The Hallowed Cure, page 28
“Not possible,” I whispered.
“Of course it is,” Jack Griffyn said, somehow using the woman’s smiling body. “I am this city now, Mister Riven, and you, all of you, are fucked. But it’s no fun if you don’t know.”
“You’re not Jack Griffyn,” Hahna said calmly.
“Because you tossed me off a building?” the woman asked.
“What did you say to me before you tossed me into the air that night? Oh, yes. I remember. Have a nice fall.”
Hahna’s expression went absolutely flat.
“A pun,” the woman channeling Jack Griffyn said. “You made a pun, Captain Sato, and one I couldn’t help but enjoy. Even as I fell to what I then assumed would be my death, to an end to the crippling pain ravaging my former body, I was amused. And here we are. You might not have intended this result, but you and my ambitious daughter allowed me to become what I am today.”
“And what’s that?” I asked hoarsely.
The woman said her next word in a dead-on impression of Jack’s gravelly drawl. “God.”
Hahna stabbed through the cage and the woman with a brightly glowing Despair. She butchered the woman ... the hapless terrified civilian, the zombie or whatever it was ... I’d still somehow thought we could save. Despite my all but terrifying confusion, I glared at her.
“Hahna!” It might be possible for a resurrected Jack Griffyn to talk through that woman, but she was still a civilian.
Hahna flicked blood off her blade. “If she was being remotely controlled, like a drone, she may be networked to the others. She could even now be leading the rest of them to my safehouse. We must assume we’ve been compromised. Move out now, before—”
A massive bang on the lightly reinforced door to the safehouse cut her off. I heard grunting and panting outside, through the walls. I realized now why what we’d been talking to had drawn things out.
That woman—or Jack, through her—had been buying time for their reinforcements to arrive.
Hundreds or maybe even thousands like the woman Hahna had just murdered might be waiting outside. I couldn’t truly wrap my head around how that was happening or even why, only that it was now.
None of this seemed possible, but impossible could still kill me. I wanted my last six years.
“Rooftop exit,” Hahna said. “Grab your gear and follow me. And Riven, your earlier order is now suspended.” She looked to the others. “You are cleared to eliminate any zombie that attacks us.”
I couldn’t argue with Hahna about that, not with my mental state where it was after having some random zombie lady tell me she was actually Jack Griffyn. Hahna expertly sliced a hole in her ceiling, leading up to the second floor, and leapt up into it without a backward glance.
Jack Griffyn couldn’t be alive. He couldn’t be these people. Yet if that was true, what the fuck did Hahna just slice apart in a cage?
And why had it known my name?
Frank already had his helmet back on. He leapt after Hahna.
Lincoln went next, and then the door to Hahna’s safehouse came down with a huge bang.
People flooded in. The Mutes. The zombies. Whatever they were, they were fast and crazed.
My old battle instincts saved me from paralysis. I jumped to the second floor just before the horde arrived. One zombie snatched futilely at my boot and nearly pulled it off. The last thing I saw below was the headless body of the Prescott clone before they swarmed over it.
The zombies couldn’t jump, but they could obviously climb. More ceiling holes awaited. I followed the others as we ascended without using the stairs and zombies churned below.
Once we cut our way out onto the roof, the rumble of rotors told me more Cloudhoppers were on approach, likely carrying more Tony Frosts or even some Prescotts. Doctor Sharpe’s forces—or Jack Griffyn’s?—were closing in on us from all sides, so I couldn’t worry about what I’d heard in that cage.
For now, I had to worry about sticking with my squad and staying alive. I’d freak out later. Hahna hurdled an alley to a nearby building and we all followed her. Behind us, those rotors grew louder. My helmet beeped a warning.
“We are being targeted by enemy aircraft,” Nine informed me. “I would suggest—”
Hahna leapt off the building ahead of us. “Dive!”
Frank and Lincoln went after her, into the alley. I was a second too slow, since I was still running behind everyone. When the whole damn building exploded behind me, it sent me tumbling almost as fast as I’d once gone off the Eiffel Tower. At least I didn’t explode.
Yet this time, my Hallowed armor had rocket boots, and this time, I had Nine to automatically fire them at the proper velocity to keep me from going headfirst into the building next door. I landed hard and went facedown, but not hard enough to crack my helmet. Frank and Lincoln pulled me up.
As a burning building crumbled behind us and a Cloudhopper zoomed by overhead, Hahna cut straight through the wall of the next one and dashed on. I supposed using buildings as cover was a good way to not get blown up by Cloudhoppers. Cutting through buildings
seemed reasonable enough. I followed Hahna and yanked Savagery off my back.
When Hahna sliced the next wall, I sliced with her. That wall went down in half the time. She didn’t say anything, but I sensed approval.
At least I could finally use my new sword.
With Frank and Lincoln behind us and a horde of slavering former people sprinting after us, we cut through buildings and walls until I was certain we’d carved our way through half the city. Eventually, we burst out onto a wide street in front of several big skyscrapers. This must be a part of the city where people worked, more towering buildings like the one into which I’d crashed my drop pod.
And there, spray-painted on the wall of the alley into which we’d just emerged, was a visible gang tag I was absolutely certain I was hallucinating.
“Lobby!” Lincoln shouted. “High ground!”
Before I could shake off yet another reminder of my past, Hahna followed Lincoln’s advice. We dashed across the street as a bunch of zombies poured out of the building we’d just cut a number of big holes in. As we moved, Frank spun and fired Baku while still running backward.
He lasered the legs off the forward crush of zombies with a single blast of concentrated energy. They dropped, and unlike Mutes, they didn’t regenerate. They just died silently in pools of their own blood, and as much as I hated murdering these poor people, I couldn’t tell Frank not to shoot.
Like the one-year-olds in Hallowed armor I’d fought earlier, these people were obviously trying to kill us. The fact that they might be ...
controlled? ... by Jack didn’t change that none of us were ready to die just yet. It was us or them, and given we had weapons, it would probably be them.
Frank’s repeated blasts from Baku gave us the breathing room we needed to cut our way into the lobby of yet another nice building.
Hahna headed straight for the stairwell, and I resigned myself to another forty flights of stair running. Hallowed endurance remained incredible, but still. Fucking stairs.
How was Jack alive? How had he spoken to me? How was that smug old asshole still messing with my head after a year as street pizza? This had to be some sort of elaborate trick, some ploy Doctor Sharpe had thrown together to fuck with my head. I couldn’t let her get to me.
“Hold,” Hahna ordered, once all of us were in the stairwell.
“Listen. They’ve stopped.”
Lincoln took the rear guard with his shield braced. “You sure?”
“They’re falling back,” Frank said in monotone. “Because I started shooting?”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Hahna said. “There must be another reason the enemy disengaged. Another target, perhaps a higher priority target?”
I immediately thought of Caitlyn, Caley or, worse, Mia. “Do we go back out?”
“No,” Hahna said. “We pick a floor and plan our next move, and then we go back out. Six sounds good to me. It’s higher than the zombies can easily climb, but low enough we can all go out the windows if we need a quick escape. Move now and keep an ear out for Cloudhoppers.”
Hahna led the way up the stairs. I did my best to follow her without shouting a dozen questions to which I had no answer. I only realized she planned to destroy the stairs when she ordered us all past her on the second floor. A number of swipes from Despair sent the earlier two flights crashing down, ensuring no one could follow us up this stairwell.
They could still take the elevator, but did zombies take elevators?
Perhaps I should watch more zombie movies. Perhaps one of those would explain this, and moreover...
“Nine, play back helmet cam footage for the last three minutes,” I ordered as we climbed. No one else heard my order inside my helmet. I’d verify my insanity before sharing it with others.
I kept one eye on the stairs and the other on the shaky footage my helmet had recorded of us cutting our way through buildings fleeing for our lives. I held my breath as we emerged into the last
alley before we crossed the street and entered the lobby. My hallucination remained.
“Nine, freeze. Rewind. See that gang tag, the graffiti? Isolate it.”
“You all right?” Lincoln asked over comms as we reached floor five.
I ignored him as Nine isolated and cleaned up the gang tag I’d seen in the alley. I hadn’t mistaken it. I really had seen it, which made me want to laugh at the absurd night I was having.
“Nine, pass the image to the squad.”
We reached floor six the same moment the image arrived. Hahna opened the locked door by only kind of breaking the handle, then ushered us all inside. She quietly closed the door and led us deeper into the darkened building, which had glass windows around all sides. Outside, light swept past as another Cloudhopper flew overhead. Yet the rotors sounded like they were moving away.
“What’s that?” Lincoln asked.
He was asking about the image he’d just received, one he must be viewing in AR inside his helmet. The gang tag I’d seen on the wall outside, hopefully, if I wasn’t insane. I had to know if I was hallucinating.
Still feeling half-mad, I glanced at Lincoln for confirmation. “You see it?”
“I see an image of a symbol on the wall of the alley we entered before coming here,” Hahna clarified. “Is it significant in some manner?”
“So you all see it,” I said hoarsely. “Okay. Great. Not crazy.”
“What is it?” Lincoln asked. “Looks kind of like a curly-cue, but blue.”
“It’s a wave, cresting.”
“Surf’s up?” Frank asked in monotone.
“It’s a tag we used to paint in Torrent,” I told everyone. “We put them all over the city, but that particular tag was used to let others know there were Torrent sympathizers nearby.”
“Holy cow!” Lincoln said. “So Torrent, then ... that was your old gang, right? When you were a gang member before you became Jack’s detective, when I thought you were off the island.”
“Sure,” I agreed. “Good summary.”
“Did Doctor Sharpe have those images on file?” Frank asked.
“Maybe, but she’d have no reason to paint one in a random alley,” I said quietly. “I think Saul painted it, or someone in his crew did. They were here. They were alive, might still be, and they left that gang tag as a message for anyone who might come after them. For me, specifically.”
“Like the zombie,” Lincoln said in quite awe. “Everyone here knows who you are.”
“Can I ask a question,” Frank said in monotone. “About the talking zombie.”
“Sure,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what information I could provide.
“What the fuck,” Frank added.
“Yeah.” Lincoln sat down. “Was that really him?”
I glanced at Hahna. “Did you really say ‘Have a nice fall’?”
Hahna actually looked a tiny bit embarrassed. So she had actually said that to Jack Griffyn before she threw him off a building. I would have laughed if I wasn’t so freaked out.
“So ... yeah,” I whispered. “Jack Griffyn’s back from the dead, and he’s controlling a zombie horde. No less fucked up than anything we saw in the war. It’s happening, so how’s it possible?”
“As I have no idea at the moment, I’d rather focus on the tag you found,” Hahna said. “If it was placed by Sergeant Bishop, can it tell us where he and his allies might have gone to ground?”
“The crest points in the direction of a safehouse,” I agreed. “So we head west to start, and then we look for more tags. If they were made by Saul’s crew, they’ll be in alleys like that one.”
“So we can find them,” Lincoln said.
“I hope so.”
“If we don’t get eaten by zombies.”
“To be fair, they haven’t eaten anyone yet,” Frank said in monotone. “Also, let me amend my prior statement regarding the zombie we captured and interrogated. What the actual fuck.”
“Five minutes,” Hahna said. “If we’re not attacked in five minutes, we’ll move out. For now, put the conversation with the zombie out of
your minds. Speculation about what’s actually going on right now is pointless. That can wait until we’ve reached safe location and can replay the interview.”
“Sure,” I agreed. “Why not.”
“Riven, we’ll follow your lead and search for more Torrent tags. If Bishop is alive and still in the city, now would be a good time to link up with him. Perhaps he’s already found Mia and Caley.”
I felt a desperate burst of hope. “Mia knew those tags too.”
“Maybe she found one earlier,” Lincoln said hopefully. “Maybe that’s where she went. Maybe she’s already found Saul, and all we have to do to find her and Caley is to find Saul’s safehouse.”
“God, I hope so,” I whispered. “So. Five minutes?”
“Four now,” Frank said.
That was the longest four minutes I’d ever waited literally anywhere.
Once we verified we were no longer going to be chased by a swarm of zombies, Frank took off to scout. He contacted us a few minutes later with an all clear. We went back down the stairs to floor two, then cut our way onto that floor. We’d be leaving through the windows through the alley in the back, both because zombies might still be out front and because that was the way the Torrent tag pointed.
I expected more zombies to swarm us the moment we hit the open street on the other side of the building, but the streets were empty again. The ... tactics ... used by the zombies made no actual sense. They’d had the numbers and the speed to keep running us down, yet they’d just peeled off once we’d entered the building.
They’d also had the numbers to surround the building, but fucked off instead.
There were way too many unanswered questions rolling around inside my head for me to make any sense of what was going on, but I did have something I could focus on. Gang tags.
I led us into the first alley across the street from the building and did a quick scan. Nothing. The second alley revealed another tag.
Instead of leaving, I just pulled out Savagery and cut through the wall in our way.
We’d already cut a whole lot of holes in the city. No harm in cutting a few more. We were already way past Caitlyn’s “Please try to avoid any property destruction” request, and given the entire city was now a bunch of zombies, I doubted anyone would care.
It took us over an hour of hunting tags before I reached one that was different the others. This was another cresting wave, but it had a rock in the middle of it. That meant that a Torrent safehouse was close, or would have meant that back in Dios. It might mean the same thing here.
Yet there would be no more gang tags that would get us closer than this one. Following the tags was just the trick to get us close enough for whatever lookouts Saul had posted to keep an eye out for allies to decide if they wanted to guide us in. If we were lucky, we’d already been spotted.
“Wait here,” I told the others.
“Right,” Lincoln said. “How long?”
“Long as it takes,” I said calmly. “Could be awhile, actually.” I glanced at Frank. “Feel free to scout around and keep an eye out for zombies. We’ll buzz you if we make contact.”
“Got it,” Frank said, and leapt. He was over the top of the nearest building in seconds.
Hahna, Lincoln, and I hunkered down in the alley. While it wouldn’t make a great defensive position for most—given the wall behind us and the buildings on both sides, we’d literally just boxed ourselves in—Hahna and I had laser swords that could cut through anything. I wasn’t worried about making a quick exit if the zombies found us.
After ten remarkably quiet minutes, Hahna huffed. “Can you explain exactly what we’re waiting on? What should I be looking for?”
So I actually knew something Hahna didn’t? “We’re waiting to be spotted.”
“So Torrent routinely sent out lookouts to survey the locations where they’ve placed these tags,” Hahna said calmly. “How often do they make sweeps?”
“Back in Dios, where we had hundreds of people and lots more sympathizers, we made sweeps every thirty minutes or so.
“So they’ll be here soon?” Lincoln asked.
“Doubt it,” I said. “If it’s just Saul and his commandos, they could only be checking every few hours or even once a day. You got somewhere else to be?”
“You should have told me it would take some time.” Yet Hahna sounded more resigned than angry. “You two continue to wait. We can’t lose the chance to make contact with Bishop and the others, but you don’t need me for that.”
“Going to kill some zombies?” I asked.
“Not if I don’t have to. I’m more interested in finding another clone, one I can interrogate at length. Frank has my communicator, and the jamming will not affect it any way. Have him radio me once you make contact, or whenever you give up.”
