The Bone Triangle (33 page)

Ezzie sent us right back to the ruined casino. I stepped out of nothingness into the damaged building, finding myself between the blackjack tables and the quarter slots. The slot machines were dark and lay on their sides. Quarters and paper cups full of chips lay strewn everywhere, discarded and forgotten. What a horrible panic must have swept this place.

The Beast was nowhere to be seen. The tentacles were gone, as were the rips it had used to attack the casino. At least, I thought, I could feel good about that part. It seemed that my efforts had made it retreat.

Ezzie came through the rip but didn’t stay with me. She formed a new rip and left again before anyone stumbled upon us. I laid McKesson on his back in the smoke-filled room and tried to make him as comfortable as possible. I pulled out my cell phone to call for an ambulance.

“Sir? Put that away!” a voice rang out.

I turned with the phone to my ear. A startling figure advanced. He had brilliant flashlights attached to his helmet and his gun. I slowly lifted my hands.

“I need help,” I said. “This man is a police officer, and he’s dying.”

“We’ll take care of him. Get out of the building. No civilians are allowed in here; we’re sweeping every floor.”

I blinked at him. “Sweeping every floor for what?”

“Terrorists, of course. Don’t you know what happened?”

“Uh, enlighten me.”

“The building was attacked. Bomb damage and bodies everywhere. All the survivors are loading up on buses to go to the hospital. That includes you.”

“I’m not injured, but please take my friend.”

He shook his head emphatically. “We’ll get a stretcher and take him out. You’re going right now.”

I thought about arguing, but two more flashlight-wearing men in body armor appeared near a crushed Corvette circled by velvet ropes. I gathered the car had once been a grand prize.

“Show me the way,” I said.

I followed the man toward the exit. Long before we reached the door, however, I used Jacqueline’s candy cane and vanished. My escort cursed and fumed, marching around in circles, calling for me. I left him searching around the ruined front desk of the hotel. The last I saw of him, he was standing outside the restroom, threatening me. I shrugged and stepped outside into the comparatively clear night air.

I walked outside, getting my first look at the Lucky Seven. The building hadn’t come down, but there had been a considerable amount of damage. Hundreds of windows were broken, and smoke drifted out of several of them far up the walls. For blocks around, the police had barricaded the streets. As I listened to snatches of conversation, I was
stunned to learn they, too, were engaged in the cover story about mythical terrorists.

I was weary and wanted nothing more than to find a hot shower and a bottle to take into it with me. But I was stunned by the situation. How could the authorities possibly believe they would be able to cover up a story this wild? A building attacked by masses of alien tentacles? Crushed bodies, hundreds missing or dead, fires and mayhem of every imaginable type? Just the police themselves would be impossible to keep quiet. Who could go home to a spouse at the end of such a day and maintain tight-lipped silence after having seen the wildest sights of his life?

I’d once read that most conspiracy theories don’t hold water due to the nature of human psychology. It’s simply impossible for ordinary people to keep a secret. That argument had always rung true to me. Even I’d found it hard to believe in UFOs, Bigfoot, and the like.

But today, I was witnessing a massive conspiracy firsthand. How could they possibly succeed? I found the buses in question. There were only two of them in evidence now, but I surmised from wandering emergency people that many more had been here recently. The buses were odd in appearance. I’ve seen a lot of these bulky vehicles, and they generally run to type. But these were different. They were painted a glossy black and had no insignia displayed that I recognized. Every window was heavily tinted and completely opaque.

My eyebrows lifted of their own accord. This was interesting. I took the opportunity to poke my nose into one of them and have a look around. The driver was sitting in his seat, texting. The engine idled loudly while his cell phone made comparatively tiny tones as he tapped at it.

I took a look at what he was telling someone with his thumbs on his cell phone. I read “totally bored. convention still hasn’t broken up. will come home in an hour…I hope.”

Convention?
I was stunned. This man was in on the conspiracy. It was chilling. What would the motivation be? How well paid was a government bus driver? Did he believe this was all for the sake of national security?

The man twisted his neck around and half stood up. He’d detected me somehow, I could tell. I leaned back quickly so he wouldn’t run into me. His head swung back to his console, and my eyes followed his.

There I was, peering over his shoulder like a ghost. The bus had cameras, and they’d spotted me.

“Who’s there?” he demanded loudly.

I made a hasty exit from the bus. Surrounded by cop cars, I realized many of them were idling and probably had their cameras running. I had to get out of here before someone decided to capture the ghost in their midst.

I hurried away and crossed the empty boulevard, heading into the one area no one seemed to be going. I walked into the deserted streets of the Triangle.

I walked through dark, quiet streets and puzzled over what I’d seen. Was this some kind of giant organization, bent on erasing this event? Did these men come from the cube city I’d seen in the desert? Was the city teeming with government goons? It just didn’t add up. The bus driver had not fit the part of a grim-faced CIA cleaner. The cops hadn’t impressed me as anything other than people doing their jobs. If I had to guess, I would say they all believed their own cover story—but how was this possible given the number of eyewitnesses? What was going on? What could cause so many people to act in concert?

The first answer I came up with was a chilling possibility. What if I wasn’t on Earth at all—not
my
Earth, anyway. What if Ezzie had returned me to a close approximation of my homeworld, where terrorists rather than monsters had just attacked the Strip?

I rejected the idea after entertaining it briefly. There were too many things that didn’t fit. The damage to the hotel didn’t look like a bomb attack.

If this was my Earth, then something strange was going on. Those strange black buses were on the top of the list. They were physical and undeniably weird. I decided I couldn’t figure this out in a vacuum. I didn’t have a lot of people I could ask about it, but I knew one who might be watching closely as these events unfolded. I also suspected this particular individual knew more than he’d been letting on since the beginning. It was time to talk to Gutter Jim. He was the one who had sent McKesson and me after the Beast in the first place.

I walked to the middle of the closest intersection in the Triangle and took out the bottle that served me as a weapon. I clanged it on the manhole cover in the middle of the street.

“Come on out of there,” I called. “I know you can hear me.”

It took a minute or two, but I was determined. At last a figure stepped away from the street corner behind me. I stood up and turned around sharply. He had come from the storm drain, rather than the manhole.

“It’s time you and I had a serious talk,” I said, putting my hands in my pocket.

He looked me over but didn’t come any closer. “Did you get to the Beast?”

“We hurt it.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “Don’t try to put a good face on it. You failed utterly.”

“We drove it back, I think.”

“You didn’t kill it. More people will be eaten tomorrow night. Many more.”

“Did you honestly think we could do it? Or did you just send us in there to die? Do you know what it’s like in there? Have you ever visited that little slice of hell, Jim?”

He laughed. He took a step toward me, waggling a finger. “That’s quite a stack of questions, rogue. I don’t answer questions from your kind unless they are politely stated—
and
I’m in the mood.”

My anger flared. I’d seen too many people die. I could no longer stomach his attitude, and I’d heard enough. It was time to get some straight answers.

I figured he wasn’t coming any closer than he was right now, so I vanished and started moving around him. In my pocket, my left hand was wrapped around the candy cane. In my right, I gripped the bottle.

Surprised, Jim made a tiny sucking sound as he drew in a gulp of air. “A rogue trick?”

I had to get behind him. He figured out what was happening about two seconds later. I suspect he’d heard my feet pounding on the asphalt. He was only a few steps from the storm drain he’d risen up from, but I calculated it should be enough. In a near panic, Gutter Jim scrambled toward the dark drain, diving onto the street like a runner sliding for home base. His fingers reached desperately toward the square metal waffling that covered the drain.

I knew if he reached the drain, he’d escape, but I didn’t want to kill him. I smashed him down, swinging the bottle like a club. I caught him just behind the ear and drove him into the pavement.

He crawled on his belly, still game, still dragging himself toward the drain. His hands were claws, but he was still a few feet short of his goal.

I sat on his back and pressed the bottle against his shoulder. I allowed myself to become visible again; I wanted him to know who had him pinned.

“Freeze,” I said. “Or so help me, I’ll burn a hole right through you.”

He froze. I felt his labored breathing. I shifted, putting my knee on him. I never gave him a chance to move. I knew the second Gutter Jim had so much as a finger into his home domain, he would be gone.

“You’re a brave one, I have to give you that,” I told him. “None of the other Community members I’ve met up with would leave their domains for a second. But I suppose I can understand it in your case. Who wants to spend life in a stinking sewer? And who else in their right mind would go down there to visit the wretched gutter-man?”

“Shut up,” he said, breathing hard.

“I will,” I said, “if I can get you to start talking. Did you send McKesson and me after the Beast just to kill us?”

“You can’t pull this crap, rogue. The Community won’t stand for it. We have a pact, you know. We used to fight, but now we are all on the same side. Even Rostok won’t save your ass if you kill me.”

I tapped his skull lightly with the bottle again. He winced. “Wrong answer,” I said. “Perhaps you don’t appreciate the power of this particular object. Let me demonstrate.”

I aimed it toward the storm drain he was trying so desperately to get to and beamed it into molten slag. The metal glowed orange and dripped into the sewer, each droplet hissing when it struck moisture below.

Gutter Jim craned his neck around to look at the bottle in my hand. “That’s Trujillo’s!”

“Very observant,” I said. “Are you in a talking mood now, or do I have to cook off some spare toes?”

He twisted to look up at me. His eyes were wide and the whites showed. He looked at me, his fear greater than before. “Did you kill him? Did you kill Trujillo? I can’t believe it.”

I pressed the bottle against him. “Yes, I’m a killer. A new kind of Community member. Don’t make me burn you.”

“Okay, be cool. I didn’t send you down there to kill you. I hoped you could kill the Beast, just like I said. Everyone says you’re the best. There’s no one like you, no one who can handle so many artifacts at once. Anyone else would go mad.”

I frowned at this. His answer wasn’t what I had expected, but I thought he was telling the truth. At least, he believed what he was saying.

“Go on,” I said noncommittally. I was still playing the bad rogue, the dangerous crazy rogue who might murder anyone and enjoy it. It wasn’t really me, but it was a part I found easy enough to play, especially after my recent experiences.

“I thought you could do it, that’s all.”

“I believe you, but why? What were you going to get out of it?”

He prattled on about saving the city for a bit, until I threatened him further. The interview took some time, but no cars came down the street. There had been a few lighted windows, but the lights vanished soon enough. No one ventured out to learn what was happening in their streets. No one who had lived this long in this neighborhood had any curiosity left in them.