Alternities Read Free Page B

answer that made sense, though it didn’t explain why someone hadn’t come through the gate to Home with word—even the fastest evacuation would have to take hours. But that puzzle could be worked out later. For now, there was a pouch of antivirals that needed delivering, all the more so if Wallace’s call was right.
    Mindful of the razor-edged glass, Wallace eased himself out onto the stone sill and then down to the marquee, which groaned distressingly when his weight was added to it load. Crouching, he paused to scan once more for unwelcome witnesses.
    None were obvious, though that was far from saying none were present. It’s hard to hide in an empty city, Wallace thought, swinging his legs over the edge and dropping to the sidewalk a dozen feet below. Best to get this done fast.
    Terry’s Spirit World was a curiosity, even a miracle—a direct successor, one of few, of the thousands of nineteenth-century wood-shack saloons which once dotted Philadelphia street corners. It had survived three fires, two neighborhood renewals, a bankruptcy, and Prohibition.
    A dozen names had appeared above its doors: Honagan’s Licensed Tavern, Mario’s, and The Iron Mug, among the most enduring. But for all its history, Terry’s Spirit World was now nothing more than a quiet drinkery occupying the ground floor of a three-story brick Colonial revival.
    A few tourist occasionally tottered in to see the collection of antique and foreign liquor bottles which gave it its name or to taste a cheese steak off the time-seasoned iron griddle. But for the most part, Terry’s served a neighborhood clientele of sedate middle-aged men who complained into their whiskey about life but otherwise minded their own business.
    Wallace had been in Terry’s several times before, as part of the process runners called softening—making their face well enough known to be ignored. But he did not expect to see the inside of the bar today. En route from the hotel, he had experimented with one of the police stickers to see if they could removed intact.
    The answers was no. Worse, through some sort of chemical trickery, seconds after the paper tore the entire sticker changed color from pale blue to a dramatic red to announce the tampering.
    No, his contact would be in the streets somewhere—a roof, an alley, a shadowed doorway—waiting and hoping. Not that the streets were any safer. In the time it had taken to cover a dozen blocks, Wallace had hidden from three patrolling police jeeps and heard, but not seen, a helicopter skimming low over the rooftops.
    As he neared his destination, Wallace slowed from his trot to a more deliberate pace. The tavern was dark, the front door sealed. Cupping his hands around his eyes, he peered through the lightest pane of the stained-glass window.
    He glimpsed a shadowy human shape, an ominous motion. Reflexively he flinched, turning and scrambling away. A fraction of a second later there was a muffled roar, and the heart of the door blasted outward, glass and wood splinters scattering over the sidewalk and beyond into the street. Wallace was caught by the fringe of the technicolor shower, but with no bare skin expose to its assault.
    “How do you like that?” demanded a voice from inside the bar. “Come on, try again and get some more!”
    The voice was familiar to Wallace, and not at all threatening, despite its owner’s best intentions.
    “O’Brien, you are one jumpy son of a bitch,” Wallace bellowed back, letting the tension go in a rush. “You goddamn bastard, you can fuckin’ forget a tip from now on.”
    Long-necked and slender, like one of the bottles displayed on walls of his tavern, Terry O’Brien advanced out of the shadows to the shattered door, shotgun hanging limply in his hands. He looked hard at Wallace, then swallowed just as hard.
    “Sorry,” he said, then caught himself. “Say, you shouldn’t be here. It’s not my fault—”
    “Not your fault? You’re the one holding the artillery,”