of drool trickled from one side of his mouth.
Hannah took Quasimans head in her hands, forcing him to look at her and causing a surge of irrational jealousy in Gregg. "Quasi, please. What are you trying to say?"
For long seconds, there was no answer. "Quasi..." Hannah said again, and the joker shook himself. He smiled at her, and Gregg could feel again the outwelling colors of his love for Hannah. "A cold," he told her. "Complete sentences. The Overtrump is the cure ... like a cold ... only then you don't get the Black Trump ..."
"Oh, God." Hannah let her hands drop. She looked at Quasiman as if he were an accusation. "You're not joking? It works?"
"Works," Quasi nodded. "Working already. You need to stop ..." For a second, Quasiman's entire upper body winked out of existence, returning eerily a moment later. "I ..." he said. "I need to take Hannah with me. I ... can't hold it together any longer. It's getting too hard. I'll ... forget." The agony in his voice was exquisite. Puppetman howled.
"Going now," Quasiman said. "Hannah ..." He opened his arms. Hannah looked back at Gregg.
"Quasi, I ..." Gregg could see the hesitation in her, the guilt. Puppetman screamed to be released. She doesn't want to be the one to go. Look at the fear, the guilt, the uncertainty. This is EASY, I tell you. Let me loose and I can make her refuse Quasiman. I can make her say "Take him. Take Gregg." She loves you. She thinks life's dealt you an unfair hand and just a push will make her willing to exchange her life for yours. Just a push ...
"I can't leave Gregg," Hannah finished. "Don't you see?" Hannah cried. "We can't stop the nuke. It's already too late for Jerusalem." Her face had gone pale, and the colors of guilt and shame surged around her like a wild surf. "God, I've killed all those innocent people ..."
"It's not too late," the Black Dog husked out. "Remember what I said about the dance, how everything has to go off at just the right time? Set off the conventionals too early, and you'll get a dandy explosion and scatter bits of radioactive material around, but you won't get a nuclear explosion."
"How do we do that?"
"Yank the wires. That's the simplest way."
Let me out! I can save US now. To hell with Hannah, let her deal with this.
Quasi won't take me, Gregg told the voice.