After about fifteen minutes, I remembered what the emcee said:
That did it. Crap. I’d just been a prisoner at the warehouse. Friend or foe, good, bad, or ugly, I wanted out, now, and I wasn’t going to ask to be shown the way. I found the wire leading up to the surveillance camera and yanked it. Then I picked up one of the nice, comfy chairs and threw it through the nearest window. Shielding my face with my arms, I jumped through the shattered frame. Was it the wrong move? Wouldn’t be the first time.
I landed on a slate floor. I was on some kind of porch ringed with bushes thick with red berries. Late afternoon having given way to evening, I stumbled into the wicker furniture, trying to get my bearings.
And then I heard a sound like chimes. Three rings, pause, three rings again. It took me a while to realize it was an alarm, set off, no doubt, when I smashed the window. Footsteps tromped nearby, getting louder. Yep, an alarm.
I jumped over the bushes and scurried like a rat along the edge of the house, doing the quiet-dead-man thing. It didn’t mean I was safe, not by a long shot. You’d need an army to keep this place secure, and Green could afford one. Given his hobby, they were probably trained to spot chakz, too. I slipped by at least ten of his men before reaching the delivery entrance at the rear of the house. I guessed it’d be a quick run to the hemlocks and the way I came in. The gate would be locked, so I’d have to figure some other way over the wall.
Only, I didn’t go. Something held me back.
It wasn’t torpor, it wasn’t the guards, wasn’t a Nancy Drew hunch, or a weird schoolboy pang about Nell Parker. It was a sound. It came from behind me, from the other side of the thick glass of a low basement window —moaning. Not just one voice, five or six.
I knelt and rubbed the glass to get a decent view. Inside it was like the chak pens Jonesey had warned me about. He was half-right. They weren’t exactly pens, more like jail cells, solid metal bars, floor to ceiling. Straw covered the ground—to catch any gleet ooze, I suppose.
There were only two cells, a seven-foot space between them, one along each side of a deep room. The chakz on the left, some still dressed in party costumes, looked sullen, but functional. There was a cowboy, the hole where an eye used to be visible through his mask, a noseless robot, and two mermen danglers. They were all pretty quiet.
The moaning was coming from the second pen. It was standing room only in there, so many chakz I could barely distinguish one set of limbs from another. A gleet whose skull was half exposed chewed at the rubber gills covering his chest as if they were macaroni. An eye dangler in a scuba outfit started wailing as I watched. Four others looked as if they’d been at it a while, and were ready to blow. Shoved into tight quarters like that, it was only a question of time before they all went. Charred bones and burn marks told me what happened to them when they did.
With most of the guards outside looking for me, only one was here, a goofy-looking guy with a huge Adam’s apple and a tense face. He had a gun in his hand, a magnum, and a key ring clipped to his belt. He was nervous, eyeing the moaners, trying to keep his distance. That meant putting his back to the other cell, where the “safe” chakz were. You know, the ones who were still smart enough to grab you from behind and try to get those keys.
I felt bad for him, wondered which chak would figure it out first.
The cowboy won. While Goofy watched the moaners, he watched him. When Goofy took a step back from the moaners, the cowboy took a step forward.
Goofy was just about to bring himself within reach of the eager cowboy when his Adam’s apple rose like a radar antenna. His expression changed. He was about to turn around, catch the cowboy, and ruin it all. So . . .
I rapped at the glass.
That’s all it took. The second Goofy looked up at me, the one-eyed cowboy reached through the bars and wrapped his arm tight around the man’s neck. The other chakz joined in. In seconds, six arms held him against the bars. Two hands were clamped over his mouth, a third over his nose, and they held on tight until he passed out. The cowboy was smart enough to snag the keys before the body fell out of reach.
Next thing I knew the cell door was unlocked and the cowboy was opening the window. It made me wonder if Green was wrong. Maybe the smart ones aren’t so rare. Maybe some of us are just smart
When I didn’t climb in right off, the cowboy looked annoyed. “Can you talk? In or out?”
With his fellow escapees stumbling out into the hallway, I was blocking his path to the window. In or out? I wasn’t sure. If I had half a brain I’d use the distraction of the escaping chakz to make for the hemlocks and catch the next train home.
I knew Green wasn’t being straight with me, but I had a feeling it wasn’t only so he could experiment with me. There was too much talk about Turgeon. There had to be something else going on, something with Nell Parker. If I could find her, she might tell me. And at least I could warn her personally. I can’t say I didn’t like the idea.
A group of guards storming along near my hiding spot decided things. I leaped in.
Seeing the guards, the cowboy shut the window. As he watched them rush by, he looked even more annoyed. “Shit, if you’d been faster, I’d be at the wall by now.”
“Hey, if I hadn’t set off the alarms and tapped that glass, you’d still be locked up. Besides, how could you even reach the wall? He’s got at least twenty men on the grounds, and you’ve got no depth perception.”
“A smart one, eh? Here. Got something for you.” He reached his hand into his pocket and pulled it back out, giving me the finger. Not the actual finger, just the FU sign. “I’ve got the layout memorized. Forty-seven seconds to the wall, twenty to reach the woods.”
“Show-off. If you’re so damn smart, why come here in the first place?”
He made a face. “Same as everyone. Money. They let me in for the party. I was planning to pick a few pockets and blow. Didn’t know about the chak checks. Every fucking hour. You don’t react fast enough, ask how high when they tell you to jump on something, they think you’re about to go feral and throw you down here. And once you’re here long enough . . .” He nodded toward the moaners. “Green leaves them in there until they tear each other to pieces. Then he burns whatever’s left. Watching that shit, I don’t know how I kept it together.”
Another lost soul, or whatever. I wanted to give him a few bucks for his troubles. Instead, I don’t know why, I pulled out Jonesey’s crumpled flyer and handed it over.
He glanced at it. “A rally? You kidding me?”
“It’s stupid. It’s dangerous. It’s something to do.”
I headed for the hall.
“Wait a minute! What about
“Up to you, cowboy,” I said.
“Oh, thanks. Exit’s to the right, by the way,” he said.
“Thanks,” I answered. Then I headed left.
23
The escapees pooled in the hall, blocking the way. I had to push through them. Once I made it out of the pile, like a bunch of zombies they followed me. I tried explaining that the exit was the other way, but they either didn’t believe me or, in the case of one earless guy, didn’t hear me at all. With a nod to Frank Boyle’s efforts during the Bedland hakker attack, I tried turning them toward the exit, but some slipped by and toddled deeper into the basement.
My Boy Scout efforts ended when a howl and a thud snapped all our heads back toward the door to the jail cells. There, the one-eyed cowboy flew into the hall and headed for the exit faster than if he’d been riding a horse. The moaning inside had turned into growls.
Son of a bitch, he’d opened the cage.
Far down the hall, I could see a staircase, but there was a lot going on between me and it. The chakz that’d slipped by me were already meeting up with some seriously armed LBs on their way down. I started running the other way, thinking I’d follow the cowboy. But once I took some turns, raced up and down some carved stone hallways, I was totally lost. The place was a fucking labyrinth. If the ferals didn’t get me, I was afraid I’d run into a Minotaur or a giant piece of cheese.
