to make you feel safe. The Fortress firmly believed in the Kill them all and let God sort them out school of therapy. Being abducted from the age of ten will do that to you. Those few people stupid enough to abuse the Fortress's hospitality never lived long enough to boast about it.
The Fortress stood between a Voodoo Business School and an Army Surplus Store. Joanna just had to stop and look in the windows. The Voodoo establishment's current display boasted St. John The Conqueror's Root in easy-to-swallow capsules, Mandrake
Roots with screaming human faces, and a Pick & Mix section of assorted charms. They'd dressed up a window dummy as Baron Samedi, complete with mock graveyard, but it looked more tacky than anything.
The Army Surplus window had uniforms from throughout history, a display of medals from countries that didn't exist any more, and a single executive's suitcase, closed, marked Backpack nuke; make us an offer. Joanna looked at that for a long time, before turning to me.
"Are they serious? Could that actually be the real thing?"
"Must be something wrong with it," I said. "Otherwise, the Fortress would have bought it. Maybe you have to supply your own plutonium."
"Jesus wept," said Joanna.
"He did indeed," I agreed. "And over worse things than this."
We approached the Fortress's front door, and that was when I first got the feeling that something was seriously wrong. The security camera over the door had been smashed, and the reinforced steel door was standing slightly ajar. I frowned. That door was never left open. Never. I stopped Joanna with a gentle pressure on her arm, gestured for her to be quiet and stay well behind me, and then I carefully pushed the door open a way. From inside came the faint sounds of distant gun-fire and the occasional scream. I smiled briefly.
"Looks like Suzie's here. Stick close to me, Joanna, and try to look harmless."
I pushed the door all the way open and looked in. The lobby was deserted. I walked in, very quietly, and studied the situation carefully.
The lobby had probably been very comfortable originally, designed to put new visitors at their ease, but now it was just a mess. All the up-to-the-moment furniture had been overturned, the country-side scenes on the walls hung crookedly, punctured with bullet holes, and the tall rubber plant in the corner had been riddled with extremely unfriendly fire. Normally you had to pass through a bulky ex-airport metal detector to get into the lobby proper. Someone had thrown it half-way across the room. There was still some smoke drifting on the air, and the unmistakable smell of cordite. Someone had let off a whole lot of rounds in here, and pretty damned recently at that.
But there weren't any bodies, anywhere.
I slowly crossed the lobby, Joanna sticking as close to me as she could without actually climbing into my pockets. I checked out the security cameras in the ceiling corners. The little red lights showed they were still operating. Someone had to have seen what went down here, but there was no sign of any reinforcements. Which could only mean the real action was still going on, somewhere deeper inside the building. I was beginning to get a really bad feeling.
The door on the other side of the lobby, that gave access to the inner layers of the Fortress, was also standing ajar. All its locks and bolts had been smashed, and one of the door's hinges had been torn clean away from the door-jamb. I carefully pushed the door aside and peered out into the corridor beyond. There were fresh bullet scars on the walls, but still no bodies. From further ahead came the sound of multiple gun-shots and angry shouting.
"Maybe we should nip next door to the Army Surplus and pick up some guns of our own?" said Joanna.
"Would you know how to use one, if we did?"
"Yes."
I looked at her. "You're just full of surprises, aren't you? I don't like guns. They make it too easy to make the kind of mistakes you can't put right by saying 'Sorry' afterwards. Besides, I've never felt the need."
"What about the Harrowing?"
"Guns wouldn't have stopped them anyway."
Joanna gestured at the cameras up by the corridor ceiling. "Why all the security?"
"Abductee logic. They have cameras in every room, every corridor, every nook and cranny. And more hidden booby-traps than I feel comfortable thinking about. And, a whole team of people whose only job is to sit and watch the monitors, in shifts. These