A tiny man dressed entirely in black appeared next to Madi. 'Iron Guard!' he shouted. 'I've searched everywhere. The Tesla device is not present.'
Madi was occupied dragging the poker out of his body. It made a sickening grating noise as it cleared his ribs. The tip came out with a chunk of tissue wrapped around it. He threw it on the floor with a clatter. 'What a waste.' He lifted his watch. 'Toshiko, give me a minute to get out of here, then scrub it off the map.' Madi rested his blood-soaked hand over the ninja's shoulders, started to speak, then paused. 'Hang on…' his face crinkled as if he had a strange smell stuck in his nostrils. He walked over to where Jane was unconscious on the floor. 'What do we have here? A Healer? You assholes actually have your own Healer?'
'Get away from her,' Garrett gasped as he struggled to rise, blood streaming down his face.
Madi reached over and grabbed a fistful of blonde hair. He dragged Jane through the broken glass. 'You know how rare these are?' He was talking to the Shadow Guard. 'This should make up for losing an Iron Guard.' He seemed to be having serious difficulty breathing. 'Get us out of here.'
Garrett had pulled himself up the wall with a trail of bloody handprints. 'Leave her alone!' he shouted, and the voice that came out of him wasn't the voice of a man, but a roar of thunder. It was like a commandment from a burning bush and Francis cringed as the words struck him to the very fiber of his being.
Madi hesitated, his brow creased as he fought the Influence. 'Damn… You're good.' Then he raised his revolver and shot Garrett. The little man went down hard. The Shadow Guard laid his hands on Madi and Jane and the three of them Traveled right out of the mansion.
'Jane!' Garrett screamed. 'Oh God no! No!'
Francis dragged himself across the floor. The zombies were still coming, and if they didn't kill the Grimnoir, the Peace Ray surely would. They only had one chance. 'We've got to get to the tunnels,' he cried. Lick Hill, California Toshiko's Shadow Guard were efficient and that filled her with pride. Bodies were strewn from one end of the command center to the other. The vast majority had died unaware that they were even under attack. She stepped over a headless corpse and took a seat in the observation area. The coordinates had already been dialed in. Unfortunately, all indications were that there was only enough energy for one brief firing, which would be more than sufficient to burn the entire town of Mar Pacifica from the world, but she had been hoping that there would be enough to cut a swath of destruction all the way to San Francisco. It seemed like a waste to her to use such a mighty weapon against so few, when it could be used to slaughter thousands.
But she wasn't in charge… Yet.
One of the men appeared at her side. 'Is the evidence planted?'
He nodded, obviously not liking taking orders from a woman, but the Chairman had personally put her in charge, so that was just too bad. 'We have used the guards' rifles to shoot the anarchists. Their manifesto was left at the entrance for all to see. Masaharu has painted their symbol on the doors using the blood of the technicians.'
'Excellent touch,' she answered. Framing militant Actives had been Madi's idea. The Bolshevik-funded anarchists had been a constant, yet minor, thorn in the Americans' side for decades, though they had never dared an operation of this immensity. A few known agitators had been easy enough to find in San Francisco. Once the news of their taking over a Peace Ray reached the wires, a violent response against all American Actives would be inevitable. The more pressure that was brought against Actives, the more dissension it would bring, the better it would be for the Imperium. She had to admit his plan was remarkable in its simplicity.
She checked her mirror. Her Traveler had exhausted his Power getting Madi, the other Iron Guard, and a blonde woman back to their trucks. She was disappointed to see that she had lost one of her fellow Shadow Guard. Travelers were irreplaceable. The Chairman would be displeased.
They would be out of the kill zone in a matter of minutes. 'Charge the tower,' she ordered.
Sullivan had taken a beating, but he was still strong enough to carry both Delilah and Lance, one under each arm. Heinrich had Garrett, while Francis had thrown the surprisingly frail weight of John Moses Browning over his shoulders in a fireman's carry.
Behind them, a butler's limbs were torn off, one by one, and smoke from the destroyed Summoned obscured the first floor. Faye brought up the rear, carrying Browning's shotgun. She blasted a rushing undead in the knee, then slammed the kitchen door shut just as it slid into the wood with a crash.
Heinrich took the lead, Garrett's arm thrown over one shoulder, his shoes dragging limp, leaving blood splatter across the pale tiles. Heinrich kicked open a door and started down. Faye was stronger than she looked, and shoved a table against the door as the zombies crashed into it.
'Schnell! Hurry!' Heinrich shouted. Francis stumbled after them, his arms slick with blood. Browning wasn't moving. Francis was so scared he could barely breathe.
Madi was in no shape to drive, so he sat in the passenger seat of the truck as the Shadow Guard took them up to their maximum speed of fifty miles an hour. He'd made Hiroyasu, that cowardly bag of piss, ride in the back. The handful of surviving men probably wouldn't make it to the other truck in time, and that was if the undead didn't lose it and pull them apart, but that was too bad. They hadn't particularly impressed him, so no great loss. The Peace Ray would take care of the evidence. He could always recruit more.
The Grimnoir had managed to hurt him bad. Every one of his kanji was earning its keep now, forcing his heart to keep pumping, moving oxygen to his brain, and knitting together broken blood vessels. He was starving. Getting hurt always made him hungry. I could really go for a good meatloaf and a cold Coca-Cola…
The Healer stirred, came awake, and screamed her heart out when she saw him. She started thrashing, which he found annoying, and the driver jerked the truck when she struck his face. So Madi reached over and knocked the hell out of her with the back of his hand. Her face struck the dash. 'That'll leave a mark,' he said. 'Keep squealing in my ear and I'll pop you a good one next time.'
She folded her arms tight and seemed to shrink into the seat, trying not to cry. 'What are you going to do with me?'
'You'll be lucky if it's with you and not to you,' he snorted. 'You can start earning your keep by fixing the hole in my heart. You got any Power left after that, I've got one lung full of blood.'
Her eyes grew defiant. 'I'll never help the likes of you.'
She had a spine. He could appreciate that. 'Bitch, you heard of Unit 731?' That scared her. Everybody had heard about them. 'Yeah… You know what those weirdos would give to have a Mender to experiment on? Especially a soft little thing like you…' He rubbed one hand down her bruised cheek and she flinched away. 'So, unless you want them carving on you, you'll do what I say.'
He gave her a second to think about it while he checked his watch. They should be clear of the blast. 'Toshiko, light 'em up.'
'It will be done,' she responded from fifty miles away. 'Accelerators are at full, but that's barely seven percent of maximum. Lazy Americans can't be bothered to even maintain their equipment. Firing in two minutes.'
'It'll do,' he said.
'We are on our way out.' There was relief in her words.
He couldn't blame her. The Imperium's recent experiments into ray technology showed that the very air around a beam could kill or sicken you. Some sort of invisible poison got in the atmosphere and it would actually damage your cells. He'd once seen Unit 731 tie a bunch of prisoners to stakes at various distances along the path of a small beam, and they timed everyone to see how long it took them to die, either burned immediately or throwing their lungs up and dying covered in black blisters. It hadn't been pretty. But he wasn't worried about that now. He'd got himself a new pet Healer.
The stairs were steep. Sullivan's big boots could barely find purchase on the narrow stones. The muscles in his arms were burning almost like the magical fire on top of his chest. He had Delilah clamped under one arm, and he hoped that she would hang on. She'd lost so much blood that he was terrified to even look at her. Lance was short, weighed a ton, and was completely unconscious, and therefore useless. His auto rifle was still banging back and forth on its sling against his back, but he was too worried about zombies following them down to drop it.
An electric-battery torch had been stashed at the top of the stairs, and all he could see was a narrow pale beam swinging back and forth ahead as Heinrich led them into the bowels of the earth. Delilah cried out in pain as
