The Nine Read online

  Then Zoe disappeared again, replaced with that ashen-faced ball of hate and anger. Her eyes narrowed, her mouth drew into a razor-sharp line, and her gaze hardened and drifted to nowhere.

  “We have to go.” I peered up at Alex. “Are you okay to move?”

  “I’ll be alright, but the three of us aren’t going to fit on your wonder cycle. I doubt she would ride at all.” Alex glanced behind me, and I saw realization dawn on her face. “Hey, what happened to your guy. Weren’t you supposed to be running someone down?”

  Now it was my turn to stare at the ground. “He set me up. It’s a long story, but he forced me to make a choice, and I had to let him go. I don’t know if it makes you feel any better, but he’s going to walk with a limp that rivals those burns.”

  “It makes me feel a little better.” Alex scowled. “You can give me the play-by-play later. For now, let’s get going. It’s obvious that our friend got a heads up before we arrived, so they must have figured us out at the club.”

  I winced when Alex used the word club, but Stray ... Zoe didn’t seem to notice. She was still withdrawn into her own dark world. I wished I could shine a light bright enough to bring her out, but right now I doubted a light that bright even existed, not here in The Nine anyway.

  “Why don’t you take Zoe and head back to the shop, and we can ...”

  “She’s not going back to the shop.” Alex’s voice sounded final. “Stray is lost. She needs someone to guide her back. You and I can’t do that, but I know someone who can.”

  My brow dove deep with apprehension and worry. I wanted to help Zoe, but I wasn’t sure about handing her to a stranger in this state of mind. Alex coaxed Zoe up and put an arm around her waist. Zoe stared at the ground, her mind still years and miles away, like an elderly woman lost in her own tragic dementia. Even if I had a logical argument for keeping her with me, I doubted it would matter. Alex was on a mission, and there was little I could do to stop her.

  “The place I know is not far.” Alex took Zoe by her elbow and guided her forward. “The people there helped me, but they’re a little—funny. They won’t like it if I bring a stranger. I’ll catch up with you ...”

  I fell in step behind her. “Too bad,” I interrupted. “Handing Zoe off to someone I don’t know is one thing. Having no idea where she is or what they are doing with her is another. Besides, you are in no shape to go anywhere by yourself, much less with her.”

  “We’ll be fine.” Alex turned and gave me a genuine smile that shook me more than I wanted to admit. “You have to trust me on this one. Zoe will be in good hands, and they can help me too. But if you tag along or try to follow us—things will become complicated.”

  Alex lowered her voice and nodded me closer. “These are very good guys, but they are dangerous. Management in The Nine doesn’t take kindly to those who work against them, especially in their own realm. Someone starts messing with all the torture and brimstone, and the retribution is rough. These guys have to guard against that, and I have seen them put up a vicious fight to protect their identity.”

  I could not help but consider the irony of her words, considering the position I had landed in within the Judas Agency.

  “Fine,” I said. “But how will I know you made it alright?”

  Alex let out a little giggle that jellied my legs. I forced them back to solidity. I had no idea what was going on but, this was not the time for teenage body chemistry to stage a comeback tour.

  “You’re awfully worried all of a sudden. Zoe will be fine.”

  “I know. I’m worried about you.”

  What did I just say?

  Alex gave me a quick glance, and her smile faltered.

  “I mean you’re injured. You need medical attention.” The weak attempt to backpedal only made it worse. I put on a contemplative face and nodded like an idiot.

  “Don’t worry,” Alex said. “We’ll both be fine. Now beat it before I have to knock you out and leave you here in the street.”

  “I’d like to see you try.”

  Alex raised an eyebrow.

  I stopped walking. “Okay, no I wouldn’t. Contact me the second you’re out.”

  Alex nodded and waved me away. Then they disappeared around a corner, and they were gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  While Stray and Alex were hidden away in some secret underground Bat Cave psych-ward/hospital for the damned, I figured I could use the time to take my side trip back to Briarsville and visit the doc. I did pretty well for my first time using the waypoint transporter. I chose the dumpster rather than the turkey nightmare because—well … turkeys.

  Turns out you can pick the point where you’re going to land, but not the condition of the landing spot when you get there. I found myself swimming in a dumpster overflowing with garbage. My body wound up suspended in the center of the giant steel coffin between bags bursting with half eaten burgers, melted milkshakes, and enough leftover french-fries to brick a scale model of the Great Wall of China.

  I pushed a cola slurry trash bag off my face, and my hand squished through a pile of sliced tomatoes. I prayed the plastic was more than a single ply. It moved without showering me in brown sticky goo as I pulled my boot out of a pan of refried beans. It came out with a shluck sound and gave me enough freedom to roll out over the side.

  I stared down at my refried shoe and thought the turkey farm might not be so bad. My hair felt heavy and matted. I reached up to pluck a slab of greasy wilted lettuce off my scalp. A gag escaped my throat. Of course, this was better than the turkeys. Anything was better than that gobbling roar sucking your soul out through your eyeballs. The thought of being near them made me want to be sick.

  I forced the image out of my mind and brushed myself off as best I could before making my way down the alley. Wind rattled a soda can across the asphalt, and a shutter banged against a far-off wall. The scene felt so ominous, I half expected a homeless zombie to leap out of a garbage pile. I gave Hefty-Bag pyramid a wide birth and hurried toward the street. This was the first time I had been alone and Topside in a very long time. It felt wrong, and in a way, I guess it was. I mean, when you head to The Nine, you’re not meant to make a return trip.

  I forced myself to straighten and step out onto the street like I owned the place. Turned out I could have. Not one of the little shops appeared to be open and several had heavy plywood nailed over the windows. They could have prepped for a hurricane with less lumber and difficulty. The town had been put out of its misery, but I couldn’t see a reason why.

  I spotted someone in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt jogging across the street a few blocks away. Maybe he knew what happened. I hurried down the main drag, hopping over trash bags and dodging the skeletons of display cases and discarded office furniture. More than half the businesses had been cleaned out too. When I rounded the corner to follow the jean-clad jogger, I found ... Well, it looked like everyone in the town had set up camp outside the doc’s house/office.

  Running made me feel like a geriatric dog with a bad case of asthma, so I gave up trying to catch the lone jogger. You would think one of the perks of being dead would mean never having to worry about being in shape. I took my time wheezing up the block toward the crowd. When I got closer, I realized it wasn’t a crowd so much as an angry mob. People yelled at the house, tromped through bushes, and pushed over the doc’s gates and fences. They seemed mere moments from throwing brick-shaped care packages through the front windows.

  I approached a woman who stood on the outskirts of the crowd. Her face looked just as pinched and angry as the others, but she did not seem to be participating in the pre-riot party.

  “What’s happening?”

  She looked me up and down, as if I’d just asked why water was wet. I smiled and tried to look friendly, but the woman’s expression didn’t change. She stared at me long enough to make a mannequin fidget, then she turned her attention back toward the crowd and nodded in the direction of the house. “That man there is a killer.
Or at least he made a lot of people real sick and won’t do anything to help them. Either way you look at it, he’s a killer. The man needs to come out and pay for what he’s done. He needs to come out and help these people, not sit in his house and watch cable TV.”

  I peered at the house. “I don’t understand.”

  The old woman dipped one eyebrow. “Ain’t you listening? The doc isn’t sick, everyone else is. Everyone who’s seen him got sick. My cousin saw him last week. He passed away last night, and he ain’t the only one. There’s been plenty more.”

  “How many more?”

  The old woman turned and gave me another once over. “Where’d you come from anyway? You don’t look like you belong around here, and that fancy outfit looks like the one stolen out of Tom Stullery’s store the other night.”

  All of a sudden, I felt very exposed. I tried to look casual, but I had a feeling my face had taken on the color of a baboon’s ... it wasn’t important.

  “I just came to tell the doc thanks for helping us out the other day.”

  The woman’s eyes got wide, and she took a step back. I really put my foot in this one. I tried to think fast.

  “Or at least he would have if he hadn’t been so busy. We never got in to see him. We only talked to his secretary.”

  The woman seemed to relax a bit. “Well, I don’t think you’ll be doing much thanking today. If these people have their way, there’s going to be some big trouble around here.”

  “Why doesn’t someone call the cops?”

  “Only had two in town. One is sick in bed, and the other is dead, bless his soul. I called the state law, but it’ll take a while for them to get here.”

  I nodded. “You should get home before this gets ugly,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I’m staying. The man needs to pay for whatever he did, but he don’t deserve to be drug out in the street like a dog. If I can help stop that, I will.”

  I nodded, admiring the old woman. I didn’t doubt she could stop it either.

  “I could use some help if you’re willing.” She didn’t look at me, she just stared at the house and the circling crowd of jackals.

  I wanted to stay. The doc didn’t deserve what was about to come down on him and neither did his family, but there was a bigger game at work here. I just shook my head and said, “I need to get back.”

  This was not a lie. I needed to get back and tell Judas what had happened, and I needed to do it now.

  The woman gave me a side-long glance and let out a little huff. “Well, run along then. Enjoy those fancy clothes.”

  Guilt weighed on me and made me feel heavy, but I backed away. “I’ll call the State patrol again and see if I can move them any faster.”

  “You do that,” she said, never bothering to look at me again, then I turned around and ran.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “I would have wished for better news.” Judas paced back and forth across his office, stroking his thick beard while Mastema followed his movements with that half grinning tilt of her head. “The mortality and infection rate may be as bad as we suspected. Procel managed to purchase a bit of information about that sample you procured. It seems the contagion you released is not only deadly, but also incurable. Less than one percent of the human population is immune to the disease, but a single carrier has the potential to infect thousands without knowing it.”

  I stood between the two bone chairs facing his desk and wished he would make a trip to Ikea and pick up something a little less murdery to sit in.

  “The whole town had pretty much closed up shop. I don’t know how many people live in Briarsville, but it has to be a several hundred at least. How are we going to help that many people?”

  Mastema let out a little giggle and put a hand over her face. I noticed for the first time that Procel was not present to balance out the Judas tag team and wondered what he might be up to.

  “You want to know how to help the residents of your little town?” Judas said, rounding on me. “You act before any of this happens. Those people are already corpses, and you still can’t see the bigger picture.”

  I sat back on my heels and felt my shoulders do their best impression of the ears on a frightened rabbit. My gaze fell to the floor, and I shook my head. He was right.

  “I’m so sorry. I should have stopped her. This is all my fault.”

  Judas sighed and stepped toward me. He put a hand on my shoulder and shook me just enough to draw me out of the pit I wanted to drown myself in.

  “There was no way for you to know this would turn out to be so serious.”

  When I didn’t look up, he stood in front of me and clasped both my shoulders in his hands. “Listen to me. Yes, you should have acted when you had the opportunity, but there is nothing to be done about it now. You must deal with the threat as it presents itself today. There is no time for pity, self or otherwise.”

  I tried to stiffen my spine and stand up straight. Judas grinned at me through his beard. His gleaming teeth made him appear both kind and vicious at the same time. A doting wolf wearing three-thousand-dollar cashmere. I had never seen anything more terrifying in my life.

  “I can be a bit hard on my recruits. It’s something I have tried to improve over the last three hundred years or so. When my recruit failed to prevent the attack at your American Pearl Harbor, he didn’t even bother with ritual suicide. He went directly to the Gnashing Fields and threw himself into the pools of burning sulfur.”

  I cringed.

  A spark of frustrated anger gleamed in Judas’s eye. “He witnessed the escalating effect of inaction as well. Japan purchased your country’s way into that war with the blood of hundreds of American sailors. In the end, the United Stated repaid that debt with two atomic bombs and more than a quarter-million Japanese deaths.”

  I swallowed hard and wished I could lie down on something—like broken glass.

  Judas dropped his hands and turned away from me. “I’ve been working on a lighter touch ever since.”

  “You’ve made some real improvement.” At least I wasn’t ready to throw myself into a molten pool of sulfur—yet.

  “I think so.” Judas turned back to look at me and gave me that wolf’s grin again. “You’re still here.”

  I answered with a slow nod and half a smile. Judas took a step toward his desk then stopped to glance back at me again. “You aren’t going to do something stupid the moment you leave, are you?” Judas pointed a finger at me. His smile had disappeared. “If you jump off this building, swimming laps in the sulfur pools will seem preferable to what I’ll have waiting for you when you re-spawn.”

  “No, no jumping. I am not going to jump.” I got a little chill as I wondered if his Pearl Harbor guy had the same lap pool idea.

  “Excellent.” Judas went back to pacing. “I will put a team together and contain the threat in Briarsville. You need to find out what Sabnack’s next move will be. I will discover what I can, but my resources exist far outside your subversive cell. We must know what they are planning, as well as where and when they intend to carry out their plans.”

  I shook my head and held up a hand. “If you can contain the threat in the town, then what is the big deal? If you can come up with a cure, the disease is no real threa ...” I trailed off. “Wait, what do you mean by contain?”

  Judas pinched the bridge of his nose. “Maybe it would be easier to throw you out the window after all.” Mastema straightened on her perch and jerked her head in my direction, her grin growing wider.

  “Imagine a disease carried by tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people who don’t know they have it. The disease would spread to countless masses in a matter of weeks, to include more of the immune carriers. Anyone who was not sick would be seen as suspect and unwittingly turned into a target. Carriers in hiding with the healthy, hoping to avoid the infected, would only infect more people. Animosity would grow. Blame would pass to the innocent few who resisted the disease. They would be hunted down l
ike dogs. Accused of causing every death, like your good doctor. But that’s not the worst part. Killing the immune would eliminate the only possible antigen to the plague as well.”

  Judas let the scenario play out in my head and nodded. “Imagine if there weren’t enough of these carriers to go around. They would be sold and harvested like cattle. Luxuries for the rich. Tainted black market hope for the poor. This is worse than a simple disease. If this plays out the way I perceive, this will be the black plague and every world war rolled into one.”

  I half sat, half collapsed onto the floor and put my head in my hands.

  “Judas, sir,” I said. “No offense, but you really need to work on your suicide prevention program.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I wandered the courtyard area between the towers trying to decide on a course of action—any action—that could improve the situation. The huge circular buildings surrounded me like a spiraling crown. Intricately patterned stone pathways connected each of the towers and led to a large patio and statue in the center. The first time I saw it, the image shocked me into silence. Even now I found the depiction difficult to look at. The figures seemed so lifelike, I almost expected them to start moving, save the fact that they were about twenty feet tall. One figure represented Judas, the other Jesus. There was no mistaking either. Judas leaned in for the infamous kiss while Jesus held his hand to the betrayer’s face in a gesture so tender, understanding, and forgiving, it made me want to weep.

  I stared at that statue now. We all had a job to do. No matter how difficult, unfair, or unpleasant, the job had to be done. I’m sure that was not the intended meaning of the figure. It was meant to celebrate betrayal and deceit. Precisely what the Judas Agency was all about. But I saw something very different. A man serving his master in the most difficult way anyone could imagine. He served Him by sending Jesus to His last and most important destination. His Crucifixion.