an enclosed space, the shot rang in her ears.
The slug took the replicant dead-center in the chest, cracking his sternum, splintering bone inward, blood blooming, his left arm flailing up reflexively, right arm stroking down reflexively, as if he were launching into some novelty dance like the Chicken. Jolted but not staggered, slowed but not halted, he came on, not shouting anymore, but not screaming either, feeling no pain, and she fired again, but screwed up because she was shocked and scared by how he surged forward, didn’t get him in the gut or the chest, but in the right shoulder, which should have torn his arm off or at least a chunk of it, didn’t, and he was reaching out to grab the barrel of the Sniper, looking strong enough and furious enough and focused enough to take maybe two more rounds and still tear her face off, rip out her throat.
Michael appeared at the back of the Honda, hisshotgun boomed, scored a flank hit just above the hip, and Carson fired again, maybe nailed the replicant point-blank in the left thigh, but his arm was in past the muzzle of the shotgun, knocking the barrel high, his crimson hand reaching toward her face. Guitreau said something that sounded like “Gimme your eyes,” and Michael fired again, a head shot, and that did it, finally dropped the Bucky thing, naked on the silver-and-black pavement, facedown, still for a moment, but then trying to belly-crawl away from them, a broken-melon head and other devastating wounds but trying to hitch away as if he were a crippled roach. He became still once more, lying there motionless, motionless, then a last convulsive spasm, and he was done.
From the corner of her eye, Carson saw something move, something close, and she swiveled toward tight-assed Janet.
CHAPTER 26
CAUTIONING SILENCE , Erika Five led Jocko, the albino troll, up one of two sets of back stairs, to the second floor, well away from the centrally located master suite.
Of the three mansions that had stood on the three lots Victor purchased, two were very alike architecturally. He joined them in such a way that a foreground trio of oaks and a background lattice arbor draped with evergreen St. Vincent lilac left the impression, from the street, that the houses were still separate.
Between them, the two residences initially included thirty-four bedrooms, but interior walls were taken down and all that space put to other uses. Victor had no family and allowed no overnight guests.
He had intended to tear down the third residence and incorporate that lot into the grounds of his estate.
A city politician with ambitions for the governorship—andwith rigid ideas about the preservation of historic buildings—blocked Victor’s attempt to have the third house certified for demolition. He tried to resolve the issue with respect for her public office and her social eminence. A fat bribe would have bought her cooperation on most matters; however, she believed that a reputation as a committed preservationist was key to the achievement of her political goals.
After the politician’s replicant had been birthed from the tank, Victor had the real woman snatched from her home and brought to the Hands of Mercy, where he described—and then demonstrated—to her the most ingenious methods of torture devised by the Stasi, the secret police of the former East Germany. When in time she stopped begging for surcease and begged instead for death, Victor allowed her to choose the instrument of murder from an imaginative selection that included, among other things, a compressed-air nail gun, a hand-held power sander, and a large bottle of carbolic acid.
The woman’s complete mental collapse and retreat into catatonic detachment not only made it impossible for her to decide upon the means to her end but also robbed Victor of some of the pleasure of administering corporal punishment. Nevertheless, he considered the resolution of the historic-preservation issue to have been one of his finer
The slug took the replicant dead-center in the chest, cracking his sternum, splintering bone inward, blood blooming, his left arm flailing up reflexively, right arm stroking down reflexively, as if he were launching into some novelty dance like the Chicken. Jolted but not staggered, slowed but not halted, he came on, not shouting anymore, but not screaming either, feeling no pain, and she fired again, but screwed up because she was shocked and scared by how he surged forward, didn’t get him in the gut or the chest, but in the right shoulder, which should have torn his arm off or at least a chunk of it, didn’t, and he was reaching out to grab the barrel of the Sniper, looking strong enough and furious enough and focused enough to take maybe two more rounds and still tear her face off, rip out her throat.
Michael appeared at the back of the Honda, hisshotgun boomed, scored a flank hit just above the hip, and Carson fired again, maybe nailed the replicant point-blank in the left thigh, but his arm was in past the muzzle of the shotgun, knocking the barrel high, his crimson hand reaching toward her face. Guitreau said something that sounded like “Gimme your eyes,” and Michael fired again, a head shot, and that did it, finally dropped the Bucky thing, naked on the silver-and-black pavement, facedown, still for a moment, but then trying to belly-crawl away from them, a broken-melon head and other devastating wounds but trying to hitch away as if he were a crippled roach. He became still once more, lying there motionless, motionless, then a last convulsive spasm, and he was done.
From the corner of her eye, Carson saw something move, something close, and she swiveled toward tight-assed Janet.
CHAPTER 26
CAUTIONING SILENCE , Erika Five led Jocko, the albino troll, up one of two sets of back stairs, to the second floor, well away from the centrally located master suite.
Of the three mansions that had stood on the three lots Victor purchased, two were very alike architecturally. He joined them in such a way that a foreground trio of oaks and a background lattice arbor draped with evergreen St. Vincent lilac left the impression, from the street, that the houses were still separate.
Between them, the two residences initially included thirty-four bedrooms, but interior walls were taken down and all that space put to other uses. Victor had no family and allowed no overnight guests.
He had intended to tear down the third residence and incorporate that lot into the grounds of his estate.
A city politician with ambitions for the governorship—andwith rigid ideas about the preservation of historic buildings—blocked Victor’s attempt to have the third house certified for demolition. He tried to resolve the issue with respect for her public office and her social eminence. A fat bribe would have bought her cooperation on most matters; however, she believed that a reputation as a committed preservationist was key to the achievement of her political goals.
After the politician’s replicant had been birthed from the tank, Victor had the real woman snatched from her home and brought to the Hands of Mercy, where he described—and then demonstrated—to her the most ingenious methods of torture devised by the Stasi, the secret police of the former East Germany. When in time she stopped begging for surcease and begged instead for death, Victor allowed her to choose the instrument of murder from an imaginative selection that included, among other things, a compressed-air nail gun, a hand-held power sander, and a large bottle of carbolic acid.
The woman’s complete mental collapse and retreat into catatonic detachment not only made it impossible for her to decide upon the means to her end but also robbed Victor of some of the pleasure of administering corporal punishment. Nevertheless, he considered the resolution of the historic-preservation issue to have been one of his finer
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