Balthazar slammed the butt of his rifle, once, twice, on a pair of hands that clung to the tailgate. He was crying, and he kicked at another joker who tried to climb aboard.
Zoe understood his pain, the necessity of what he was doing; Bruckner had to get the truck out the gate and up to speed or they couldn't get gone, couldn't save even the few who had managed to fight their way onto this ark. Jan, Mama, Angelfish, if he lived, the three-fingered joker who had helped pull Zoe aboard, the others who whimpered and clung to each other in the crowded truck. All of them might survive, if Bruckner could do his trick with distance.
"Zoe!" Balthazar yelled. "Can you help Bruckner?"
He motioned toward the cab.
Zoe nodded. "I can try!" she yelled.
Hands pushed her to her feet. Jan looked up from where she huddled by Angelfish; Jan's eyes glowing bright with terror and hope in the smoky, sand-filled air.
Get Jan out! Save her!
Bjorn's voice bellowed louder than the roar of the truck's laboring engine.
Save these few, not the whole world, but they are dear and precious; yes, Daddy, I'll try.
Jokers shifted out of Zoe's way, pushed her, lifted her over their bodies and forward toward the cab.
Help Bruckner? If she could, she would animate the whole damned truck, give it wings, fly it over the Zion gate.
The three-fingered joker smiled at Zoe as she was handed over him. He smiled, and coughed, and covered his face with his hand. He stared puzzled, at the bloody mucus in his palm.
Zoe tumbled through the window of the cab and over the lap of a rifle-wielding Fist before the realization struck her.
The joker was dying. We carry the Black Trump. Can't leave. Can't take the Black Trump out of the City. Can't.
"You, is it?" Bruckner's massive arms fought the rust-stained wheel of the rickety truck.
"Yeah. Zoe." She sat wedged between Bruckner and a Fist with a rifle who peppered the crowd with bullets to try to clear a way for the roaring truck.
The truck crashed through a barrier of seller's carts, old chairs, scrap wood. They flew aside; revealing a more substantial barricade made of parked cars. Bruckner geared the truck down and bulldozed his way through, while metal screeched and glass shattered. The gate was not a hundred yards away. Beyond it, Zoe caught a glimpse of the UN flag, whipping in the vellow gusts of the simoom.
We carry the Black Trump in a rusty truck and all of them will die, nats, babies, murderers and innocents. She stared at the rusty steering wheel.
Rust. Aluminum. Thermite!
I'm sorry, Bruckner, but we can't leave. We die here. I'm sorry, Anne.
Zoe leaned forward and blew, gently, at the rust on the steering column, at the set of aluminum keys that dangled from the dashboard. Ferrous oxide, aluminum oxide. She turned her head and kissed the rifle barrel beside her, magnesium for a catalyst -
"Bloody hell!" Bruckner screamed. He lifted his scorched hands away from the red heat of the steering wheel as the reaction catalyzed every bit of steel in the truck into glowing heat, as the engine froze, as the wheels fused into solid masses of angry, reactive metal.
The truck stopped dead with its front bumper crumpled into the ramparts of the Zion gate.
Smoke, wails of terror, blasts of rifle fire, Zoe could see only Bruckner's fist, as large as a country ham. The fist seemed to expand as it drove toward her jaw.
She heard the smack as it connected.
The world turned red and then went black.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
"Up there," Owl said, "at the end of the cul-de-sac. They've stashed the bomb in the garage."
"All right." Ray took Owl by the shoulders. "They're distributing the Overtrump at a UN medical station in the old church on Chabad Street. Know where that is?"
Owl nodded. "What about the bomb?"
"Don't worry about that. I'll take care of it."
Owl nodded again. "I - "
"Owl, it was great working with you, but if you don't get going neither of us are ever going to pull another caper again."
Owl flashed a smile that made him look like a real kid. "Okay. Thanks, Mumbles. Good luck."
"Good luck," Ray said, already climbing up the rungs of the ladder to the street above.
This part of the Old City looked like a ghost town. Ray went up to the garage doors and shoved. They were locked. He thought about knocking for a second, then figured, screw it. He put his good shoulder to the door and pushed. It gave a little, but was locked from the inside. He looked at the door. The wood was thick, but old. He backed up, gave a running start, and smashed into it, shoulder first. There was groaning and complaining and some wood even splintered off the door, Ray backed up again, charged it, smashed into it, and it started to sag inward.
Cursing his aching shoulder, he got his hands around one of the door panels and yanked. The lock pad yielded, pulling out of the wooden door, and the panel collapsed.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
With Hannah gone, Gregg let go of Puppetman. Near him, the LED glowed, the numbers of its face changing inexorably.
1:00
0:59
Puppetman lay still, beaten. Strings trailed from his fingers, the ends frayed. Why did you do that? it asked him. Why? We could have lived.
"I've lived that way before," Gregg told it. "And I ended up living your life, not mine."
Someone was hammering on the doors, and Gregg could sense a familiar presence close by. "There's no way to disable the nuke other than setting off the explosives early?" he asked the Black Dog again. "You're sure?" The Black Dog just nodded, his mask hardly moving. The leader of the Fists was fighting to remain conscious, the blood loss from his wounds terrible. For a moment, he thought of using Puppetman, of forcing the Black Dog to yank the wires while Gregg fled, but the Black Dog was too weak. There was no strength left in him.
I don't have a choice.
As Puppetman watched, sullen, defeated, Gregg went to the timing mechanism. Yellow hands, his joker hands, grasped the knot of wires trailing from it to the bomb. "It's time for me to do something for myself," he said. As he spoke, the doors to the garage screeched as they were forced open by superhuman strength. Billy Ray stood in the doorway.
"Hey!" Billy Ray yelled. He paused, seeing Gregg with his hands on the timer.
"I never said thanks, Billy, and I'm sorry," Gregg called out to Ray. "And I'm sorry for this, too."
Gregg yanked the wires free of the timer.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Damnation roared around Ray and he closed his eyes. Something wet and squishy slapped him in the face and chest and he opened his eyes, blinking.
He wasn't dead. He wasn't atomized or blown into green glowing bits. He was, however, bleeding. He put his hand to his face and brought it away covered with some kind of green goo. He suddenly realized that it wasn't blood, even, but stuff from the inside of the caterpillar that had been blasted all over the inside of the garage.
Caterpillar parts were everywhere. An abdominal segment with three pairs of attached legs was running in circles around the floor. As Ray watched, it keeled over, kicked a few times, and was still.
"Jesus, Hartmann ..." The garage groaned and began to collapse. One of the walls looked as if it could come down any second.
Ray walked to where the Black Dog lay in the puddle. The Fist leader was unconscious. He'd caught some shrapnel. For once Ray had been lucky. He'd only been hit by caterpillar parts. He wondered what had happened, then realized that Hartmann must have pulled the plug on the nuclear explosion, but couldn't stop the conventional triggering mechanism from going off. He looked at the bits of caterpillar scattered all over the room. "Jesus, Hartmann, I guess you were a hero after all."