Scott Sigler - Nocturnal - A Novel

“Everyone, stop !”

The sound of panting and coughing filled the air. Almost there …

He set Amy Zou down on her feet, gave her a little shake.

“Chief, snap out of it,” he said. “You have to walk on your own.”

She blinked at him, a glazed look in her eyes. So many blisters, so much scorched flesh; she had been beautiful once, but would never be so again.

“Step where I step, Chief. If you stumble, if you fall, you die and so do your daughters.”

That hit home. Zou straightened, seemed to call upon some inner reserve of strength. She nodded.

Bryan looked at the little girls. Now wasn’t the time to be nice. “No room for mistakes. Step where the person in front of you steps. You screw it up, you die and kill everyone around you. Got it?”

Their eyes were wide, their little faces streaked with sweat and smoke. They nodded just like their mother.

He looked at the rest: Adam, Robertson, Biz-Nass and Pookie nodded as well. Everyone knew the stakes.

Bryan took a deep breath. The air was clearer here, pouring in from the train tunnel beyond. He eyed the narrow spaces between the columns and the wall.

“Hey, Pooks,” he said.

“Yes, my Terminator?”

“You better suck in that gut.”

Pookie did, tried to hold it, but he was exhausted and his air let out in a tummy-puffing huff.

“I guess I’ll go last,” he said.

Bryan nodded, then trained his flashlight beam on the floor and started working his way through.

He made it out, then waited. Zou came next, then Tabz, then Mur, the one who had killed Pierre. Biz-Nass followed, then Adam. As Sean Robertson crawled out of the hole, the ground trembled again.

Bryan leaned in. Pookie was halfway through the columns.

“Pooks, move !”

A pebble dropped from the ceiling and hit Bryan in the head. Both men looked up — the ceiling above Bryan was a single, wide piece of chipped concrete.

More pebbles dropped from around its edges, trailing little comet-trails of dust.

Pookie drew in a big breath, then scooted faster.

Two columns to go.

“Pooks, slow down.”

“ You slow down.”

Pookie was panicking. He moved too fast. His elbow hit the second to last column.

Bryan stepped through the hole and reached. He grabbed Pookie’s arm and yanked him forward. Bryan grabbed his stumbling friend in his arms, then threw himself backward out the hole as the tunnel collapsed. A thick cloud of dirt and dust billowed out around them.

As the dust settled, eight people sat on the train tunnel’s narrow walkway, coughing and gasping.

They had made it out alive.

Big Pimpin’

FOUR DAYS LATER

Pookie Chang limped up the steps of 2007 Franklin Street. The porch had been cleaned of debris. Yellow hazard tape was strung between posts, marking the danger of the broken rail that Bryan had driven Erickson through just a few days ago.

Pookie glanced back to his Buick. Night was falling. The streetlights were slowly flickering on. John Smith leaned against the passenger door, sipping on a cup of coffee. He smiled and gave Pookie a thumbs-up.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Pookie tucked the manila folder under his arm. Someone had replaced the wooden front door. The new door was tasteful, artistically etched, and solid steel.

Pookie pressed the door buzzer.

He still ached. He was beat to hell. His body would recover, but would his mind? That shit had been too much for anyone to see, let alone a modest, God-fearing boy from Chicago.

The door opened. Bryan Clauser stood inside. He looked fine. Days earlier, he’d had burn blisters, broken fingers and a line of staples up his ravaged cheek. Now the only thing marking that face was a neatly trimmed dark-red beard.

At least his face looked okay. His eyes? They stared out in a way they never had before. Bryan had seen too much, too soon.

“Bri-Bri,” Pookie said. “How’re they hanging?”

Bryan shook his head. “Sorry, Bro, the name is Jebediah now, although I may just go by Jeb .”

“That does have more of a Dukes of Hazzard feel to it, but I’d rather not see you in short-shorts.”

“In that case, just call me Mister Erickson .”

Pookie laughed. “Yeah, sure, I’ll get right on that. You gonna invite me in or what?”

Bryan nodded quickly and stepped aside. Pookie walked in. Like before, the house’s old-time finery overwhelmed him. Only now the place didn’t belong to some crazy old man … it belonged to his crazy best friend.

Pookie followed Bryan into the living room, again taking in the teak, marble, polished brass and fancy-pants picture frames. Emma sat curled up in a beautiful, gold-gilded Victorian-era chair. The dog had a white bandage wrapped around her head. She saw Pookie and started wagging her tail, although she made no effort to get up.

Pookie pointed at Emma. “Bri-Bri, I know you have all the culture of a stale Milwaukee’s Best spilled in the bleachers of a tractor pull, but you might want to get the dog off a chair that costs more than my Buick did when it was new.”

“Emma can sit wherever she wants,” Bryan said quietly. “She lives here.”

Pookie heard the tone in Bryan’s voice. Emma was the man’s last connection to Robin. The dog would have the run of the house, to say the least.

Pookie walked to Emma and carefully twirled her ear. Her eyes narrowed in a quiet doggy smile. He patted her rump, then turned back to Bryan.

“So you own all this now?”

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean, sort of ?”

“Well, Erickson still owns it,” Bryan said. “It’s just now I’m basically Erickson.”

“You’re looking pretty fly for a seventy-year-old.”

Bryan nodded. “Yeah, well, the mayor is going to take care of that. He knows some people.”

“What kind of people?”

“I’m not sure,” Bryan said. “Powerful people. All I know is now I’m the Savior. I’m willing to go along with it for now.”

“So you’re not going to make this insanity public? You suddenly buying into Zou’s line of BS about property values and how people don’t need to know?”

Bryan chewed his lip, then shook his head. “I don’t care about that right now. I think Sly got away. So did Firstborn, maybe. There were hundreds of those things, but we didn’t see hundreds of bodies. The tunnel we came out of is gone. I need to figure out where the rest of Marie’s Children went. And if Robin’s killer is out there, I have to find her. Hunting is going to occupy my nights, Pooks. I don’t give a shit who foots the bill.”

Pookie nodded. His moral imperative to bring a vigilante killer to justice wasn’t quite the same when said vigilante had saved his life. Twice. And after the things Pookie had seen, how close he’d come to death … maybe this way was better after all.

“Hey, you clean out that wacky basement yet? Could have one hell of a yard sale, I imagine.”

Bryan shook his head. “Hell no. A trophy room is for trophies.”

A trophy room?

“Uh, Bri-Bri, you’re not taking up taxidermy, are you?”

Bryan shrugged, said nothing.

Pookie could only pray that Bryan kept at least a shred of his sanity and didn’t go down the same path Erickson had.

“I’ve got some good news,” Pookie said. “Word at Eight Fifty is that Chief Robertson is clearing you of the murder charges for Jeremy Ellis and Matt Hickman.”

Bryan nodded. “The mayor made sure that would happen. Robertson brought him to the hospital yesterday to talk to Amy.”

Chief Amy Zou was now just Amy?

“Is it true she’s staying here?”