Giving Him Hell: A Saturn's Daughter Novel (Saturn's Daughters Book 3) (26 page)

Protests broke out around the room. Leibowitz ripped a loud snore, intruding on the anger. In the momentary, startled silence, I waved my hand for their attention. “You can make your own decisions after you look. I’m not an engineer or a safety inspector. Those are your chores. What I want you to understand is that you’re ten years too late to save the Zone, and that this is no place for a medical facility.”

I heard shouts in the street, followed by chants, and I sighed. As Bakir began preaching about the wonders of modern science and the Great Medical Experiment, I checked out the window. The storage room overlooked an alley, not the street, but I spotted a familiar reporter scanning the back of the building below. Jane had called the media. This particular reporter was a sexist pig with reason to hold a grudge against me.

The chanting was probably Katerina’s work. Andre would have told her about the meeting. Since there was no elevator, and she wasn’t up to climbing stairs yet, I hadn’t called on her. I lifted a quizzical eyebrow in Andre’s direction. He smirked.

So the street out front was probably filled with media and protestors. Great. I would have to try not to blow up anything. With kids in the house, that had to be a priority anyway.

While Bakir prosed on, I tried visualizing Graham Young back to life. But I wasn’t angry, and justice had been served when I’d stoned him.

How could I prove to these men of science that the Zone was warped and they needed to stay away? If tourists thought talking gargoyles were toys, it would take some convincing to persuade these pragmatists that they’d fallen through a rabbit hole.

I reached back to Milo’s shelf, scratched behind his ear, and tried not to yawn at the eager doctor’s speech. Milo offered a kitty snort, waited until I’d stepped out of his path, positioned himself, and leapt—on top of Bakir’s head.

That shut up the verbose medical man. While Bakir struggled with his cat fur hat, I held up a hand again. “Gentlemen, I’m not disagreeing that medical science is a wonderful thing. I’m telling you that the Zone isn’t where your clinic belongs, and Acme isn’t a good partner. Senator MacNeill . . .” I smirked at him. “So good to see you here today. Would you kindly tell these gentlemen that Acme has had one scientist commit suicide, another who attempted to murder one of your stockholders, then disappeared, a squadron of security guards vanish, and most recently, a gas explosion that has turned untold numbers of Zone inhabitants comatose?”

The room fell oddly silent. Milo had gone to ground and found a position beside our sleeping Santa. The OSHA guys looked a little surprised at my announcement that Acme had accidents. Gee, ya’d think no one had told them.

MacNeill smiled genially. “Miss Clancy misunderstands. We had a small boiler problem a few months back, nothing to worry about. You know how these eccentric types are though. Bergdorff was convinced his experiment was ruined. The police report is on file.”

Chants of “Hell, no, we won’t go,” filtered through the silence. The vagrant vets was my bet. I waited to see if I was the only one who might question the obvious.

“Comatose?” OSHA asked.

Yay for the good guys!

Paddy snorted and leaned against the cookie table. It wobbled. He crossed his arms and glared at me as if it was my fault. Paddy is a smart man.

“I’m the stockholder Ferguson tried to murder,” he said before MacNeill could find a silver-tongued explanation. “Acme had a few personnel problems that have been corrected. The X-element with which we’re experimenting has a great deal of scientific and medical potential. It has cured cancer. Now that Acme is under new management, we’ve instituted tighter safety measures.”

“Too late for the Zone,” I argued. “We’re damaged, and bringing in innocents unaccustomed to the chemical environment will only cause more harm than good. You can build your medical facility elsewhere. I don’t know how you dare expose anyone else to your dangerous fumes and spills. If anyone ought to be condemned, it’s Acme. Take out the plant that caused the problem in the first place.”

“We did that,” both OSHA and EPA guys protested. “The old plant on the harbor was unsafe. The new one has been thoroughly inspected.”

“Oh, so you know about the underground labs?” I asked with glee.

By their blank looks and Paddy’s glare, I assumed they didn’t. Talking to authority was almost as entertaining as egging a provost’s office.

“Look, the little lady is trying to protect her turf. That’s understandable,” MacNeill said reassuringly.

Okay, red-ragey began to boil.
Little lady
, indeed! Andre smacked the top of my head as if he could see the steam emerging. He knew me a little too well.

“But we’ve agreed to pay a fair price for the property,” MacNeill continued, obliviously revealing to Andre that it wasn’t the medical facility buying him out. “We can make arrangements for the residents—”

“Throw the bastards out!” screamed a shrill rough voice from our snoring Santa’s corner.

All heads swerved to Santa’s lap. A full-sized Graham Young, CEO of Medical Science Inc, green hair, red lipstick and all, tumbled on the floor as Leibowitz woke and jerked with shock.

Looking a bit pale but unstoned, Young sat up, livid with rage and painted like a cartoon. He pounded his fists on the rough wood floor, then appeared startled at discovering he was in a storage room. Recovering, he glared at his shocked and staring audience. “What the
hell
are you people doing in here? Don’t you know the bulldozers are coming?”

I wondered if I’d prevented him from wrecking the town last week—followed by one of those “oops, we got ahead of schedule” apologies that corporations often made after the destruction was done.

While I tried to keep a lid on my fury, everyone else gawked at the rouged ruin of a man. You might say that Young hadn’t weathered well on my roof. His clothes were worse for wear and looked as shabby as if he’d slept in them—outdoors. The pigeon poop was a bit of a giveaway. His green hair was filthy and lank. And well, the red just didn’t flatter his cheekbones. Pink particles from my gas canister fell off his shoulders like dandruff.

Paddy and Andre recovered first and had the sense to glare at me. The others simply watched in awe. Young stood up, ranting and raving when no one jumped at his orders. Catching sight of me, he lumbered in my direction, shaking his fist.

Milo slipped between Young’s legs, causing him to stumble before he could swing. That brought me abruptly back to reality. I put the table between me and the angry elf.

Making certain my cat had escaped to high ground, I rapped the table with my knuckles to get their attention. “
This
, gentlemen,” I announced, gesturing at our unbalanced CEO, “is why you don’t want to introduce innocents to the Zone.”

I was wicked with glee and wondering how I could zap more statues. Maybe I could start a parade. I had absolutely no idea what I’d done—other than to paint the scene with explicitness to a few engineering types who lacked imagination.

MacNeill caught the reeling gnome by the shoulders and shoved him to a chair. Reality must have been setting in for Young, too. After nearly toppling from the chair, he held a hand to his icky hair and studied his filthy clothes with horror.

“The pollution turns sane men mad,” Andre said solemnly, distracting from the comedy routine. “We can’t predict how long it takes. Most of us living here have been inoculated against the worst of it, but it’s not safe to bring in anyone else. You’d be wise to go back to forgetting our existence.”

I needed a hypnotist to enforce that warning.
You are getting very sleepy, you are forgetting we exist . . .

Perfectly sane scientists stared in horror at the crumpled CEO who had moments ago been a stone toy in Santa’s lap. They probably didn’t know if Graham was mad or they were. I knew that feeling.

Childish shouts of excitement tinged with fear and shock echoed up from the front room, reminding me that I’d gassed two other statues. Oops.

I turned to head downstairs when a roar rattled the windows and rumbled the foundation. Milo dashed between my legs, and I took off after him. The floor was still shaking beneath my feet, and screams echoed from inside and out, upstairs and down.

I raced for the children in the front room first. The two polka-dotted Nazis were flat on the floor with terrified kids scrambling all over them. The thugs tried to struggle to their knees while the kids used them for security from whatever had shaken the building. The former gnomes looked too stunned to be dangerous. They certainly hadn’t rattled any foundations.

I glanced out the big plate window to a scene of chaos.

Sign-toting vagrants and Do-Gooders were shouting, running, and staring at a mushroom cloud by the harbor. In shock, I gazed a few seconds too long before registering that the cloud was steam, not a nuclear explosion. Gloria might be gone, but the hole she’d vented in the veil between dimensions had just ruptured.

“Get the kids out the back,” I ordered the few adults who had run into the room. “Take them to high ground, as far from the harbor as possible.”
Before any gas or polluted steam spread
went unsaid.

Leibowitz in his Santa suit lumbered downstairs, took one look out the window, and fled for the back door. At the sight of Santa, the crying immediately stopped. Stunned, the kids stared, then in excitement, ran after the man in the red suit as if he were the Pied Piper. The adults raced after them. Good deal. Cowardice had its purpose.

Andre had his phone out before he even set foot in the room. One look out the window, and he was shouting orders into the cell. Across the street, the patrons of Chesty’s were fleeing for their cars. They were closer to the harbor and could probably feel the heat.

The gargoyles didn’t shriek as they had the last time a gas cloud had enveloped us. Maybe they were only attuned to Acme. The steam was coming from the area of the former rusted-out plant on the water, not the new, EPA-approved, one to the north.

Graham Young stumbled in. At sight of his colorfully inked comrades on the floor, he started raving and ranting again. Fortunately, none of them carried guns or we’d have wholesale mayhem. I dodged as the painted demon CEO lunged in my direction.

Paddy entered and caught Young in a headlock before a brawl could ensue. Cheers for the home team!

The other shocked and grim figures of authority stumbled down to see what the excitement was about. Like good scientists, they studied the situation from a distance. Andre, Cora, and I knew better than to stand still while the harbor boiled.

My friends ran out the back, shouting into their phones, setting up phone trees, and evacuating buildings. I followed Milo, the trouble-stalking cat, out the front door.

I didn’t really think Paddy could hold back a raving Young and his two polka-dotted fascists if they recovered enough of their senses to fight back, but without weapons, they couldn’t cause too much harm. As I dashed after Milo down an alley next to Chesty’s, I met Sarah staring at the chaos of fleeing figures in the wasteland along the water.

“Protect people, remember?” I shouted at her. “Not kill them. Run up and see if Mrs. Bodine and the others are okay.”

I didn’t think steam should cover the area as the gas had, but keeping Sarah from turning into a freaking chimp sounded like a good idea. She nodded and took off running. Good girl.

Bad cat. Milo dashed between momentarily paralyzed trash bins, leaped over the fallen chain link fence, and headed for the last remaining tent spa.

The blue blob was emerging from the tent. It stooped to pat Milo. I screeched to a halt and tried to take stock of the situation before I got myself into real trouble. I had to keep reminding myself that I was a lawyer, not Super Tina.

Men in bulldozers were intelligently retreating to the far end of the wasteland, leaving the geyser of steam alone. It didn’t seem to be spreading, but I could hear it pop and sizzle as it hit the cold air. I didn’t smell gas, but the real poisonous stuff was scentless.

The tourists who had been lined up for the spa simply stood there and gaped as if they were watching Old Faithful. Maybe the steam was that safe. Maybe it wasn’t. I didn’t plan on testing it to find out.

The tourists didn’t seem to notice the blue blob, or thought he was part of the fantasy park for all I knew. I eased in his direction. He looked up, saw me coming, and returned to the tent. Milo sat outside, patiently waiting for me.

I’d forgotten the demented frogs and lingered out in the open too long. Bullets buzzed over my head, tearing into the tent canvas. I cursed and dove for Milo.

Tourists shrieked at the automatic gunfire. Smart ones hit the ground. The rest scattered. I had no idea which direction was best, so I rolled with my cat into the tent and out of sight. More bullets whizzed through the canvas, lower this time. I jerked and screamed as one seared my thigh.

Tents were obviously not good cover. Biting my tongue against the throbbing agony of the wound in my leg, I crawled—dragging myself more on one knee than the other—toward the curtain in back that I hoped held a sturdy hot tub.

I counted frogs in my head. After Sarah had killed one, there had been three left that I knew about. Kaminski was supposed to be laid up with a busted kneecap, and another one ought to be in the harbor, but there was at least one more roaming free.

Damning the thugs hadn’t helped without bulldozer persuasion, but I flung a curse in the gunman’s direction now, just in case it made a difference. “Damn you rotten frogs to hell!” I shouted. Another hail of bullets rang over my head in response.

Behind the curtain, a large round tub steamed. Whoever had been collecting money had abandoned his ticket table. The dressing booth was open with no one cowering inside. I wondered if the tub would protect me if I could get into it.

Milo sniffed around the bottom of the tub, but like most cats, he avoided the water. I didn’t want my cat shot any more than myself.

Where had the blue blob gone? Somewhere safer?

When had my normal world gone from law books to blue blobs?