The Stickmen (21 page)

The end of the secret, or at least one step
closer to it. After he secured the location of the whatever this
Depot 12 was, he still had to find Danny Vander and make sure he
got there too, and along with all of that, there was still a rising
flux of complications: the ADM and its proper assembly, the timing
mechanism, and just getting the damn thing and all its three
hundred pounds transported to the site.

Just take it a step at a time,
Garrett reminded himself, against the mudslide of details.

And there was always Sanders to worry about.
Garrett didn’t even want to
think
about how to deal with
that…

The street stood quiet, distant crickets
trilling, and the air was cooling down. Softly lit windows glowed
in the identical Army prefab apartment buildings before him. He
tried to appear as normal as possible as he approached Building
4128, entered the side stairwell, and hiked up to the third floor.
Halfway down the corridor, he found Room 313, Ubel’s room.

I guess I don’t need to knock,
Garrett thought in the poorest taste. He didn’t waste time testing
the doorknob to see if it might be unlocked; Ubel, given his post
and occupational specialty that required a highly compartmentalized
security clearance, wasn’t the kind of guy to forget to lock his
front door when he left his apartment.

No big deal.

Garrett didn’t have the key, of course, but
he had something better: his set of HPC lock-picks and assorted
tension wrenches. If there was one thing he’d learned during the
course of his eccentric profession it was the quick and effective
circumvention of the inconvenience of locks. For years he’d studied
the brands, the model numbers, function types and
pin-configurations. It was second nature now, and at the very
least, Garrett was one of a very low number of people who didn’t
have conniptions when he locked his keys in his car.

A certain tactic of appearances was
involved. You walk up like you owned the placed, all the while, as
you approached the door in question, you scrutinized the lock for
its make and model. Garrett did exactly that as he approached the
door to #313, his mind already working out the details:
Shlage,
Primus model 1116 from the ‘82-’88 series.
Upper deadbolts were
almost always the same pin-configuration as the lock on the knob.
Left-side locks generally worked clockwise, right-side counter
clockwise. The flange set told him both locks were top pin-sets.
Eleven pins in each set,
he assessed.

He made these calculations in a matter of
seconds, as he was walking toward the door. The worst thing to do
was react if anyone else stepped into the hall: a man with
lock-picks looked the same as a man with a key if he held the pick
and tension wrench properly.
Just walk up and do it, like it’s
your own apartment…

Without having to look at the lock-pick
wallet, Garrett’s fingers slipped out his #4 “hook” and a
6-millimeter tension wrench. He applied both into the keyway
heavier deadbolt, gently raked with pins with an upward stroke
while simultaneously holding the pins in place with the wrench,
exerting just the right amount of pressure with his thumb.

Come on, you—

But before he could finish the thought, the
bolt slid open after only one stroke against the pins.

The lock on the door knob opened just as
easily. Garrett had managed to tease open both locks in the same
amount of time as it would have taken with the actual key.

Tell me I’m not good,
he
congratulated himself. But—

Something flagged his senses, and then he
sniffed and knew something wasn’t right. Then, when his fingers
closed around the brass-plated knob—

Warm,
he noticed at once.

The metal doorknob felt unduly warm, almost
hot to the touch.

He didn’t need to open the door to verify
his suspicions, but he did anyway. He twisted the knob and pushed,
and when the door swung slowly open, he was looking into a room
walled by sheets of flame. A billow of black smoke rolled out, and
the scene within was strangely silent. No crackling, hissing of
gasses evaporating out of the sheet-rock. He stood in a momentary
shock, surveying the room made of traceries of flame. The scene was
almost delicate somehow, almost beauteous.

Fuckin’-A!
he thought, and turned and
ran.

“Fire! Fire!” he yelled as his feet rocketed
him down the hall and toward the stairs. The act of arson, clearly
set by Sanders, had obviously been set very recently, and Garrett,
even in his panic, was adept enough to give that some thought.
Careening around the metal banister in the exit stairwell, he
yanked the red fire alarm, and then tramped down the stairs.
Seconds later, he was out of the building.

The alarm bell grated into the formerly
quiet night. Residents began to wander out of all the surrounding
buildings, and from Ubel’s building, residents
poured.

Thank freakin’ God,
Garrett thought.
When he’d discovered the fire, and pulled the alarm, it looked like
he’d done it in time for everyone to get out.
Sanders must have
set it very recently, maybe only minutes ago,
he considered. He
could hear the sirens from several fire trucks as he was getting
back into the Buick, driving away.

Yeah,
he thought, his tires
squealing.
Sanders must’ve known I was coming here. It’s almost
like he was
waiting
for me, waiting till I got here before
he set the blaze, probably with some remote-controlled pyrotechnic
device.

But why?

If he knew I was coming to Ubel’s, why
didn’t he stake the place out and just kill me? Or—

Garrett’s eyes widened as he accelerated
away from the apartments.

—
he needs me alive.

Two fire trucks screamed by in the opposite
direction.

Sanders must not know where Depot 12 is, and
he thinks I do.

This was not an exuberant realization.
Garrett didn’t know where the hidden depot was either…but a trained
assassin thought he did.

Garrett errantly lit a cigarette, every gear
of his mind running full-tilt.

If Sanders knew I was going to Ubel’s
apartment…he’s gotta also know where I’m going next…

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Are you all right?” Lynn asked.

Jessica looked up numbly from the seat she’d
remained in for quite a while since the…forearm bone
had…regenerated… She squinted at Lynn. “Are you?”

“Fuck no,” Lynn replied in some very out of
character profanity. But if any occasion warranted indecorous
language, it had to be
this
occasion. The two women, both
Garrett’s ex-lovers, sipped hot coffee and stared speechless for
extended snatches of time. But neither of them dared to let a
glance drift over to the top of the shining stainless steel
examination table…where
it
still writhed.

“I actually feel bad now,” Lynn muttered,
leaning against the counter which housed an autoclave, a hi/lo
baumanometer set, and a Ritter 800V automatic-cycle sterilizer. She
barely felt the near-scalding coffee in her mouth.

“Feel bad about what?” Jessica muttered
back.

“You know. For the whole time we were
married I give him a hard time every damn day about the things he
believed in. I called him a crackpot and a nut and a tabloid weirdo
with no connection to reality.”

“Me too.”

“And look where it all ends—”

“A fuckin’ alien arm on my morgue slab,
regrowing skin before our eyes,” Jessica admitted. “I never
would’ve believed it in a trillion years.”

“Me either.” Lynn wished she could pinch
herself, or prick her skin with a safety pin, and simply wake up to
discover it was all a macabre dream, and she almost expected that:
to wake up in her own bed, in a world with no evidence whatsoever
of extraterrestrial visitations.

But she’d been here for hours now. She
hadn’t woken up, and she wouldn’t.

This is real…

“What the hell are we gonna do now?” Jessica
asked.

“Good question, and I sure as hell don’t
know the answer,” Lynn admitted. “But there’s no point in hanging
around here all night.”

“Yeah…so…”

Where do we go now?
Lynn finished the
obvious next question.
Where do we go with…an alien arm?
So
she voiced the only fair suggestion: “Your place or mine?”

Jessica made a face. “You know, I really
don’t want that
thing
in my apartment. I mean, Christ, I’d
have to put it in the damn refrigerator. You want something like
that in
your
fridge?”

Lynn winced; it didn’t take her long to get
the point. She simply could not envision herself opening the door
of her shiny white Kenmore and seeing a two-fingered
extraterrestrial forearm stuck in between the Sunny Delight and the
Fat Free Kraft Miracle Whip.

Not in my fridge, no way.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Jessica perked up.
“Why don’t we go to—”

But Lynn had gotten the idea at the same
time. She grinned. “Harlan’s apartment—excellent. Come on.”

Jessica stood up, then paused. She and Lynn
stared at each other through a shared sub-verbal dread.

“I know,” Lynn admitted. “One of us is
actually going to have to pick that thing up and put it back in the
bag.”

Then they both glanced back at the morgue
table. The arm’s runneled, veiny pink skin glistened harshly under
the exam lights.

“I think you should do it,” Jessica spoke
up. “After all, you used to be Harlan’s wife.”

Lynn gaped.
You’re ballsy little tramp,
aren’t you?
“What’s that got to do with anything?” she wasted
no time in objecting.

“Well…”

“Besides,
you’re
the medical
examiner��”

“
Assistant
medical examiner,” Jessica
corrected.

“Fine.
Assistant
medical examiner.
“Which makes you a thousand times more qualified than me
to…relocate…post mortal…evidence.”

“My ass!”

Jesus,
Lynn thought. “All right,
we’ll do this the fair way, okay?” She plucked a quarter out of her
purse.

“Fair enough,” Jessica groan her
consent.

“Call it—”

“Heads!”

Lynn watched the silver coin twirl up, then
down, clinking to the floor. It spun there for a moment as both
Lynn and Jessica urgently leaned over, squinting.

The quarter fell over, head-side up.

Fuck!
Lynn thought.

Jessica released a relieving sigh. “Like I
said, fair enough.”

I’m am REALLY beginning to dislike
her.
Lynn bit the loser’s bullet, turned, faced the table. And
there it was, lying before her.

The arm.

Lynn could hear her teeth slowly grinding as
she stepped forward, her eyes narrowed to squinting slits. She
reached out, as if to grab a bag of stinky, leaking garbage, and
very slowly, she lowered her hand to the table and—

YUCK!

—let her fingers close around the arm, at
about the midpoint.

It felt like raw chicken skin wrapped around
a broom handle. It felt…squishy, warm, and in even more distaste,
she could feel the veins—fat as earthworms—beneath the welt-pink
skin. Then—

“Oh my God!” Lynn squealed.

“What?”

Lynn, her own arm fully extended, was
staring at the queer, two-fingered hand. “The fingers are
moving!”

“No way! That’s impossible!” Jessica
insisted.

“Yeah, and it’s impossible for a bone that’s
been sitting in a fucking briefcase for thirty years to grow skin,
but this thing did it!”

“Yeah, but that’s a lot more explainable,
Lynn. Something caused some minor cellular regrowth of the skin,
probably just some genetic regenerative effect. But there’s no way
the fingers can move because that kind of movement requires a
synaptic command from the brain. And there’s
no brain
.”

Infuriated, Lynn turned and shook the arm at
Jessica. “Yeah?”

Jessica’s face twisted up in disgust when
she looked more closely. The two long, multi-jointed fingers—no
thicker than a pencil—began to minutely move.

“Gross,” Jessica acknowledged. “But it’s
probably reflexive death-response. It happens here i the morgue all
the time. Decaying nerves can cause the digits to move slightly. I
guarantee you, the skin growing back on that thing is just an
autonomic fluke. A couple of hours now, it’ll be dead again. So
come on, put the damn thing back in the bag and let’s get out of
here.”

But before Lynn could do that…the two
fingers began to flex rapidly back and forth.

Lynn and Jessica screamed simultaneously,
then Lynn dropped the arm, where it slapped to the floor.

“Jesus Christ!” Jessica blared, jerking
back.

They both looked down in shock, staring at
the arm on the floor.

No,
Lynn thought.
No way in
hell…

The index finger continued to move,
extending, lowering, and pulling back. The finger, in other words,
was dragging the arm across the floor, several inches per motion.
At this rate, the arm might be able to traverse the floor in a
matter of minutes.

Lynn sighed after the initial shock. She
watched the arm move for a few more seconds, then frowned back to
Jessica. “That doesn’t look like any fucking
reflexive
death-response
to me.”

««—»»

The neighborhood itself didn’t appear
“military” at all. It was not regimented, nor uniform. Instead, it
looked like typical middle-class suburbia in Anywhere, U.S.A.

But Garrett doubted that he looked as
typical himself, not with scuffed shoes and a long tear in his
expensive slacks, his suit jacket long gone since it had served as
Ubel’s shroud. He kept Lynn’s pistol stuffed in the back of his
belt.