Gasping for breath, he pulled open the door on the driver’s side. A wave of relief coursed over him. “What the—” he said, almost laughing. Mendel was stretched out on the seat, asleep. “You’re sure taking this easy.” He reached down and shook the short man’s shoulder. The body rolled over and fell to the van’s floor, the head lolling against the accelerator and brake pedals. The seat was shiny with blood.
Ralph backed away, clutching the device in his sweating hands. He forced himself to walk to the rear of the van and to pull the doors open.
Spencer’s body couldn’t be seen. A wadded mound of paper was smoldering into ashes between the banks of electronics. The interior was filled with smoke.
Gunther, he thought dully. Sarah was right about him. He found out somehow, or something else happened to make him snap. And now they’re all dead. Spencer and Mendel and Sarah—
Something moved inside the van. He peered into the smoke and saw a man’s vague outline. Was he holding something out to him? Suddenly, Ralph fell back as a flash of light appeared in the obscured hand, followed by a muffled pop. The window in one of the doors shattered around a bullet hole.
Raising himself from the asphalt, he looked up and recognized the figure standing above him. Gunther.
The hand with the gun pointed down at him. His heart stopped for a moment, then he reached up, grasped the van’s door and swung it towards Gunther. The edge of it caught the gun and sent it clattering into the darkness beyond the van.
He was running across the lot before his mind was functioning again.
Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Gunther’s silhouette separate from the outline of the van and start after him. He realized he still had the device gripped in one hand. The image filled his mind of a place where he’d be safe. For a moment, at least.
The service elevator was still open on the ground floor. As he punched the button inside and the doors slid shut, he saw Gunther run onto the loading dock. Then the elevator jerked upwards.
Ralph leaned against the side of the elevator. His lungs burned with each breath. He considered trying to elude Gunther in the building, then making it out into the street. No, he decided, If I can get into the broom closet and into the field I can wait until morning. Chances will be better when the building’s full of people. The elevator rattled upwards in its shaft, each floor falling slowly past.
Finally the doors pulled open and he stepped out into the corridor. A sound froze him. Somewhere on the floor, one of the passenger elevators was closing. He ran, turned the corner, and saw Gunther hurtling toward him from the other end of the corridor. The broom closet was between them. Cradling the device to his chest, Ralph ran for the door.
He made it into the dark space but before he could close the door, Gunther had pulled it away from him. The man’s weight toppled him backwards against the mops. As the enormous hands circled his throat, he grasped the device’s wire loops and twisted the knob.
Breath came again, along with the cool fluorescent light. His ears were filled with a wailing, siren-like noise. He stood up but the noise didn’t end. The alarm’s been tripped, he realized. They’ll find me if I stay here.
Something hard seemed to grow inside him, swelling in his chest. He stepped backward against the wall of the small room, tightened his grip on the device’s wire loops and turned the dial.
Gunther was still in the broom closet, waiting, his hands spread and tensed. He started to turn as he felt Ralph’s presence behind him, but then staggered as the flat metal box struck the side of his head. Ralph swung the device again and Gunther fell heavily to the floor of the closet. The device dropped to the concrete as Ralph’s hands started to tremble. He forced a breath and ran out to the corridor and toward the elevator.
Several blocks away from the Muehlenfeldt Center, he found a phone booth and called a taxi. As he stripped off the janitor coveralls he saw that the front of them was stained with blood. That’s from the van, he thought vaguely—his emotions were burnt out from exhaustion. He left the coveralls in a trash can outside the booth.
“You look like you’ve really been through it,” said the taxi driver as Ralph climbed into the back seat.
“Yeah.” He reached up and kneaded the side of his face.
“Must’ve been some party. Hey, let me know if you’re going to be sick and I’ll pull over to the curb, okay?”
At the downtown bus terminal, he got out and paid the driver. A few of the people inside the brightly lit building glanced at him as they stood or sat beside their luggage. The automatic doors swung open as he approached them and he hurried toward the ticket counter.
A few moments later, he sat in the building’s lobby, waiting. He leaned forward and studied the ticket, though he had already memorized everything on it. Norden, he thought, and then back to the base. Maybe that’ll be the last place they’ll look for me. Maybe there’ll be enough time to figure out what to do. But L.A.’s not safe any longer. He leaned back against the bench, a hollow feeling growing inside him. No place would be safe again.
PART THREE
The Base And Beyond
Chapter 11
The sun came up as the bus crossed the desert. Ralph awoke from fitful sleep—dreams of more fangs, sliding in the sockets of armored jaws—and saw the red light staining the earth. Blood, he thought. A residue of fear and nausea lingered in his stomach.
Nothing had become clarified in his mind by the time the bus pulled into Norden. He had no plans other than getting more sleep, letting the fatigue poisons drain away and seep into the carpet in his apartment on the base. The door of the bus hissed shut behind him as he stood on the sidewalk. The proprietor of the town’s miniscule grocery store glanced at him, then continued drawing up the store’s window shades.
On the path that led to the base, a lizard scurried away from him and disappeared into the rocks at one side. Ralph wondered if the two bright little eyes were watching him from some dark space as he passed. And who else is watching me right now? The thought chilled him despite the morning’s growing heat, until he forced it farther back into his mind. A little time’s all I need, he thought. To figure out what to do next.
The town had long disappeared behind the hills’ sand and scruffy brush. A few more yards and the buildings of the Opwatch base appeared inside the encircling fence, square and almost featureless, the same color as the dunes beyond them. The sun bounced off the blank walls with such intensity that he lowered his eyes and walked toward them with his head bent, as though through a storm.
He stepped through the unguarded gate and trudged towards the Rec hall, passing between the other buildings as they slowly sucked up their own shadows. The familiar scent of the Rec hall’s air-conditioned interior hit him in the face like a silent blow. The door of dark glass swung shut behind him. Another copy of the L.A. Times was spread out on the table.
Goodell raised his eyes from behind the sports section. Farther down the hall Kathy was fumbling her hand around inside her mailbox. Suddenly he felt even more tired than before he had come in, his fatigue now extending above him like the sides of a deep well. Right down here at the bottom, he thought. Where nothing ever changes. This is better than L.A.?