Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (27 page)

Beneath, the green-and-white paint of the rounded walls had peeled
away to reveal dry dark wood beneath. In the center, a large ornate
double door. To either side, hollowed-out alcoves that Finch didn't
think led anywhere. In front of all three, a facade of archways.

A horseshoe-shaped barricade of six or seven tanks with a sandbag
wall curved from just beyond the side of the chapel to around the front
of it. The tanks nestled together as if sleeping. Been there seven years
at least. Burnt out. Crumbling. Faithful old Hoegbotton insignia still
visible on the sides. Delicate snow-white mushrooms had overtaken
them. Fernlike green tendrils grew from their rusted tops: all that was
left of the men that had been flushed out.

Less than one hundred feet between the chapel entrance and the
sandbag wall. Anyone could have manned it. At any time. Rival
armies and militias had marched and retreated across that damaged
ground for more than forty years.

No one in sight now, in either direction. Yet another kind of sign.

"Great fucking place for an ambush," Finch said, as they stood outside
the chapel. At their backs, beyond the tanks and sandbags, a warren of
streets. Burnt-out schools, apartments, abandoned businesses.

"I don't like it, either," Wyte said.

"What if it's a test? A test to prove our loyalty?" Dapple said. "And
it's not a rebel safe house at all."

"Shut up," Wyte said. Shifting his weight from foot to foot as if
something pained him. To Finch: "If anyone is in there, we ask a few
questions. Try to get some information to satisfy Heretic. Get out."

Finch nodded. If anyone was in there, Finch didn't know if they'd
get many words in before the shooting started. Rebel safe house. Three
detectives working for the gray caps, with Partials backing them up.
Be better off turning in their guns, asking for mercy. Maybe.

Dapple looked close to tears. "We should get. The hell out now."

"Changed your mind? Then why don't you stay out here," Finch
said. "Guard the door. Duck inside and tell us if you see anything
suspicious." Dapple would be less dangerous as a guard than backing
them up.

"With Partials out here?" Dapple protested.

Finch checked the magazine in the semi-automatic. Released the
safety. "You'll do it, Dapple, and you'll be happy about it. And Dapple?
Don't run away. We'll find you."

"Enough!" Wyte said. "Let's get this over with."

The language of men scared shitless.

Wyte put his hand in the huge left-side pocket of his coat. The one
with the growing verdigris stain. The one with his gun in it.

He walked through the middle doorway, Finch behind him.

Dark and cool inside. A second door just a few feet after the first.
Wyte pushed it open. Finch covered him.

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Finch let the room come to him.
The smell of moist, rotting wood. A high ceiling that made every step
echo up in the rafters. Two sets of pews, in twelve rows. Leading up to a
raised wooden platform with an ornate, carved railing. Beyond that, red
curtains. The supports for a chandelier hung down from the ceiling. But
there was no chandelier. On the right side of the dais, an iron staircase
curled up toward the dome.

"What the hell is that?" Wyte said, pointing.

As his eyes adjusted, Finch could see that a long, low glass-lined
counter ran along the right side of the dais. Couldn't tell what was
inside it.

"I don't know."

Finch drifted ahead of Wyte. Walked up the carpet with Wyte
behind. Climbed onto the platform from the steps built into the
right side.

The counter. Under the smudged glass, a series of arms and heads.
The arms looked like prosthetics. Didn't understand the heads with
their hollow eye sockets any better.

"Why in a church?" Wyte asked.

Finch shushed him.

Beyond the counter: a doorway covered with a tapestry of Manzikert
subduing the gray caps.

Finch motioned toward the tapestry with his Lewden Special.

Wyte shook his head. Too dangerous. Too unknown.

Finch nodded.

Wyte retreated into the shadows to the left of the counter. Pulled the
gun from his pocket. It looped spirals of dark fluid onto his overcoat.
Finch bent at the knees, put the counter between his body and the
doorway. Aimed at the tapestry.

"Is anyone there?" Finch said. Loud enough to be heard in any
backroom.

Something fell. Like a jar or tin.

"Is anyone there?" Finch repeated. His heart felt like a fragile animal
inside his chest. Trying to get free. Being battered in the attempt. Kept
switching the gun from hand to hand. So he could wipe his sweaty
palms on his shirt.

A kind of hesitation from beyond the doorway. A kind of poised silence.
Then a careful movement swept aside the tapestry. A short, thin woman
walked out.

She stood behind the counter as Finch rose, gun at his side. Wyte
reappeared from the shadows.

The woman's gray hair had been pulled back into a tight ponytail.
She wore a formless blue dress with a black belt. Her face was heavily
lined. Her mouth drooped on the left side as if from a stroke. Or an old wound. Finch thought he could see the whispering line of a scar
across the cheek.

"Point your gun somewhere else, detective," she said, staring at Wyte.
Her voice had gravel in it. Finch had no doubt she'd commanded men
before.

The seepage had become a constant spatter against the wooden
floor. But Finch couldn't tell if it came from the gun or from Wyte.

Wyte lowered his gun.

"Who says we're detectives?" Finch said.

Her eyes were the color of a knife blade. "That's a gray cap weapon."

"We're investigating a murder," Finch said. "That's all we're here for."

"All?" she echoed.

Finch wondered what they looked like to her. Wyte transforming.
Him tired and dirty. In Wyte's crappy shoes.

Wyte asked, "What's your name?"

No answer.

"We could bring you in for questioning," Wyte said.

"But you won't, because I'm an old woman," she said in a whisper.
"Because you're decent men."

Wyte snorted, losing patience. "A night in the station holding cell
might make you more talkative."

The full, hawklike intensity of her stare focused on Wyte. "You
want a name? It's Jane Smith."

Wyte opened his mouth. Closed it again.

Finch gave Wyte a wary look. Said to her, "What are all these parts doing
here?"

"This is a business. People who've been released from the camps come
here if they've lost a leg. Or an arm."

"Or a head?" Finch asked.

"You seem to be keeping yours, detective," she snapped.

Wyte said, "Are you the Lady in Blue?"

Finch knew he'd meant it as a kind of joke. But Wyte's voice couldn't
convey a joke anymore.

A look of disbelief spread across the woman's thin features. The
wrinkles at the sides of her eyes bunched up. She began to guffaw. The
roughest, crudest laughter Finch had ever heard from a woman.

When she had recovered, she said, "You should leave. Now."

"Bellum omnium contra omnes," Finch said. Put as much weight as
he could behind the words. As if he meant to physically move her
with them. Couldn't have said where the impulse came from, to say
it. Wyte gasped.

Her eyes opened wide. The color in her cheeks deepened.

"There is a way," she said. Hesitated. As if she'd made a mistake.

Finch repeated the words: bellum omnium contra omnes.

Her features hardened. "I don't think I know what you're talking
about after all."

"I think you do," Finch said. He hadn't given the right response,
but he'd been close.

Wyte pulled out his gun, brushed past Finch, and shoved it in the
woman's face.

"Wyte..." Finch said in a warning tone.

"No, Finch," Wyte said. "I'm sick of this. Sick of it. She's lying. You
want this to go down like Bliss all over again? Well, I don't." Wyte
pushed the muzzle into the woman's forehead until the discharge
dribbled down her face. She closed her eyes, winced, said again, "I
don't know what it means. I don't."

"Wyte, this won't get you what you want," Finch said.

Turned his pale, monstrous head for a second. "Hell it won't."

"For Truff's sake, Wyte! Put down the fucking gun!"

"If I do, she's going to kill us," Wyte said. The gun slipping in his
grasp. Finger still tight on the trigger. "Can't you feel it? We're going
to die here because of her." Voice small and low. His shape beneath the
overcoat in the grip of some terrible insurrection.

The woman's eyes fluttered, closed again. Waiting for the bullet
while Wyte waited for his answer.

No way to get to Wyte before he shot her.

Saved by Dapple calling out in alarm from beyond the door.
"Partials!"

Wyte looked toward the door. Lowered the gun. But something was
swimming in his eyes. Something that wasn't part of him. Not really.

The woman leaned down, fast.

The front of the counter exploded in a cloud of dust and debris.

The force threw Finch up against the rail, drove Wyte down to one
knee. Wyte's gun skittered across the floor. A piece of wood had grazed
Finch's left arm. His ears rang from the blast. Through the wreckage
of the counter, Finch could see the cannon of a gun that had done the
damage. Mounted on a metal stand.

The woman had leapt to the spiral staircase. She was shouting to
someone above her. Coughing, Finch got off a shot that bit into the
steps at her heels. Then the darkness took her.

Wyte recovered his weapon, started to move toward the stairs. Finch
followed, then stopped. Pulled at Wyte's coat sleeve.

"Fuck. Wait."

"Wait, Finch? Wait?" Straining against his grip. "Goddammit, she's
getting away!"

The sound of gunfire. Coming from the top of the chapel. And a torrent
of boots on steps from beyond the tapestry door.

"No! Didn't you hear Dapple? And there's a whole fucking army
coming."

"Shit," Wyte said. No longer pulling away.

They ran back down the carpet. Past the pews.

Bullets sprayed in a torrent against the outside of the chapel walls.
A muted cry from Dapple.

Brought them up short at the double doors.

Finch looked at Wyte. Wyte looked back at him. Knew they were
thinking the same thing. Better outside with Partials than trapped inside
with the rebels.

Finch heard the sound of the tapestry parting just as they burst
through the double doors. Out into the light. Stumbled over Dapple
lying on his back in the dirt between the doors and the archways.
Face slack. Clipped by a fungal bullet. Left shoulder turning black.
Neck covered in looping veins of dark red that made him look
like an obscene map. Convulsions already. Eyes distant. Muttering
through a mouth flecked with spit. His guns beside him.

Finch looked up to see Partials behind the sandbags, amongst
the tanks. Dozens of them. Pale faces. Dark clothing. Aiming up
at the top of the chapel and the sharpshooters pouring fire down
on them.

Frozen for an instant. Caught between two bad choices. Didn't
know how Dapple had gotten hit.

Then a roar from next to him. Wyte was roaring. Standing straight
up. Not caring if he got hit. Finch could just see the Partials moving
back and forth behind their shelter. The liquid muzzle flashes.

"No, Wyte!" But it was too late. Wyte was shooting at them, and
shooting and shooting. Bullets stitched through the dirt. Smacked
into the stone of the archways.

No chance for finding common cause now. They had to get away
from the front door.

"Wyte! Come on!" Shoved Wyte toward the alcove to their right.
Finch dragging Dapple, who had gone silent with shock. Wyte still
blazing away with his gun, gone mad with the pressure. Goading
them. Laughing at them. Their confused pale faces in Finch's confused
vision like smears of fat.

Between the alcove and the archway in front of it: enough cover to
get Dapple out of sight and Finch mostly out of the line of fire.

But Wyte, oblivious, was beginning to scare Finch. A fungal bullet
ripped right into Wyte's arm as he shot back at them. The bullet just
stuck there. Absorbed by Wyte's body.

Finch got off a couple shots at the Partials. Semi-automatic bucking
in his hand. Smelled the acid smoke of the aftermath. None of the
Partials went down. Had about ten bullets in the gun. More clips in
his pockets.

But they'd still get shot to pieces. Now the double doors had opened.
Rebels were firing back at the Partials. From the doors. From the dome.

Wyte jammed another bunch of sticky nodules into his gun from
his right front pocket. Kept right on firing. The noise was hellacious.
Wyte's bullets made an echoing thwack sound. Finch's a deeper crack.
The Partial's return fire was like wood popping in a fire. The smell of the
fungal bullets musty and metallic.

A scream from one of the Partials. Another scream. Finch, back up
against the wall, shielding Dapple, had only a partial view.

A fungal bullet hit the dirt well to their right. Veins of red spread
out across the ground. Seeking. Searching. Stopped next to a lizard
sunning itself, oblivious to the threat.

"What's happening, Wyte," Finch shouted above the roar.

"I'm fucking killing them. Killing them all," he roared.

A conventional bullet clipped the side of Wyte's head. Left a bloody
track. A runnel of flesh coming off. He roared again-this time with
pain. Directed his fire to the left, toward the rebels or more Partials.
The response was a fresh hail of bullets that sent even Wyte back into
their shelter for a moment. Finch kept squeezing off rounds blind.
Trying to aim high but not too high.

Wyte's face shone bright. His eyes were large and dilated and he was
smiling.

"The bullets don't hurt," he kept saying. "They don't hurt at all."