Germ Page 36

“We’ll talk here,” Stephen said.

  “This street no good. Bad … uh … element … kids.” He turned a corner.

  Stephen looked at Julia. She lowered her head, whispered, “If this turns bad, jump out your side. Don’t worry about me.”

  He nodded. “Are you buying any of this?”

  “If nothing else, it’s a lead, it’s something.”

  The car made another turn. All the streets looked alike: empty, dark, and wet.

  Julia poked him in the thigh. “Listen. If something happens to me, go to the American Consulate. It’s probably in Asuncion.”

  “Nothing’s going to—”

  The car braked hard, throwing the two of them into the seat in front of them. Rain hit Stephen’s face. The driver’s door stood open. The driver was gone, three quick, splashing footsteps, then nothing.

  Stephen jerked his door handle up. Julia grabbed his arm. Blood was smeared on her upper lip, leaking out her nose. She was peering over the front seat, through the windshield.

  He looked. There was nothing out there but a disappearing red-dirt road, rust-colored puddles, millions of little stalagmites of water pinging upward, wavering sheets of heavy, dark rain …

  And a man.

  Walking toward them in the center of the street. Just a silhouette. Rising and falling with each step. Gone now, lost among the cascading beads. There! Closer! Broad shoulders. Tall. Wearing a … cape? No, a long coat, an oilskin slicker. It took a few seconds to realize the figure had stopped moving; the rain maintained the illusion of movement. Then it slacked.

  “The Warrior,” Stephen said. The wound in his side seemed to throb, as though confirming the killer’s presence. He became aware of the dome light, making their faces visible to the man outside. Atropos waited at the far edge of the headlights, appearing blurry and grainy, a 1970s eight-millimeter version of himself.

  “He knows where Allen is,” Stephen said.

  “We’re not ready,” she said. “He’ll kill us. We need to do this differently.”

  “Like how?”

  “We need to be the ones surprising him, not the other way around.”

  “Too late.”

  “Why’s he just standing there?”

  “He’s grinning,” Stephen said. He felt his muscles tighten with anger.

  Atropos swung his arm up. A red light glimmered, then his hand appeared to explode in white light. Windshield glass shattered over them. Then again. Stephen turned to cover Julia, but she was already falling out of her open door. He shouldered open his own door and tumbled out into the mud. He rolled to the rear and fell into Julia, crouched at the bumper. The back window ruptured; glass pellets washed over them.

  He looked at her hard. “You run,” he said. “I’ll distract him.” He started to rise. She lunged at him, encircling his neck with her arm. Her face, mud peeling off it with each strike of raindrop, was all he could see.

  “You’re not doing that!” she said. “You didn’t come this far to die in the mud. I can’t save Allen alone. I need you.”

  “You need me right now,” he said. “Let me get you out of here.”

  “Not like this. We both go or neither of us does.”

  He saw in her eyes she was serious.

  She uncoiled her arm and took his hands. She moved them to the bumper. “Hold on,” she said. Then she rolled away, back around the side of the station wagon.

  “Wait—!”

  He peered through the windowless back. Through cantaloupe-sized holes in the windshield, he watched Atropos approach, slowly, with confidence. He saw Julia’s hand come up by the steering wheel and grab the shifter. She yanked it down. The engine gunned, and the station wagon fishtailed and shot forward.

  The tires slung mud into Stephen’s face, blinding him. He pinched his eyes closed, held his breath, and tightened his grip on the bumper. The road played out under him, jostling him over ruts and potholes. A hundred tiny fists beat his chest, stomach, legs. Their speed seemed tremendous, and the ride went on and on. The hidden edge of the bumper cut into his fingers. Mud pushed under his grip, slick as soap. He turned his hands to stone, but he couldn’t hold on much longer.

  The wagon crashed into something. His body lifted and his head cracked against the tailgate. He released the bumper. His face dropped into a puddle. He used it to splash the mud out of his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He rolled onto his back, raised his head, and looked. They had traveled only about three blocks.

  How could that be?

  Atropos was back there, not as far away as Stephen would have thought … or wished. Red mud coated the killer’s right side, as though he had hit the road to avoid the station wagon. The rain was washing him clean again, as it was Stephen.

  Julia appeared at his side, a fresh gash in her forehead.

  “I’m all right,” she said before he could ask. “Come on.”

  She tugged on him, and they both rose. They passed the station wagon, which had struck a large wooden cart. Crates of oranges had tumbled onto the hood and road.

  At the first street, they turned right. Stephen looked back, slipped in the mud, and fell hard. Julia pulled him up. Stephen wiped his eyes and peered around.

  They were on a street mixed with storefronts and small houses that appeared to be cobbled together from old signs and corrugated metal. The rain and false dusk cut visibility to roughly two blocks; any direction could lead to a dead end or to the relative safety of a crowded indoor market—there was no way of knowing.

  “This way,” she said, heading up the street.

  Stephen took the lead. They sloshed through rustred torrents, blinking at the pelting rain. The water was cold; Stephen’s toes went from frigid to sore to numb. At each cross street, they scanned for signs of people or police or shelter. Stephen continually veered to one side of the street, then the other, rattling door handles, rapping at doors. Pedro Juan Caballero could have been a ghost town.

  At an intersection, a cutting wind hurled beads of water at them with the force of a shotgun blast. They stepped out of the crosscurrent, and Julia stopped so fast her feet slipped out from under her. She clung to Stephen’s arm, managing to stay up only after planting one knee in the mud.

  Atropos was coming toward them. Somehow he had overtaken them, or they had gotten turned around in the storm. Julia kept her eyes on the killer as she regained her footing. The wind had caught the man’s long coat, causing the sides to flap behind him like leathery wings. She saw a flicker of red dancing at his side: his pistol like an extension of his arm.

  Lightning burst across the sky, illuminating a million raindrops as if they were tiny mirrors. It blinded Stephen for a sheer moment. In that time, Atropos halved the distance between them. Clear, now, was the look of grim determination on his face. His right arm rose stiffly, pivoting at the shoulder. The laser drew a glittering arc toward them.

  “Move!” Julia yelled. She shoved her weight into Stephen. The two splashed down in a stream of rushing water at a point in the street where a curb would have been, had these back roads possessed them.

  He didn’t hear the spit of the silenced gun, but a nearby window shattered like a melodic counterpoint to the rain’s ceaseless pounding.

  “Move! Move!” she screamed. They tumbled over each other, gaining their feet. He pulled her up and pushed her forward, back the way they’d come. She stumbled again, splashing down in the mud. He leaped over her, his momentum making a sudden stop impossible. He turned and was blinded by Atropos’s red laser. He snapped his head away and felt the hot-piercing impact of a bullet.

  eighty-three

  The red dot of Atropos’s gun flickered through the beads of falling water and touched Stephen’s face like the finger of fate. He flew back, crashing through the door of a shop, its glass pane bursting into slivers, for a second becoming indistinguishable from the rain.

  “Stephen!” A drenched rope of hair fell into her face. She swatted at it, flipping it away. “Stephen!”

  S
he rose from the mud and swung around toward Atropos. He stood dark and solid in the center of the road, fifty feet away. The gun was at his side again, and he was simply watching. Slowly, watching him, but anxious for Stephen, she stepped to the shop door. The Warrior made no advance, no move intended to stop her. He seemed to be communicating his understanding of the situation: she and Stephen were his to kill at his leisure; nothing they did could prevent him from acquiring his trophies.

  Stephen was lying inside the store, his feet protruding over the bottom wood slat of the door. His head was thrown back so only his hairy chin and neck were visible beyond his chest. Did she really want to see his face, the damage a 9mm could do to it? But if he were alive, could she deny him the chance to behold a friendly face before dying?

  Then his chest heaved, and he raised his head. His eyes found her and his lips tried to form a smile, but settled on a grimace.

  “Stephen?” She felt disoriented, dreamy.

  “I think he shot me.” He crossed his right arm over his chest and gripped his shoulder. She saw where the jacket was torn and soaked in blood.

  She stepped through the broken door and crouched at his side. “I thought …” She smiled and he took it in; the healing touch of an angel—or a shot of morphine—could not have effected such a positive change to his expression. He grinned, reminding her of when they met, only a few days ago; she’d felt an instant kinship with him and had hoped she wasn’t being naive. Her chest tightened as she realized now he was one of the few genuine good guys—as Goody had been. Her heart ached to see him hurt.

  She stuck her finger in the bullet hole in his jacket and felt for the wound. He winced.

  “High on the shoulder,” she said. “Not too bad.”

  His eyes widened. “Where is he?”

  She looked out through the destroyed door. “He’s just standing there, watching. I think he’s toying with us.”

  At that moment Atropos’s rain-blurred figure took a step toward them, then another.

  “Stephen, you have to get up.” She got her arms under him and helped him up. Atropos was forty feet away and closing in fast. They stumbled around displays of pottery and handmade ceramic picture frames, heading for the back of the store. They plowed through a closed door into a living room, where a family huddled together on a threadbare sofa. The mother, a teenage daughter, and two school-age boys were making an admirable attempt to disappear into the father’s embrace. They all looked healthy and loving. And utterly terrified, Julia thought.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She pointed toward another door that was ajar and seemed to lead to more rooms. “Go in there, please!”

  “They don’t understand,” Stephen said.

  “Go! Go!” she yelled, waving the way. The family dislodged themselves and started to comply. Julia shot to a third door, this one metal and heavily bolted. She opened it. “Alley,” she announced. They heard the crunch of glass from the store. “Come on.”

  The passage was narrow and dark. Slate clouds swirled in the strip of sky overhead. The rain pelted the side of one of the buildings that formed the alley and cascaded down; a fine mist descended upon them. They sprinted left. She heard Stephen’s splashing footfalls and labored breathing behind her—sounds the tight alley magnified. They passed another alleyway that transected their own. Ahead, the rain at the end of the alleyway appeared to bow inward, taking the shape of a man before he actually materialized just inside the alley.

  It was Atropos.

  She stopped cold. Stephen huffed behind her. “I … don’t … understand …” he managed between inhalations. “Could he … have … come around … that fast?”

  She thought of the crunching glass they’d heard in the store. No way. “Go back,” she said. The figure was moving toward them. Spinning, they dashed toward the opposite end.

  Ahead of them, Atropos stepped through the door into the alley. His head snapped around to take them in.

  They stopped cold. They looked from one warrior to the other. Physically, they were identical in every way. They even converged on Julia and Stephen with the same measured gait. Each held a pistol in his right hand, a little red dot dancing beneath it, reflecting off the wet surface.

  “They won’t shoot,” she told Stephen. “They’re in each other’s crossfire.” She inched toward the Atropos that was farthest from them, the one who had followed them through the store. She pulled Stephen along by the hand.

  “When they get close enough, they will,” he said.

  “That’s why we’re going to run down this other alley. You see it?”

  “Yep.”

  “To the left.”

  “Yep.”

  “Now!”

  They bolted into the cross-alley, crashing over a garbage can. Food wrappers and bits of trash clung to their legs; the odor of rot wafted over them. Julia’s stomach, already knotted by fear, contracted at this new revulsion. She knew she could vomit and run at the same time if she had to. But in the next second, she’d forgotten about corporeal grievances—her aching muscles, her cold and waterlogged flesh, nausea—and simply ran. She listened for a sound that would signal the warriors’ arrival at the head of the alley. Would they try to get closer? Or would they just aim and shoot, a certain bull’s-eye in this straight-as-a-shooting-range passageway? Would the spit of a silenced round be the last thing she ever heard?

  They came to the end of the alley and whipped around the corner, out of the path of any bullets sailing their way. They pressed against a stuccoed wall, panting.

  “We gotta keep going,” she said. Then a movement caught her eye, A block away and across the street, a stranger emerged from an alley. He was wearing a leather jacket, appearing casual with one hand in a pocket. He had stolen Indiana Jones’s hat and had it cocked forward, obscuring his eyes. Rain poured off of it like a backyard water feature. He motioned to them, beckoning, then stepped out of sight.

  Stephen looked at Julia.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  A loud sound came from the alley next to them, a knocked-over-trash-can sound. That decided it for her. She ran toward where the man had stood. They curved around the corner and saw him at another intersection of alleyways. He was a black man and almost invisible against the darkness. Again he beckoned to them. He disappeared into the adjoining alley.

  When they followed, they found that the alley disappeared into darkness. Behind them, footsteps echoed against the buildings. They plunged into the darkness. As a wall of brick materialized at the end of the alley, a metal door swung open. Julia crashed into it; Stephen crashed into her. Bodies rushed out of the black opening, enveloping her in unyielding, viselike arms.

  She kicked out, and a pair of hands seized her foot, wrenching her leg. She was pulled into the darkness. Stephen came behind her, grunting and thrashing. The door shut, and the arms hurled her to a dirt floor she could not see. She felt Stephen land beside her. A click, and light pierced her pupils. Blinded, she heard more clicks, metal sliding on metal, mechanisms locking into place. She knew these sounds. Shielding her eyes, she looked around—

  Into the black barrels of a dozen guns.

  eighty-four

  Julia blinked. A face presented itself over the rifle poised directly in front of her. Crevices exaggerated the contours of the man’s mouth and cheeks, the permanent twin furrows between his eyes. A spiderweb of delicate lines fanned out from his eyes, which were red and moist and slightly protuberant. Folds of flesh gave him little jowls that, coupled with an expansive mouth that God surely intended for profound utterances, made him look wise. It was a face at once friendly and sad.

  It was the man who had beckoned to them.

  The rifle came down—only this one—and the man pressed an index finger to his lips. “Shhhhhhh,” he whispered, soft and long, as a mother to a baby. He took one step backward and leaned an ear to the metal door. Gently he laid the fingertips of his empty hand against the door, as though feeling for vibrations.

>   No one else in the room moved. They stood in a circle around Julia and Stephen, leveling an arsenal of pistols, rifles, and shotguns at them. Water dripped from their clothes. The man at the door cocked his head and raised his rifle like a shaman’s staff, a call for silence. Then she heard them: footsteps approaching the door, the scuff of a sole against pavement. The sound moved past without pausing.

  Someone behind Julia clicked his tongue, preparing to speak. The man at the door raised the rifle higher, shook his head. The sound outside the door returned, this time stopping directly outside. Silence. There was no noise for so long, Julia wondered if the person outside had moved off undetected. There was an almost imperceptible click. Her eyes fell to the doorknob, which was turning slowly. After the slightest rotation, it stopped. The person outside—certainly one of the Warriors—rattled the handle, shook the door.

  “Get down,” Julia hissed, trying for both discretion and urgency.

  Then it happened: the assailants outside fired into the door. The bullets made convex dents in the door’s metal skin but did not penetrate it. Two … three … four. The man at the door moved to the side, gesturing for the others to do the same. The handle jerked violently, then again, as bullets hit its outside counterpart.

  Julia noticed that a heavy bar had been braced horizontally across the door; their safety was not dependent on the handle’s integrity. The handle fell away, leaving a three-inch hole straight through to the gray alley. A shadow moved over it, then an eye appeared, rolling to take in the men, locking on Julia.

  A rifle cracked behind her, loud. The bullet pinged three inches from the eye, which pulled away. A sound-suppressed barrel slipped into the opening. It spat blindly, hitting the wall behind Julia.

  Men yelped and bolted toward an interior exit.

  The black man by the door slammed the butt of his rifle against the barrel, which spat another bullet—this one kicking up a chuck of dirt a foot from Julia’s knee. She felt hands under her arms, and she rose off the ground at rocket speed. She swung through the air and landed on her feet behind the crush of men leaving the room. She looked back. Stephen’s expression was firm, implacable. He pushed her forward.