Damn Him to Hell

Paddy staggered in, covered in pink particles, like he’d been confettied.

Paddy hadn’t collapsed. Given his odd behavior and weird mutterings, I’d figured he was mentally, if not physically, ill. Except right now, he sounded more rational than I’d ever heard him. He’d actually replied to a direct statement instead of talking about plastic and wandering off.

I watched skeptically as he shuffled over to the food, helped himself to an apple, and settled on a bar stool as if he were a hundred years old. I did a few mental calculations. His son Dane had been in his mid-thirties when I sent his soul to hell. Chances were good Dane’s father was over sixty. Good lord, that calculation had Gloria Vanderventer closing in on ninety. I mentally voted to bring her to the Zone to see how she reacted to green gas.

“Why won’t it be easy?” I demanded when no one else spoke. “I’ll say Sarah is my sister, she has a dangerously infectious disease, and they’ll all turn into monkeys if they don’t let me have her.”

Andre snorted. Paddy almost smiled. I’d never ever seen the man smile. He’d muttered imprecations, deconstructed appetizers, and ignored me. Just getting him to talk had been a chore. Smiling might be fatal.

“Acme’s on full lockdown,” he explained, sounding perfectly normal. “They have security at every entrance. The EPA thinks they’re in charge, but they haven’t been allowed into the underground labs, don’t even know they exist. They’re just removing the mixing tanks.”

I stared in amazement. Whole, coherent, unpalatable sentences. I glanced at Andre, who shrugged.

“Problem is,” Paddy continued, “the machine they want is underground and could blow again if they don’t stop the experiment. Bergdorff, the guy in charge, is obsessed and not particularly rational.”

Silence rippled outward as we absorbed that news. I debated the validity of one madman judging another, but I could practically feel the ground shiver beneath my feet.

“Do we need to go in and take Acme down?” Andre asked ominously.

Paddy shrugged and threw back a slug of juice. “They’ll halt for a while. But if the plant closes, this area really dies.” His voice still sounded rusty.

That had been the problem all along. People needed jobs. The Zone needed customers. Acme provided both. This part of Baltimore was not particularly thriving, so any business closure was a blow. I’d once threatened Max after he became a senator and vowed to shut down his family’s business.

My cell phone rang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Speak of the devil . . . I very decidedly had not programmed in that tune, but my messenger bag was practically rattling with urgency. Taking off my gloves, I dug out my new pay-as-you-go phone.

“Justy!” Max shouted as soon as I opened it. “What the devil is happening down there?”

“Good morning, Senator Vanderventer,” I purred, knowing every ear in the room had suddenly turned to me. Even Milo listened. I scratched behind his ears. “What can I do for you on this fine and glorious morning?”

“Get the hell out of there,” was his retort, not unexpected. “Did Acme have another spill?”

“Spill? Of course not. What would make you think that? And if there were, I’m sure your grandmother would be right on top of it. Why don’t you give her a call?”

Max hated Gloria, Dane’s grandmother. Living in someone else’s body was a complicated business.

He swore like the biker he was and not like the senator he was supposed to be. “I’m coming down there,” he threatened.

“I won’t be here,” I cooed. “Really. Talk to your grandmother. Better yet, bring her down here,” I added meanly. “And if you truly want to help, have one of my friends hired at the plant.”

That produced silence. Max had been trying to get the goods on Acme’s dirty R&D for years—until they killed him. Playing the part of a senator, he avoided the place to prevent any appearance of favoritism. If he wanted to get reelected, he’d have to stay out of the family’s dirty business, one way or another. So all my ribbing was a little in jest.

But totally unexpectedly he said, “I can get someone my security clearance. Check at the guard gate in half an hour. Use it wisely.” He hung up.

Every man in the place stared at me, waiting.

“So . . . I have one get-out-of-jail-free card. Do we draw straws to see who gets into Acme?” I asked into the silence.

5

I’d spent years keeping my head down and my mouth shut after the college protest (read: riot) that had ended with me being arrested, shoved down some stairs, hospitalized for months with a mangled leg, and expelled from school. After Max’s fiery explosion, I’d been running on scared. In consequence, I’d developed some grandiose notion that once I passed the bar exam, I’d miraculously morph into a respectable citizen standing on firm moral ground, with rulebooks all around me.

Obviously not. I knew what I had to do. Even though I generously offered the opportunity for someone to develop a better plan for getting into Acme, I really wanted to be the one to save Bill and Sarah. But if I tried, the likelihood of my damning someone to hell was pretty high. It wasn’t as if Acme would let a woman with chimp hands escape without putting up a fight.

Besides, I had a whole lot of enemies in the Vanderventer camp—like maybe all of management and anyone related to them. They probably had wanted posters bearing my face tacked to the walls. They couldn’t prove I’d done anything to Dane or sent their goons to Africa—one of my more brilliant visualizations—but after months of spying on me, they had reason to suspect it.

“None of that drawing straws nonsense,” Andre announced. “We only have this one chance, and we have to do it right. Paddy, can you get back in without clearance?”

Our scientist shrugged, slumped his shoulders, let his straggly hair fall over his face, and crumbled bread into his beard. “Yeah,” he muttered.

Wow, and I’d thought I was good at keeping my head down! Paddy had me beat by a mile. Or maybe he had just miraculously recovered and simply mocked his prior behavior. In the Zone, it was best to keep an open mind. Or an empty one, ignorance being bliss and all.

“Schwartz, if you put on your uniform and showed up at the gates, do you think you could get access as a policeman?” Andre continued his Lord of All He Surveyed act.

Schwartz squirmed uncomfortably at the notion of suiting up and faking authority he really didn’t have, but he nodded.

“Clancy and I are persona non grata up there, so we’re out,” Andre continued. “Paddy, do you think we can reach both Sarah and Bill and carry them out, or will we be limited to finding out where they are so we can go in later?”

We were up to the royal we now, were we? I bit my tongue and tried listening instead of reacting.

“Locate first,” Paddy decided. “They’ve been adding underground bunkers even I don’t know about.”

Andre rubbed his eyes tiredly at this information. He muttered a few epithets under his breath. I knew the feeling. I wanted to go in, guns blazing, like Clint Eastwood and John Wayne rolled into one. As previously noted, subterfuge is not my strong point. I wanted the good guys to wear white hats. Even Paddy appeared pretty shady right now.

“Frank it is,” Andre ordered.

Which made sense. Frank was our Finder. But just finding didn’t save my friends from Acme’s depredations. I couldn’t justify leaving them in there. I wanted Bill out because he’d hate being a guinea pig, but I was the only one who knew what Sarah was capable of. She could damn us all to hell if she woke up suddenly and didn’t see a familiar face. I didn’t particularly want to spend eternity dancing in flames, but I couldn’t risk seeing my friends do the same, either. Rescuing Max’s soul from hell had been a one-time fluke.

“Nope. I’m going,” I decided, against all common sense. I didn’t even have the strength to lift Sarah should we find her. “Schwartz, meet me at Pearl’s in half an hour. Can you get an official car?” I stood up and stalked