Man on Fire

by csyphrett

Marvin Lake is given a simple choice. Work for the RIPD rounding up dead people, or face his final judgment. Lake signs on for a century of service so he can get even with the man who killed him. He didn't count on his murderer having friends.

RIPD: man on fire

1

Marvin Lake stepped out of his house, pulling the locked door shut behind him. He straightened his tie as he walked to his parked car in the driveway. He placed his briefcase in the passenger floorboard before getting behind the wheel. He put the key in the ignition and started the car.

His car wrapped him in a ball of fire and twisted metal. A column of smoke reached into the sky.

Lake looked out of the fire. A piece of metal hovered by his face. He pulled himself out of his now convertible. Something tugged at him from the sky. He looked up as he stood next to his pyre.

A giant red hole glared down at him. Clouds circled the eye, but they didn't look like real clouds to him. They looked like wisps of bubbles going down the drain when you let the dish water out.

Lake left the ground. He looked around as he flew into the sky. Everything looked frozen. The highway had four lines of frozen cars trying to get to where they had to go stalled in place. The spinning hole pulled him toward it in its inescapable grip.

He entered the hole and found himself floating in a horde of others. Noise filled his head as he looked around. The air was heavy with sulphur, and bacon. He felt another tug. He fell sideways, sliding in a chair that slid in front of a desk.

"How's it going, Marv?" The stocky figure on the other side of the desk pulled out a file from a stack of other files. "Looks like you got blown up. Rough start to the day."

"Who are you?" Lake looked around the office. He didn't like the all white of it, with windows looking into other offices next door. "Where is this?"

"Name's Makamura." His round face broke into a smile. "This is my office, and we're talking about sending you back to answer your next question."

He made a gesture with both hands to indicate the chaos Lake had been plucked from before finding himself in his current position.

"Didn't I die?" Lake looked down at his suit. It looked as if nothing had happened.

"That's why you're here, Marv." Makamura nodded. "We need recruits, and when I got the notice, I decided to snatch you up for the department. It gets you out of the judgement room for the century you'll work for us if you sign up. And you'll get a good recommendation when your time is up."

"The bombing?" Lake gestured with a hand. He wasn't sure which way was up.

"That's up to your comrades on the living police force." He shook his head. "We have a narrow jurisdiction that parallels the living."

"What does that mean?" Lake gathered that it meant that investigating his bombing would be frowned on.

"We only have one type of criminal that we go after." Makamura tapped his desk. "Are you in, or out?"

"A century." Lake closed his eyes. His hands covered his face. He lowered his hands. "All right. I'll do it."

A burning sensation sliced through his chest. He stood up, and opened his shirt. A series of lines that resembled a badge had branded themselves on his chest. He made out something that looked like a word at the top of the drawing.

"Welcome to the RIPD." Makamura reached into a drawer of his desk and pulled out a golden weapon in a holster. "Let's get you a partner to show you the ropes."

Lake buttoned up his shirt as he followed his recruiter toward the office's exit. He followed the Hawaiian shirt in front of him, glancing at the card files that seemed to extend out of sight before they stepped through a door to a wide room that was half detective bullpen and half holding area. Things watched from inside the cells. Marvin paused when he realized he was looking at monsters.

"These are what we hunt." Makamura gestured at the cages. "They're called dead-os. They refused to go to their judgement and stayed on Earth."

"Why are they so ugly?" Lake stayed clear of the bars of the cells. He had dealt with prisoners trying to hurt him from their holding areas once, or twice.

"Refusing to go to your judgement will do that to you." Makamura shrugged. "It rots the soul, and corrupts the world around them. That's why we can find them when they are hiding behind their human faces."

"How does that happen?" Lake understood not wanting to face the other side. He wasn't quite so thrilled at the small amount he had experienced before being pulled into the office.

"They refuse to give up their bodies." The commander led the way to a bullpen of desks within sight of the cells. "Then they start to rot inside, then they start causing things around them to rot."

"What about us?" Lake looked down at his suit. It was the same as when he was blown up.

"We're dead too." Makamura shrugged. "Feathers!"

A woman in a police uniform looked up. Her pale face had hated the sun when she had been alive from the looks of it. She brushed back a strand of blond hair as she stood.

"Sir?" She strode over, hands on her utility belt.

"Marv, this is K.C. Feathers." Makamura nodded at the policewoman. "K.C., this is Marvin Lake. He's our newest recruit. Get him checked at the range, and show him the ropes."

"Funeral?" She kept her face as passive as her chief tried to emphasize his own friendliness.

"I don't see why not." Makamura shrugged. "Don't try to talk to anyone, Marv. They won't know who you are."

"Why not?" Lake held up his hands. They looked exactly the same as they always did.

"A new face is given to all RIPD members." Feathers stood at almost attention. "It's standard operating procedure. Only we see you as you really are."

"What do I look like to others?" Lake frowned at both of them.

The commander handed over a wallet. Lake opened it and saw various identification cards for various agencies. Each one had a picture of a large, fat, bald white man.

"This doesn't feel right." Lake looked at the two of them.

"Tell me about it." Makamura shrugged. "I got Grandma Sacred Cow. Do I look like an Indian?"

Lake didn't say anything. He looked at Feathers. She shrugged.

"Take him down to the range and qualify him, then show him the ropes, Feathers." The commander handed her the weapon and gunbelt he had pulled from his desk. "Take him to the funeral if he wants."

Feathers made a crisp about face and headed away from them. The firearm rested in the crook of her arm.

"Go ahead." Makamura waved Lake off. "Feathers will show you the ropes."

Lake put his new identification away and followed the uniform across the bullpen. He noted others working at their desks wore various clothes and uniforms. None of them looked modern to him.

Feathers waited by a door leading to some steps. She led the way down when her new partner had caught up with her. A prosaic pistol range was set up at the bottom of the steps.

"The RIPD uses revolvers for the most part." Feathers put the firearm and holster down on the desk used to mark where the shooter stood to shoot. She pulled the pistol from the holster. "We use these in public."

She pulled out a bullet with a silver tip. The end glowed slightly.

"This is a cremator. It won't hurt anything but us and dead-os. You have to shoot them in the head to erase them." She placed the bullet in the cylinder of the gold firearm and closed it up. She took aim and fired down the range. A silver streak burned the air and then vanished when it hit the target.

"Why the head?" Lake took the pistol from her. He opened it up. The shell popped out effortlessly.

"That's the only weak spot we have." Feathers shrugged. "Erasure means we don't have to worry about celestial punishment because it removes us from existence."

"Why is that so bad?" Lake placed the empty revolver back in the holster.

"If you get erased, you don't get a chance to get into Heaven." Feathers pulled her own pistol and shot down the range in one motion. "You're reduced to dust. We're still trying to figure out if you're still sentient in that state."

Lake tried to imagine being a cloud of dust and still being able to think. He grimaced at the options that his brain supplied him.

"Go ahead and try it out." Feathers gestured at him to pick the weapon back up. "It's going to be with you for a long time."

Lake picked up the weapon. He loaded it with a speed loader and clicked it shut. He took position at a shooting mark. He raised the weapon and fired. He nodded when it was empty.

"Don't worry about looking armed." Feathers told him. "It's just as disguised as we are. Ready to get a closer look at our beat?"

Lake nodded as he reloaded the weapon and placed it in its holster. He hooked it to his belt as they left the range.

2

The entrance in and out of headquarters was a concealed stairwell. They stepped through a door, walked up three steps, and exited outside the lobby of a mall. Lake paused at the surroundings.

"Marbleton Mall?" He turned a full circle.

"We use the power room as cover." Feathers started for a car parked near the front door of the mall. "No one can go in there without a key."

Feathers got behind the wheel of the car. She glanced at the front of the mall. Nothing moved.

"We pick up dead-os at the mall all the time." The patrol woman nodded at the mall. "They always seem to be shopping despite being dead."

"They don't want to go to the next life." Lake settled into his seat. "It's no surprise that they would tour shopping places to mimic living people."

"Funeral?" Feathers pulled out of her space. She started for the exit.

"No." Lake had no interest in that. Who would show up for his funeral? "I would like to check the evidence in my bombing."

"We don't investigate living crimes." Feathers pulled out on the road. "That's not part of the mission."

Lake didn't protest. His situation was precarious enough that he didn't want to push things.

He was the rookie of the force here, and looking at a really bad firing if things didn't work out.

He also wasn't ready to accept that there was nothing he could do about his bombing. All he needed to do was dump his babysitter long enough to get a chance to examine the evidence.

"How did you wind up with the RIPD?" That seemed the safest thing to focus on.

"The same way you did." Feathers smiled. "I got killed."

Murdered was more likely. Lake leaned back in his chair. He had a feeling that most of the officers he had seen in the office had been killed in the line of duty.

He reviewed his cases in his mind. None of them indicated a special need to remove the investigator from them. Why had he been targeted?

Maybe it was someone from a case he had closed earlier. The fact that any one of his suspects could have survived their deaths added a new wrinkle on things.

Lake had shot several suspects under questionable circumstances. He had been cleared by the later investigations, but it also meant that anyone that heard of his reputation would try to fight it out rather than submit to a peaceful arrest.

Any of them could be dead-os.

"How does becoming a dead-o work?" Lake closed his eyes to listen to the explanation.

"No one knows." Feathers obeyed the speed limit as she drove through the mall traffic. "The best we can figure out is people just refuse to go to the wheel in the sky when they die. It only stays open a short amount of time, and if it closes while the dead are still in their body, they get to stay on Earth. The problem is the rot."

"Why is that a problem?" Lake wondered how long people had refused their judgement.

"If a dead-o stays in one place for too long, then they cause the world around them to break earlier than usual." She stopped at a stoplight. "They are entropy incarnate."

"So all we have to do is look for places with higher than usual maintenance." Lake frowned at the thought of having to check repair bills for the city's plumbing, carpentry, and auto mechanic industries. "We can put it on a spreadsheet, I suppose."

"Or we can just look at stoplights." Feathers headed west, moving slow.

"Stoplights?" Lake opened his eyes. "Why stoplights?"

"They stop working if a dead-o is in the area." She smiled. "Then we can look for any unusual damage."

"Like what?" Lake wondered if Makamura had placed him with someone who was not good at the job. It wouldn't be the first time something like that had happened to him.

"A cracked window, or a burned out sign." Feathers smiled at him. "You'll know it when you see it."

Feathers drove on until she pulled to a curb. She cut the engine. She examined the area slowly.

Lake looked at the lights in the intersection. One of them had all three lights flashing at the same time. He looked around.

A crack in a window presented itself. It was in a store for cakes.

He got out of the car and went to the crack. It could have been made by anything but a dead man wandering around loose. He would have dismissed it before his own revival.

Now he looked for more signs that one of his quarries had come this way.

He walked down the walk, spotting a hotel pushed back behind the other businesses on the street. He noted the blinking lights at the door.

Lake walked to the door, scanning the front of the place. He noted a stain in the carpet on the other side of the door.

Maybe he had the scent of a dead man. Maybe he didn't.

Feathers joined him as he pushed through the door into the lobby of the hotel. She nodded at a blinking light further down the hall pass the front desk. She went to the front desk, smiling at the clerk standing there.

"Division Six." She flashed her credentials so fast it was obvious the woman hadn't been able to see the card. "Building inspectors. Do you have a lot of problems with the infrastructure here?"

"Yes." She stepped from behind the counter and pointed down the hall where the flashing light remained at the end. "We have a lot of problems with the lights and air-conditioning down at the end there."

"Anyone in any of those rooms?" Feathers asked. She made a face as she looked down the corridor.

"We have a guest staying in 118." The clerk rubbed her chin. "No one wants to stay in the rooms near it. We have numerous complaints about those rooms except for him."

"We'll go down there and talk to him." Feathers smiled. "Maybe we can get things fixed for you."

"That would be great." The clerk looked at the two inspectors. "The place used to be in such good shape. Now everything seems to be falling apart."

"We'll talk to your guest and see if we can work something out." Feathers started down the hall.

Lake walked behind her. He kept an eye on the doors. He noted a gradual shift from something that looked almost new to decrepit in the walls as he advanced.

"How come no one ran away when he checked in?" Lake paused to study streaks and cracking in the plaster.

"He'll look normal until we break his assumed identity." Feathers paused at the indicated room. "Something about Cumin powder makes them revert to their real appearance."

"So when we pull him out of here, all of this could be repaired and it will stay repaired?" Lake wondered how many guests didn't want to stay in the rooms around 118.

"That's the theory." Feathers smiled. "Hopefully he'll come easy. Otherwise, we'll have to erase him."

"How do you want to handle this?" Lake kept his hand next to the firearm he had been issued.

"I'll knock. We give him the identification. We see what we can get out of him." Feathers looked up at mold on the wall near the ceiling. "I'm pretty sure he's a dead-o."

"Go ahead." The detective straightened his jacket as he waited for the next step.

Feathers knocked on the door. She listened at the wood. She stepped back as the door opened a crack.

"Yes?" The resident looked at her, and then Lake. "What can I do for you?"

"Step away from the door, sir." Feathers held up a card, but Lake didn't see what she held up. "We have to talk."

"I don't think so." The guest glared at her.

Feathers threw her weight against the door, knocking the other back. He glared at her as she pointed to a chair provided to the room.

"I don't have to stand for this." He looked at the two dead policemen. He stood in the room. "Get out."

"You know who we are." Feathers pointed at the chair. "We're here to take you in."

"Screw you." The dead-o ran for the window. Feathers and Lake tried to catch him before he threw himself through the glass. He took part of the curtains with him.

"That didn't go well." Feathers jumped through the window after their perp. She landed lightly and gave chase.

Lake ran out of the room, down the corridor, and out the front door to the car. He got behind the wheel, glad that Feathers had left the key in the ignition. He started the engine and backed out of the slot. He headed for the street, and took a right to head toward where he thought the dead-o would run.

He spotted the guy cutting through a parking lot. He pressed the gas pedal down and roared into the lot after the dead-o. The guy had time to turn around right before he met the bumper on the front of the car.

Lake got out from behind the wheel after placing the car in park. He shook his head as he approached the dead-o.

"RIPD." Lake pulled his weapon. "Turn over and lay face down."

"Good job." Feathers ran up, pulling her handcuffs from her belt. "He's fast."

"Stupid cops." The dead man beat his face against the asphalt.

"Don't worry." Feathers cuffed his hands together. "You're getting what you deserve."

"I was buried in my room." The dead-o glared at them. "I wasn't hurting anyone."

"Stop." Feathers grabbed one arm. She yanked the bigger dead man to his feet. "You know that's not true."

"It's the rot." Lake opened the back door. "How many people did you chase off with your presence? You cost the hotel money that it needs to keep doing business."

"So?" The dead-o shrugged. "I needed a place to stay."

Lake banged his face against the roof of the car before helping him sit down on his hands.

"You're dead, idiot." Lake closed the door. "What do you need with a place to stay?"

3

Lake and Feathers brought their capture in and sat him on a bench bolted to the floor. They made sure to handcuff him to the bench so he wouldn't be able to take off on them.

"He came along pretty easy, didn't he?" Lake looked around for a desk to use.

"Good job with the car." Feathers pulled up a report and started typing up what happened for the record. She waved him to the desk across from hers.

"What happens now?" Lake turned his own computer on. He frowned at the different setup it gave him.

"We write him up, put his belongings in the evidence vault, and lock him down." She looked up. "Eventually someone will come to take him back to the big waiting room."

Lake looked at the dead-os in their cells. He understood why they didn't want to go to the other side. Sometimes the punishment didn't fit the crime. Maybe it would be more merciful just to erase them.

He leaned back in his chair. Words from Sammy Davis, Jr flitted through his mind. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

"Do we get a break?" Lake shifted the mouse on his desk around. He found a button that said reports and pushed it. He nodded when a list of all of the reports needed popped up.

"No." Feathers printed out her report. "We don't have to eat or sleep, so we can chase down suspects at all hours."

"So no hobbies for the likes of us." Lake knew he only had a passion for his cases. His house had copies of all of his case reports and work boards for open cases he was trying to close.

"I learned how to knit on my downtime." She held up a scarf she had put together out of fifty different colored yarns.

"That's nice." Lake frowned at the scarf. "Weather doesn't bother us."

"I give them to the Goodwill." Feathers put the scarf away.

"So we put our guy in a cell?" Lake could see how being unable to sleep, or eat, could wear on people. It was being unable to leave work when you needed to get away from it all.

"Let's check the personal stuff first." Feathers stood. She picked up a bag of loose ends. It was almost enough to imitate a living person.

She walked over to a counter at the end of the room. Two officers in uniforms waited for them to approach.

"Mr. Lake, this is Roberta Potter and Harlan MacQuiston. They run the property room." Feathers handed over the bag of personal possessions. "They help to keep things locked down for us."

Harlan pulled two switches that rested next to each other. A conveyor belt carried a chest forward to the desk. Roberta took a picture of what had been handed over, and wrote down everything in a logbook. She typed an entry in her computer so the officers would know what had been seized. The chest split apart thanks to rails hooked to its sides holding it to the conveyor belt. The properties went inside it as soon as they were catalogued.

Harlan locked the box up and sent it back to its own spot for storage. The belt had more chests than Lake could count. How many had confiscated items of dead-os in them, and how many had evidence of crimes committed in their afterlife?

"Sign here, handsome." Roberta handed him a clipboard with a chain of custody sheet on it. She held a pen in the other hand.

He signed the sheet and handed the pen back with a quiet thanks.

"Come back anytime." Roberta smiled wider at him.

"I will." Lake scratched his head as he went back to his desk.

"Now all we have to do is put our guest in a cell and pop him to make sure he's a dead-o." Feathers went to where they had left their prisoner. "Ready? This is the worst part of the job."

Lake watched as she took a box marked Cummin on the side. She poured some powder out in her hand and held it under the monster's nose. It started to shake, losing flesh as it glared at the two of them with five eyes. A gaping hole ran through its torso and sucked in its shirt.

"That's unpleasant." Lake stepped back.

"Tell me about it." The dead-o glared at the two of them. "I wasn't hurting anybody."

"Your presence hurts everybody." Feathers undid the manacle holding him to the bench. "Let's go."

The dead-o tried to shake her off. He looked around for an escape route through the horde of officers working in the bullpen. She pulled a baton from her belt and slammed him across the leg so he would fall down to a knee.

"Don't make this any worse than it has to be." Feathers hooked the baton through his arms and tried to wrestle him toward the cells in the back of the precinct.

Lake grabbed hold of the dead-o's rubbery neck and shoved his weapon in an ear. The dead man paused in his struggle.

"Don't make me use this." Lake let the dead man see the glow of the spirit killers in the cylinder. "I can't miss from this distance."

They escorted the prisoner to his new home. The cellblock opened with a whoosh to reveal the cells. Some of the cages were empty. Lake assumed the occupants had been sent to their final reward.

One of the cage doors opened for them. Feathers and Lake shoved their prisoner in the cell. The door slid down.

"Put your back to the door." Feathers pulled back, slipping the baton back in her belt. "We'll take the cuffs off."

The dead-o growled but did what it was told. The chain clinked against the silver bars as it waited to be unshackled.

"Don't move." Feathers unlocked the cuffs and pulled them out of the cell. "They'll move you to your final destination soon enough."

The other prisoners had called things out, but Lake had tuned them out. Now they were in his ears. He hoped they got what was coming to them soon.

The block door slid shut behind them when they stepped out in the precinct proper.

The lower level of sound was music to Lake's ears.

"Let's see if we can grab another one." Feathers went to her desk. "I would like to clear the North Side once before more flock in."

She looked through the papers on her desk, looking for notifications. Maybe someone had seen something. Random patrolling like they had done earlier wasn't a guaranteed success every time they did it.

She looked up with a note that something odd was going on in her chosen hunting ground. She frowned at the lack of her new partner at his desk. She searched the bullpen with her eyes. Where had he gone while she was distracted?

"Hey, Fish." An older detective with bushy eyebrows and a hangdog face looked up from his typewriter. "Seen the new guy?"

The detective pointed toward the front door with a skeletal finger.

"Thanks." Feathers tucked the note in a pocket as she jogged toward the front door. She doubted Lake had decided to go shopping the strip mall.

The detective had seemed unfazed by his new existence. That had thrown her off. Of course he wouldn't leave his bombing to the mortal authorities.

She reached the sidewalk and looked across the parking lot. She didn't see any tall black men in nice suits walking away from the mall. How had he slipped away from her?

Where would he go first?

What would she do if she wanted to investigate something? Where would she go?

She jogged to the car as she reviewed Lake's options as she saw them. She decided to try his house first. Then she would look around the morgue. If he wasn't in those two places, she would have to take a minute and think of somewhere else to search for him.

His identification could get him in anywhere he wanted with the right pick.

Feathers got in the company car and slammed the door as she thought about what she would do. She couldn't think of anything but reviewing the scene of the crime. Since that was in front of his house, she could check the place out too.

She cursed herself for not thinking he would ditch. He had acted solidly for his new position. It had never crossed her mind that he would take off on his own on his first day.

She roared out of the lot with the smell of burning tires. She turned right and headed for the bombing scene.

Lake watched her leave from his seat on a bus parked at the mall. The bus whistled and started lumbering away to the next stop.

4

Marvin Lake nodded at people he used to know as he walked through the forensics lab maintained by the city. He had to use his FBI card because of his new face. He didn't expect anything more than baseline cooperation thanks to his presumed authority.

The federal government was not always welcomed in the off-white and pale green halls of the city police department.

Lake paused outside of the explosives lab. It was a small set up room next to the ballistics areas. He looked around. No one paid him any attention after the first glance of surprise that a stranger was on their turf. He remembered when he went over evidence with these people so he had airtight cases, and now he was just another stick in the gears of justice.

He wondered what the RIPD was going to do when Feathers reported him AWOL. He was going back to that space between worlds to suffer. He knew that. It was a foregone conclusion.

First he wanted to look at whatever the lab boys had constructed from the pieces of his car. Maybe there was a clue he could use so he could solve the case ahead of the regular homicide detectives assigned to it.

And Feathers struck him as someone who was fast on her feet. She would realize what he was doing and come looking for him inside the halls of justice. Then he would have a real problem on his hands.

He better examine the evidence as fast as possible and see what clue it could give him so he could move on before she arrived to try to take him in.

He knocked on the wooden door before he opened it. He had his identification in hand, and the visitor tag pinned to his jacket collar. The technician looked up with a frown.

"This area is restricted." The technician stood to block the table from Lake's view. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"FBI." Lake flashed him the fake identity before putting the wallet up. "I'm interested in the car bombing of Detective Marvin Lake. What can you tell me?"

"Not much." The tech read the visitor's badge. "Agent Pulaski. I'm not authorized to talk about it."

"Do you mind?" Lake walked around the tech, hands in his pockets. He scanned the parts laid out on the table, sniffing the air quietly. He paused as his memory matched things together in lines of area. "I've seen something like this before."

"What do you mean?" The tech frowned at him.

"That guy couldn't have built this." Lake walked around the table, matching the parts that were at the edge of his memory. "He's dead."

"I don't understand." The tech reached for the beige phone on the wall behind his seat at the head of the table. It was time to clear this loon out of the room.

"A man named Arlo used a setup like this for his arson for hires." Lake straightened. He was reasonably sure he could recreate the design on paper if he had to. "He was shot by the Homicide Squad. He went up in a fireball."

"How do you know that?" The tech took his hand from the phone.

"I have an excellent memory." The fat white guy smiled at him. "Your name is Jimmy Roland, married, three kids, one dog of some mongrel kind. You smoke Newports and drink tea with mint in it. You also have a girlfriend on the side."

"What?" Roland glared at the stranger. "I don't have a girlfriend on the side."

"Her name is Esmeralda." Lake smiled at the look he was receiving. "You pay her fifty bucks every Friday night."

"How do you know that?" Roland looked around. "No one knows that."

"Once the government starts looking into things, we find out all kinds of things that might be of use later." The dead detective made a suggestive move with his eyebrows. "Do you have a list of known associates for Arlo? That will save me having to go back to the office and using my own computer."

"You got a first name?" Roland went to a desktop set up in a corner. The techs usually used it to put in details of the bombs they pored over. He called up the felon search programs that would link him to the records division.

"Jan Kyle Arlo." Lake paused as he read the report he had filed in his head. "Jay. Ay. In. He was only arrested twice for destruction of private property and insurance fraud. Then he was shot after a third outing."

"Right." Roland used a finger to locate the names of associates while reading the report. "Blew up a school bus?"

"Killed a driver and a teacher if I remember right." Lake walked over, pulling out his notebook. He scanned the list before writing down names and addresses. "Like I said, he's long dead."

"But his signature is on this device." Roland knew he didn't have to explain about signatures to this stranger. The guy seemed to know all about it already.

"Maybe one of his friends went into business for himself." Lake put his notebook away. "Thanks for the help."

"I'm going to have to report this." Roland moved to the phone.

"Go ahead." Lake waved as he stepped out of the lab. "Tell them you stumbled on the profile."

Lake headed for the exit. He hoped Roland wouldn't have him detained. He doubted the fake identity would stand up to examination. He had two directions of travel, but he didn't like either one.

And he didn't want to fight his way clear of the normal police department. They used to be his colleagues. He didn't want to hurt any of them so he could chase his leads.

He made it out of the glass doors in the front of the building with a wave to the guards on the door, and the front desk. He turned right and started down the street. He needed wheels if he wanted to keep chasing things.

Would the RIPD punish him more for stealing someone's car and using that to solve his own murder? Did he really want to know how extreme they could be?

He decided against taking a car from the street. It would just cause too much trouble for him if it was discovered missing. He needed some other solution.

He checked his pockets as he walked down the street. He had some money from when he had left his house earlier. His own identity and credit cards had been blown up with the rest of him.

He counted the money and put it away. He had enough for a single cab trip across the city. It wasn't enough to work with for a rental car.

Maybe leaving Flowers behind with the car had been a bad idea after all. He should have taken it so he could at least drive around.

It looked like he was stuck with the bus again.

The police would bring in Arlo's associates for questioning, but he doubted they could make anyone crack with what they had.

A signature weapon of a dead arsonist didn't amount to much.

Lake cut through the crowd on the sidewalk and headed for the bus depot. He checked the first address he wanted to look at as he walked through to the station's waiting room. He looked at the wall map with all the routes marked out in different colors, then picked up the appropriate schedule so he could figure out how much time everything would take.

He doubted the RIPD was going to let him continue to run loose. They would put people on the street to look for him sooner or later. And they knew what identity he was using.

He only had few hours to operate. Maybe he should have stolen a car after all.

He saw his bus roll to a stop in front of the station. He walked out to get in line so he could claim a seat.

Lake followed five teenagers, an old woman bundled in an almost as old coat, and a woman with a carriage with a baby in it. He helped the woman with the carriage so he could get on the bus faster and find a seat.

He took a window seat so he could watch the street. He considered what he had. It made things more complicated than he wanted.

Either Arlo had trained someone to set up a bomb like he would have, and that person had decided to blow him up, or Arlo was a dead-o who held a grudge.

He considered his next steps with both possibilities in mind. He didn't like either path.

He could ask Arlo's associates if they knew why he had been bombed. He doubted they would know, or be frightened enough to tell him.

He could look for Arlo at his old haunts. The arsonist might have played off his death as a brush that ended with him escaping and someone else being blown up.

Both approaches required time, and he didn't know how much time he had before either side caught up with him.

He wondered if he would be erased for going rogue. He hoped that was better than flying back into that maelstrom he had encountered before falling into Makamura's office.

The bus rolled into a quiet neighborhood of houses and small stores. He got off at a stop as close as he could to the first name on his list's stated home address.

He found himself looking at a burned out hulk in the middle of two normal houses. That was one name he could cross off his list.

He decided to make sure before he went after the next name on his list.

He walked over to the house on the right and listened. A television played but he couldn't make out the words. He knocked on the door. He scanned the street while he waited.

The door cracked open as two yellow eyes in a dark face peered out at Lake's disguise. She frowned at the wide white man on her doorstep.

"What you want?" She didn't open the brown door wider.

"I wanted to ask about Bruno." Lake pointed at the burned down house. "I'm looking for him."

"He got killed." The old woman opened the door wider. "The fire department said he was smoking in bed."

"You don't believe that?" The dead detective put his hands in his pockets. He could see her thinking about what she had been told.

"Bruno didn't smoke."The old woman shook her head. "I told the fire fighters but they didn't believe me."

"I believe you." Lake nodded at her. "Thanks for your help."

"I got to get back to Oprah." She closed the door in his face.

Lake looked at the hulk again. Why had Bruno been killed? He believed the witness about the smoking.

How many of the other names on his list were still alive?

Had someone gone after everyone Arlo had dealt with over the years?

Lake walked down the three front steps of the house and turned to walk down to the bus stop. He needed to find the other two addresses on his list.

What was going on?

5

Lake drank the cold coffee out of habit. He couldn't taste it, and the caffeine in it didn't race through his system. Its only value was that it allowed him to sit at a window and watch the people in the shop with him, and wandering the street outside.

The only spoiler was the face in the window matching his expressions belonged to man who was fatter and whiter than he was without hair that he had.

He considered his findings as he sat and drank his coffee. They didn't give him much to work with as far as he could tell.

The bomb in his car had the signature of a professional bomber. The bomber was dead. His closest associates were also dead.

His mind traveled the options stemming from those facts and he didn't like the conclusions suggested.

The first theory was that Arlo had someone who liked him enough to get even for perceived slights and knew his signature. He decided to kill Lake, the man who shot Arlo, and Arlo's known suppliers and confederates to get revenge.

It worked if he could find that one guy who hadn't mind burning him and those people.

The other option was that Arlo had survived being shot, or had become a dead-o, and was carrying out the murders himself.

It was something he wouldn't have considered before meeting the RIPD and the things they hunted.

How did he gather the evidence to exclude one of the options?

Digging up Arlo's grave wouldn't matter unless dead-os didn't leave their bodies behind. A grave without a body might be an indicator that he was walking around among the living.

Maybe he could exhume the grave somehow with his fake identification. He could commission gravediggers to do it for him. One peek inside would confirm his suspicion one way, or the other.

Lake looked at his empty cup. It reminded him of something. He concentrated until he had the memory in place.

Arlo had liked to frequent a strip club when he was alive. He would ogle the dancers until closing time. Then he would be pushed out with the rest of the lonely men.

It was called the Empty Cup if he remembered right.

Lake considered all of his options. He didn't have anything else. Arlo hadn't set up in his old residence as far as he knew, all of his former known allies were dead, and he had no known relatives. The strip club might be a link to his new life from his old one.

He threw the cup in a trashcan next to the door as he walked out. He could get a bus out to the Goatville section of town. Then he would have to walk to get to the strip club.

At least his new body never seemed to feel tired in any way. He supposed that went along with being resurrected with a new face, and lacking a sense of taste.

He clumped along to the nearest bus stop. He wondered if Feathers had written him off and reported him yet. How long did he have before he was yanked back in and erased? He couldn't worry about that. He had a job to do.

You didn't get to work on your own murder every day. It was a once in a lifetime thing. He was Ed Bigelow from D.O.A.

Was that why Arlo had blown him up if he had blown him up? It was a chance to get even with no one thinking he did it. No one would believe that he had pressed the button since everyone knew he had been shot in the face.

Lake felt a sudden sense of relief on having pulled the trigger. All of this killing after being put down once justified his decision to shoot the bomber instead of taking him in.

The dead detective heard the low groan of a heavy engine and looked over his shoulder. The bus rolled toward him, and he wasn't at the stop yet. He started jogging so he could get to the stop on time. Some of the drivers wouldn't stop if you weren't close enough.

He reached the sign and grabbed it to brake. He looked over his shoulder. The bus struggled up a hill and cleared it as he watched. It rolled to a stop with the hiss of brakes as the door opened.

"Evening." Lake boarded the bus and dropped the last of his change in the collector. He headed for the back of the bus.

He settled in with his eye on the people around him. Most of them looked like they wanted the trip to be over. Some were goofing off, talking about their favorite sport, player, game. One lady balanced bags of groceries on her seat.

Some of the kids pointed at the old lady. Evidently they planned mischief.

Lake pulled out his fake badge and held it up so they could see it but not the woman. He gave them a glare to go with the badge. He put the copper away as they settled back in their seats.

He didn't want to have to make time to deal with thugs. It was better to warn them off and hope they got the message. He wouldn't mind hurting them if he had to do that either.

Lake had hurt many people in the course of his job. He didn't see that changing any time soon.

The old lady got off at the next stop. Lake stood up to prevent the mob from following after her. His mask took up the stairs with its bulk. He smiled at the gang as they glared at him. Some of them thought about going to the front of the bus and getting off. He stepped out in the aisle to make that impossible.

He waited for the gang to do something. They looked at his bulk and glared. None of them did anything. They might not be ready to take on a cop. Eventually they would start asking themselves why he was riding a bus and not driving.

What would they do then? How badly would he have to hurt them? Did he have the ability to hurt the living? Did he want to find out?

He smiled at them. He really did want to find out if he could hurt someone living. It would be useful information for later if he needed it.

The bus rolled into the depot with the gang and Lake staring at each other. He decided he was winning the contest. His dead eyes didn't seem to need to blink unless he thought about it.

The dead detective got off the bus as slowly as possible. He checked the line of buses until he found one marked for the Stern Manor which was in the Goatville area. He boarded the bus after a slew of passengers. He moved as far as he could to the back.

The thugs didn't get off the bus. He hoped the old lady had gotten off the street in the amount of time it would take the bus to get back to her particular stop.

He put it out of his mind. He had done everything he could short of actively hurting one of the gang when they hadn't done anything wrong yet. If something happened to the old woman and it made the news, he would ask them some questions if he was still around to ask them.

Lake watched the streets roll by the plastic window. He thought about what he had to do, what the club had been like, and how to isolate Arlo if he was there. He hoped he could wrap this up before the RIPD caught up with him.

He was starting to like this second hand existence. He would hate to give it up when he was done with this one case.

He wondered if being erased would hurt.

How many RIPD officers did get erased? How harsh were their Internal Affairs? Did he have a court of last resort?

Had he blown his chance already?

He got off the bus at a stop he thought was the closest that the route ran to the Empty Cup. He looked around at the empty streets and headed for the club. He wanted to get this over with as fast as he could.

He already knew a devil had been put aside for him.

Lake spotted the dancing light girl sign from a distance as he turned in the block. It adorned a building painted pink with red Valentine hearts everywhere. Any windows had been blocked over as far as he could see. A lot had been set up behind the building for cars.

He noted the hand of the dancing girl vanished sometimes. He supposed a light was out.

He smiled as he kept walking. Maybe there was something there after all.

"What are you doing?" Feathers fell in beside him. "I've been looking all over for you."

"I'm going to see some naked ladies." Lake tried to give her his friendly face. She punched him hard.

"Is there any reason I shouldn't pound you into the ground?" Feathers pulled out her baton. "I would love to hear it."

"I can't think of any." Lake decided she wasn't going to erase him. She would have pulled her pistol instead of the baton.

The punch had hurt, but not enough to stop him.

"You want to tell what you're doing." That wasn't a question. "I already talked to the forensics people. I know you idented the bomb signature."

"I'm following up a lead." Lake frowned. "Jan Arlo and I go way back."

"You think your dead bomber is a dead-o?" Feathers slapped the baton against her other palm. "That's a heck of a coincidence."

"I'm crossing it off my list." The detective shrugged. "I don't have any other leads. All of Arlo's known partners are also dead."

"Like he cleaned house and evened all of his old scores." Feathers nodded. "Sounds plausible. How are you going to prove it?"

"I planned to go in and look around." Lake pointed at the bar. "Someone in there might fall in our jurisdiction even if he isn't Arlo himself."

"We'll go in and look around." Feathers put the baton back in its slot on her belt. "Don't ever duck me again. I will wreck you. Are we clear?"

"Yes, ma'am." Lake tried not to look sheepish. "How did you find me?"

"As soon as I talked to the bomb tech and found out what you had done, I checked Arlo's known haunts." Feathers shook her head. "I sat here and waited for you to show up. I knew that you would eventually."

Lake shook his head. He supposed he had not given the patrolwoman enough credit as a detective. He should have known better. The RIPD wouldn't want to recruit a loser who couldn't close a case.

She had cut across his expectations and showed him that he wasn't as fast as he thought he was. If he hadn't ditched her, he wouldn't be where he was now. Some good and some bad had come from his decision. It was the best he could have done, but he knew he had acted out of self-interest, and some desire for retaliation.

Being blown up tended to cause that.

The dead detectives opened the front door. Feathers showed her badge so they didn't have to pay the cover. They stepped inside and looked around the darkened room.

Carpeting covered the floor in a pinkish hue. Hearts and cups decorated the walls. The cups had sloshing liquid spilling out of them. The sound system threatened to break eardrums as "The End" played. A stage covered a corner opposite of where the police stood. A bar took up the corner and wall next to the stage. Tables were placed in a repeating diamond pattern on the main floor. The last corner led to the bathrooms and office. A scattering of customers had seats at the bar and tables as they waited for the next dancer to come out to show her assets.

Lake scanned the room. He smiled quietly. Jan Arlo sat at a table near the center of the floor. He tapped his foot to the Linkin Park barreling from the speakers. He had a full glass of beer at his elbow.

"Looks like Arlo is alive, or impersonating someone alive." Lake nodded at the bomber. "Do we try to take him here, or wait until he leaves?"

"Let's wait until he leaves." Feathers backed out of the bar. "That way none of these other people will be in the way."

Lake followed quietly. He wanted to talk to Arlo. Civilians could take their chances. His badge was a reminder he couldn't do things that way.

The RIPD seemed flexible by his standards, but he had only been on the job for a day. How did they deal with crooked cops? It couldn't be worse than what he had seen before being pulled in the Chief's office.

6

Lake and Feathers sat in the company car to watch the front of the strip club. Lake checked his watch as he eyed the door.

"This is taking too long." He crossed his arms. "We should go in and get him."

"We can't." Feathers shook her head. "We have to take him away from the norms."

"Why?" Lake glanced at his new partner.

"It's the rules." She frowned at him. "The object is not to let everyone in the world know that their dead can turn into monsters and try to escape their punishment. Everyone would try to do it, and that would accelerate entropy here on Earth that much faster."

Lake thought about the damage he had seen from one of the dead-os just living in a place for too long. He could see the reason not to let on about what could happen. No one who felt guilty about anything would want to move on to the next rung of existence.

The door opening across the way put him back on alert. He scanned the small crowd leaving the building, looking for his prey. He wanted to pick up Arlo and ask him some questions.

Shipping him to judgement would follow as soon as Lake got his answers.

He spotted Arlo walking out with two other men. They engaged in some chitchat before breaking up. It looked like the two strangers had their own vehicles in the lot. He watched them as they went to their cars and started them up.

"Who do you think they are?" Feathers kept an eye on the lights pulling out of the lot with the rest of the patrons.

"Keep an eye on Arlo." Lake got out of the car and crossed the street. He stood on the sidewalk and noted details he could use later as the cars turned in different directions. One swept by his post, while the other turned and headed for the highway.

He wrote the plates down in his notebook as he walked back to the car where Feathers waited. Maybe they had stumbled on something more important than his being blown up in front of his house.

That didn't matter. Arlo was walking free after killing people, then he killed Lake and his known associates. He didn't get to walk around any more.

"Let's go." Feathers rolled up beside him. "Let's see where our guy is going. We might be able to pick him up at his home."

"Do dead-os have homes?" Lake got in the passenger seat and closed the door. "Or are they just places where they roost until the place falls apart?"

"You're getting too philosophical for this job." She glanced at him. "The job is to round up dead people and send them to judgement. Anything else is above our pay grade."

"Do we get paid?" Lake didn't remember that from his short briefing.

"No." Feathers smiled slightly as she rolled gently down the street behind someone who was driving below the speed limit. "Get ready to take Arlo at the next corner."

"I'm ready." Lake pulled his issued handcuffs. He tested the bracelets. "What do we do with him when we have him?"

"We take him in and send him where he belongs." She kept an eye on the street, watching cars and people. "First, we ask him about his friends."

"Conspiracy of dead men?" Lake glanced at her stolid face.

"It happens." Feathers checked her mirrors. "Get ready."

She brought the car so that Arlo walked on Lake's side. She sped up, keeping an eye on the cars around her. He opened the door as she rolled next to their suspect. He held it open with his foot. The bomber went down on impact. The detective jumped out and dropped his weight on the dead-o's neck to keep him pinned down. He slapped the cuffs on after a few moments of struggling.

Slamming his face into the sidewalk didn't slow Arlo's efforts to get away.

"Into the car." Lake yanked the smaller man up and shoved him into the back seat. He got in with him. "How's it going, Jan?"

"Do I know you?" Arlo looked at the fat guy sharing the back seat with him.

"RIPD." The fat guy smiled when Arlo blanched. "So you've been around long enough to know that dead men staying on Earth is forbidden. We're here to ship you out to your afterlife."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Arlo tried to recover his poise. "I'm alive."

"Say it again." Lake shook his head. "Be more convincing."

"I'm alive." The bomber stopped. "What makes you think I'm dead?"

"I killed you." Lake liked the realization that warped his killer's face. "Remember? You should have left things alone."

"Wait." Arlo glared at the fat man. "You can't be Marvin Lake. Tell me you're not Marvin Lake."

"That would be lying." Lake leaned closer. "I hope what's waiting for you will be worth this effort to take you in."

"Screw you, cop." Arlo slammed his head into the side window. Cracks formed around his skull. He did it again and the window flew out in pieces. "I'll give you a repeat once I get these cuffs off."

"No." Lake pulled out his pistol. He shook his head as the bomber tried to throw himself out of the window. "You've done enough."

He pulled the trigger on the service pistol. A white light struck the prisoner in the side of the head, at his jawline. A cloud of darkness flew out of the window and dissipated into the car's slipstream.

"There goes our lead." Feathers pulled over in a stop and go, and left the engine running. "Did you have to erase him?"

"I don't know." Lake put the pistol away and grabbed his cuffs. He put them back in his jacket. "He certainly decided he didn't want to stay in the car."

Lake got out and then got back in the front. He closed his eyes. He regarded his actions and wondered if he should have used the spirit killers on the two strangers at the strip club.

If the special bullets worked, that would take two more dead men off the streets before they did whatever they planned to do.

"Let's run the plates I got and see if they belong to someone." Lake wondered if the dead applied for licenses after they died. "Maybe we can use that to track down our two unknowns."

"Makes sense." Feathers looked and then pulled back into traffic. "They won't drive for long unless they got something to mask the rot."

"Can that be done?" Lake understood the implications. If everything around you decayed ten times faster than it should, stopping that would allow you to stay in one place and live a life without arousing suspicion.

"There are things floating around that could do it." Feathers took a right and pointed the car back to the office. "We try to recover them when we can and lock them up. We'll just have to check these guys before we bring them in."

"So if they have cars, they have lives. And the artifacts allow that." Lake supposed it made sense. "Otherwise they're guys who just happened to be talking to a dead bomber at the entrance to a strip club."

"That could be something, but it's out of jurisdiction." Feathers shrugged. "We can tip off the living police I suppose."

"If they're dead, why would they meet with Arlo." The dead detective wished that he had not erased their only lead. "What did they want to do when they don't need to eat, or sleep."

"Some of them don't believe in lying low and working under the radar." Feathers shrugged. "Maybe they wanted your guy to blow something up for them."

"Maybe." Lake frowned. "Whatever it was, he decided to try and escape instead of riding down to the station. Is that common?"

"Depends." Feathers's face was closed as she looked back. "Some will do anything to stay on Earth. They would wreck the planet just to breathe air. Others go along quietly once the jig is up. Most tend to fall in the middle of those two extremes."

"Just like human criminals." Lake didn't add that didn't help them much. "I think we have a plan in motion to bomb a locale. We need to find the two guys Arlo was meeting with and talk to them."

"We'll run the plates." Feathers glanced at him. "If they are alive, there's nothing we can do to them."

Lake said nothing. He didn't plan to let the two guys walk away and commit their scheme. So what if the cremators didn't work on the living. There were other ways to hurt a man than bullets.

"Don't pull another vigilante thing on me." Feathers glared now. "Once was enough. Twice and I'm turning you in to Infernal Affairs. Got it?"

Lake nodded. There were ways around that too. He watched the street. He was the rookie and he might be blowing his second chance.

A century of service was a long string of counted days and he hadn't got past one day before he started doing things his way. He supposed that was why he had been drafted for the RIPD in the first place. If he had been as upright as he should have been, he wouldn't need their recommendation to get through his own judgement.

He wondered if he had already thrown that away. Was he putting Feathers at risk too if she covered for him? He decided that he needed to keep her out of the loop as much as possible. He didn't want to drag her down with him.

The car rolled into the mall parking lot and parked in the slot reserved for it. The dead police got out and surveyed the nearly empty lot. A guard rolled by and waved a hand at them as they walked across the lot toward the darkened building.

"We run the plates, we look at these guys to see if they match up." Feathers's hand was on her baton in her equipment belt. "We don't go out of our way to dust them if they are dead-os. We clear?"

"I understand." Lake nodded. He was sure he could take a few hits from the baton. He didn't want her to try it out on him.

7

Marvin Lake smiled quietly as the two plates came in. It looked like they were back on track trying to find out what was going on. He had made a mistake dusting Arlo, but it had felt good when he had done it.

And it was a guarantee that Arlo wouldn't hurt anyone else. Feathers had confirmed that a dusting was permanent erasure as far as anyone knew.

Lake wonder what really happened when someone was evaporated, but none of the cops on duty knew. It was the last resort against dead-os. Anything else was superfluous.

A century was a long time to close cases. Keeping your head down and grinding out work was an option.

Lake preferred to keep learning things he might need to know later.

"The plates belong to cars owned by William Michaels and Lee Running Horse." Lake handed over the copy of licenses he had downloaded from the DMV. "What do you think?"

"They're dead-os." Feathers studied the pictures. "They've been dead since before these pictures were taken."

"How can you tell?" Lake looked at the pictures. They looked like normal guys to him.

"There's something about the eyes." She checked the addresses that went with the licenses. "Which one do you want to stake out?"

"Let's go with Michaels." Lake picked up the picture with the lined face and chopped gray hair. "He's in the Hill from this address."

"We'll head out there and look around." Feathers stood. "We'll have to make sure he's a dead-o before we can go ahead with anything."

"Do you think the other one will run if we pick up his partner?" Lake memorized Running Horse's face before adding his picture to his notebook.

"Don't know." Feathers shrugged as she headed for the door. "We might have to pick one up, turn around and pick up the other. I'm hoping that we stopped whatever deal they had with Arlo."

Lake silently agreed with that sentiment. Arlo's way of doing business started with explosives and led to places being burned out along with anyone stuck inside of them when they went up.

Arlo deserved his original death just for that, if nothing else. Lake admitted he hadn't lost a night of sleep over what he had done.

"If they were meeting, what do you think it was about other than an arson for hire?" Lake considered targets as he followed Feathers from the squadroom. Where would dead men attack?

"I don't know." Feathers shrugged. "I didn't see any problems when I ran the plates. They look clean as far as I can tell."

"How many dead-os are clean before they die?" Lake paused in consideration.

"I don't know." Feathers activated the door. "Why avoid judgement if you did nothing wrong?"

"Everyone has done something wrong." Lake knew that for a fact.

"Dead-os tend to have done more wrong than the usual John Public." She headed for their car. "That's why we get some that will try to take us with them."

"What's the plan for getting into the Hill?" Lake remembered that Vista Hills had two gates, a fence and wall combination around the perimeter, and a golf course inside of it.

"We can go up to the gate and drive in, or go over the wall." Feathers got behind the wheel. "Which one do you want to do?"

"Let's try the gate first." Lake shrugged. "Maybe our fake cards will get us around the guard without too much trouble."

"If the guard calls, that might be a problem." Feathers pulled out of the parking space and headed for the exit. "It's easier than climbing a wall."

"Let's do that." Lake nodded. He preferred direct action to subterfuge. "So what if we are visiting him. He must have had do deal with police before now."

"Doubt it." Feathers smiled. "We'll see what happens when we get there."

She drove through town, using the highway for most of it before descending to streets that had an increasing number of small trees as they went. She pulled into a turn-off leading to the Hills front gate. She rolled up to the wooden arm meant to tell her to stop until she was checked out by the guard.

"How may I help you?" The guard looked at the car with a look of disbelief in his tired eyes. He was carrying too much weight, and didn't look like he was taking any of it off anytime soon.

"Police." Feathers flashed her fake card. "What can you tell me about a William Michaels?"

"Mr. Michaels?" The guard frowned. "I don't know any of these people except by sight. Got a picture?"

Lake gave him the picture of the copied identification.

"Him?" The guard handed the picture back. "I only deal with the residents if there is a problem at the gate. This guy complains about everything. When he leaves, or enters, he cuts people off like he owns the road."

"Not real friendly?" Feathers put on a serious face. "Is he home?"

"The residents can come and go as they please through that other gate." The guard frowned. "I think he is home because I haven't seen him go out this way."

"Thanks, Mr. Taffino." Feathers smiled. "Please don't call him. We want our visit to be a surprise."

"No problem." The guard smiled. "I would love to see his butt getting dragged out of here in front of his neighbors. The guy comes across as a big pain."

"We're just here to see if he knows anything about a case." Feathers shook her head. "We don't want him to have ready answers when we ask him our questions."

"Mum's the word." Taffino raised the gate. "Good luck getting anything useful out of him."

"It's probably nothing." Feathers nodded. "But we have to ask."

She pulled through the opened passage and headed into the interior of the Hill.

"Where are the address numbers?" Lake rolled down his window to scan the houses as they went by.

"Here's one." Feathers scanned the small sign in the yard as they passed. "We're on the right track."

They found the right house after some guesswork with the numbers they could see. Feathers shook her head as they got out of the car. She hoped this wasn't a big mistake.

Lake checked his pistol for ease of draw as he looked around the neighborhood. It looked like the kind of place that nothing bad ever happened.

He knew that was a lie. Something bad could happen anywhere no matter how peaceful it looked.

"Let's get this over with and see if we're right." She led the way to the front door. Her hand held the grip of her baton as she walked.

Feathers knocked on the door, checking the windows on either side of the door. Things didn't look right inside the house. Where was Michaels?

"Do we go in, or wait for him to answer the door?" Lake pulled his issued weapon. A light formed a door in the back of the house.

"We might have to go in." Feathers frowned. "I don't see any movement."

"Let's see what happens when we open the door." He tried the knob and found it locked. He stepped back and judged the distance. He kicked the door as hard as he could. The lock ripped its way out of the frame instead of coming out of the door.

Lake waited for something to happen before he stepped inside. His patience was rewarded by a bang that became a roar. The officers flew back as the house went up in a fireball.

"Feathers?" Lake brushed out a piece of fire on his sleeve. "Feathers?"

"I'm over here." The policewoman's hair was on fire where she lay on the ground. She patted at it with both hands. "What happened?"

"It looks like the house was booby-trapped." Lake tried to brush the grime from his suit, and found that he was spreading it instead. "Your head is on fire."

"Explosions do that." Feathers snapped. She went to a ruptured water pipe and used the spray to put her head out. "Let's go in and see if Michaels was caught up in the blast too."

"It's your turn to go in first." Lake found his revolver laying on the ground and picked it up. It look as unhurt as he was.

"One little explosion and suddenly you're scared." Feathers shook her head. She picked up her own revolver and went through the burning door. She started searching in the remains of the front room.

Lake followed, taking up the right side. He didn't want their suspect blindsiding them from that direction.

Feathers started for the back of the house, glad that most of it had been blown out. It eliminated a lot of hiding places for her to check as she moved forward. She didn't like the fact they hadn't found a body, or body part, yet. There should be at least a foot laying around.

"No body." She paused in the frame for the master bedroom. "Anything?"

"Fire and smoke." Lake frowned. "No body here either."

"Improvised trap, or bad timing?" Feathers scanned the kitchen, then moved to look out the back window.

"No idea." Lake moved to stand beside the refrigerator. "At least we can't be hurt by explosions."

"We've blown our chance." The policewoman stepped back from the window. "He'll call the last guy, and then we'll lose him too."

"Why trap his house?" Lake put the pistol away. He looked around. What were they missing?

There had to be something there they had missed that Michaels hadn't wanted them to see. He had set the trap on the front door. Why not on the other doors of the house?

Lake turned in a circle where he stood by the refrigerator. Why hadn't he trapped the other doors?

"Do you think there's a basement under this rubble?" Lake looked at the floor in the front of the house.

"I don't know." Feathers went to the destroyed living room and looked at the floor. She pulled the tattered rug out of the way. A door in the floor had been blown askew. She grabbed the ring and pulled it out of the way.

She pointed her revolver into the hole as she pulled her flashlight from her equipment belt. She directed the beam into the hole. She whistled softly.

"Looks like a bomb factory to me." She swept the beam around. "I don't see any body."

"Maybe he wasn't home." Lake wondered how long they had before the living police showed up.

"Maybe he took off when we knocked on the door." Feathers didn't want to go down into the workroom, but it had to be searched.

"Maybe he is waiting for us in his workshop." Lake smiled at the look she gave him. "It's my turn to go first."

"Be my guest." She waved at the hole. "We have to hurry up and get out of here."

"Don't worry." Lake dropped down in the hole, avoiding the ladder entirely. He pulled his own flashlight from his jacket pocket and shone it around the room. The beam paused on a map on the wall. "This could be a problem."

8

Lake played his light around the work room to get a better glimpse into the man he was chasing. He frowned at the display of blinking lights in a corner. He grimaced.

How much damage could his new body take? Did he want to find out?

Lake decided that he could find that out some other day. He pulled the map off the wall and headed for the ladder leading down to the secret room.

"Get out, Feathers." He started up the ladder. "There's a time bomb down here."

He hurried up the ladder. He looked around the room as he headed for the front door. It looked like his partner had gotten out while he had pulled himself up the wooden rungs.

He folded the map as he stepped on the ruined front porch. He had to push some debris out of his way so he could jump to the lawn in front of the house. He saw Feathers behind the wheel of the car, driving to the end of the driveway to get away from the house.

Lake ran for the car. He realized that Feathers was a better partner than he wanted to admit as he crossed the yard. He shouldn't have brushed her off like he had.

He grabbed the passenger door and opened it. He dove into the seat.

"Drive!" He hoped they could outrun the explosion that was going to happen.

The house went up in a fireball that threw wood and cracked windows up and down the surrounding streets. Neighbors appeared at their windows to stare at the collapsing flame.

"He put the small explosive at the front door to make people cautious so the second bomb could catch people looking around, or keep them back until the second bomb went off." Feathers looked at the flames in her mirror.

"Probably the first thing." Lake righted himself in his seat. "Killing investigators covers up what they found."

"What did you find?" Feathers pulled over to the side of the road and called the living police with a cell phone.

"A map of the mall." Lake showed her the piece of paper he had ripped from the wall before the explosion. "What do you think?"

"I think that I don't like the looks of that." Feathers shook her head. "It might be a strike against the House, or the Mall. A lot of civilians could get hit in the crossfire depending on when they strike."

"We should put Makamura on alert so he can keep an eye out for the mall." Lake studied the map. "We might be able to catch them before they can plant any explosives."

"Or we might be too late." Feathers made a second call to let her boss know he was sitting on what they thought could be ground zero for an explosive attack.

He ordered her to find the bombers before they hurt someone living trying to carry out their scheme.

"So we're the point people on this." Feathers grimaced as she hung up the phone. At least the Chief had said he was putting people in the mall to look around for any bombs.

"Let's get out of here before someone wants to know what we were doing here." Lake folded up the map. "We can try to figure out what the map means after we're clear."

"These guys are a lot more vicious than I thought." Feathers got the car rolling toward the gate. "Traps to destroy evidence and kill the searcher seems a little too much."

"We're two for three for bombers." Lake frowned. "What are the chances of our third guy being one?"

"Three dead-os attacking our home base doesn't seem likely in itself." Feathers turned into a driveway as the first of the emergency vehicles rolled down the street toward them. "That was faster than I thought."

"Someone could be paying them for the job." Lake watched the red lights go by. "Arlo worked for money more often than not."

"It's possible, I suppose." Feathers waited until the next fire truck rolled by before backing out in the street and heading for the gate again. "Dead-os are like us. They don't need to eat, or sleep. Why take up a masquerade?"

"I don't know." Lake closed his eyes as they passed through the gate and onto the street.

"We need to find these guys and question them about what they are doing." Feathers turned toward the mall. "If we don't have a motive, we have no way of knowing what they want."

"We know that we have Arlo meeting these other two guys which we have identified. We know that Arlo was an arsonist for hire and a bomber. We know that our second suspect had his house rigged to blow up anyone who entered it. We have an address for our third suspect." Lake opened his eyes. "We know that Arlo won't be around to cause problems."

"The unknowns are where are our two remaining guys, what do they want with the mall, and is there anybody else involved." Feathers nodded. "How do we get the answers we need?"

"Let's start with the address of the third guy." Lake hated to agree with her assessment, but she was right. "Let's see if he's home."

"That was what I was thinking too." Feathers turned at the next intersection to avoid a patrolman headed for the fire. "If he is, let's see if he'll be more forthcoming than Arlo."

"I'm hoping he left us something physical we can work with to close this down." Lake believed in evidence more than people. It rarely lied about what it was about.

"That would be nice." Feathers's voice held a mocking lilt to it. "Then we wouldn't have to question the evil doers about their evil doings."

"Exactly." Lake responded instantly. "We can just shoot them without having to worry about how much they are going to lie to us."

Feathers shook her head at the declaration. Lake closed his eyes again. He would have looked asleep to anyone who didn't know the RIPD wasn't allowed to sleep ever again.

There was no rest for the wicked on both sides of the afterlife law.

Feathers found the right turnoff after an hour of driving in the desert surrounding the city. She frowned as the car's lights revealed twin rows of trailers on either side of the road.

"If a bomb goes off here, a bunch of people are going to be hurt." She scanned for the trailer number as she coasted along the dirt road.

"We'll have to be more careful about how we go in." Lake scanned his own side of the road. "Does the RIPD have a bomb squad?"

"Nope." Feathers stopped. She scanned the trailer next to their car. "We have one guy who blew himself up."

"Not a good recommendation for him." Lake got out of the car. He nodded when he spotted the lot numbers on the side of the trailer. "Front, or back?"

"He's probably got both wired up to go if we knock." Feathers cut the engine and got out. "I say we try a window this time."

"After you." Lake pulled his weapon as he kept an eye on the neighborhood. He didn't need civilians getting in the way while they went about their business.

Feathers drew her nightstick from her equipment belt. She went to one of the windows that she could reach. She nodded at the three rows of rectangular panes of glass and the screens behind them.

She placed the end of the stick inside the planes and levered the holding rods out of the way. She pulled a knife and sliced the screen. She pulled the netting out of the way so she could get inside.

She put the knife away and pulled herself up into the window with a minimum of grunting. Silence answered her invasion.

"Looks like no one is home." Feathers reported through the ruined window. "I'm going to let you in so we can search."

"Be careful." Lake went to the steps in front of one of the doors. He checked underneath the wood before he ventured on them. He didn't want to be blown up again.

Feathers peered through the porthole in the door before she opened it. She had put her stick away. She stepped out of the way so he could walk inside before she closed the door.

"Not a bomber?" Lake stood in place and looked at the living area before he considered searching for clues.

"I didn't see a workshop." Feathers moved to the kitchen, frowning at the running refrigerator. "I wonder what he has in here."

"Don't open it." Lake raised a hand. "It might be trapped. We still don't know what Running Horse does or how he fits into things. There could be anything inside the refrigerator. Let's concentrate on what we can see out in the open first."

"Trapping the fridge?" She backed away from the appliance. Dead-os didn't need to eat. Anything could be inside the white cube. "Good point."

"It looks like nothing but the usual debris of life." Lake bent and considered the tile under the throw carpets under some of the furniture. "I see some mold. It looks like he's not keeping all the rot out."

"That's good." Feathers checked the bathroom. She didn't see any of the usual toiletries. Dead men didn't have to shave, or brush their teeth. She paused at the door to the last room in the trailer.

"Looks like we only have one room to check." She paused before touching the doorknob. She didn't want to be blown up trying the lock. "I don't know if I want to open it."

"Let's see if we can take it off its hinges first." Lake pulled his pocket knife. He worked the blade under the top part of the bottom hinge. He worked on it until the rod fell out on the floor. He switched to the top hinge and worked the pin loose after some effort.

Feathers pulled the door out of the way and shook her head. Bottles of some chemical stood like soldiers in front of her.

"What is this?"

9

"We might have stumbled on a chemical factory." Lake didn't pick up any of the bottles.

"Running Horse is the supplier for the others to build the bombs?" Feathers stood back. "So these bottles might be ready to explode like the other place."

"It depends on what's inside of them." Lake sniffed the air. It seemed clear to him. "What do we do about it?"

"We have to get one of these bottles tested before we try to move any of this." Feathers looked like she was having a headache. "If any of this is poison gas, we could kill everyone within miles if we blow the bottles."

"If it's nitro, we could blow up everything within miles of this place." Lake hoped his body could take such a blow.

"How do we play this?" Feathers frowned at the bottles lined up like soldiers. "One bad move could be all she wrote."

"We're going to have to let the living handle this." Lake shrugged at the look on her face. "They're the only ones who can."

"Bomb squad?" She nodded as she pulled out her phone.

She hated to get them to help her on a case, but she didn't have a choice. Sooner or later, someone would be blown up in the explosion they had been talking about.

She didn't want them to get killed and put a black mark on her record. She only had a few decades to go. She didn't want to blow her chance by being wrong about something.

"Emergency Services." The female dispatcher sounded calm and composed. "What is the nature of your emergency?"

"I think I have broken into a place with a large number of explosive stuff waiting to be knocked over by the next burglar." Feathers shook her head at the truth of that. "Do you mind coming down and looking at it to make sure it's safe?"

Feathers gave the address.

"I'm going to go and break into a place down the street." Feathers put the phone away. "Let's go before they get here."

"I'm going to go and break into a place down the street?" Lake frowned at her.

"More walk, less talk." Feathers headed out the house the way they had broken in, heading for her disguised RIPD car.

Lake followed her out of the trailer as he thought about the case so far. Tracking down Arlo had opened a can of worms like nothing he had thought would happen when he accepted the offer to work for RIPD. He wondered if he had been touched by a divine interference to get him on the team.

He put that aside. He had a more pressing issue to deal with than whether or not Heaven had killed him just so he could track Arlo down and stop whatever he had planned.

He didn't know enough about how the afterlife worked to decide that Heaven, or someone in that general vicinity, had dropped the hammer on him just because of his connection with the bomber.

He needed to concentrate on what they did know so he could try to figure out a target.

It looked more than likely that the mall was the target. Why? Did they plan to kill shoppers during a special holiday opening?

Did they plan to get in the RIPD station house? Why?

Did the station have something they wanted? What could it be? How could he figure it out when he had to fight through the crowd?

Did he have everything he needed to go ahead?

What was his best course of action in this?

He decided to talk to the evidence keepers and see if they knew some kind of hidden artifact that was attached to explosions, or a trapped monster.

Maybe they had some kind of machine that the dead men wanted.

Maybe they were just going after the younger people to shove it in their faces.

Lake planned to erase either one of the murderers without a thought.

It was the best he could think of while he tried to figure out what the conspiracy planned to do.

They walked to the car and Feathers pulled away. They didn't need to be caught by the living police while trying to run down the small amount of leads they did have.

Did the RIPD pay bail? Did he really want to find out?

"We should head back to the mall and see if we can find our two bomb builders." That seemed to be the best thing they could do in his opinion.

Where would he hide explosives in the place so they could do the most damage?

"What do you think Running Horse was making in his trailer?" Feathers broke into his thoughts as he considered the way the mall looked in his brain.

"Nitro." Lake tried not to think about what would have happened if all those bottles were filled with explosive juice.

The thought that Running Horse was making the stuff with the knowledge that he was making the explosives unstable with his presence made Lake think how lucky they were the liquid hadn't gone up.

Too bad they had called for the living to get rid of the stuff for them.

Lake silently wished them the best of luck before turning back to his own problem.

Their enemies had been a trio of bomb builders. They had different means of doing things from the looks of their homes. Did they have different reasons for doing what they did?

He needed to know more about the other two.

At least they had spoiled part of whatever scheme that had been going on. That should be a partial win. He didn't think so. They hadn't stopped whatever scheme was in place even if they had compromised the headquarters/factories of their enemies.

Erasing Arlo had been a bigger mistake than he had thought.

It had just seemed better than letting him walk away from everything.

"Why the mall?" Feathers's question pierced his thoughts like the sun through clouds.

"What do you mean?" Lake shook off his reverie to concentrate on the here and now.

"What made the mall a viable target to these nuts?" She concentrated on the road. "Why would you attack the mall?"

"Money." Lake didn't think about it. "I just can't figure what makes the mall that valuable."

"Dead-os don't need human comforts like the living do." Feathers shook her head. "Money is nothing to them."

"I can't think many of the other seven sins would apply other than envy or wrath." Lake paused. "We need to check if our bombers had a beef with the owners of the property."

"So this is some kind of revenge thing?" Feathers let that roll around in her mind. "We don't have any other motive kicking down our door. Why now?"

"If we go with revenge over any other motive, they might not have known who they were looking for until after they had died." Lake nodded. "They would have had unlimited time after becoming Dead-os to find the right man since they don't sleep any more."

"So they didn't know at first." Feathers nodded. "Makes sense. If we keep going down this road, what does it give us?"

"Nothing unless the target is inside the mall." Lake concentrated on the stores and kiosks that filled up the floor space. "He might even be the manager of the property."

"So we're looking for people who had reason to hire Arlo and have a connection to the mall." Feathers nodded. "That cuts out most of the city in my opinion."

"Because Arlo worked for money." He paused. "Revenge is why he blew up my car, and revenge was a good reason to attack the mall since he was dead. All of this was his plan at first."

"The other two don't have a stake in killing the target unless he did them wrong too." Feathers rolled to a stop at a light. "They might still do it just for fun."

"So one man hired all three of them and wronged all three of them." Lake traced the lines in his mind, trying to find the connections. "The only way none of them went after him is none of them knew, or he killed all of them first."

"Killing all of them first seems much." Feathers rolled forward, watching for the road leading back to the mall. "It does explain why they would want to get revenge. Not everyone becomes a dead-o, so they wouldn't have known about coming back to life if you refuse to move on. It would look like a second chance."

"Does the department have files on criminals?" That would be really helpful if the two survivors were written up somewhere.

"Some." Feathers spotted the mall in the distance. "Let's see if we can find the link between the three."

She pulled into the lot outside the mall. The guard car rolled by as they got out. A guard leaned out of the passenger side of the security car. White sparks flew at the dead detectives.

Feathers dropped down in place. She pulled her weapon as she lay on the asphalt.

Lake dove for cover, sliding across the trunk of their car. White sparks splashed against the glass and metal of the car as he fell on the other side.

"Looks like they're trying to take us out before we can warn the station." Lake pulled his own pistol. "We're pinned here."

"I don't see our two guys." Feathers peeked over the hood of the service car. "It might be unconnected."

"Don't." Lake took aim with his revolver. He really wanted an automatic. He fired one round at the shooter. The gunman vanished in a cloud of black dust.

"Just saying." Feathers fired at the driver as he tried to speed away. Her bullet hit his arm through the open window. He veered into a lamp post and crashed. "Watch out for others."

She walked forward, pistol pointed at the dead-o driver. He pushed on the door and scrambled out with a shotgun in hand. He raised the weapon to aim at the policewoman.

She pulled the trigger as she stalked forward. He blew up in a cloud, dropping the shotgun on the ground.

She shook her head as she closed on the wrecked vehicle. What was going on?

They needed to find their masterminds and take them as fast as they could. This might turn into a war between the RIPD and the dead community they policed.

10

Lake studied the parking lot as he walked toward the mall. He wondered if the two bombers were inside. It could mean the end of the case for him if he could erase both of them.

He certainly planned to stop them from getting what they wanted and shutting them down.

He spotted shapes at the front door. He didn't like the fact they looked armed to the teeth and ready for trouble.

Were they alive, or dead?

He had the magic bullets in his weapon. Feathers had said they wouldn't hurt normals. That meant he didn't have to worry about hostages if they showed up while he was searching the mall.

Lake pointed his pistol at the doors. He only had four shots before he had to reload, but he had two reloads if he could get to cover before they started shooting at him.

He walked toward the doors. If they were using real bullets, they couldn't hurt him. If they were using cremators, they were legitimate targets. And if they were vulnerable to the cremators themselves then they needed to be shot.

He wished he had a real gun with real bullets for real people.

The doors swung open. Guns pointed at the dead man as he advanced. He pulled the trigger four times before taking cover behind a car. Two of the targets exploded into a cloud of mist as the universe erased them. The third bullet hit the door and bounced away harmlessly. The last bullet flew inside the mall somewhere.

Lake snapped the revolver open and dumped the spent shells out. He clapped in a speed loader and twisted. He dropped the bullet holder and closed the pistol. He spun the cylinder as he watched the doors into the mall.

Would they come out to chase him, or would they stay under cover? Could they stay undercover? Someone must be guarding the door from headquarters and bottlenecking the cops who had returned to office to fill out their reports.

If he and Feathers could clear that block, they would have back up. How did he do it?

Shining bullets bounced off his shield. One stray round was enough to make him hunch down further. He frowned. How did he get pass this?

He needed to get next to the doors, so he could shoot inside the building. The cremators wouldn't punch through the glass.

He really needed a gun with real bullets for something like this.

Feathers fired at one of the dead-os shooting at her partner. He went up in a cloud of smoke as she ducked behind a minivan. Shining bullets bounced off the van, and off the car Lake was hiding behind.

The detective moved to the end of his car. Maybe he could distract them from Feathers so she could shoot another one. He saw a car closer to the mall across two lanes of open space. It would make him a big target, but it had to be done if he wanted to work his way inside.

Lake waited for a pause in the shooting. He sprinted for the other car as fast as he could. He felt a sting in his leg as he threw himself behind the cover of the other car. He hunched up behind a wheel as bullets swarmed around his shield.

He looked down at his leg. He had a tear in his pants and a welt on his leg. One of the bullets must have hit him.

He worked the leg and found it still did what he wanted. Evidently the cremators had to hit him in the head to get rid of him. That was good to know.

Feathers fired twice. She missed both times as the group holding the door used the door to block the bullets.

They really needed real bullets.

Lake peeked over the trunk of the car. He thought he could get to a tree. Their cremators wouldn't penetrate the wood. It might give him enough cover to let him clear the door.

It might distract them from Feathers long enough for her to take advantage of it.

Either way, one of them had to get inside and find out what was going on.

Lake grabbed his last speed loader in his left hand and waited for another lull. He suspected they were eating up their ammunition because they didn't have any fire discipline. He jogged to the tree as the storm of bullets waned. He held his fire to avoid wasting his own ammunition.

He only had twelve shots. He had to make them count.

Cremators blasted around him as he glanced at the doors. He nodded. None of the rounds were going through the tree. He took aim and blasted away to draw their attention.

Three bullets struck the two dead-os in the door. They vanished in black clouds. One hit the door on the right. One flew inside. A third dead-o took a bullet in the leg and it staggered her back from the door.

Lake reloaded as he headed for the door. He needed to get inside and find out what was going on.

The group tried to regroup as he charged. He took aim and fired to clear his enemy from the door. This time he hit all six times and vaporized all of his targets. Too bad he was out of ammunition.

He picked up a fallen monster's rifle and checked the load. That should help him as long as he watched the remaining bullets in the magazine.

Bullets bounced off the wall next to him so he moved behind a concrete plant potter, and leveled the rifle over the top of the thing. He fired one burst down at the dead men shooting at him. That only drew more fire.

Where was SWAT when you needed them?

Feathers dropped behind a twin potter on the other side of the door. She dragged a rifle into reach with her foot and checked it. She didn't seem concerned about the white bullets trying to drop them.

"What's our next move?" She fired one round at a moving target who dropped behind a couch. She doubted she hit.

"We don't know what they are doing, and what they want." Lake frowned. "We're pinned down, and we don't know if the Station can get people out to help us. We don't know if they know this thing is going on."

"So we have to clear the office door, shut these guys down, and find out if they have any of that stuff from the houses here." Feathers fired one more round back at the defense down the corridor. One of the dead-os exploded. "And we don't know what they are trying to do."

"Seems right." Lake held his fire. He couldn't seem to get a clear shot with the rifle. Dead-os used their cover better against him. "I think I can hold these guys down if you want to try the main doors."

Feathers backed up, and opened the door to leave. White starbursts struck the glass. She ducked and sprayed the rest of the ammo out of the rifle before dropping it.

"Bad guys are trying to surround us." She pulled another rifle to her. "This could be our last stand, Tex."

Lake closed his eyes. He concentrated on the part of the mall he was in, drawing things out. He came out of his reverie.

"We have to go forward." He grabbed as many of the discarded weapons as he could reach and slung them from his shoulder. "We can't stay here. They'll have us boxed in and erased if we do."

Feathers copied his move, frowning. She had one eye on the glass windows behind them as she watched for the support team trying to get close enough to break the glass and shoot them.

Lake reached out and threw the lock on the doors to make it a little harder for them to do that.

"When I shoot, move over to the Pet Palace." Lake pointed. "When you shoot, I will go to the Taco Roll."

"Leap frog?" Feathers readied herself. She might have to shoot on the run.

"Yes." The detective nodded. "We have to get away from these windows."

"Ready." Feathers pointed the rifle down the hall.

Lake began firing single shots down the hall. He didn't want to use up all of his ammunition. He wanted to make it count. Feathers scurried to the niche created by the door of the pet shop. Answering fire made him duck.

The windows broke behind him and he threw himself forward towards the restaurant. White bullets flew by in both directions. He turned at the niche and raised his rifle. Some of the dead-os had been hit by friendly fire from the looks of things. He fired into the gaps caused by the missing windows. That should keep their heads down.

Feathers advanced down to the next store as he turned back to the front. She slid to the wall, with her rifle pointing forward. She snapped off shots to give him cover until her rifle ran dry. She dropped it and grabbed another.

Lake advanced under her fire. He noted that the resistance was crumbling under their combined assault. Were they that good, or were the dead men retreating?

He hoped it was because they were that good.

Lake hit the next niche and noted this was the last store he could use for cover. After that he would have to charge into the lion's den.

He didn't like that at all. Maybe Feathers had a better view from her side of the hall.

She hit her niche as he fired into the relaxation area with its sofas and chairs. No one shot back at him. He didn't like that.

Where were they?

11

The glass doors opened at the other end of the hall. Rifles expended ammunition as more dead-os appeared. They had popped to reveal death wounds, extra limbs, and growths. The four of them marched down toward the two dead cops.

More bullets speared from beside the public escalator leading up to a second floor.

"We have to move." Lake hated this. He saw another group of gunners to his left, holding position in front of the center of the mall. "Give me some cover."

Feathers calmly fired into the storm of bullets from the revenants in the hall with them. Answering fire made her duck as white sparks bounced off the store's security grill from both sides of her.

Lake ran from his alcove, not bothering to fire. He was good with a pistol, fair with a rifle, but wanted to conserve what ammunition he still had. He threw himself behind a column to get protection from both sides shooting at him.

He took aim at the group behind the escalator and fired one shot. He was rewarded with one of the dead men exploding into a black cloud. Return fire caused him to duck down.

Feathers dove around the corner, spraying bullets at the escalator. Most bounced around harmlessly in a trail of white sparks. One pulled a dead man out in front of the next. He blew up as she slid to where Lake had taken refuge.

"Get your own." Lake fired a burst at the guards holding them away from the center of the mall. He didn't hit anything.

"We need to reverse and get the heck out of here." Feathers fired her rifle back at the corner she had dodged around to keep the new arrivals down. "We're surrounded."

Her rifle clicked as she held the trigger down but nothing happened.

"This is where they charge us." Lake handed her a magazine he had looted with his own rifle. He dropped the weapon and pulled his service pistol. "Get ready."

True to his words, the three groups closed on their position. He noted the escalator people only had two left. The group from the center had five. The ones in the hall were still at four. He shot the two from the escalator with two quick pulls of the trigger. They both exploded as they were erased from existence.

Feathers turned and sprayed the whole magazine of bullets at the center guards. They dove for cover as the cremators searched for their brains. Three of them didn't make it. She dropped the empty weapon to pull her service weapon once more.

Lake shifted to keep the column between him and the four in the hall. He fired at them with as much care as he could muster.

He opened the cylinder to empty out his spent shells and load his last speed loader. He didn't want to have these people at his back, but they didn't give him a good shot.

"Move." Feathers ran down to the next column. "This is still bad."

"You don't have to tell me." Lake jumped over a chair to land in the pit people used to sit to get over their shopping in the nearby stores. He headed towards the other side of the sunken floor to try and flank the guards left to stop him.

One of them tried to draw a bead. Feathers shot him in the side of his burned covered head. Lake jumped over the chair in his way to get to the raised part of the floor. He listened before checking his surroundings.

The last man had taken cover and hid from the detective.

He placed his back to an artificial tree. His pistol pointed at whatever his eyes looked at. Where would he have gone if he was a dead man with unknown physical abilities?

He looked up. The dead-o dropped down on top of him from the railing running around the holes in the second floor to let people look down on the first floor. They both crashed to the ground. The detective shoved with an arm to turn the weight off of him.

"Gonna cut you, pig." A third arm raised with a knife in hand as the dead man smiled with too many teeth missing and an eye that was overly large and yellow while the other was a pit in his misshapen skull.

Feathers shot him from across the hall. He exploded in a cloud of blackness that wiped his smile off his face.

Lake retrieved his pistol and took cover behind the plant. He worked his neck although nothing hurt.

Feathers ran across the hall. White sparks chased her as she dropped behind a stool used for sitting. She grimaced as some of the sparks bounced off her plastic shield.

Lake took aim and exploded one of the four before fire made him drop behind the plastic tree.

He moved to a column where he could watch the hall, and have better cover from the three survivors. He and Feathers had been lucky so far. He couldn't count on that luck lasting forever.

Feathers crawled to a column a little toward the center of the building and dropped behind it. She seemed to be panting.

He waved to get her attention. She gave him an okay sign back.

He pointed toward the center of the building. That was where the dead-os were trying to keep them from. What did they have down there?

She nodded in understanding. She stood, back to the column to use it for support.

Lake looked for the three survivors. They had staked the support columns on the other side of the hall as their own hiding places. When they moved, the dead men would too.

He held up three fingers. She nodded. He started counting down. When the last finger folded, she started running. The three dead men started shooting at her. He shot them one at a time while they were distracted.

Lake looked around for more enemies before turning away and heading after Feathers. They were still alive after all.

Whatever this thing was that mimicked a life they had now.

Feathers stopped when she met some resistance. She ducked into an alcove formed by the closed doors of a jewelry store. Lake joined her. If they ran into another armed band, they were done. He didn't have any more bullets to send the dead men to where they belonged.

"Make sure everything is linked together." One of the dead men told his assistants. "When this goes, we want to push all the walls out from this point."

Lake frowned in recognition. William Michaels was on the scene, directing traffic. What did he want at the mall?

"We are almost ready." Michaels went over the small tower they had built on the carpeted floor. "Once we pull the trigger, we'll be able to get what we want."

The detectives looked at each other.

Lake checked the ammunition in his pistol. They weren't getting a chance to blow up the mall if he could help it. He needed more cremators to stop this nut.

Feathers handed him a handful of loose bullets. He would have to load one at a time, but he would be able to shoot enemies almost at will.

She checked her own pistol. She nodded at him. If they didn't expose themselves, they could take this nut.

Michaels put his hand to his ear. He looked around. He drew a pistol.

"We have some cops in here with us." He looked around at the guards. "Get ready to fire it. We can't let them stop us."

Lake and Feathers exchanged looks. That was the one thing they couldn't let happen. They had no idea how powerful that thing was. They couldn't let it go off next to RIPD's station house. The others would be trapped inside the office.

Lake took aim. They had surprise on their side. All they had to do was get rid of the seven guards and Michaels. Then they could have a bomb squad take the bomb apart.

Feathers fired from her side of the alcove. Three of the men went up as she made her three shots.

Lake stepped out and away. He didn't want to get caught in the alcove by return fire. He blasted away with his revolver as he moved. Two more of the gunmen went down.

The last two fired at Lake because he was visible, heading for cover, and had a weapon. The sparks of their weapons rebounded off of glass and metal as they tracked him across the court to an escalator that he dove behind.

Feathers shot them in the back of the head as she looked around for more targets. More dead-os had to be covering the rest of the building. Would they come running now?

Michaels stood by the tower. He pressed numbers in a keypad before hitting the green enter button. He stepped back with a smile. He was taking them with him.

"Looks like you lose, cops." He grinned at them. He pointed a pistol at Feathers. She erased him without a thought.

She cursed herself for that.

12

Lake and Feathers approached the tower. Lake circled it slowly, mapping it in his mind. How did they stop it?

"I don't know anything about bombs." Feathers scanned the halls. They looked clear to her. "What do we do with this thing?"

"I don't know." Lake closed his eyes, searching his memory. Some of it looked like Arlo's work.

The problem was the parts that didn't match Arlo's signature at all.

That had to be where the other two came in. They helped design and put together the thing, or hired Arlo to help with part of it.

There was a countdown. Why? Maybe that was to let the others know the thing was going to blow up and they should clear the mall. At least no one was shooting at them.

"We can start cutting wires at random, or we can try to move this thing out of the building." Lake shrugged. "I don't know which would be the best thing to do in this situation."

"We don't have time to move it." Feathers pulled out a folding knife and opened it. "Which wires do we start cutting?"

"Start with the ones hooking this clock up to the rest of the rig." Lake pointed out which wires he meant. "Then the one leading to these tumblers."

Feathers sliced through all the wires with one yank of the threads and a push of her other arm. She threw the clock down and bent down and cut the other indicated wire with a single move of her arm.

"How strong are you?" Lake frowned at the display.

"I don't know." She reached in and started unscrewing part of the shell with the tip of her blade. "I never checked it out."

Lake spotted movement down the hall. He picked up one of the weapons left behind by the erased guards. He pulled the magazine and checked it. Glowing bullets gleamed under the soft mall lighting. He slid the magazine back into the well and pulled the hammer back. He set the selector on single fire so he wouldn't burn the whole magazine in a few seconds of shooting.

"Better hurry." He raised the rifle to his shoulder. "It looks like we have company coming."

"I know nothing about bomb disposal." Feathers pulled the shell away so she could look at the insides of the thing. Two plastic tubes held liquid in them. Someone had dyed the chemical in the right hand tube blue. Maybe it was the color of the tube. She decided that didn't matter.

She stabbed the blue tube as close as she could to the bottom. The stuff slowly leaked out through the hole. She worked the knife to make a bigger cut in the tube. The blue stuff poured out like jelly.

That had worked better than she had thought it would.

"We have to move this." She stepped back. "I don't want to find out what will happen if the other stuff mixes with the blue stuff I just poured on the floor."

"Here." Lake handed her the rifle. "Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes."

"Got it." Feathers nodded as she took cover behind a bush. "What are you going to do?"

"I going to see if I can move this to the fountain." Lake grabbed the bomb and pulled on it. It resisted his efforts. He looked down. The bottom part had been bolted to the floor. "They didn't want this thing to be moved."

"If they shoot that other tube, and some of it mixes with the other stuff, there could be a problem." Feathers waited calmly. "We don't know how volatile the stuff is."

"Give me your knife." Lake held out his hand. "Got an idea."

Lake took the knife and worked on the screws holding the tube in place. He felt glad that a booby trap had not been installed. He didn't know how powerful the bomb was, and he didn't want to trip something and find out.

He worked on the tubing and screws until he could pull the container loose from the shell. He carried it over to the fountain and dropped it in. The fluid sank to the bottom of the pond where it would be harmless until they got the rest of the place cleaned up.

He hoped that worked. It was the best thing he could think of to keep the solution separate.

The tower made a clicking noise. Plungers slid down where the tubes had been. A beeping denoted a failure in the system.

Lake smiled. They had saved the mall, RIPD's station house, and anyone still in the building after the dead men had taken over. All they had to do was pick up their third bomber to wrap things up.

Flame washed over him, throwing him through the air like a baseball. He lost sight of Feathers as he flew into a security grill. He dropped to the floor.

He knew he could be hurt in his new state. He hadn't realized how much it would take to knock him down and make it hard to move.

It was a good thing he was already dead.

"Feathers." Lake opened his eyes, pain stabbing in his head from the effort. He wondered what had happened to her after the explosion. "Feathers!"

He picked himself up and looked around. Where could she have been thrown by the blast? He limped over to where the bomb tower had been standing. He frowned at the crater left by the explosion.

The thing had been set up to dig into the concrete floor. Their interference had simply directed the blast the wrong way. If they had not done anything, it looked like the blast would have dug a deep hole in the floor.

Lake wondered what they had been after. He could worry about that later after he found his partner.

"Feathers?" He scanned the court one more time. Where could she have gone?

"Up here." She waved a burning hand at him. She looked at it and then fell on it to put it out.

Lake looked around for any dead-o that might have been caught in the explosion with them. He didn't see anything moving. Maybe they were alone for the time being.

"See anyone?" He called. He checked and didn't have his pistol. He did have Feathers's knife. He must have held on to it while flying through the air.

If he couldn't shoot the bad guys, he would chop them to pieces and hope they could be put back together for deportation.

"Looks like we're all clear." Feathers looked over the second floor railing. "What do you think they were trying to do?"

"I don't know." Lake sat down and closed his eyes. "We need to let the captain know what happened."

"Got it." Feathers dropped down from the second floor. She took stock and shook her head. "I lost my guns."

"So did I." Lake kept his eyes closed as he went over everything that happened, what he had done, what he had seen, the notes he had taken. He had trained his memory to be better than what it had been to help on cases. "I don't see what we could have done differently."

"Maybe Makamura knows what's in the floor." Feathers shrugged. "That seems to be the heart of this."

Lake opened his eyes. He got up and walked over to the wreckage in the center of the court area. A small crater had been blasted down into the floor. He touched the concrete with a finger. Heat passed through it before he could pull it away.

"Quit doing things like that, Marvin." Lake shook his hand to cool it down. He should have expected that.

"Looks like the blue stuff caught fire in the blast." Feathers pointed out the scorch mark. "I think we made things worse."

"Maybe." Lake shrugged. He spotted his revolver and nodded. "Maybe we stopped dead men from getting what they wanted. We need to talk to the last man."

"The Indian?" She shrugged. "He's the only one left who knows what they want."

"Exactly." Lake tested the revolver before he picked it up. "We need to find him and find out what this is about before we can say we closed this case."

"I don't see my guns." Feathers looked around.

Lake scanned the area again. He spotted the guns over by the door of a Game On. He pointed at the store.

"Thanks." She walked over and picked them up. "Poor babies."

She paused to listen. She shook her head.

"The living police are here." She started up the hall toward the station door. "We can't let them see us. We'll be trapped answering questions for hours, maybe days."

Lake took one last look around at the small fires burning the carpets, broken glass, metal embedded in the walls and columns, smashed cases in some of the stores with burned merchandise on top of that.

It wasn't a win.

He didn't think it could be considered a partial victory.

He started after Feathers. How did they turn it around? How did they find the last bomber and cut this off?

Maybe there was something in the files he could use. He planned to put the Indian down before he could try to blow up the mall again.

Feathers opened the door leading to the office. She shook her head as blue and red lights blinked closer through the shattered front doors.

Lake doubled his pace. They had to be out of the main hall before the living guys got a good look at them. Their covers would be blown.

They stepped through the door and shut it. They walked into the busy bullpen where most everyone looked up at them.

"They don't know what just happened." Feathers headed for her desk. "We just became an urban legend for our living colleagues."

"Great." Lake broke open his revolver. "I am going to need some more ammo."

"Better see if you can get a backup weapon." Feathers pointed toward the armory. "You might need one of those too."

"Tell me about it." Lake put his pitted weapon on his desk. He noted it had a plaque with his name on it. "Thanks for the knife."

"Keep it." Feathers opened the top drawer of her desk. She pulled out a cardboard box and opened it. She grabbed a folding knife out of it and put it in her pocket. "Never go anywhere without one."

"Thanks." Lake sat down at his desk. He rubbed his face. He needed some kind of inspiration.

"Feathers, Lake." Makamura stood at the door to his office. "Could you come to my office please?"

Lake stood. He really didn't want to explain everything to his commanding officer when he didn't know what was going on himself.

What was going on? How did he start working the case from here?

"Hello, Captain." Feathers brushed the front of her uniform off. "What can we do for you?"

"How have you two been doing?" Makamura went to his desk and sat down in his chair.

"Okay." Feathers didn't want to commit to anything she couldn't deny later.

"Do you want to tell me what's going on with your cases?" He looked at his subordinates. They looked at other places than at their boss's face.

"We're in the middle of something." Lake knew that was the wrong thing to say. Makamura focused on him.

"What are you in the middle of, Lake?" Makamura picked up a pipe and stuck it in his mouth. He chewed on the stem casually.

"We're looking into a dead bomber."

13

Lake sat at his desk and reviewed the evidence they had followed so far. It was leaving him with limited options. He didn't like the ones he could think of as he closed his eyes and imagined a chain from one dot to the next.

Arlo, Michaels, and Running Horse all seemed to be explosive experts. They all seemed to have combined their talents to create a directed charge into the mall floor. That hinted that something was buried there.

That made Lake want to dig up the crater and see what was so important.

Running Horse also seemed to be the chemical guy behind the trio. That meant he had created the formula Feathers had stopped from fueling the charge. There was no telling what would have happened if the two solutions had mixed.

Maybe the lower floor of the mall would have been gutted completely instead of injured.

How much more of that stuff did he have? Was it enough for another try at the mall and the RIPD office? Did they want to find out?

So they had to make sure Running Horse didn't have a stash of the stuff, or a way to use it. That was defense, and Lake didn't like defending.

Tracking the Indian down was what he wanted to do, but he didn't have a rap sheet to start with for listed associates.

Depending on how long ago he had died, there might not be any record of the man any more.

Running Horse, the chemical explosive he had manufactured, the artifact stood in a row in Lake's mind. He paused in his consideration.

Where had Running Horse bought, or stolen, his ingredients for his fuel?

How many companies dealt with explosive fuel in the city?

Maybe that was what he needed to start moving forward again.

He opened his eyes. Feathers was still with Makamura, explaining what had happened. He didn't envy her that.

The captain didn't look happy that their cover had almost been blown by a bunch of crazy dead men.

Lake turned to his computer. He noted that even most of the old timers had one, even if they had died long before a computer existed, much less the thought of one. He turned it on and registered a handle for use.

He decided the first thing he should do is search for companies in the city that made what he was looking for in bulk. That might give him a lead on a second house owned by Running Horse.

Only an idiot would go back to the house they had exposed to the living world.

Running Horse hadn't struck Lake as particularly stupid in the brief time they had interacted.

He made a list of places his quarry might have gotten the stuff. Now came the part where he called around and asked if ingredients had been bought in bulk, or not.

He realized he needed more than that before he tried to get an admission of sales. He needed to know what was in the goop, and he didn't. Who could he call for that?

As far as he knew, the police and the fire department had the mall cordoned off. How did he get an analysis from one of their technicians?

Maybe he could call one of their techs for the answers he wanted.

Jimmy Roland might know something.

He checked his fake identification before calling the lab. He hoped Jimmy would give him something he could use. He needed to get back on the street with a clear line. He didn't know how long he had before they yanked his plug for good.

He doubted he would be with the RIPD much longer. He had broken several rules of engagement that would get him fired if he were alive. He had no doubt the same sort of thing applied here in the dead police department.

Their internal affairs must be more hated than a normal unit.

He dialed the lab and waited for the phone tree to come on. He held down zero until he got someone living. He smiled at the crusty voice that finally answered the phone.

"This is Pulaski." He was careful to leave out the fake authority. Most police, even the civilian lab people, hated the FBI horning in on a case. "Is Roland there?"

"I'll have to switch you to the lab." The receptionist seemed put out by his tone of voice. She put him on hold.

Roland's voice mail announced itself moments later. Lake frowned. He decided to not leave a message. He didn't want Roland to get suspicious and call the real FBI about him.

He doubted that he was an officer of the dead police would be the explanation that would get him out of any trouble.

He still needed to know what the lab knew. Then he could narrow his search down further.

Feathers walked out of Makamura's office. She settled at her desk, looking down at the top. She looked defeated.

"What's going on, Feathers?" Lake printed out a list of the closest companies. He could try to talk them in person. He had nothing but time at the moment.

"I have to stand for a review board in a couple of days." Feathers took her guns out of her desk. She pulled out a gun cleaning kit. Her hands emptied the revolvers and began brushing and wiping them as she looked off in space. "Makamura said don't worry about it, but we caused a lot of damage when we're supposed to be keeping things under wraps. Infernal Affairs thinks it's unacceptable."

"We saved most of the mall." Lake didn't quite think that was true. The evidence suggested that the explosive charge would have been directed into the floor without their interference. They might have made things worse instead of better. He doubted Feathers wanted to hear that.

"That doesn't matter if the living world finds out about us." She glared at him. "We cut it too close. As the senior, I should have held up until we knew enough to keep things under wraps."

"So if the three stooges succeeded, it was okay as long as no one living knew?" Lake frowned. "I don't think so."

"The rules are the rules." Feathers shook her head. "That's why we're here in the first place."

"We're here to stop bad guys." Lake paused as inspiration struck. "How long do you have before your review?"

"The day after tomorrow, at eight in the morning." Feathers started putting her pistols back together. "Why?"

"I want you to dig up what they were after." Lake stood. He put the list in his pocket. "Can you do that?"

"I guess." She slid glowing bullets into her guns. "Why?"

"If we got what they want, they'll have to come to us to get it." Lake smiled. "I have to check on some things. I'll be back in a bit."

"Keep things under the radar." Feathers stood. "I might be able to slide through this review, but not if you do something stupid."

"I promise all I am going to do is talk to a guy I know." Lake headed for the street exit. "I'll introduce you sometime when this is over."

"That's not keeping things under the radar, Lake." Feathers glared after him with her hands on her hips.

"He doesn't know, and he never will." Lake opened the door and stepped out of the power room. He looked toward the mess in the center of the mall. People were down there, analyzing what they could of the action. He turned and went out the damaged front doors.

He wanted to talk to Roland, make sure his cover was still good, and use the lab to find out if any of the companies on his list had lost their chemicals. That would give him some kind of cross trail. Then he could try to narrow down his search.

If Feathers got whatever it was in the floor, that would give them a two prong attack.

Either they tracked Running Horse and whomever he had as allies down with the bomb materials, or they set a trap and tried to lure him in with the artifact. They just had to get it done before the review so Feathers would be kept on the job.

Lake's reading of her told him she wanted to stay on the job more than going to her just reward. He figured it was a sense of duty that had outlasted the rest of her mortal life she had lost.

He wondered if that was all he would have left by the time his century was up.

If he closed this case, he would have the time to find out.

Lake headed for the undercover car. He needed to make sure no one got a good look at it. He didn't want the authorities putting out an APB on his thirty year old wreck.

That would cramp his style.

If he couldn't get anything out of the lab rat, he would have to try some other way to get the information. Hopefully no one would see him coming in time to do anything about it.

Lake got behind the wheel, put the spare key in the ignition, and drove out of the parking lot. He avoided a couple of work trucks and a glassier as he rolled on the street and turned toward the city/county lab.

He thought of other means and if he had them. He doubted the person he was going to meet knew anything outside of his lab. The rules probably forbade him explaining everything to his old colleagues.

He wondered what happened if the masquerade was broken. Would the world break down? Would it be something out of the Walking Dead?

Did he really want to find out?

In the back of his mind was the thought that this was the chance for some to earn some kind of redemption and fix the mistakes they had committed in their lives.

He wondered if it worked, or if they were found wanting after their century was up.

Would he be found wanting?

He hoped not.

14

Marvin Lake carried his imaginary weight into the lab building. He kept his head down as he walked by the police waiting on reports. He knew they wouldn't know him, but he didn't want to engage them in conversation.

He had a deadline and he couldn't afford to arouse any suspicions before he helped Feathers with her review. Authority tended to forget problems if you fixed them before they handed down punishment.

That's what he planned to do.

He stepped in the lab and looked around. Roland stood over a microscope. He had ear buds for an Ipod in his ears. He mouthed the words of a song as he checked whatever sample he was working on.

"Roland?" Lake paused to get a reaction, but the technician was in his own world. "Roland!"

The lab rat jumped, ripping the ear buds from his ears as he looked around. He frowned when he saw the fat white guy standing there. Had they met before?

"Pulaski, FBI." The fat man pushed the cloudy memory into sharp relief. "I was wondering if you got anything at the mall bombing yet."

"Not yet." Roland looked around his lab. "I don't know if I should tell you anything."

"I know there was a bomb at the mall. I know that it didn't blow the mall up like it should. Can you tell me why?" Pulaski pulled out a notebook just like any department detective and waited.

"I don't know." Roland shrugged. "The bomb squad is still going over most of it. I got samples from around the bomb. This blue stuff for instance was collected at the edge of the blast zone."

He gestured at the microscope.

Pulaski looked through the lens with a frown. He rubbed his eye after his one look.

"What is it?" He knew that was what he needed to know. Then all he had to do was start calling chemical places to find out which one sold what.

"I don't know." Roland shrugged. "I put some of it in the Spec Mass. I think it's the reason the bomb didn't go off like it should have."

"I don't understand." Pulaski indicated the microscope. "What happened?"

"From the way the scene looked, this blue stuff was supposed to be in the bomb with another chemical." Roland gestured at a cart covered with boxes. "We found traces of that in a nearby fountain. I think someone prevented the two chemicals from mixing and that partially saved the mall."

"But you don't know what these two chemicals are." Pulaski frowned. So much for the easy trail.

"Just that they are binary agents and you can't have a bomb without one of them." The technician smiled as one of the machines began printing out a report. He glanced at it. "Definitely binary."

"Who makes the stuff?" Pulaski wondered if Roland was suspicious of him. He hoped not.

"No one." Roland looked at the report. "This material wasn't made commercially as far as I know."

"Thanks for your help, Roland." Pulaski put his notebook away. "If I think of anything else, I'll call you I guess."

"I got a question." Roland frowned at the bigger man as he turned to leave. "Why don't you ask the FBI techs what they know?"

"I'm supposed to be checking the sale of manure to farmers." Pulaski paused at the door. "I'm not supposed to be doing an end run, if you know what I mean."

"Got that." Roland shook his head. He wouldn't want to strongarm some guy trying to grow some corn. "I'll keep working on it."

He glanced at the report. He raised his eyebrows for a second.

"Wait." He went over the other sheets again. "I think I got something you can use."

"What?" Pulaski pulled out his notebook again.

"This ingredient, Metrokerion, was pulled off the market." Roland showed him the sheet. "It's incredibly lethal to anyone who stays around it."

"What good is that?" He knew there was something there. This might have been in all those jars he had pulled Feathers from earlier.

"There was a supply locked up in the manufacturer's warehouse." Roland smiled. "There was a thing about it. It's still there on Fifth and Perry."

"Fifth and Perry." Pulaski wrote that down next to the chemical name. "Do you remember the name of the company?"

"Wolford Explosive." Roland nodded. "What do you think?"

"It's the only thing I got." Pulaski shrugged. "If anything is there, maybe we can figure out what's going on."

"Good luck with that." Roland reached for his ear buds. He went back to the microscope, adjusting the focus.

Pulaski headed down the hall. He decided to take a look at the explosives place. Maybe there were dead men waiting to be erased there.

Marvin Lake walked to the undercover car. He felt like himself. But everyone he saw looked at him like a stranger. That took some getting used to after the years on the force working on other cases.

He considered picking up Feathers, but decided against it. She had to get whatever was buried in the floor. She couldn't do that if she was riding around the city with him.

Whatever the dead men wanted had to be kept out of their hands.

Lake got behind the wheel and aimed the car for the open road. He turned right and followed the signs to the highway. From there, Fifth was a block over from a designated exit. Then he could drive down until he found Wolford.

He wondered if his credentials included anything for impersonating a federal inspector.

He needed to get into the warehouse, see if any of the stuff was missing, and figure out how to check the inventory. He saw problems but didn't think they were insurmountable.

Did Wolford Explosive have both chemicals, or did someone else have the other ingredients?

He might be able to trap the last bomber with a need to resupply.

How much damage had he and Feathers caused? That edged to the top of his worries. Had they stopped most of the dead-os? How many still remained? Could Running Horse recruit more?

Did erasing dead-os count against his good recommendation when his time was up? How did that work? Did he want to find out first hand?

He put thoughts of his future aside as he spotted the old chemical factory. He pulled out his credential case and decided to use the FBI one more time. Maybe that would get him some cooperation from the explosive makers.

He rolled his car to the guardhouse out front of the property. A chain fence ran around the edge, leaving a clear space next to the street. They had left off the sidewalk beside the link fence so that grass grew in uneven clumps. He didn't see people moving around inside the lot. There were three brick buildings sitting in a rough triangle. He supposed the staff would work in those buildings putting together what they needed to blow things up.

The guard stood from his chair, looking the undercover car over. Then he looked Pulaski over with weedy eyes. One hand seemed to be set too far back from the wrist as it picked up a clipboard. His lips drew down as he inspected the clipboard.

"I don't have any visitors listed for today." He looked at the car. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"Pulaski, FBI." The big white guy behind the wheel showed a badge and a credential card before putting them away. "You in charge of security here?"

"I work the gate most days from eight to four." The guard glared at him. "What's the problem?"

"I need to know if you shipped some Metrokerion out of here in the last few days, maybe as much as a week ago." Pulaski pulled out his notebook to make sure he had the right word. "It's blue, and sort of like jelly."

"I don't know anything about the mixing and shipping stuff." The guard shrugged. "You would have to talk to the office people."

"Could I do that then?" Pulaski waved a meaty hand at the arm across the entrance road.

"Let me call them first." The guard picked up a phone and pressed a button for who he wanted to talk to inside. He didn't take his eyes off the car. "I have a guy here who wants to talk to someone about a mix leaving the place. Says he's from the FBI. Should I send him through?"

He listened with a couple of noises that indicated disbelief. He put the phone down firmly.

"Go up to the big building." The guard pointed with his strange hand. "A guy named Withers will meet you there."

"Thanks." Pulaski waited for the arm to lift before driving up to the main building. He inspected the grounds as he parked next to the indicated building.

Lake wondered how their business was doing. Everything seemed dark and gloomy to him.

He got out of the car and went to the glass door marked with office and the business name with a phone number to call. He went inside and looked around at the low key office. Everything was in pink and light green. Pink chairs waited for visitors to sit in them. Pictures of flowers adorned the walls. A middle aged woman with one eye wider than the other smiled at him with crooked teeth. He smiled back.

"How can I help you?" Her voice was like rock grating against each other.

"I'm here to see someone about shipping." He showed her his badge. "The guard said a Withers is supposed to meet me."

"He should be down in a few minutes." The secretary went back to going over a list of messages.

A man with too much gel in his hair and a smile that was blindingly white arrived. He had rolled up shirt sleeves on a buttoned white shirt and khakis.

"I'm Billy Withers." He shook hands with cool flesh. "How can I help you?"

"I was checking on a thing called Metrokerion." Pulaski frowned. "This place seems to be the only supplier."

"We have some in storage, but that stuff is deadly." Withers led the way out of the lobby and toward the smaller building at the top of the triangle. "One sniff and you keel over in a second."

"Why do you keep it around?" Pulaski noted the dim lights as he entered the storehouse after Withers.

"It would be expensive as heck to burn it up." Withers pointed at the barrels at the back of the warehouse. "If we tried any usual method, it would burn the furnace out in a few minutes of cooking. As long as we don't mix it with the other half of the formula, and keep the barrels airtight, it's safe up against the wall."

"How would you know if some of it was missing?" The barrels seemed okay to the detective as he walked closer to inspect them.

"We wouldn't." Withers waved a hand at the pile. "All of this stuff is written off the inventory since we can't sell it."

15

Lake walked around the storehouse, scratching his head. He paid attention to where the barrels stood, and what moved around him. He had no way of knowing if some of the stuff was missing.

He wanted to look inside one, but Withers hovered at his elbow and he didn't want to kill the man with the fumes.

Lake checked his watch and decided that he should leave the staff alone for the moment. He could always come back if he had to later.

He needed to check in with Feathers anyway. Maybe she had found what the dead-os wanted with their invasion of the mall.

He scanned the grounds again. Something was wrong with the place. He didn't know what, but he felt it. He hoped he wasn't being paranoid. Finding out that dead people didn't always stay dead might have something to do with the feeling.

He got behind the wheel of the unmarked car and looked around again before starting the engine. At least the car didn't blow up. That was something to expect after what he had seen so far.

He drove into the out lane and pulled out of the parking lot. He went down the street and turned. He parked next to the sidewalk as he considered his next move.

What was he missing? What was triggering his wrong feeling about the factory? If he could figure that out, he might be ahead of the game.

He wonder if the office had some paperwork on the place. He should head back and try to figure out which way to go. Feathers wouldn't like it if he left her out of the action again. She didn't have a lot of time left until her review. He had to dig up as much as he could to help her.

He should get some of that seasoning too. It was the only way to make a dead-o reveal themselves. He needed that to identify any of the dead men working in the warehouse.

He knew he could be wrong. He wanted to be ready in case he was right.

Lake put the car in drive and headed down the street, heading back to the mall. He needed to check in before he did anything else. He didn't plan to raid the Wolford offices by himself. They might have firepower able to make his new existence uncomfortable.

They had used a small army raiding the mall. They might have similar numbers in the factory. There was no way he could handle those numbers on his own.

He wondered if the RIPD had a shotgun he could requisition. The next time he got into a gun battle, he wanted to put his target down.

If they were dead-os, and knew his Pulaski face, he might have already tipped his hand that the RIPD knew something about their bombing activities. That might force them to rush whatever plan they had.

If they didn't know, he was still in the clear.

He couldn't bet they didn't know.

Survivors might have reported a fat white guy and an old Chinese man wiping out their guys. He and Feathers would be known to their organization if there was one.

Feathers had said that dead-os liked to keep to themselves to keep their detection down. Maybe she had been wrong about that.

Maybe there was an equivalent of a dead mafia running around trying to do things.

He mulled that idea over as he pulled into the lot in front of the mall. He liked it but it was hard to prove in the absence of evidence.

He had a factory for making explosives with weird people in charge. That was nothing but a side check at the moment. He needed to know more about Withers.

Did the dead police have records for the living?

Lake walked across the lot, heading for the mall. He ignored the sign that said the place was closed. He went inside, flashing a badge at the local cops on duty. Once he checked on Feathers, he could put his notes down and think about what he could prove.

Right now he couldn't prove anything without throwing seasoning in a guy's face.

He found Feathers and Makamura standing by a hole dug into the concrete floor. They didn't look happy about it.

"Found anything?" He looked in the hole. A workman with a hardhat marked JCO had a jackhammer at the bottom. A hose ran from the hammer to a portable generator set up down the hall. Lake realized they hadn't heard the question and repeated it in a louder voice.

Feathers shook her head. Her expression said that she thought his idea was nutty.

Maybe it was. It could be the dead-os had been digging in the wrong place for whatever they were looking to find. It wouldn't be the first time someone had screwed up a treasure hunt.

The jackhammer clanged on something in the pit. The workman stopped instantly. He could have hit a pipe of some kind. He didn't want to rupture a water pipe or electrical pipe.

Both led to bad consequences.

He bent down in the relative silence and checked what he had hit. He hoped he hadn't busted a pipe. That was more work on top of what he was already supposed to be doing.

It looked like someone had buried a box in the concrete slab that would form the base for the mall. It was gray metal with a heavy lock on it. He could see the top of the lock's bar in the part that he had exposed.

"Go ahead and finish digging that up, whatever it is." Makamura called down. "This might be what we are looking for."

"Right." The workman picked up the jackhammer by the handles and applied tiny trigger pulls to cut around the box so he could free it. He put the hammer aside and grabbed the thing by the sides. He yanked on it and it came free. He handed it out of the crater and then he handed up the hammer. Then he climbed out himself by gripping the top of the hole and pulling. "This is a thick slab for a floor."

"Concrete in the lock." Feathers knelt to examine the lock. "We can get this off with bolt cutters."

"We need to close this hole up." Makamura picked up the box with both hands. "Then we need to see what's inside of this thing."

"Why would the dead-os want it?" Lake frowned. It looked like a perfectly ordinary metal box with a lock on it. It reminded him of a treasure chest.

"There might be an artifact inside of it." The captain started back toward the office door. "They can do things that change the rules of the game."

"You're kidding." Lake paused. It did make sense. What else would dead people need when they didn't eat, breathe, or die anymore.

"No." Makamura shrugged the thing to his shoulder. "There used to be magic in the world. People built things to change the lines so to speak."

A jar full of yellow liquid crashed at their feet. There was a moment for them to see what had splashed their shoes. Then a sheet of fire wrapped the trio hurling them into the air with a thunderous boom.

Lake lifted his head, the fire from the explosion blurring his vision. Three men had the box. Four more had weapons pointing at him. He assumed that he was close to Feathers and Makamura since he didn't see much of a variance in their aiming.

What was in the box?

He needed to move. The others had to worry about themselves at the moment. He doubted the bad guys were using real bullets since they knew what they were facing.

Lake picked himself up and threw himself toward one of the plants he had used for cover the night before. He covered his head with his burning arms as bullets snapped at him. He dropped behind the ceramic planter at the base of the plant and rolled to try to put the fire out.

It hurt like being stung by a swarm of bees, but he was still mobile. He clapped the last burning flame on his arm out with his opposite hand. The sensation died out as he took a breath to get organized. He needed to get to better cover than a fake potted plant.

Lake peeked through branches to look at the group. His move seemed to have split the bullets from the group as they moved toward the main doors. He ducked down as white sparks sliced through the leaves of the rubber plant.

One of the explosive balls flew at his cover. He ran away, sliding behind one of the support columns. White sparks traced the air around him, but only two hit. He tried to ignore the pain in his arm and leg as he rolled behind the solid obstruction.

The plant rolled over in a ball of burning plastic. It lay where it fell, one frond curling up from the heat.

Lake pulled his pistol, flexing his hand. The pain in his arm remained from where the cremator had hit. He had gotten lucky. If he had been hit center of mass, or in the head, he would have been reduced to dust.

He heard the crack of revolvers on the other side of the central court. At least one of his guys was still there. He needed to draw fire and hope they could get in a better position to stop the bad guys from getting away.

He couldn't do it from where he was. All he could do was hope to make the dead-os duck for cover.

Lake took aim, frowning at the lack of viable targets and fired. If he could distract them, maybe Feathers could take one, or two, of them out from her side of the court.

The bullet bounced around, but he felt that he had missed hitting the dead men. He needed to get closer for a better look.

Explosive globes shattered against the security grills of the stores on both sides of the main corridor. Fire blasted out to cover the dead men. One stayed behind on the other side of the flame to lay down suppressive fire with a laugh.

He paused when he ran out of ammunition.

Lake moved forward. He shot into the flame in the hopes of dusting the guy before he reloaded. Then he could get through the fire and target the others.

Whatever was in that box had to be recovered. The dead men wanting it was a good enough reason as far as he was concerned. There was only one reason for them to go to the trouble. He had the feeling he couldn't allow that to happen.

He jumped through the wall of flame and raced for the front doors. He dove for cover when cremators chased through the empty frames. He spotted a station wagon pulling away with people sitting on the opened back door, weapons at the ready.

They headed for the exit after passing the undercover car. The RIPD vehicle blew up seconds later.

Lake took aim at the station wagon but didn't fire. He wasn't sure he could hit the rapidly fleeing dead-os.

How did he catch them?

Lake scanned the parking lot for options as he ran across it after the wagon. He needed a car with keys in it. The rest would take care of itself.

He found one after a few minutes. He smashed the window out by using his gun for a hammer. He unlocked the door and slid behind the wheel. He started the engine and pulled out of the space, turning to follow the wagon who was speeding down the road away from the mall.

He drove down the exit road, and turned after them. Even if the contents of the box was harmless, they had already shown they would go to any lengths to get it and keep it. He had to put a stop to things.

He sped around traffic, trying to keep the wagon in view. The wind pushed on his face through the open window. The wagon picked up speed. He pushed the gas pedal all the way down.

He nodded as he slowly caught up with the wagon. He needed a real weapon to take out the car, then cremators to take down the crew. He should carry an arsenal around with him.

The passengers passed a crate forward. One of them seemed to be smiling behind his bandana and goggle mask. One mismatched hand opened the crate. He dropped a grenade on the road.

Lake swerved to let the grenade bounce behind his car. It went off behind him as he took a position at the corner of the rear bumper. He had to stop that before someone living got hurt.

He turned the wheel hard to the right, slamming his car into the station wagon's fender. The driver shook the move off, pulling ahead of the smaller car. The passengers seemed too shook up to shoot at him as he tried to set up to do it again.

A window smashed outwards. Five, or six, grenades dropped on the road in front of him. He pulled away from the bouncing balls as they went up in clouds of flame and spikes.

Lake frowned as his passenger windows cracked in webs from one side to the other. He smelled fire and looked around. He frowned at the small fire on his trunk.

Then one of the masked bandits smashed through the passenger window and was in the car with him. He grabbed the wheel and sent the car into the sidewalk and then into the wall of a Taco Bell.

Lake pushed out of the driver's side and erased the bad guy as he fell out of the car on his back. He took a deep breath and watched the station wagon drive off.

16

Lake picked himself up as people streamed out of the Taco Bell. He brushed off his suit jacket. He frowned as the station wagon sped away from the scene.

Where were they going and how did he catch up?

He needed to get his wheels going and chase after them. He looked at the stolen car crushed into the wall of the fast food place. It wasn't going anywhere. He needed to take someone else's wheels.

He looked around the lot for candidates for thievery. He needed something fast so he could make up the time he was losing.

A car pulled up to block the wrecked car. Feathers leaned out of the window on her side. She waved at him to get in. He jogged over and paused on the other side of the door.

"Your head is on fire, Feathers." Lake gestured at the bonfire on top of her skull. "You might want to put that out."

"I wondered why my scalp was itching." She slapped her head gently, but groaned when it didn't help her. "Let me get some water. I'll be right back."

She got out of the car and ran inside the restaurant. She entered the bathroom and put the flames out as the customers watched her. Some took pictures with their phones. The video would be unbelievable to anyone who wasn't there watching an old Chinese man step into the ladies and extinguish a fire dancing on his head. She came out and got back in the car.

"Which way did they go?" Feathers pulled out of the lot. She waved at the manager who said some bad words and only waved one finger back.

"They headed toward town." Lake closed his eyes and thought. Images and lines shifted as they fought for prominence. He commanded the mindscape to freeze in place long enough for him to study each thought before dismissing it. He spotted two images standing side by side. He superimposed them with a wave of his hands. They fit almost perfectly. "Can you get us to Fifth Street?"

"Yes." Feathers turned left and cut another driver off as she put her foot down. "Why?"

"I think they are going to Wolford Explosives." Lake closed his eyes and braced himself as the car continued to pick up speed. He felt sick even though he was dead.

"Why there?" Feathers shalomed through slower moving traffic, ignoring horns and screeching brakes.

"It's the only place to get the mix we saw at the mall." Lake had another more important reason, but he didn't want to state it until he was sure. "I think that was used in those balls a few minutes ago."

"So you think they think we don't know who they are, and they are going back home." She drove on a sidewalk to avoid a slowing of the lanes in front of them.

"It's the only thing that makes sense." He didn't open his eyes. The car was maneuvering right and left so much his stomach was starting to give him fits.

"Who are they?" Feathers hit the street again, and drove around a parked car in the middle of the road with abandon. "That way I know who to shoot at when we get to the place."

"I think they're the staff of the explosive company." He grimaced. "Our three bombers might have worked for them at one point, but they concealed it."

"So how do you want to handle this?" Feathers honked the horn to get a jaywalker to cross faster as she barreled through the next intersection.

"We go in, we get the box, we get out." Lake opened his eyes. "Anybody who isn't us gets put down."

"We'll have to round them up later." She slammed the brakes to avoid a woman walking her dog. She backed up to get room and jumped the curb and went around the ancient and her owner.

"That's later." Lake checked the load on his pistol, dumping out the empty shell and putting an unspent cremator in its place. "The box has to come first. They went to a lot of trouble to get it. That makes it a priority for us to get it from them."

"It might have an artifact inside it." Feathers smiled when she saw Wolford Explosives in the distance. "There are things floating around that can do things."

"What kind of things?" Lake didn't like the sound of that. It was a game changer.

"Our Boston guys grabbed up a thing that opens the door to the afterlife and drops all those dead things back on Earth." Feathers shrugged. "Imagine billions of dead-os trying to escape judgement and coming back."

"It would be the apocalypse." Lake frowned. "Who made something like that?"

"Some dumb goob five thousand years ago." Feathers aimed the car at the guardhouse arm across the entry. "Get ready. We might have to go in shooting."

Lake looked for targets as the wooden arm broke off against the bumper of the car. He gritted his teeth as he braced against the dashboard as Feathers aimed for the doors of the storehouse.

How much would it hurt if they were blown up?

She hit the metal doors and bulled them out of the way. She braked as soon as the car was inside the space. No one shot at them.

"Did we come to the wrong place?" She bailed from her side of the car.

"I don't know." Lake got out on his side, searching the storehouse with his eyes. Where were the dead-os?

Where was the station wagon? Had he guessed wrong? Had they gone somewhere else with the box? What did they do now?

What if they had beat the other car back? The way Feathers was driving, it was possible. They might have blown their chance to arrange an ambush. Once the dead men saw the busted arm and doors they would turn to leave.

"Let's go." Lake hoped they had a chance to pull off some kind of ambush now. "We'll set up across the street."

"Hold on." Feathers went to the car. She pulled out a shotgun. "This might come in handy."

"Where did you get that?" Lake gave her a glance.

"Sports store." Feathers checked the breech and nodded. She had real shot loaded up. It wouldn't hurt a dead-o, but it would stop their car.

"I wish I had thought of that." Lake shook his head. "Take a spot on the other side of the street. If you can stop their car, we can hit them on foot with cremators."

"Let's get these guys." Feathers trooped down to a guardhouse to another complex. She showed her credentials to the guard on duty, and told him to head in to the factory so he would be out of the way.

Lake headed down to a spot between a telephone pole and a sign made out of bricks and gold letters. He tried to blend in as much as a black man disguised as a fat white man could. He wondered who handed out the false identities. They had a sense of humor.

At least he didn't look like a woman. That would be embarrassing.

The station wagon limped around the corner. The secretary drove. Smoke rolled from the bottom of the car. The fender where he had hit it with his own car was crushed in, but it didn't seem to be impairing the car.

What would they do when they saw the gate? What would they do?

He wished he had thought of a shotgun for himself. That would make him feel better about waiting on the suspects if he could stop their car. Cremators didn't do anything to anything that wasn't a dead-o.

He definitely needed a backup weapon.

The station wagon paused at the gate. The secretary looked around, before starting to back up. Feathers blew out the tires on her side as she stepped out of hiding. Boom, boom, and down the car went.

Lake started forward, revolver on point. If they came out of the back, he wanted to make it expensive for them.

The secretary hit the gas and the station wagon lurched inside of the fence. It wasn't going much further than that from the smoke coming out of it.

Feathers switched to shooting at the windows. Shot wouldn't do anything, but maybe the impacts would make them hunt for better cover.

Lake waited for a shot as he walked to the gate. He wanted to blast away at the dead-os, but he waited for a clear shot to conserve ammunition.

He didn't want to have to change out for fresh ammo in the middle of a firefight without hitting one of them.

The dead men and woman poured out of the car. One of them had the box in his hands. He ran for the storehouse. The rest covered him by shooting at Lake and Feathers as they retreated in the same direction.

Lake took cover behind a telephone pole, lined up a shot, fired. One of the men went down in a cloud. He moved as the storm of white sparks bounced off his wooden shield. He ducked behind the gatehouse so they would have to shoot over the car and through the brick of the station to hit him.

Feathers unloaded the shotgun at the crowd. Some of them took the hit for the others to get to the storehouse. Then they got up and ran to the wrecked doors.

She dropped the shotgun, and pulled her revolver. She fired six shots rapidly. Two of the monsters went up.

She dropped behind cover and opened the cylinder. She shook the revolver and the empty shells dropped to the ground.

Lake fired the rest of his cylinder out. He watched the sparks fly over the wagon, but didn't hit anything as far as he could tell.

He reloaded as he walked forward to the wrecked wagon. He paused as return fire hit the car. He closed his eyes and counted. He had to charge them, but he didn't like it.

He jumped up and aimed over the roof of the car. The survivors had made it to the storehouse. He dropped one before they drove him behind cover with concentrated fire.

Feathers ran to the station wagon. She dropped in a crouch beside him. She glared at the storehouse.

"Get in." She pointed at the back door as she opened the driver's side. "We're stopping this no matter what."

"Are you crazy?" Lake looked at her.

"Review board." Feathers got behind the wheel. "I'm running out of options. Let's go, Sherlock."

"This better work if you want to get off the hook." Lake climbed into the back seat, dropping his empties, sliding in another six shots. "Is there a reason we're using wheel guns, and not automatics?"

"Got me." Feathers closed her door. "They left the keys in it. Ready?"

"Go ahead." Lake checked the back of the car. Empty boxes and a closed box shared the cargo space. "Looks like we got some kind of explosive on board."

"Throw it out after we make our move." Feathers pointed the car at the storehouse and hit the gas. The car ground forward. It shook as she tried to get it up to ramming speed.

Lake groaned as the car limped under fire toward the storehouse. He turned and opened the box. He nodded at the grenades he found. He wondered how he could use them to his advantage.

The engine released a belch of smoke and refused to move any more. White sparks bounced off the cracked windows.

"Get ready to move." Lake grabbed the box and hoisted it into the seat with him. "We're getting out of here."

"Go." Feathers gripped her pistol.

Lake rolled down the window on his side. He pulled the pin on the closest grenade, closed the lid on the box, and threw the box through the opening. He waited for the grenades to fire before he jumped out of the car.

He shot the two dead men on his side who had been sliced through the legs by the grenades in the box. He shot one more as he entered the storehouse. Where was the box?

He didn't want to think about having to do a search for the remainder of the dead people.

17

Lake scanned the open space, comparing it with his last visit. He had three live shells left in his pistol. He needed cover to reload.

Feathers stood on the other side of the battered wagon. She swept her side of the warehouse with her gaze, ready to shoot at anything that moved.

She shook her head. The space looked clear of dead people needing to be shot.

Lake pointed to an office in the corner of the large room. It was the only place that looked like it would provide cover that wouldn't blow up.

Feathers moved to his side of the car. Her pistol swept back and forth. She frowned at the office.

"I don't think their car will run far enough to get us inside of there." She moved to a stack of crates. "I definitely don't want to use our car after what we have already done to it."

"Kick in the door?" Lake took position behind another stack. He dropped out the spent shells and reloaded three new ones with thumb and index finger.

"Looks like it." She checked her own load. "Ready?"

"I think so." Lake scanned his surroundings one more time. "I have a feeling we're missing something."

The policemen started forward, using a zig zag pattern to make getting hit harder. That part worked as a white bullet bounced off the floor between them and vanished in the direction of the opened door.

The pair went in separate directions, looking for cover to protect them from above. Lake landed next to the office, scanning the ceiling.

He spotted something moving up on a catwalk running above the floor from one wall to the opposite side. Anyone up there had full view of the floor.

He needed to get up there without getting shot. That should give him a chance at their enemy while Feathers got ready to kick in the door.

Lake spotted a ladder next to the wall. He could use that to get to where the shooter was waiting for them. Then he could take the guy and give them a chance to get the artifact back.

Lake ran for the ladder. Bullets sparked around him as he grabbed the lower rung of the ladder and pulled himself up on its rungs. He started climbing as white sparks bounced off the metal bars.

He reached the catwalk, ducking to keep his profile low. He scanned the flimsy platform as he advanced. Where was the sniper?

A white bullet struck his shoulder. He fell on the catwalk, clutching at the railing. He saw the sniper in her suit. She walked forward with a maniacal grin on her mismatched face.

"We're going to run the world as soon as we get rid of you stupid cops." She raised the deer rifle to point at his face. "Any last words?"

"Feathers hates your guts." Lake smiled at her when he said that.

"What?" She couldn't squint both eyes at the same time. She lowered the rifle slightly. "What did you say?"

"I hate your guts." Feathers grabbed the dead woman's head and threw her off the catwalk. "I hope that hurts, you freak."

Lake rolled to one side. He stuck his pistol over the edge of the platform. He fired one bullet into the stunned secretary before she could recover enough to make a run for it. She turned into dust that settled on the floor.

"Looks like we're almost done." Lake climbed to his feet.

"I hope so." Feathers looked down on the closed box that was below them. "I'm almost out of bullets."

"So am I." Lake dropped down on the office. He moved to the edge of the cube. He paused as he tried to decide what way he wanted to go.

He dropped down from the top of the block to the concrete floor. He landed on the edge of the main window of the office. He peered inside the space, looking for the enemy.

Wind pushed on him. He looked around. Black fog drifted toward the office. He frowned. Where was that coming from?

The most important thing had to be what was it, and why was it converging on the office area.

He had a feeling that the dead-os had opened the box before he and Feathers could stop them.

What did they do now?

He went to the door and kicked it open. Confronting the enemy was the way to go now. He didn't like the fog congregating in the building, and he didn't want to find out what the mask did if he could get it back in a second.

"Why do you keep interfering?" The masked menace glared at the RIPD agent. "I just wanted what was mine."

"You know the rules." Lake realized he didn't have his pistol. How could he have dropped it after using it to save his life? "You're not allowed to stay on Earth."

"You can't stop me now." The masked man laughed. "This mask allows me to do anything I want."

"We'll see about that." Lake threw himself forward.

The black cloud wrapped around the masked man and formed a screen of blackness between the two of them. The dead-o laughed again in the middle of the darkness.

Lake paused. He didn't think diving into that obscurement was a good idea. Anything could happen.

The stuff reminded him of what was left over after a dead-o exploded from a cremator. That was reason enough not to step inside its reach.

"Cremators are no good now." The darkness walked forward. "They just make me stronger."

Lake backed up. He didn't like the sound of that. He had blown up more than a few stubborn dead men in his day on the job. If they couldn't use their primary weapon, how were they going to stop this thing?

More of the dust congregated in the room. It danced around the figure in the mask. How much was being collected?

Dark fists extended from the cloud. More sprang out as the fog continued to collect dust from the air.

How much would it absorb before it stopped? Did he want to be around when the thing reached its upper limit?

Faces appeared out of the mist. He recognized one as Arlo screaming for something. Maybe being erased wasn't as painless as he had thought.

That was cold comfort in the face of the problem at hand.

He fired his revolver into the cloud once. The white spark bounced off the darkness and hit the ceiling where it exploded. He put the weapon away.

It wasn't going to do him any good against what he was facing.

He knew that the mask was gathering the dust from the erasing. How did he fix that? He needed to get the mask away from the dead man wearing it. How did he do that? He had no idea.

Hands stretched out for him. He backed up. He didn't want to test how durable he was against those things.

If they ripped off one of his arms, could he get it put back on after this was over. He didn't want to find out the hard way.

The office desk lifted into the air. It flew through the window as a hundred hands and arms flexed their muscles. It crashed on the concrete floor of the warehouse.

"Soon I will be able to do that to anything." The masked man laughed. "Thanks for using cremators so much."

Lake frowned as he tried to think of something he could do to turn things to his advantage. He certainly couldn't grapple with the growing cloud of dead people dust.

"I don't hear any smart remarks, copper." The expanding cloud marched forward as more faces and hands appeared.

"I'm thinking." Lake used the door to step out of the office. He wanted more room to move if he had to evade the growing number of hands that kept extending from the dark body of the thing.

The cloud ripped the door off and flung it at him. He stepped out of the way and looked around for a weapon he could use. Maybe if he set off the explosive in the warehouse, if there was any in the boxes he was surrounded by, that might do something besides blowing them up.

He wondered idly where he would land if he did do something like that.

More importantly, would he be in one piece when he did land? How tough was this new body given him by the RIPD? How far could he push it?

Was this the time to find out?

A car engine caught his attention. He looked over his shoulder. Feathers had gotten their car running. The front was dented from hitting the doors and knocking them out of the way. She gunned it right at him and the cloud.

Lake jumped out of the way. He had wanted to use something to take the cloud down, but hadn't considered using a car to do it. Would a speeding vehicle do anything against the cloud of hands and ugly expressions?

The car hit the cloud. The dust burst apart for a moment to reveal the mask wearing dead man. Then the car hit and slammed him against the wall of the office before knocking him through the plywood and plaster walls. The car rolled over the dead-o and dragged him along with the undercarriage for a second before he rolled free.

"Ouch." Lake jogged through the debris to where the dead-o had stopped rolling. The man was getting up, gathering dust to him again. Soon he would be surrounded by his cloud again.

The detective didn't plan to let that happen. He grabbed the mask and pulled. The gold and silver sheet refused to move. Visions flashed through his mind as he struggled with the thing.

Lake fended off blows from the dead-o with his arms as he twisted on the mask. He grimaced as he tried to get it off. A scene of a beating flashed through his mind, but he ignored it. He had been a cop too long to care in the middle of a fight.

"Allow me, rookie." Feathers walked up with shotgun in hand. The dead-o froze as she pointed it at his head.

"What are you–," The dead-o started to say as she pulled the trigger. The mask came off in Lake's hands.

"Ouch." Lake handed her the mask so he could put the cuffs on Billy Withers. "Too bad for you, pretty boy."

18

Lake looked over his report one more time before he put it in his outbox. Paperwork was the bane of the working policeman, but it had to be done. Reports nailed a case down for a jury, even a heavenly jury.

He looked over his clean desk. He looked over at his partner's messy desk. He shook his head. How had she ever solved cases with that pile of paper spread out everywhere.

He should have gone with her to the review board. She had forbidden it. There was no need for her partner to be there for her to be humiliated.

He had a feeling this was her first review about an operation. He frowned because he suspected it was all his fault that she was getting reviewed in the first place.

They still had one loose end to tie up if she was still on the case.

Running Horse got away clean unless he was one of the gunmen they erased in the shootouts they had engaged in to get the mask and stop Withers. The downside of erasing dead-os was the absence of bodies afterward.

Maybe they should have made sure they had the guy while they were getting shot at by his fellow dead men.

Lake wondered what other conspiracy he could take apart in the next hundred years. He should see if he could get the RIPD to give him an automatic if he ran into armies of the monsters.

He wanted the firepower so he didn't have to reload so much.

Feathers walked into the squad room, head down. Her hand rested on her baton as she walked to her desk. None of the other cops said anything to her.

She sat down, looking at the mess on her desk. She sighed. She started shuffling some of the papers to make neater piles.

"How did it go?" Lake crossed his arms. Most cops would be emotional about a drubbing from some brass. Foaming at the mouth was the description he had heard.

"Got another ten years." She smiled slightly. "Slap on the wrist. Paperwork?"

"Done." He smiled. "The only thing we have to do is hunt down Running Horse and make sure we bring him in, or erase him."

"He's probably skipped town if he didn't get killed in the firefights we were in." Feathers paused in her paper shuffling. "We could check to see what's left of his house now that the regulars are done with it."

"I would like that." Lake nodded. "It's the only thing we have to do to really close the case."

"The case was closed when we got the mask from Withers." Feathers smiled. "We erased, or bagged, a lot of dead-os. One skipping the system won't change that much."

"So we let him slide?" Why should they do that? He had proven dangerous and needed to be taken.

"No, but we do have other dead-os we are responsible for bringing in." Feathers smiled slightly. "We have a hundred years to find him. We will, but not today. Today I am going to a play and taking two hours to relax."

"Really?" Lake frowned. "Are we allowed to do that?"

"I just got ten years for letting you investigate your own murder." Feathers stood. "I'm going to a play."

"What are we going to see?" Lake stood also. He strapped on his pistol and cuffs. He might as well take them in case they ran into someone they had to take down.

"Maybe Waiting for Buck Godot." She smiled as she started across the squad room. "I heard it was okay."

"So we're going to a play at ten in the morning." Lake checked his watch to make sure of the time.

"Yep, and then we'll swing by Running Horse's house." Feathers reached the door and waited for him to join her before stepping through into the mall. "He's not getting the mask now unless he can get into the station. It's going to sit in the vault forever."

"How many other artifacts are there?" Lake felt maybe the RIPD should be gathering those and getting rid of dead-os as a side effect of their work.

"Who knows." She led the way toward the lot. "There are dozens of those things floating around. A lot of them were created when the afterlife was a lot easier to get in and out of. Lots of energy was being slung around before things settled down."

"Who was responsible for that?" He considered a scene where dead people battled it out for who was staying on the planet, and who was going to the flaming pit in the sky.

"Above my pay grade, Rookie." Feathers smiled. "Angels and devils walked the Earth then."

"Angels and devils?" Lake paused in the walk to the car. "Met any of those?"

"No." She shook her head. "I'm glad about that. I don't think the cremators will work on them."

She got behind the wheel and started the car. She smiled as the engine purred.

"Wait." Lake paused by his door, scanning the lot. "Running Horse's here."

"What?" Feathers cut off the engine and looked around.

"He's here." Lake slipped his pistol out of his belt. "I don't like that coat he's wearing."

"Another bomb?" Feathers got out of the car. "What does he want?"

"Maybe he wants to get even with us by blowing up the mall." Lake looked around. "It looks like we're clear of the civilians."

"How do you want to do this?" Feathers pulled her own pistol.

"I'll walk up to him and get him talking." Lake frowned at that. At least he was almost invulnerable. "See if you can sneak up on him from behind."

"If he gets into the building..." Feathers started to one side.

Lake nodded. If Running Horse got into the building with an unknown amount of explosive, there was no telling how many would be killed by him pressing the button. He would be able to walk away thanks to being already dead. It would be too bad about the building and people.

Lake paused ten feet in front of the Indian. He held his pistol straight down to be less threatening. He didn't want the bomb to go off if there was a chance of hurting others. What happened to Running Horse didn't matter.

Getting erased, or wearing manacles, were all that Running Horse could expect no matter how things worked out for anyone else.

"Don't move, Running Horse. It's time for you to surrender." Lake waited. His sudden appearance was enough to cause consternation. "Everyone else has been taken."

"I am going to level that mall and there's nothing you can do to stop me." The bomber held up a switch. "If I let go of this switch, I'll explode right here and right now. Someone here in this lot will be hurt no matter how you try to stop me."

"It doesn't matter." Lake edged closer. "We took your partners, we got the mask. There's nothing to be gained. Even if you blew up the cover, the Department would just move the station instead of leaving it closed. You won't accomplish anything."

"I'll be able to get some revenge for myself." Running Horse smiled. "There's nothing you can do to stop me. I loaded cremators in the mix so you'll go up just like me, White Eyes."

"Firstly, I am not white." Lake closed his eyes and thought about where everything was. He could possibly set off the bomb and duck for cover without getting hurt. He wasn't sure of the civilians who were wandering around in other parts of the lot. "Secondly, I will erase you right here before you can hurt anyone. The only ones hurt will be me and you, and I think I can get to cover first."

"What do you get out of being a hero?" Running Horse edged closer. If he went up, he wanted the fat white man caught in the spray with him.

"I get to know that I stopped some crummy people ruining things for other people." Lake pointed his weapon at the bomb maker. "Either way, you're done. You won't be able to hurt anybody else. I won't have to worry about another hundred years on the job. If I get really lucky, you'll take your bomb with you before it explodes."

"I don't think so." Running Horse started to release the switch. Thin fingers caught the handle and kept the button pressed down so the bomb would not go off. He looked over his shoulder with a stupefied expression.

Lake fired while the dead-o was off guard. He almost smiled when the bomber went up. He stopped when he realized that Feathers still held the bomb by the handle.

"What are we going to do with this?" She held the bomb by a strap and the handle.

"Since we are failures at bomb disposal, hand it to me, then get the car." Lake put his pistol up as he walked forward. "We'll have to get rid of it somewhere."

"Are you sure about this?" Feathers looked around. "I could just drop it in the trunk of our car."

"You would be blown apart before you could get the lid closed." Lake held out his hands. "Hand it over, get the car. We can dump it somewhere safe if we move fast. He might have put a timer on it in case he lost his nerve."

Feathers reluctantly complied with his demands, making sure he had firm grip on the button before releasing it. She ran around to the car parked halfway across the lot. She returned a few minutes later in a roar of screeching tires.

"Get in." She opened the back door for him before closing it and rolling out of the lot. "Where are we going?"

"There used to be a lake west of here." Lake searched his memory. "Along Kritz. We'll drop this thing in there. The only things it will kill when it explodes is the fish."

"I'm right there with you." Feathers stepped on the gas pedal to make the car roar through traffic.

She executed a series of fancy maneuvers to shalom through traffic, cutting off slow movers with a wave of her hand as she went. She turned on Kritz Street, and went around a block to get to Kargill, a parallel avenue with limited access to Kritz.

"There's the lake." Feathers smiled as she barreled down the road. "How do you want to do this?"

"Bring us in close as you can, and I throw the bomb." Lake frowned. "He should have some kind of delay between the release and the actual explosion."

"If he doesn't?" She rolled down an access road, heading to the lake.

"Then we're going to get perforated." Lake looked around for any bystanders. He nodded when the place looked clear. "Make sure to duck."

Feathers braked the car and jumped out. She pulled the back passenger door open and helped Lake out with a hand on his arm. He sprinted for the lake, counting to himself as he ran. Then he threw the bomb vest toward the water. He ran back to the car, hoping to make cover before the bomb blew up.

He didn't quite make it as he was lifted in the air on a wall of water and slammed down to the ground. He lay there for a while. He rolled over and checked himself out. Nothing was missing.

"Good job." Feathers smiled from behind the car. "Case closed."