He caught Holly on the sidewalk, where she was pulling on her own blue windbreaker. Holly’s read FBI. “Here’s the deal. These aren’t very convincing disguises, but they don’t need to be. It’ll be chaotic in there, and MCB usually pretends to be some other agency anyway.”
“In where?”
“We’re sneaking into the quarantine. Try not to talk to anybody. If you act like you belong, then nobody will bug us…Maybe. Stand in front of me for a second.” Mosh did as he was told. Holly reached into her purse, pulled out a pistol, quickly stuck it in her waistband, then covered it with her jacket. A few extra magazines went into the jeans pockets. “I’m glad you showed up. I might need a lookout or a distraction or something. You ever picked a fistfight with federal agents before? How good’s your attorney?”
“He’s not talking to me because I still owe him money from when the city of Montgomery sued me.” You knew things were really bad when your own attorney put you in collections. “Why are we sneaking into…a quarantine?”
“No big deal. It’s just a stroll through the MCB’s secure area without proper ID to talk to a mad scientist. If we’re seen by a certain scary albino, I’m going to shoot him in the face. We get caught or we don’t. Either way, we’ve got to figure out how to stop that.” She nodded her head toward the frightening pillar. From this distance it seemed even more unnatural. “Any questions? No? Good.” Holly raised her voice and spoke directly at Mosh’s forehead. “Listen up, ghosts, if you’re really in there, and you can do anything to help, I’d appreciate it.”
Apparently Mosh was the only one that could hear the voices, because Holly showed no reaction when Bubba chimed in. “I really wish we could’ve contacted her instead of this bum.”
“She is not blood of champion. Must work with what we have.”
Great. I’m being insulted by the voices in my own head. Just do like she asked and send the cavalry.
Bubba laughed. “Kid, you are the cavalry.”
Holly, who apparently couldn’t hear any of that, put on a pair of dark shades and a matching fake FBI ballcap. “How do I look?”
“Like a gorgeous FBI agent?”
“Why, Mosh. Even when you’re in way over your head and scared shitless you can be so sweet. Come on.” Holly had only made it a few feet when she spotted one of the tourists that had talked to Mosh on his way into the costume shop. “Excuse me, ma’am. Nice shoes. Are those size seven?”
The surprised woman looked down at her plain black tennis shoes. “They’re eights.”
“Close enough.” Holly’s grin was sort of frightening.
Holly’s plan worked. Briefly.
Piercing the outer layer of defense had been easy enough. Because of the sudden chaos the authorities were still disorganized. Adding to that was the evacuation order, which was taxing everyone’s resources. There were police and sheriff’s deputies from different departments, representatives from multiple agencies, and they’d called in the National Guard. The weirdness of the unnatural smoke funnel made a great distraction. Holly had simply picked a spot on the perimeter and walked right between the barricades, talking on her cell phone like she was getting directions from a superior, and waving at the distracted soldiers.
Mosh figured that it helped that all of the law enforcement and military types were distracted by the screaming death cloud. And it was, quite literally, screaming. Having spent years of his life on a stage listening to vast crowds making all sorts of noise, the sound coming from the whipping smoke was uncomfortably similar. It might have only been the wind, but the frequency of this particular wind sounded like thousands of people crying out as one, and they didn’t sound like they were having a good time.
All eyes were on the smoke so Mosh couldn’t blame them for the lax security. Screw watching for trespassers breaching the perimeter. Who’d be crazy enough to want to come close to this thing anyway? The smoke seemed alive. It was moving, but not billowing outward like smoke should, just going straight up, not deviating from its path until it was a quarter mile up. It was moving, like the whole thing was rotating around some unseen axis, but it didn’t seem to be moving fast enough to be making that screaming noise.
After a few minutes of walking through chaos, the two of them stopped behind a fire truck to take a look around. It wasn’t marked in any way, but it was obvious that this was the line where regular law enforcement stopped, then a no-man’s land of pavement, and then there was the special government on the other side. That was where their scientist would be.
Holly was watching the smoke and shaking her head. “That is some major weirdness. It’s so…contained…” Normally you’d be able to see a fire or something, but this was just gray. Not only that, but the pavement ran right up to it then seemed to drop off, as if the smoke was coming out of a hole. “It’s like it’s held inside some sort of force field.”
“What happens if the force field comes down?” Mosh shuddered at the thought of all that smoke getting loose. It looked…sticky.
“How should I know?”
“You’re the professional Monster Hunter.”
“Newsflash. I’ve never seen anything like that before, and I’ve seen a ten-story walking insect tree, so chill the hell out.” Holly reached out and popped the collar on Mosh’s jacket. “Cover your neck tattoos. The next line is going to be MCB. Try to look professional. Think paramilitary business casual, but with a bureaucratic stick up your ass.”
He had six inches of dyed pointy goatee hanging off his chin. Mosh wasn’t sure how he was supposed to look business casual, but then again the jacket said DEA. He’d just say that he worked undercover…And then they’d probably ask to see his ID or badge, or whatever DEA agents had, and when he couldn’t produce one, they’d probably shoot him. “So what is the plan, exactly?”
“Look for someplace where you’d put the expert on this sort of thing, so some sort of command center probably. I saw the feds use a giant rubber tent for that once, but they’ve commandeered all the local buildings, so they’re probably in one of those. If we can’t find him, then find Franks.”
“The big scary one? Are you out of your mind?”
“Maybe. If he doesn’t just arrest us, then I trade information for a chance to interview this Dr. Blish.”
“Information?”
“I can’t really call it blackmail, because I’m not stupid enough to try to blackmail Stricken. Think more along the lines of me giving Franks an excuse to murder somebody.”
“Subtle.”
“As a train wreck. I give Franks a license to kill, he lets me interview the scientist, and then we get that to our friends.”
“Assuming they’re still alive,” Mosh said as he watched the cloud of the damned. Holly glared at him. “I’m not trying to be a downer, but look at that thing.”
“When it comes to survival, Hunters make cockroaches look like quitters. So man up, Mosh.” She quieted down as several SWAT cops jogged by. “They’re still alive. I know it.”
He waited until they were alone again. “I’m kind of scared of Franks.”
“Oh, he’s cuddly. Don’t worry. Him and your brother are tight.”
“That’s not exactly how Owen tells it—”
“You know how Z likes to exaggerate. Enough talking. Put your big-girl panties on and follow my lead.”
Holly kept them on the normal cop side of the line, paralleling no-man’s-land, trying to spot anyone that looked like an old scientist. Unfortunately, there were several big vehicles, a few tents, and even a couple of small buildings that had been taken over inside the inner perimeter. Whenever someone would come near, Holly would either walk past like she was on a mission, or if they looked like the sort of people who might try to talk to her, she’d get out her cell phone and have an imaginary conversation with her superiors as they gave her imaginary directions to their imaginary position.
It took half an hour to walk all the way around the site, and they were just as clueless as when they’d started. “We’re wasting time. I’m going to have to go in,” Holly told him finally. “You stick out like a sore thumb. Stay here.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Mosh answered with more bravado than he felt. “I can’t let you go in there alone.”
“You going to protect me, stud? Ninja your way in there all badass and choke out the guards?”
It sounds stupid when she puts it that way. “Sorry, I left my wall-climbing boots at the hotel. Maybe the dead guys have an idea? Gimme a sec. Hey, ghosts, you got any ideas?”
Holly was suspicious. “Does that work?”
“I don’t know. A couple of hours ago I thought I was having an aneurism when they started talking to me. I’m not Owen.”
“No kidding. He’d actually be useful.” Holly put her hands on her hips. “Hurry up and do…whatever.” She turned back to the smoke pillar. “Being psychic must run in the Pitt family.”
“Psychosis runs in the Pitt family,” he muttered. Mosh closed his eyes and concentrated as hard as he could. It made him feel completely ridiculous. Mordechai, Bubba, come in. Help me out here. He put his head down and folded his arms. Do I like need to meditate or something?
Now that he was more familiar with the effect, he could tell that the voice only seemed to be coming from around him, when in actuality it was completely inside his head. No wonder his brother had gotten so weird, living with this kind of thing. “Go with the men,” Mordechai told him.
What men?
“The secret policemen who will shoot you in the back if you try to run away.”
Mosh opened his eyes to find himself staring down the muzzle of an assault rifle. Behind the rifle was a dude in black body armor, helmet, and face-covering balaclava. Three other men moved up behind him, coming silently from around the corner of a military truck. “Uh, Holly?”
She was still watching the MCB line. “What now, Mosh?” She turned around to see the SWAT team pointing four guns at them. “Oh…Hey there.”
“Put your hands in the air,” said the first gunman.
She slowly raised her hands. “I’m looking for the Las Vegas FBI SAC, I was told—”
“Save it.” Two kept covering them while the other two moved up. Mosh’s face was shoved hard against the truck, and in a flash he was relieved of his Glock and handcuffed. He finally managed to look over to see Holly getting the same treatment. “Holly Newcastle, you’re under arrest.”
Holly snarled at Mosh. “I swear you are the worst lookout ever.”
“I was meditating!”
“Worst. Ever!”