Max Collins - Skin Game

Then he quickly ran to the door on the other side of his, on the left, and ducked inside. White had referred to Joshua being “next door” — Alec hoped that was literally true. The room was dark, the curtains drawn, no one in here but the patient in the bed.

If this wasn’t Joshua’s room, he knew he’d never get his friend out. He could hardly search the building, and would hate to have to abandon the naive dog man.

He looked quickly toward the big figure under the sheet. “Is that you, Joshua?”

“... Is that you, Alec?”

Now, he — they — had a chance.

Sticking his head back out into the hall — still no men in black — Alec fired a couple more rounds in either direction, just to encourage the suckers to keep their distance. Moving to the bed, he uncuffed Joshua’s right hand and gave him the keys.

“You all right?” Alec asked.

“I feel good — why are we in the hospital, Alec?”

“Okay, uncuff yourself, big guy. We gotta go. Ames White and his bozos are after us.”

Scooting back to the door, Alec peeked out. The agents were making their move, hugging the walls and pushing tall stainless steel carts that held the food trays in front of them, as mobile shields.

Alec emptied the clip at them, bullets whanging off metal, and turned back to Joshua. “You ready?”

Joshua jumped off the bed. He too wore only a hospital gown, looking not a little absurd in it. “Let’s blaze.”

“Through the window,” Alec said.

But when Alec went to it, the thing was firmly locked.

“Alec needs to stand back,” Joshua advised.

And, in two steps, Joshua was standing in front of the wall-mounted television. Wrenching the box free, he pitched it, the glass of the window shattering as it flew through, the curtains jerking off the wall and going along for the ride. A few seconds later they heard the TV crash onto the concrete in a glass-shattering explosion.

Joshua looked out the now open window. “We’re up high, Alec.”

“There’s a ledge. Move it! Go!”

Joshua climbed through the broken window, skillfully avoiding the teeth of glass waiting to bite him; soon he was out onto the ledge, and Alec quickly followed.

They were a good six or seven floors up, with a concrete expanse of parking lot beneath them. His back to the building, Alec could see something down in the parking lot, off to his right — a dumpster maybe?

Already sliding along the ledge, Joshua headed toward the window of Alec’s room. Looking in that direction, Alec realized that White had opened the window in hopes they’d come that way.

“No!” Alec yelled.

But it was too late.

As Joshua neared it, Ames White leaned out, pistol in his hand.

Reacting instantly, Joshua grabbed White’s gun arm and pulled. White came flying through the window. He squeezed the trigger, the shot going wild, into the sky. Sunlight off the window blinded Alec for a second. Then he heard White’s yell of rage — not fear — as he fell.

Regaining his vision, Alec looked down to see White sprawled like he was making a snow angel in a dumpster full of garbage bags.

Turning to Joshua, Alec yelled, “Jump!”

“Jump?”

“Now!”

Gunshots exploded from the rooms on either side of them, and they both leapt into the afternoon air.

When they hit, even though the bags were soft, it felt like concrete. It took Alec only a few seconds to gather himself, and as he rose, he caught a whiff of the dumpster — medical waste disposal was pretty casual, in these post-Pulse times — and felt the sudden urge to vomit. From above, he heard no more gunfire — the agents were probably coming down after them — and he knew they had to shake it.

“Joshua!”

His large friend rose from the muck with Ames White tucked under his arm in a headlock.

“We’ve got to go,” Alec said. “Kill him or drop him, I really don’t give a shit.”

Yanking White’s face up by the hair, Joshua thrust his leonine countenance into the agent’s barely conscious, slack features.

“You should die for the things you’ve done,” Joshua said. “But if I kill you, Max says you win — you make us look like monsters. But you’re the monster.”

White’s upper lip curled back in an awful grin. “Freak.”

Joshua punched the agent once, knocking him out.

“Soon,” he said to the slumbering agent. “Soon you’ll pay for Annie.”

“We’ve got to blaze,” Alec urged, “gotta jet,” using the Max idioms that would get Joshua moving his hairy ass.

The two friends in hospital gowns climbed out of the dumpster and took off at a run, their bare feet slapping against the pavement as they went.

Alec knew how much Joshua wanted to destroy White for killing Annie Fisher, Joshua’s one friend among the ordinaries, a blind girl who hadn’t cared what the dog man looked like, and who could “see” past Joshua’s stunted social and intellectual growth to the sensitive, intelligent being just starting to blossom after a lifetime of Manticore abuse.

But Alec knew Joshua had no desire to disappoint Max, and she’d kept him from killing White once before. The big fella wouldn’t go against Max’s wishes.

And if Joshua knew how Alec had manipulated him into leaving Terminal City — very much against Max’s wishes — Joshua would be angry as hell... though Alec knew his friend would forgive him. He always did.

As they made their way through the streets, their gowns flapping in the breeze, Alec realized they had to get back to Terminal City, and fast — and they had to tell Max they now knew the identity of the killer.

The problem was, they were miles away, with no transportation, and — in broad daylight — the normal-looking Alec was running along next to a seminude six-foot-six-inch 240-pound dog boy. And, of course, both were wearing hospital gowns, not exactly a current fashion trend.

Alec almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Of all the contingencies that Manticore had trained their test-tube soldiers for, this particular one had never come up.

His arms didn’t hurt, but the now-dried stripes of blood on his arms might draw attention as fast as them running with their asses hanging out of the gowns. They had to get off the damn street, toot sweet.

The neighborhood they were sprinting through looked vaguely familiar to Alec, and he realized suddenly — when Joshua made a right past a grocery store — that the big guy knew right where they were and where he was going. They had been held at County General less than two miles from Joshua’s old pad — “Father’s” house.

So they should be able to easily make their way to the large Gothic home that had belonged to Sandeman, their Manticore creator — about whom they knew little — before the man — the only benign presence at the project — had disappeared. Better to be lucky than smart, Alec thought. They both had clothes on hand from when they’d lived there together, and the phone had been reconnected once Logan had taken over. Should still be working...

Cars were sparse in the neighborhood in mid-afternoon, and the sidewalks were all but empty. Then, in the distance, Alec spotted a car coming toward them, a dark model that just might be government issue.

“Joshua,” he said. “Car!”

But Joshua seemed to be ahead of him. The car, stopping in the middle of the next intersection, was a little over two blocks away when Joshua pulled off a manhole cover and climbed down out of sight. The vehicle now only a block away, Alec followed Joshua down and pulled the manhole cover back in place only seconds before he heard wheels rolling over it.

The aroma down here wasn’t any more pleasing than the dumpster back at the hospital. Standing in dirty brown water that came almost to his knees, Alec shivered in the foul, frigid stuff; but Joshua didn’t seem to mind or even notice. Alec took off walking after his towering friend, who knew these tunnels as well as anyone in the city.