Behind each of them stood one of the huge alpha bags. One cord went to a wooden handle in the swollen fist of the bag behind them, and a second, longer cord was tied around the bag’s waist to prevent an escape even if the bag were killed.
Piotr was close enough that I could see the fine drops of Greg’s blood dotting his shirt and jacket. I strained to move, to reach him, and actually managed to drag the bags holding me several inches closer.
“Good,” he said. “Hold on to what you’re feeling. We’re getting close to the end of this unpleasant business, you and I, and I promise that you’ll be satisfied with the way things turn out. We’ll each get what we want, in the end. For now, however, you’re going to have to trust me. I’m going to have your hands bound behind your back with police zip cuffs. Now, I know they can’t hold you, even as … unfinished as you are, but if you break free, that’s a clear sign that you’re not cooperating, and my slaves over there will simply give a good yank on those cords and kill your friends. Okay?”
I went limp. Piotr placed one hand on my head, almost reverently. Possessively. “Thank you.”
Zip cuffs are police restraints that resemble big plastic zip-ties like the kind the hostages had been bound with, only thicker and with two loops that ran through a central plastic block to hold each wrist. The bags pulled the strips so tight that my skin caught in the slot where the band entered the plastic housing, cutting the flesh.
After that I was yanked roughly to my feet and shoved out the door and into the parking lot with everyone else. One of the prison buses sat idling close by. Piotr took the pistol from Anne and tossed it away. He stepped up to me and pulled my baton out of its holster. He turned it over in his hands thoughtfully.
“You made this, correct?” I could still hear a touch of his Polish origins under the tacked-on Midwestern accent he used. “Well, I say you made it, but I think we both know that it wasn’t entirely you.”
“I made it. Just me.”
“Really. Quite a coincidence, isn’t it? That you would create this object, this specific object, right after we met. I mean, what are the odds? Unless, perhaps, our meeting changed you more than you admit to other people. Or to yourself, yes? Well, in any case, you won’t be needing this crude imitation any more.”
My heart sank as he turned and threw my baton out into the darkness. I never heard it land.
“Well. Time to get started. I’m a patient man, but I think I’ve waited long enough, don’t you? Thanks to your friends all those years ago, pulling you out of your birth waters too soon and stealing my book. Yes, I think we’ve both waited long enough.”
Piotr gestured at the open door to the bus with a little half bow, every bit the genial host.
53
Back when I was a kid, my folks used to take us to barn dances out in the country. You’d get there an hour or so before the band started up, and there would be picnic tables set out on in the grass outside of the barn. The kids would always eat at separate tables, and the grownups would always arrange us boy-girl-boy-girl at each one. That’s how Piotr had arranged the bus ride, only instead of boys and girls, it was people and monsters.
The seats had been ripped out and replaced with long wooden benches than ran down the sides of the bus so that passengers would be facing each other across the center aisle as they sat. The benches were all one piece, thick and heavy, and coated with once clear but now yellowing lacquer. They had regular bolt holes in them in the center and on the ends, and these were used to secure them to the brackets set into the floor, but the bolts themselves weren’t what was originally in them. Fresh scarring where the nuts had gouged a circular track into the varnish was proof of that. They looked familiar, but I couldn’t place what they had originally been part of.
Two passengers were already seated at the rear on the left side of the bus, one hostage and one bag. The hostage sat next to his monster, leashed around the neck with cords as expected, but with the addition of a sack over his head.
I was shoved into place on the bench on the right while my friends were pushed into position on the left, alternating hostage and keeper all down the line. The wooden handles on the ends of the cords remained clenched in the bags’ fists.
My two escorts sat on either side of me. I was alone on my side of the bus with my keepers, with my friends serving as audience, or maybe jury, in front of me.
Piotr strode briskly down the aisle, nodding to himself in satisfaction at the weird tableau. When he reached the rear of the bus, he put his hands on top of the coarse burlap sack on the head of the hooded passenger and looked back over his shoulder at me. “Care to guess who we have here?”
I didn’t have to guess, I knew Henry’s hands as well as my own. When I didn’t respond, Piotr winked at me and then yanked the sack off of Henry’s head with a flourish.
He looked bad. His lips were cracked and split from both thirst and somebody’s fists, and there was a trail of dried blood that traced a line down his cheek from his left ear. His eyes, however, were as sharp and alert as ever. And angry.
“It’s always a pleasure to reunite old friends.” Piotr gave Henry a few stinging slaps on the cheek and then went back to the front of the bus and slid into the driver’s seat.
A moment later the bus roared to life and lurched into motion. Streetlights swept past the windows, throwing sharp shadows and highlights across our faces, both human and other. Thick tentacles that erupted from stretched lips glistened as the light passed over them, swaying and bouncing with the motion of the bus. Above them glassy eyes stared blankly ahead, neither blinking nor looking away.
In front of me, the gallery of my friends sat and silently regarded me. Anne. Chuck. Henry. I don’t know what they saw in my eyes, but I know what I saw in theirs. Cold anger and resolve and not a single speck of fear or defeat.
Back at the quarry Anne and Chuck had accepted, even embraced the idea that they may have to give up their lives to ensure that Piotr and his creatures paid for what they had done. As soldiers, Henry and I had always been willing to do that. I was touched by their valor and their refusal to give in, regardless of the circumstances. Their quiet resolve in the hands of their captors made me proud and gave me strength.
“He took me from the hospital, not an hour after you left.” Henry’s voice was strong, despite the raspy dryness of his throat and tongue. “He was close by, just waiting for you to chase down his men. Abe, every step you’ve taken has been a step he’s planned for you, right from the beginning.”
“I know. And I don’t think this is the first time. How exactly did we end up in that train station in Warsaw?”
He nodded. “Patty’s nose.”
“Exactly. Patty would smell bags close by and we’d follow. If we got off track, bags would attack us and then run off, and we’d chase them. Remember?”
“Makes sense. We didn’t surprise Piotr after all, he led us to that train station, just like he’s been leading you around the country all this time.”
“I think the surprise was when you pulled me out of that pit before he was ready, and then stole the altar pieces and his journal.”
Henry leaned his head back against his seat and closed his eyes. “This time he took the altar pieces from us, made sure you had a tracker in case you got off the trail, and collected a nice group of hostages that you care about to keep you under control once you followed him to where he wanted you. Obvious in hindsight. And smart.”
“If it’s obvious, then tell me what he needs me for. Why lure us there in the first place, all those years ago? And why now? What’s he trying to accomplish?”
Piotr called out from the front of the bus. “Justice, my friend. No less than that.”
54
When the bus stopped, I glanced out the window and realized where I had seen these wooden benches before. They were school bleachers. The bus doors whooshed open and my handlers led me down the rubberized steps into the faculty parking lot of an abandoned high school. The idea of Piotr running around loose inside a school
