Damn Him to Hell (32 page)

I was trained to act instinctively when grabbed by brutes. I swung my bag and kicked backward with all my strength. Unfortunately, the goon’s arm was longer than my legs. He dodged the bag and retained his grip.

Andre sucker-punched the thug lunging for him. With a nifty twist I’d like to learn, he elbowed the bully in the solar plexus to keep him spinning, then thumped our next assailant with two fists to the jaw in a swift upward thrust that left my fighting abilities in the shade.

Not having time to be awed, I swung my puny weight sideways enough to unbalance my captor and kick his jewels. He screamed and released me. Biker boots ain’t light.

I ducked another grasping fist and gut-punched the next thug who got near me, nearly breaking my knuckles. Stupid move, but by this time, I was fueled
by fury and not logic. In hindsight, had I been thinking, I would have dodged the brawl and gone for the Einstein with the answers. But I was in red-rage madness and needed to take down brutes while resisting cursing them to Hades. My victim grabbed my hair. I raked his face with my fingernails and reached for the surgical knife I’d stuck in my waistband.

I couldn’t, unfortunately, fight off the gun aimed at my head by the creep who came up behind me. I froze at the cold metal pressed to my temple and the meaty arm choking my esophagus. I’m barely five-five. The goon had to be covering six feet or more. I was out of my league.

Andre had no such problem. Even as I tried to slither down from the choke hold, Andre pulled his automatic out of his belt. Giving me no time to scream in panic, he point-blank shot the thug. The gun at my head clattered to the floor and I whipped free of the brute’s hold. Just like an old oak struck by lightning, he toppled.

While the troll shrieked in outrage instead of shock, I stared in incredulity at the neat hole in the middle of the thug’s forehead. Killing probably wasn’t good for Andre’s health or his future behind bars, but the man was damned good at it. They say that Special Ops training stays with you forever.

I didn’t have the stomach for violent video action. I wanted to barf. I considered taking out Andre’s weapon for the sake of his immortal soul, but the brutes had now rightfully targeted me as the weak link. I was suddenly occupied, swinging left and right,
offering vicious kicks at goons lumbering up on me from all sides, while swinging my knife at any others who considered coming closer.

But shock had momentarily replaced my red rage, and I’d finally woken up and realized that what I really needed to do was to break through these goons to get at the shouting white-haired troll jumping up and down at the end of the hall, unapologetically demanding our demise. I wanted answers.

Andre had his legs spread and his gun aimed, waiting for a clear shot in the tangle of arms and legs trying to halt my whirling-dervish act. The guards were nasty thugs willingly following the orders of a nutcase, but they
might
be redeemable. I couldn’t damn them to hell and wish our patients back to normality, much as I’d like to try.

For the sake of Andre’s immortal soul and my eternal health, I sighed with regret and conjured more toads. Or bullfrogs. I liked that solution, and it didn’t require a lot of mental acuity.

I threw in a hasty picture of frogs turning into princes if kissed. I didn’t know if kisses would actually transform them back to thugs, but if they had loved ones out there, maybe I’d find them and hand them a frog. Someday. If I survived. It was mildly better than letting Andre shoot them all, as he apparently meant to do.

Andre’s next shot winged a fire alarm—because his intended victim had shrunk to boot-heel height and now hopped about the floor, croaking. We both stared in disbelief at the frightened, hopping frogs.
Even the guy with the bullet in his middle morphed into a flattened amphibian with his webbed feet curled in the air.

Andre turned an incredulous glare on me. The ensuing shriek of fire alarms prevented argument and shredded my already ragged nerves. And yeah, of course, the sprinkler system came on. The frogs loved it.

At the end of the hall, Einstein froze in disbelief as half a dozen amphibians hopped about where his guards should be, but Andre and I were Zonies. We were used to chaos and destruction. We took off running in his direction, trying to avoid breaking our necks on the water coating the tiled hall.

The white-haired troll sprang into action, darting into an office to the left. The slam could be heard over the shrieking alarms.
IVANOV BERGDORFF
had been gold-lettered onto the door.

I had the gut feeling we’d just located the true villain behind Acme’s depredations.

Andre didn’t even bother trying the knob. He simply blew it away, then kicked in the door.

Not wanting to lose my chance to question our target, I whacked the gun out of Andre’s grip with the side of my hand.

Andre shot me a truly disgruntled look but miraculously didn’t go after the gun. Maybe even he understood what he was doing to his soul when he killed. Maybe he had issues like mine. Although not quite like mine, because he’d been trained to kill, and I’d been trained to find evidence.

But I didn’t figure Bergdorff would give up information just because I asked. So I jumped him before he could put that big desk between us. Landing on his back, I brought him down to the ground and rammed my knee into his spine.

“What is that infernal contraption doing to us?” I shouted, struggling to hold down the furious scientist. For an old man, he was wiry and strong.

“Making magic!” he cried. “We can cure cancer, raise the dead, own the world! It worked, can’t you see? They said it wouldn’t, but it did! The gas is curing their ills.”

That sounded way too much like Gloria’s mad tirade. I could be sitting on another power-hungry demon. Or a madman. Guilty by way of insanity? “Did you gas us on purpose?” I asked in horror.

“I needed to prove my element would work on people! It was the only way.” The troll shoved, and, furious, I shoved back, kneeing him harder and grabbing his electrified hair. Andre located his gun but stayed out of my way, thank all the heavens and maybe Saturn.

“How?” I demanded, wanting to smash Bergdorff’s nose into the floor but magnanimously refraining. “With pipes straight to hell? Where does that gas come from?”

“Who cares?” the troll asked, practically spitting in rage. “Don’t you understand? I’m creating medical history! All those sick old people—they’re cured!” He stopped his struggles in his need to explain.

“They’re not better if they’re comatose,” I argued,
backing off slightly and wishing he were right. “And the gas causes violence.”

“But don’t you see? We can utilize that!” he crowed in triumph. “The ultimate weapon! We just have to refine the process.” Taking advantage of my loosening grip, the devil came up swinging. He socked me straight in the diaphragm, sending me sprawling backward into Andre.

And of course Andre had aimed his damned gun while my back was turned.

Knocked off target by me hitting Andre’s shins, the shot rang wild. The troll grabbed the opportunity to dive for an open desk drawer.

Figuring he was going for a gun, I rolled for cover. Andre did the opposite. He flung himself directly at Einstein.

Instead of a gun, Bergdorff brandished a familiar aerosol canister. He spritzed. Pink sparklies and a green cloud billowed in Andre’s face.

Andre staggered backward, cast a startled glance at me, then crumpled, nearly two hundred pounds of male muscle at my feet. That he hadn’t turned into a raging berserker like Gloria probably said something, but Andre was the final straw. He’d been trying to do
good
. And now he was comatose like the others.

Red rage instantly consumed me.

The cloud had drifted down to the carpet, where I was still gasping from the blow to my gut. I couldn’t catch my breath in time. I inhaled.

He’d gassed us! The insane Nazi had gassed us!

Just as he had risked all our lives by gassing the
Zone, used our friends as guinea pigs, and turned them into zombies.

“Damn you to hell, you’ve killed him!” I shrieked, wiping my eyes and lunging for the madman behind the desk, who had scrambled to his feet again.

My curses never worked fast enough and usually required physical action. Stupid slow Saturn.

Bergdorff shot another cloud of gas but missed in his scramble to retreat from a raging virago. Covered in pink sparklies, I was too furious to think. I just went over his desk, aiming for his face and the can at the same time. I mashed his nose with the flat of my hand and shoved him back against the wall before nearly ripping his arm out of the socket to get at the cloud can.

“I want Andre back!” I yelled, struggling with his grip on the can. “I want my friends back. I want all the zombies back, you bastard.” I dug my fingernails into his hand so hard that he finally dropped his weapon. “And I want you to suffer like them!”

With that last shout, I did more than slam my palm in his face. In my wild frenzy, I swung my fist at his jaw with all the power in me and sent him flying. He wasn’t big and he wasn’t agile and he obviously had a glass jaw. He slumped into a window, crushing the blinds. Before he could recover and come after me, I found the canister and shot him with his own damned gas.

He shrieked. He clutched at his eyes. And instead of leaping at me in self-defense, he turned and dived through the closed window, blinds and all.

I staggered backward, stunned. I didn’t think it was really possible to throw oneself through glass and blinds at close range. He should have just bounced off. He didn’t. As if a giant hand had grabbed his back and swung him through the air, he took out everything, including the aluminum frame. And then he was gone.
Whoosh
, out the window.

Maybe I hadn’t killed him. Maybe he was just out there on the ground.

I glanced down at Andre’s lifeless, elegant body sprawled across the floor and felt the red rage drain away, replaced by soul-deep fear that I might never talk to him again. I didn’t know what was happening to us or to the Zone, but I’d never wanted anyone to die. Or spend eternity in a coma. Shaking, trying not to cry or panic, I approached the window and leaned out.

This was the main floor, one level above the basement labs where we’d left Paddy and the machine. The window wasn’t much more than ten feet above ground—a survivable drop.

Einstein lay crumpled across a spiked fence surrounding an air-conditioning unit. I was pretty sure the black spike coming out his back wasn’t good for his heart, if he had one. My stomach churned. Had I done that? Or the evil gas? Or . . . Saturn?

A frog hopped through the open doorway and across Andre’s silk shirt, croaking. I realized the fire alarm had stopped shrieking. In the silence, I could hear the bullfrog still bellowing through the air vents. I brushed pink particles off my sleeves and started shuddering. Hard.

“Okay, Saturn, what do I do now?” I whispered, wishing I’d at least learned how to save the zombies before inviting death and destruction.

I had no idea if Bergdorff had been mad or evil. I just knew he was dead. And so was almost any hope of Andre and the others recovering.

Hands trembling, I could scarcely open my bag to retrieve my phone as I kneeled beside Andre. I still had the can in my hand. I stared at it in distaste, but, not wanting to leave a weapon lying around, I stashed it in my bag after removing the phone.

Who should I call? I didn’t know how Andre or Paddy had gotten in. I wasn’t certain Leo would be willing to climb the fence, and we really needed ambulances and cop cars. . . .

Phone in hand, I knew my mind wasn’t working right when I realized I was thinking of calling cops to help Andre. He was wanted for murder. And there was a dead body outside the window and missing security everywhere. And frogs.

I stared in fascination as the one near Andre shot out a long tongue to catch up one of the pink particles as if it were a tasty insect.

The frog didn’t flinch when I glared at it, but it hopped under the desk to slurp more particles while I tested the pulse in Andre’s strong wrist. He was still alive. Grasping at this one straw, I punched in Cora’s number. This was Zone business. Outsiders not allowed.

P
addy staggered in holding a white cloth to his head. He glanced down at Andre and wearily slumped into a chair. “What happened?”

“Einstein gassed him.” I put away my phone and waited for the troops to arrive. I still wasn’t certain if Paddy was any saner than Einstein or Ferguson had been. Maybe magic gas had polluted their brains and the whole plant was crazy.

Paddy glanced worriedly at Andre, rubbed his head, and asked with puzzlement, “Einstein?”

“Oh, stop that,” I said grouchily. “I’m tired of the crazy act. The troll with the white hair who had the cloud canister. He sprayed both of us. Andre dropped like a stone. The troll went berserk.” With a little help from a raging Saturnian lunatic.

“Bergdorff?” he asked in bewilderment at my rant. His attention was more on Andre than me. “Andre got gassed? Julius will kill me.” Paddy winced and pressed the cloth tighter to his head. “We’ve got to get him out of here before we call the cops to report Ferguson. I’ve already called the fire chief and told him we had a false alarm.”