Bzrk Apocalypse by Michael Grant Read Free Book Online Page A

authority of a sixteen-year-old girl.
    Yes, Plath was the daughter of Grey McLure, Anya’s former employer,
    and Plath had proven herself in battle. And it had become clear that
    she was a bit more . . . stable . . . than Nijinsky, who had been in charge
    during Vincent’s recovery.
    But Anya was suspicious of money. She could call herself Plath,
    but Anya knew who Sadie was. She was rich, that’s what she was.
    Worse yet, she’d always been rich. She’d had life handed to her. Anya
    would rather have seen Keats in the top job, because there was a boy
    who had never been handed anything, and Anya instinctively trusted
    working people. She herself had come from nothing and nowhere to
    earn a PhD. She shared with Keats an emotional knowledge of hard
    times and hard choices.
    But Keats was totally loyal to Plath.
    Billy was a child. Wilkes was . . . well, she was Wilkes. Nijinsky
    had to a great extent lost the confidence of the group. And that left
    two people to run things at the New York cell of BZRK: Vincent or
    Plath.
    Plath, who saw a great deal when she paid close attention, saw all
    this in Anya’s smoky eyes. Vincent might or might not still be dam-
    aged, but Anya loved him and would never admit he was ready to take
    charge again. Not if it meant risking his life and sanity.
    In the matter of safe houses things had improved quite a bit. Plath
    had access to most of her own money now, and she had Mr. Stern and
    the McLure security apparatus to arrange things. So BZRK New York
    was quite nicely established in a five-story townhouse not far from
    49
    MICHAEL GRANT
    Columbus Circle on the Upper West Side.
    They had obtained it through numerous cutouts and guys-who-
    knew-a-guy, and bought it for cash for nine million dollars.
    Just twelve blocks away was a second safe house. This had also
    been purchased for cash, but this time the cutouts had been just a bit
    less well managed. Not so poorly managed as to seem obvious; just a
    few scant clues left here and there for those who were watching the
    movements of Plath’s money.
    The fake safe house was above a bankrupt dry cleaner. A sound
    system played ambient noise from within—TV, music, the sound of
    laughter, occasional yelling. A timer turned the lights on and off. And
    random people delivering handbills were hired to enter and leave the
    place at odd times of day and night. It wouldn’t stand up to in-depth
    surveillance, but it would do as a diversion. It was already, according
    to Stern, drawing the attention of Hannah Thrum, the chairwoman
    of McLure Holdings, the parent company of McLure Labs. Thrum
    was almost certainly working for the Armstrong Twins as well, but
    that was all right, so long as Plath knew where all the players were.
    Let Thrum follow the money. She was a numbers person. Num-
    bers people loved to believe they saw deeper than anyone else,
    believing their numbers were truth. In reality, Thrum was chasing
    numbers like a kitten chasing a piece of string.
    Plath, Keats, and Billy carried their sandwiches back to the parlor
    where Nijinsky, Vincent, and Wilkes waited. Anya sat beside Vincent
    on the couch. Plath stood, leaning back against a walnut Restoration
    Hardware china cabinet, bit into the sandwich, and looked over her
    sparse troops.
    50
    BZRK APOCALYPSE
    Nijinsky was a bit less elegant and less well turned out than he’d
    been just a few weeks ago.
    Wilkes had shaved half her head and dyed the other side a sickly
    yellow that was only vaguely related to blonde. Wilkes—named for
    Annie Wilkes, the insane fan in Stephen King’s Misery —was a tough
    chick, a pierced, tattooed (including a sort of down-swept flame tat
    under one eye), leather-and-lace teenager whose personal history
    strongly suggested that people not mess with her. There was a fire-
    damaged school in Maryland that stood witness to what happened
    when Wilkes lost it.
    Billy the Kid: a scrawny mixed-race kid who had shot his way out
    of an Armstrong attack on the