The Ninth Dominion (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (40 page)

Peet! Kimberlain realized happily. It had to be Peet!

Leeds rose and pressed himself against one of the many ceiling-high stacks of money. Building fragments began to rain down on his cache of death-laden bills. Flames licked through the gaps.

“No!” the madman screamed. “Not now! Please,
not now
!”

While Leeds’s attention was diverted and his eyes focused on the money, Kimberlain lunged forward. As he reached for Leeds, the madman again pulled the trigger of his gun. But this time a quaking tremble threw his aim off, and Kimberlain smashed into him amid the huge stacks of wrapped bills, which had begun to sway.

Peet felt himself falling, but his feet found some strange purchase in middescent. He realized he had been saved by a crisscrossing section of steel beams forming part of the building’s foundation. But his survival might be short-lived, considering the certain combustion of the GS-7 Kimberlain had released once the rising flames touched it.

Peet swung to the right in time to see Tiny Tim coming at him with a massive knife glinting orange from the fire. Peet twisted from the path of the first strike and blocked the second with a piece of heavy insulated tubing his hand had locked on. Around the two giants, the jetting flames of the ovens continued to climb and surge. Their battle raged over a river of fire lapping ever closer to where they stood. The crisscrossing support beams formed a catwalk of sorts, and Tiny Tim’s eyes followed it in the direction of the control panel. Despite the collapse of the floor, it remained in reach for a man his size. But to get there he had to get by Peet.

Tiny Tim lashed forward with his knife once more, and again Peet parried with his piece of rubber tubing. His free hand lashed against the burned side of Tiny Tim’s face. Flesh tore, and Seckle screamed in agony. His bandage was gone now, revealing raw, scabby skin burned almost to the bone. His bad eye was half closed. He held his mouth open like an animal.

He came forward again, feinting with the knife to draw Peet’s attention. When the bald man took the bait, Seckle lunged to a neighboring support beam that provided a direct route to the control box.

Peet realized Tiny Tim would succeed in reaching the panel first if he tried to leap across to the beam his adversary was already on and give chase. His only chance of cutting him off was to rush down the support beam he presently occupied, even though it ended several yards short of the one Tiny Tim was on. Peet charged forward, gathering as much speed as possible to fuel the leap now required to bridge the gap. Seven, maybe eight feet from one narrow catwalk to another—and he had to land
upon
Seckle.

The possibility that he might overshoot or undershoot his target never occurred to him, and he threw himself airborne. He smashed into Tiny Tim at full speed and took him down. Clutching for each other, fighting for control, their upper bodies hung over the side of the catwalk toward the rising flames.

But Peet’s leap had left him on top. Not about to squander the advantage, he jammed a massive hand beneath Tiny Tim’s chin and tried to bend his head back far enough to break his neck. Tiny Tim locked one of his own hands against Peet’s to maintain the stalemate, while his other flailed desperately for the knife he had lost control of on Peet’s impact. Smoke clouded both their eyes and the flames teased their flesh. But neither man felt anything besides the other. Peet continued jamming Tiny Tim’s head back with the same hand still clutching the rubber tubing. He could feel it starting to give. Seckle’s fingers were trembling when they at last closed upon his knife’s hilt.

“Ahhhhh!” he screamed, and drove the blade hard into Peet’s side.

Peet howled in agony, his life saved only when the blade bit into a rib and wedged there. Tiny Tim tried to yank it out to mount a killing strike, but Peet locked his hand over Seckle’s to hold the blade in place. Tiny Tim twisted, turned it, and Peet bellowed some more, still holding firm. Seckle’s head was coming up now, winning the fight against Peet’s determined hand. At last Tiny Tim removed the hand that had been maintaining the stalemate from Peet’s arm and began to slam him again and again in the soft side ribs.

The cracks sounded like gunshots as the ribs gave, but Peet wasn’t finished. He released his hold on Tiny Tim’s chin, and when the monster beneath him mounted the expected surge, he lashed him across the bridge of the nose with the tubing he still held. Tiny Tim greeted the blow with a burst of rage that allowed him to drive the knife stuck in Peet all the way through the bone. Peet responded with a wild strike from his hose that shattered Tiny Tim’s teeth. He spit them up at Peet and buried the knife in him up to the hilt.

In the agony that resulted, forcing his teeth through his bottom lip, Winston Peet saw his only chance. When Tiny Tim tried to withdraw the knife this time, Peet let him, looping his piece of tubing through the gap in the catwalk and hoping it held. Tiny Tim lunged with the knife, and Peet simply went with the move, pushing off with his feet in the same motion. The knife made a neat, shallow tear just over his navel, and the two giants dropped from the catwalk together. The tubing stretched but held over the climbing flames, and Peet hung by it with his right hand. Beneath him Tiny Tim was clinging to Peet’s belt with his left hand, his right still holding fast to the knife. He whipped it at Peet in wild swipes that drew blood on each occasion, until Peet dropped his free hand downward and did the only thing he could.

He grabbed the blade in his bare hand, accepted the agony and the blood, because now Tiny Tim was powerless. Peet began to thrash his legs wildly to throw him off. Tiny Tim lost his hold at last, and the blade tore from Peet’s bloodied grip. Seckle slid downward and, in a desperate swipe, grasped one of Peet’s feet, arresting his fall. The monster smiled as he began to climb up his leg, still clutching the knife.

Peet kicked both legs viciously but to no avail. Then, as he was trying to find another way to shed the monster, a huge gush of flames reached up and took Garth Seckle in their grasp, burning him black while he still held fast to Peet’s leg. Peet never thought such screams could come from a man. When the death grip was at last relinquished, he gazed down into the inferno hoping to see Tiny Tim paying his final price, but the flames had swallowed the sight.

Peet bit down the pain in his sliced hand and ribs and pulled himself back up onto the catwalk. Around him the tallest of the flames engulfed steel. He charged through them for the shredding chute and clawed up its heavy tread. Peet emerged on the next level and burst into a sprint for the garage door. He didn’t stop when he got there. His impact tore the right side of it from its hinges and he was greeted by the sight of fire engines streaming into the complex.

He turned back then toward the hot orange glow climbing ever higher through the building, knowing the final explosion was just seconds away and the Ferryman was nowhere to be seen.

Leeds got off four futile shots before Kimberlain was able to force the pistol up and away from him, the struggle flaring anew. He stared into the madman’s rage-filled eyes and watched as they somehow turned bright red. It took him an instant to realize they had filled with the glow of a massive fire burst that rocketed the two of them through the stale scorched air. Kimberlain landed against heaps of fallen money bushels still clothed in their plastic wrappings, sight of Leeds stolen from him. Freed bills showered into the air, many blackened and already charring. Portions of the floor blew out to reveal an inferno raging in the second storage level below.

Only seconds left now before the entire building blew!

But where was Leeds?

The question was answered when his shape emerged staggering from a pile of loosed bills ten feet before the Ferryman. A half smile hung over his face. His trembling hand held fast to the pistol.

“It ends,” he said.

Kimberlain could do nothing but watch as his finger tightened its curl on the trigger.

“You’ve lost, too, Ferryman.”

Before Leeds could fire, though, massive segments of the ceiling and walls blew outward, tumbling the remaining stacks of money in the path of another fireball. The last the Ferryman saw of Leeds, he was standing statuelike amid the deadly money of his own making, his mad eyes fixed on the bills, as if welcoming them.

It ends
… .

Yes, with the last huge bulk of the GS-7 soon to be ignited. But not before I get out, Kimberlain thought to himself.

The conveyor belt was still whole enough to allow for a rush back up it to the ground floor through the converging flames. The production area was a fiery shambles already. The machines Leeds had switched on were still whirling spasmodically, but gushed smoke instead of money. The Ferryman danced through the flames and debris until he reached the depository’s lobby.

He burst into a dash for the glass doors forming the main entrance. Just as he reached them, a deafening blast projected him forward like a cannon shot. Crashing through the glass felt strangely like a sudden fall into ice-packed snow, albeit with something blisteringly hot breathing down his back.

Impact came with stunning abruptness, and the black night closed over him.

Epilogue

KIMBERLAIN CAME AWAKE
slowly to find a squat figure standing between his bed and the window.

“Who are you?” he managed.

“Jones will do,” the man returned, as he approached with a trench coat folded under his arm.

“Washington?”

“Close enough.”

Kimberlain’s return nod was equally slight. He knew Jones was a fixer, dispatched by the powers that be to clean up a mess the government didn’t want leaking out by any and all means available. His features were as nondescript as his job. Of medium height, he was slightly balding, his remaining hair was turning gray, and any muscle he might have had was a memory. When he was a yard from the bed, the Ferryman smelled drugstore after-shave.

“There are some matters that need to be cleared up,” Jones said with the interest of a man already late for his next appointment.”

“Where am I?” Kimberlain broke in. His throat was dry, and he had difficulty swallowing.

“Don’t you remember?”

“Pieces. That’s all.”

“You’re in a hospital. Better you don’t know the name or locale for now. This wasn’t the first hospital you were brought to. We had you moved after your ID came through.”

“I wasn’t carrying one.”

“Your fingerprints were sent to Washington. When your name came up, they sent me.”

“My wounds, how bad?”

“You were lucky. Collarbone needed surgery to repair. You suffered a severe concussion and broke your right ankle on impact with the ground. Assorted other bruises and lacerations. I can make you a list.”

“Don’t bother.” Kimberlain swallowed as best he could. Even blinking his eyes caused pain.

“The money was all destroyed,” the fixer went on. “The entire building was. No trace of Leeds either.”

“How did you know about—”

“A rather unusual man sent by you reached one of the typical agencies with a most unusual story. He told them everything, as you and he assumed it to be.”

Captain Seven, Kimberlain thought, following his orders when the Ferryman missed a planned contact.

“And did this agency believe him?”

“Would you?”

“No.”

“They didn’t either,” Jones said. “But when word of your presence here and of the depository’s destruction came in …”

Kimberlain tried to sit up and failed. “The money, some of it had already been shipped to—”

“Impounded earlier today.”

“Checked?”

“In the process. I expect they’ll find just what you destroyed in Kansas. We can’t put a cloak on everything that happened. Probes are inevitable. The emphasis must be on minimalization.”

“Of course.”

“Toward that end, I have reached certain conclusions you need only confirm.” Jones looked him closely in the eye. “It has been determined that one Winston Peet, believed to have died during an escape from Graylock’s Sanitarium some years ago, was at the depository. Yes?”

Kimberlain wasn’t sure how to answer until he observed the expression on Jones’s face. “Yes,” he said then.

“It is our contention that his escape from The Locks was engineered by Andrew Harrison Leeds at that time and that Leeds has been harboring him, along with numerous others, ever since. Yes?”

“I suspect so.”

“And, lastly, we are led to believe that you were behind Peet’s final demise within the Kansas Depository building. Yes?”

“I was,” Kimberlain told him.

“Good,” Jones returned.

“Devil’s Claw,” the Ferryman said.

“My next subject. You should know a resort community being built there perished in a massive landslide two nights ago. There were no survivors. The coast guard is making regular patrols to make sure no one strays even close to the island. And you might also be interested to know T. Howard Briarwood has apparently disappeared once again. We do expect this time it will be rather prolonged.”

Kimberlain peered at Jones more closely but didn’t get much past the trench coat. “Kind of you to come all this way to provide me with an update.”

“Part of the cleanup process.”

“There’s a much bigger part you’ve got to undertake: finding all the monsters that came off the island to be stashed for judgment day. They’re out there, Mr. Jones, and they won’t be staying put for long.”

“I’m afraid we have no firm evidence of their existence.”

“Is it going to take one of them coming up and blowing your brains out to convince you they’re real?”

“We deal in realities, Mr. Kimberlain, not suppositions.”

“Of course,” the Ferryman concluded, “because to acknowledge their existence would mean having to marshal forces and admit all this happened. Can’t have that, can we?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. And yet …”

“Yet what?”

“If a private contractor wished to work on this matter, we would lend any support he desires. All he would have to do was ask.”

“That come from your superiors?”