“Yeah, yeah, I know, you’ve got orphans in Haiti to support.” I hated being reminded that Schwartz didn’t think me capable of behaving responsibly. He was probably right. I don’t know what gets into me sometimes. I can’t save the world. I know that. I was having a hard time saving myself. But here I was anyway.
We drove straight through the lingering remnants of the gas cloud, down Edgewater, past the swiveling streetlights and sleeping gargoyles. Schwartz pulled the car up to the police barricade blocking the plant driveway at the end of the street, waved his badge, and cruised on through to Acme’s security gate while I tried to appear innocuous.
The guard handed us clip-on passes and waved us past after checking his log to verify the senator had called in about a guest pass. I cringed at knowing that respect came from having friends in high places.
Losing a boyfriend had been a hard way to gain a senator. Even after it turned out that Max had been using me as a spy, he had still rated as one of the good guys, and the sex had been incredible. I was sooo not getting it on with Max in his cousin’s body, though. That was just too freaky.
As a consequence of my vowing to lay off both Max and Andre, even the respectable lieutenant was starting to look good. And I hated cops.
Acme’s reception area was unassuming, at best. Old linoleum-tile floors, a spindly banana-type plant near the front window, a wooden desk guarding the hallways leading off left and right—straight out of the fifties or an old people’s home.
Obviously, the Vanderventers didn’t spend their money on décor. Schwartz again flashed his badge, and the nondescript receptionist gave us directions to command central, or whatever cops called it.
“Best if I don’t show my face to anyone who knows me,” Schwartz murmured, steering me down a dark corridor of closed office doors and veering from the directions given.
“Watch it, or your Dudley Do-Rightness will wash off,” I warned. My smart mouth hid a variety of fears.
Schwartz was a hunk and a half, but his shining armor was seriously out of place in the world I lived in. Maybe I could grow into his world—after I swallowed my terror and rescued Sarah and Bill. I checked directional signs and decided labs would be a good starting point.
“Someone has to uphold the laws,” he muttered, shoving his muscled arm in front of me and checking around a corner before letting me proceed. The entry-level floor seemed to be mostly gray walls leading to manufacturing facilities. “Place is weirdly empty, isn’t it?”
“Saturday,” I reminded him. “Who in here would be working weekends besides security?”
“Paddy should know. It would help if he’d carry a phone. The crazy old coot gives me the creeps.”
For closemouthed Schwartz, that was an I-wanta-be-friends moment. And it worked. I studied him with interest. After all, he had great abs and I’d been without sex way too long. He was looking back. But this wasn’t the time for overtures of that sort. I hid my gap-toothed smile, and we both glanced away at the same time.
Following signs, we took the stairs down. We’d been directed to an office on the top floor, so we were safely heading in the opposite direction of authority. I just hoped we weren’t aiming for a nest of vipers. I’d had some pretty hazardous encounters with Vanderventer security in the past.
The ozone stink seemed stronger in the stairwell, but I didn’t notice any green gas. I kept checking myself to be certain I didn’t somehow start disappearing like Tim or shifting like Sarah. The ozone and rattling metal steps gave me cold shivers.
At the bottom of the stairs, we found another corridor, this one of concrete blocks painted two shades of beige. Signs indicated Lab A was on the right, Lab B on the left. Voices carried down the corridor from the left.
Confronted by the peril of what we were doing, knowing Bill was strong enough to take care of himself, I had a WTF-am-I-doing-here moment until I recalled Sarah’s condition. To avoid nuclear damnation, we had to find her.
Which meant going where the people were. Grimacing, I turned left. Schwartz grabbed my elbow. We had a brief, silent wrestling match that I was going to lose unless I used dirty fighting. Not wanting to actually hurt one of the good guys was a deterrent to violence.
Paddy resolved our nonverbal argument. He peered out of an unmarked door, held a finger to his lips, and gestured us in.
I swear, the room we entered was straight out of Bride of Frankenstein. I expected Boris Karloff to pop out of a closet. Wooden lab tables! Beakers, test tubes, burners, clamps . . . I hadn’t done well in high school chemistry, but I could recognize the ancient apparatuses.
A battered desk covered in papers and notebooks was nearly hidden in one corner by a metal cabinet. Dust covered everything. Nary a computer in sight. And no Sarah, not that I’d expected our hunt to be that easy.
“Where to now?” I asked, trying to keep the doubt from my voice. If this was Paddy’s lab, it didn’t appear as if he’d worked in it for years.
Paddy had donned a long, dirty white lab coat since we’d seen him at Andre’s. His beard was as scraggly as his hair, but his eyes were clear and perceptive as he rummaged through a drawer and produced blueprints.
“I confiscated the building plans. Here’s us,” he rumbled, pressing his finger to a little square in the sprawling complex. “They’ve put the EPA up here.” On a top management floor, away from the action.
“The technicians they’ve called in are meeting down here.” He pointed to a slightly larger rectangle roughly in the direction from which we’d heard voices. “The stairs to the hidden sublevels are here.”
I gulped. He was pointing at a door accessible only from the room where all the technicians were meeting. “What’s in the sublevels?” I asked, just because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“The Magic labs,” Paddy replied.
Okay, so maybe he wasn’t totally sane after all.
6
Schwartz didn’t bother hiding his skepticism. “Magic lab? Is that some kind of acronym?”
“Code word,” Paddy acknowledged. “About twelve years ago, Acme acquired a new element from a top secret source. If anyone asks what we’re working on, we just say magic.”
“Swell, a new element to blow up the world, like uranium, right?” I asked. “And they’ve got Sarah down there with your crazy exploding experiments? What about the other zombies?”
“Zombies?” Schwartz and Paddy both asked, glancing up from their study of the blueprints.
“Like Sleeping Beauty back at Andre’s—dead, but not dead,” I explained impatiently. “What’s up with that?”
Paddy wiped his big hand over his face, but I thought I caught a glimpse of sadness before he turned back to the table. “That’s not our concern. We have to remove Sarah first.”
Okay, I got that. Sarah was one of those “special” people that the Zone residents hid from the outside world. They’d been hiding Sleeping Beauty, too. And I aimed to find out why, eventually.
“Will Bill be there, too?” I demanded.
“I think they’d gather all their victims in one place,” Paddy acknowledged. “There’s not a lot of places to hide them.”
“Can we call the authorities once we find them?” I asked bluntly.
Paddy shook his head. “Acme will stonewall. That’s why they have the victims hidden. I think Gloria bribes the police chief or someone to play down incidents here. Schwartz, if Tina called you on an official basis and told you there were homeless bums in Acme’s secret basement, what would you do?”
“I’d go for a search warrant.” Schwartz glanced at me and shrugged apologetically. “And even if my boss gave me permission to try, which would be a hurdle, the judge would deny it unless I had proof that Acme was harming innocent people. No one believes Acme’s dangerous but us.”