A Hard Rain Part 3

In front of him the street leading to Joe "the Undertaker" Morgan's headquarters seemed empty. The buildings along the street were made of stone and brick, not more than three stories tall. The windows were black and empty, like the eyes of a dead man. The fog seemed to drift around the tops of the buildings, threatening to drop down at any moment and put a shroud on the entire city block.

Dixon Hill glanced around. A dozen of his people, including Mr. Data and the Luscious Bev, were scattered along one side of the street near the mouth of an alley. All were armed and hiding back in the shadows and doorways, waiting.

A short distance away Danny Shoe and Redblock's men were moving slowly toward the front door of the Undertaker's funeral home headquarters. A big main entrance opened right onto the street beside a large garage door, clearly made to handle a hea.r.s.e. Shoe figured he and his men could bust through the front and surprise the entire place. And he wanted to lead with his men.

Dix was more than happy to let him lead. The last thing Dix wanted was for his people to get hurt.

After Shoe had his men in position in alcoves and such near the Undertaker's front door, Dix motioned for his people to start forward down the narrow side alley that led to the back of the Undertaker's headquarters. Dix's job was to make sure no one escaped out the back, especially with Redblock or the Heart of the Adjuster. With luck, Dix figured he would have the small golden ball called the Heart in his hands in a very short time.

The alley felt more like a tall, dark hallway, with doors inside brick and stone alcoves along both sides. Garbage cans littered one side of the narrow corridor and metal fire escapes clung to both walls casting barlike shadows over everything. A dark alley cat rummaged in the garbage of one overturned can, making almost no noise as it searched for survival. Dix was about to join it in that alley, on the same search.

Just as Dix was about to step into the narrow corridor, three of Shoe's goons busted open the funeral home's front door and went in firing.

The rest of Redblock's men followed.

The quiet, cold street had suddenly come alive with the loud explosions of gunfire, so much that the sound seemed to combine into a thunderlike quality, shaking the windows and rattling doors. Lights in windows up and down the street flashed on as the noise awoke the neighbors.

"Get into positions," Dix shouted to his people as they scattered along the length of the alley and into doorways across from the back entrance of the big funeral home.

The entire building seemed to shake with the storm of weapons fire raging inside it. Clearly Shoe and Redblock's men had met some resistance in there. But they had expected it.

Suddenly the back door burst open and three men Dix didn't recognize ran out into the open. All three were packing large weapons. They were so close Dix felt he could almost touch them.

"Freeze!" Dix shouted.

"Drop the heaters!" Mr. Data joined in.

The three were clearly not used to being smart. All three spun and started firing, the explosions impossibly loud in the narrow alley. One bullet sent stone chips flying right over Dix's head.

Dix fired back, taking down the guy on the left in the dark suit with a single shot. The other two went to the pavement just as quickly under the hail of fire from Dix's people.

Slowly, the battle inside calmed until there was no more firing. No more men tried to escape.

Dix's ears were ringing from the noise. The smell of gun powder and death mixed with the rotting stink of the alley.

"d.a.m.n," Bev said, moving forward and kneeling over someone who lay sprawled in a doorway just a few feet from Dix. It was Evans. He had been hit. Steam was coming from the blood flowing on the sidewalk.

Dix moved over to stand above Bev as she checked out the young Evans' wounds. The kid was twenty-six, and had claimed a love for this old city, which is why he thought he could help get the Heart of the Adjuster back. Dix just hoped now the kid wasn't going to die here.

"How is he?"

Bev glanced up, not noticing the blood on her hands that seemed black in the poor light of the street. "He needs medical help. Quickly."

Dix turned and pointed at the nearest one of his men. "Mr. Whelan, you and Carter help get Evans out of here."

They both jumped to Bev's side as Shoe came to the door of the funeral home, took one glance at the three bodies on the ground, and motioned for Dix to come in.

"Let me know how he does," Dix said to Bev.

She only nodded as Whelan and Carter picked up Evans and headed down the street, with her following. Dix watched for a moment, then before he turned to join Shoe he motioned for the rest of his men to stay in position. "Any trouble, pull back and report to Mr. Riker. One of you search these three for the Heart."

They nodded.

Dix indicated that Mr. Data should come with him and he headed for the back door of the funeral home.

"Good job out here," Shoe said, indicating the three dead goons on the sidewalk, before turning and moving into the black opening of the funeral home.

"Redblock?" Dix asked as he followed Shoe into a dimly lit hallway that smelled of disinfectant and even more blood.

"We're workin' on that," Shoe said.

"Working on that?" Dix asked, not liking the answer.

"Does not sound promising," Mr. Data said from behind him. Dix had to agree. Something had gone wrong here.

The hallway opened up into a back storage area of the funeral home. Two men lay dead there, covered in supplies that had fallen from the shelves. Shoe went on through an open door into the casket display room.

"Search this area and these men for the Heart," Dix said to Data, pointing at the storage.

Dix then followed Shoe. Two of Shoe's men had a skinny man in a black suit pressed down into a coffin. Five or six of Shoe's goons stood guard over four of the Undertaker's men near the front door. Even though the room was full of caskets, there were no bodies in here that Dix could see.

"Let him up," Shoe said. "Get him out of there."

Shoe's two stooges yanked the skinny guy up and out of the casket like so much tissue paper, setting him down on his feet.

The thin man swayed for a moment, then caught his balance and straightened his tie, squaring his shoulders to face Shoe.

"So, Undertaker, where's Redblock?" The thin man shook his head, smiling at Shoe with a sickening mouthful of rotten teeth. "From what I heard, he was s.n.a.t.c.hed right out from under your nose. But not by me."

Dix, for some reason, instantly hated the guy. More than anything he wanted to punch him, but held back.

Shoe clearly didn't feel like restraining himself. He simply stepped forward and buried his fist into the thin man's stomach. With a whoosh of air, the Undertaker doubled over as if he had suddenly lost something on the ground.

"How can I be sure of dat?" Shoe asked.

Dix knew there was no chance the Undertaker could answer that question with all his air gone.

Shoe's goons hauled the thin man back upright. The man's face was red, his eyes bulging out of his face as he fought to catch his breath.

"I asked ya a question," Shoe said, smiling at the Undertaker.

"Search all you want," the thin man managed to choke out. "He's not here. I didn't s.n.a.t.c.h him."

At that moment Mr. Data came out of the back room. It was clear to Dix that he had not found anything.

The Undertaker took a deep, shuddering breath and again straightened his tie. "As your boss would tell you if he was here, we worked together. Who do you think handled all the bodies your organization generates?"

"Boss!" one of the goons shouted from the front door. "We got company. It's the cops!"

"It would seem," Mr. Data said, "that the gig is up."

Eighteen hours before the Heart of the Adjuster is pilfered Captain's Log.

Mr. Data has confirmed, by managing to alter sensors enough to get some basic readings, that the Blackness is caused by four quantum singularities, all balanced on the same plane like four corners on a square. Such a formation has been theorized as possible since the early twenty-first century, but never seen before now. If this was not affecting our s.h.i.+p and endangering the lives of my crew, it would be a fascinating scientific study.

Mr. Data mapped for the crew the extent of the subs.p.a.ce disturbances. It would seem that we stumbled right into it. And with each pa.s.sing moment we are going deeper and deeper. We are able to deal with the forces near a single quantum event horizon, but the subs.p.a.ce disturbances that are combining from four are creating a new problem.

At least knowing in general what forces we are dealing with will help in the search for a way to slow us down to a stop, and then back us away. It would seem, from Mr. Data's calculations, that at our current speed, we have forty-two hours before the intense gravitational forces in front of us tear the s.h.i.+p apart.

Section Three: Captured Dead or Alive?

"Come on out with your hands in the air!"

The police shout from the street in front of the Undertaker's building echoed like a nightmare for Dixon Hill. Around him the smell of the funeral parlor closed in, as if too many bottles of bad perfume had been opened at once.

The Undertaker laughed. "It would seem we are all going to be spending some time together."

"They're not going to take us alive," Shoe said.

All of Redblock's men nodded, as did most of the Undertaker's as well. Dix didn't like the looks of that. The worst thing he could imagine now would be getting in a gunfight with police. The second worst would be to end up in jail, with what little time they had left ticking away.

"Sir, you have already died once today," Mr. Data said to Shoe. "Don't you think that would be enough?"

"And rot in some stinking jail cell?" Shoe said, staring at Mr. Data. "I'd rather die a dozen times."

"Fighting the police will take you a step toward that goal," Mr. Data said.

Shoe ignored him. He turned to his men guarding the prisoners. "Let 'em go and give 'em back their heaters."

Then Shoe turned to the Undertaker. "Seems we're working together again. Sorry for da misunderstandin'."

Shoe tossed him a gun, and in one smooth motion the Undertaker caught it, turned it around, and shot Shoe at point-blank range.

Before Shoe's body could hit the floor, the Undertaker said, "You are forgiven."

Silence smothered the room like a heavy blanket on a warm summer's day. No one moved.

The Undertaker glanced around at all the men in the room. "Now you're working for me, and if you want to get out of here alive, follow me."

The Undertaker turned and headed for one side of the room where three caskets sat against a wall, their lids closed. He pulled one casket aside, showing a hidden doorway in the wall behind it.

The Undertaker glanced back at the group of goons. "Well, are you all coming?" Then he ducked inside and vanished in the darkness.

Dix watched as Shoe and Redblock's men stood facing the Undertaker's men, keeping their guns trained on each other. Finally one of Shoe's men shrugged and moved to follow the Undertaker into the secret pa.s.sage. Everyone else did as well, leaving Dix and Mr. Data standing over Shoe's body, alone in the casket-filled area.

"Well, Boss?" Mr. Data asked.

Dixon Hill looked around, trying to give himself a moment to think this all through. He was convinced the Heart of the Adjuster wasn't here. But if not here, then where? Who had taken it, and who had taken Cyrus Redblock? They were no farther along in solving any of this.

"One more warning!" the voice came from a bullhorn out on the street. "Come on out of there with your hands in the sky!"

Dix knew they could not afford the time stuck in jail answering questions. Finding the Heart and getting it out of this city had to take priority over everything.

Suddenly from outside, a ma.s.sive gun battle broke out, the sound echoing through the building like rolling thunder. It seemed as if the Undertaker's secret escape route hadn't worked as well as planned.

"It would seem the cops have their hands full," Dix said, smiling at his friend. "And that gives us a chance to make our own escape. Follow me."

Outside the gun battle raged on as Dix took the stairs up to the second floor of the building two at a time, then on up to the third and finally up one more flight and out onto the roof.

The cold night air caught him hard, like a slap to the face. The mist and fog swirled around the dark roof, making the pipes and fans that stuck out of the black tar surface seem like graveyard monuments. The gun battle still raged in the street below, sending wave after wave of explosions echoing over the nearby buildings. Not even the fog seemed to dampen the sound.

Flas.h.i.+ng red lights of police cars lit up the mist in both directions down the street, making the street feel more like a main boulevard on a Sat.u.r.day night than a quiet side street.

Dixon Hill moved over to the waist-level stone wall that looked out over the alley and studied what was below. A metal fire escape clung to the side of the building, ending just out of reach above the alley floor.

"Boss, if we go down, we will be trapped in the alley," Mr. Data said. "The cops have the front blocked."

He pointed down through the swirling mist to where two police were stationed in a doorway near the mouth of the alley, firing back up the street, their guns flas.h.i.+ng in the faint light.

"Looks like our people got out in time, though," Dix said. "I'm not thinking of going that way." He pointed across the narrow alley to the next building. "See how the landing of the fire escape one floor down sticks out over the alley toward the landing of the fire escape of the other building? There can't be more than ten feet between the two. We go down there, across, and up onto the roof of the building next door."

"The distance between the two platforms is twelve feet," Mr. Data said, "to be exact, boss."

A stray bullet ricocheted off the building and chipped stone from the roof's edge five feet from Dix. He ignored it. This wasn't the time to start being cautious.

He studied the two metal fire escape landings. Making the jump might be possible, but it would make noise, and even with the gun battle going on in the street below, noise at the wrong time would bring attention, and they would be sitting ducks on that fire escape. They'd be cut down before they could climb to the next roof.

He studied the metal of the fire escape. He didn't much like the idea of jumping in the dark and trying to grab on to cold, wet, metal bars. One slip and the two-story fall to the concrete would be painful, at best.

He turned away from the edge of the building as below the gun battle seemed to gain in intensity, as if the police had brought in more men. The rooftop was lit by the neighboring lights and police lights reflecting off the swirling mist. It made everything stand out in stark shadows that seemed to flicker and wave.

Then Dix saw what he had hoped he would see. Against the side of the area that covered the stairway were long planks, clearly used for scaffolding at some time in the past, from the looks of the paint splattered all over them. With Mr. Data at his side he moved to the material and dug out one board. "This long enough?"

"It is, boss."

Quickly they carried the thick, heavy, wooden plank back over to the edge. It was wet and slick from being outside for so long. Slowly they worked it over the edge until it was hanging down along the side of the building with both of them holding it above the landing.

"I'll hold it while you get down there," Dix said, adjusting his grip on the wood so that when Mr. Data let go, he could keep the heavy wooden plank in place. "Be quiet getting it across to the other fire escape."

"You can count on me, boss," Mr. Data said. "Ready?"

"As ever," Dix said.

For a moment, when Mr. Data let go, Dix thought the heavy wooden board would drag him right over the edge. But he managed to brace himself against the stone and hold on as Mr. Data silently went over the edge and down the ladder to the fire escape landing below.

It seemed like an eternity that he held that wood, his hands slipping, his back straining not to let it fall. One slip and the police would see them and then, as Mr. Data had said, "the gig would be up." In a very real fas.h.i.+on.

Somehow, he held on.