Forests of the Night

by S. Andrew Swann

  Nohar wondered if the people who used it habitually were consciously aware it was a call for human genocide.

  It felt like he was in the Hellcats again and everything was about to explode into brimstone and shitfire. The feeling didn't leave after they passed the concrete pylons demarking the end of May field Road.

  The pink universe of Case Western Reserve University was only a few blocks from the farthest extention of Moreytown. The border was marked by the sudden shift into decent landscaping.

  Angel turned toward him. "You feel safe, Kit?"

  "No."

  "Feel the shit's about to go ballistic?"

  "You, too?"

  "When the players absent all of a sudden, you know the situation is going to ground zero on you.''

  Nonar shrugged. "I've got a meeting to go to."

  "Right. Whatever it is, it ain't us."

  Nohar let it go with an insincere nod. He knew Angel didn't believe that. Neither did he. He didn't believe in coincidence. He thought it pretty damn likely the absence of Zips had a hell of a lot to do with them.

  They made the coffeehouse at a little after twelve. The aroma of exotic, rare, and engineered coffees overwhelmed Nohar's sense of smell—at least it removed Maria's ghost-odor from Angel's clothes.

  It was a college lunchtime crowd, with only one other morey—at least he and Angel weren't the only ones—a graying red vulpine who was engaged in a chess game with a black pink. Some of the patrons gave the new pair a few stares. Nohar, being a rather singular morey, got more than his share. Nohar was relieved to see Stephie in the back. She had chosen a table with enough room for him to maneuver around.

  Nohar walked straight to the table and sat down. Angel hovered a second at the counter, until she seemed to realize she didn't have any money. Stephie was looking at Angel, but she directed her question to Nohar. "Who's your friend?"

  "She's a lead from the Johnson killing."

  "She?"

  Sometimes pinks weren't quick on the uptake when it came to morey gender. Nohar supposed it had to do with the lack of prominent breasts.

  Angel turned a chair around and sat on it backward.

  She rested her chin on the back, and scratched the base of her scar—her nose twitched. "Name's Angel, Pinky. Kit here's my bodyguard."

  "Ah, hello. My name's Weir, Stephie Weir."

  Odd, Nohar thought, now she was acting like he'd expect a pink to around morey. It was usually one of three things—fear, condescension, or this vague nervousness that was now spilling off of Stephie in waves.

  "You wanted to talk. What about?"

  She took her eyes off the rabbit and looked at Nohar. "I've been offered my job back—"

  Nohar gave her a close-lipped smile. "Congratulations—"

  Stephie interrupted him. "—aren't in order. It was conditional I didn't talk to you. That kind of job security I don't need. I've been let go once, like excess weight on a ballistic shuttle. I'm not going to be blackmailed into helping in a cover-up."

  Angel chuckled. "Good for you, Pinky. Fuck the PTB."

  Stephie looked confused. "PTB?"

  Nohar felt his claws digging into the table. He untensed his hand and tried to stare Angel into shutting up as he explained. "P. T. B. Powers that be. Terminology from the riots—When did you get this offer?"

  "After I gave you the lift from the hospital. It was waiting on my comm when I got back home. I never liked Harrison that much." She smiled now. "I called his house the minute I got the message. I got him out of bed at two in the morning to cuss him out and tell him what to do with his offer. He gave me a raise twice. I told him, at this point, not even if I supported Binder.''

  That nagged at something. The Binder campaign was riddled with that kind of inconsistency. "I want to know why the campaign has people like Thompson, Young, and Johnson in it."

  "I never probed too deeply into that. I told you I was just window dressing. It was a money thing. I admit it. I sold out. They needed me for Derry. Anyway, there are precious few women in my age-group that are for Binder. Those that were might have had some principles."

  He appreciated the fact she wanted to tell him about Harrison's offer. It also reminded him about his worries earlier today. "Who'd you tell about our meeting?"

  Stephie shrugged. "No one, not even Harrison— though I was tempted to tell him he was too late with his little job offer. Just to make him stew."

  Angel beat Nohar to the next question. "Why not?"

  Nohar glared at her as Stephie answered. "It's my business. Why should I have told him about it?"

  There's the anger again, Nohar thought, just like that lesbian comment. It was laced with confusion, too, but less of it. It felt like she had come to some sort of decision.

  Oh, well, let Stephie be pissed at the rabbit. "Stephie, you told no one?"

  "Right."

  "Not boyfriend, girlfriend, family, your mother?"

  "I said, no one—" She gave a weak smile. "Not even my nonexistent boyfriend."

  Now Nohar had reason to worry. Young's self destruction and the Zip attack on him had been just too well-timed.

  "Someone found out. You're being watched."

  "What?"

  Nohar glanced at Angel, and gave Stephie the story. Nohar briefly wondered if he should be doing all this exposition in front of Angel, but she was involved in this—however tangentially—and she was getting the short end of it as well.

  After the brief rundown, Stephie looked thoughtful. "You might be right. I think Phil could handle the strain of losing Derry. But if he thought himself responsible. If he actually was responsible ..."

  Stephie shook her head. "But I do not understand why you think the black hats from Phil's conspiracy are watching me. Of all people, I am—was—the least significant person in the Binder organization."

  Angel dived in again. "Pinky, do they know that? Overheard your story, and the whole point was to make you look like honcho's squeeze and his second. Like, this is what pissed you in the first place, right? You just looked high-mighty when your real job was to make mister rump-ranger look like an upstanding pink hetro."

  Angel was crude, but right. Nohar jumped in before Stephie could say something to Angel. "As Johnson's 'executive assistant,' you 'officially' had access to all the finance records Young torched. They might not realize your only function was to cover for Johnson's homosexuality. Also, Young started destroying records, not right after the murder, not when the body was found, not even right after the funeral. Young waited till nearly two weeks after the killing—"

  Nohar leaned in for emphasis and tapped the claw of his index finger on the table. "He waited until the day after I talked to you."

  "I see what you mean—"

  "Hey, Kit. You smell something?"

  Nohar looked at Angel. He was finally about to tell her to shut up, when he smelled it too. If it wasn't for the coffee, he would have noticed it immediately. Someone was wearing a very distinctive perfume. Nohar remembered the first time he had smelled it—in front of the ATM in Moreytown. It belonged to a female white rat. Terin.

  The Zipheads were here.

  Nohar looked to the front. The front door was closing. As it did, the waft of sickening perfume died out. The fox was still the only other morey in evidence inside the coffeehouse. Terin?" Nohar asked Angel.

  "Terin," she agreed,

  The only change in the street was the car parked in front. It was a black ailing Jerboa, like Nohar's. Older and not a convertible. The windows had been painted black on the inside. Nohar heard the door slam on the car, and saw a hunched form run away from the vehicle. Nohar couldn't tell if it was pink, morey, or one of the Ziphead rodents. But Nohar remembered the Zips' trademark.

  The driver was running away—

  "Stephie, get down!"

  Angel had already dived under a table. Nohar didn't wait for Stephie to reach cover on her own. He circled his left arm around her chest and slammed her against the far wall behind
the table, putting him between her and the windows. His right hand went for the Vind.

  For three seconds, Nohar felt real stupid.

  Then the car exploded.

  The windows weren't glass. They were some engineered polymer. They didn't shatter so much as tear and disintegrate. Then the air blew in carrying the heat and smoke of the blast. The pinks were yelling and screaming. Thankfully, Stephie wasn't one of them. Her face was buried in the fir of his chest.

  The sounds began to fade as Nohar became too aware of his own heartbeat in his ears. He felt his pulse behind his eyeballs and in his temple.

  He tried to fight it.

  Nohar turned as soon as he realized there wasn't going to be a secondary explosion. He wasn't surprised to see four rodents diving through the now-open windows. The pinks didn't know squat. They had all hit the ground. The members of the gang advanced on the patrons, jumping overturned tables, kicking aside chairs.

  Nohar was back in the riots again, watching one of Datia Rajasthan's terror runs on the pinks. He was breathing heavily. Against his will, he could feel his time sense telescoping. Things were slowing down. His head throbbed as the adrenaline started kicking in.

  A black rodent with a sawed-off shotgun was diving straight for their table. The room was hazed with smoke, and his eyes stung and watered, but Nohar knew Blackie was aiming at them. Nohar jumped to the side, hoping to draw Blackie's fire.

  Nohar assumed he was the target.

  He was wrong.

  Blackie kept going straight for Stephie and leveled the shotgun at her.

  The Beast kicked the door wide open, roared, and pulled the gun. The Vind 12 slid out of its holster like it was on greased bearings. His thumb had clicked the safety as it cleared his windbreaker. He leveled the Vind about twelve centimeters away from Blackie's head and pulled the trigger.

  The report deafened Nohar.

  It did worse to Blackie, who had started to turn when he realized Nohar was armed. The bullet caught Blackie in the face, under the right eye. Datia's bullets weren't the standard Indian military teflon-coated armor-piercers. They were twelve-millimeter dumdums, strictly antipersonnel. The bullet carried away half of Blackie's head out the back of his skull.

  Time was moving incredibly slowly. It seemed there was a full second between each heartbeat, but Nohar knew his heart was running on overdrive and trying to jackhammer out of his rib cage. His nerves were humming like an overloaded high-tension wire.

  He had whipped around to face the other Zipheads before Blackie hit the ground. The rodents, who had been about to lay waste to the pink population, were all looking in his direction. One of them had an Uzi nine-millimeter. The rat had been facing the wrong way, and was only now swinging the gun toward Nohar.

  The Vind was already pointing in Uzi's direction. Three shots in rapid succession. One for each heartbeat in the space of a second. Nohar's aim wasn't great. The first shot went high. Nohar corrected and the second went low, taking out Uzi's right knee and knocking the rodent sideways—sending the gun sailing over the counter. Third correction got Uzi right in the chest as the rat was spinning. The shot took Uzi off his feet and slammed him down nearly two meters back toward the smoking window.

  There was a pop, it sounded like someone breaking a light bulb. Someone rammed what felt like a white-hot knife into Nohar's right hip. The warmth spread down his leg, soaking into his fur.

  The rats were unfreezing.

  One had a familiar-looking twenty-two revolver. Wasn't Fearless. As Nohar turned, the popgun fired again. Nohar felt a breeze on his cheek, brushing his whiskers as a supersonic insect grazed his neck. The Vind swung at the rat with the popgun and Nohar saw one of the Zipheads had a forty-four. Forty-four had a nice, expensive Automag. Problem was, the rat must have been used to revolvers. He seemed to have forgotten about the safety.

  The Vind stopped on the dangerous one and unloaded four rounds as Twenty-two popped off another shot that missed. Forty-four got it in the gut twice, once in the neck. Twenty-two ditched his gun and ran for the window, diving. Nohar had a perfect shot and three bullets left. He almost pulled the trigger.

  The door creaked shut on The Beast. Reluctantly.

  The front of the Arabica coffeehouse was now obscured by smoke from the burning car. Pinks were making for the exits. Nohar's hearing was coming back and he could hear the fire alarms wailing. The sprinklers came on.

  Unlike most everyone in the room, with the exception of Angel, Nohar had been through shit like this before. It wasn't over.

  "Angel, you still with us?"

  A table turned over and Angel climbed out. "Yeah, Kit."

  "Grab Blackie's shotgun, cover our rear."

  "Gotcha."

  Stephie, like most of the other pinks, had yet to react. She was still staring at the rodent whose head had done a halfways vanishing act in front of her. "Stephie, rear exit."

  She turned toward Nohar with a blank expression. The crash was already hitting him. He didn't need to deal with this. He grabbed her and shook her a little too hard. "You know this place, where's the back door? They're only hesitating because they didn't expect a gun in the crowd!"

  Angel had the shotgun. She was leveling it at the windows. "That Vind ain't a gun, it's a howitzer. Kit, I got two shots—and the way this shotgun's been treated, lucky if it don't blow up."

  "Exit!"

  Stephie was finally getting a grip on herself. She started back to the rear of the place. Nohar was grateful. She wasn't one of those pinks that suddenly collapse at the sight of blood and violence. And thank whatever deity, she didn't suggest waiting for the cops.

  "Here."

  The rear of the shop was, for the most part, covered with old sacks and bags that used to hold coffee. At this end of the store, the bean smell overrode even the smoke. Stephie pulled aside one of the bags. Behind it was a short hallway with a public comm and rest-rooms, terminating in a fire exit.

  They piled in, Nohar first. For the first time since he had broken free from the adrenaline high, he realized the hole in his right hip was more than minor. The engineered endorphins were wearing off. Felt like someone was holding a hot iron on his leg. "Stephie, you drive here? Where'd you park?"

  "Lot behind the building. Were they after me?"

  Nohar pressed himself against the fire door and peered through the one small pane of cracked yellow glass. "Blackie went straight for you. The Zips are hooked into the Johnson killing."

  "If they've been watching, they know my car."

  "Pinky has a point. Zips are real fond of burning transport." Angel paused because the chaos in the front room had just upped a notch. Nohar thought he could hear the sound of distant sirens. "We best vanish ourselves, quick."

  Nohar had been scanning the parking lot, looking for the Antaeus. The huge Plymouth was hard to miss. Especially with the rat fumbling over the open hood to the power plant. Nohar grunted. His temple was pounding and there were little flashes of color interfering with his peripheral vision. Keeping his concentration focused while he slid the downside ride from that violent high was giving him a migraine.

  "Bad news, you're right. They're wiring the car. Angel, cover me and be quiet."

  "Gotcha, Kit."

  Lucky, lucky. They were lucky because the Mad Bomber didn't quite seem to have a handle on what he was doing. Lucky because there weren't any other rats in the back. Mad Bomber was supposed to be the rearguard. Apparently the Zips gave him too much to do.

  Nohar didn't rely on stealth, but Bomber seemed oblivious. Nohar closed the space between him and the rat in five running steps—each lumbering step drove a spike into his hip—and leveled the gun at the back of Bomber's head. By then, the rat knew something was up.

  Mad Bomber was in the process of turning around. Nohar cocked the Vind and and clucked his tongue at the rat- "Car has a wonderful finish, I wonder if you'll see the brains leave your head in the reflection?"

  "Wha?" The wave of fear that floated off th
e rat was gratifying.

  "Undo it, now. Or we're walking and you’re on permanent vacation."

  "Yeah ..." The rat started taking things out of the power plant. Too slow, the sirens were getting louder.

  "Remember, fifteen seconds and you're going to start the car."

  Bomber hurried, ripping other things out of the power plant. Nohar hoped the rat knew the wires he was pulling.

  Mad Bomber finally came out with what looked like an Afghani landmine. It had Arabic markings on it.

  Bang from behind them.

  Angel called back as the smell of cordite and blood drifted over. "Kit, that's one shot. Hurry up, pink law's coming!"

  Nohar kept his eye on the rat. It was becoming hard to keep his vision focused. He had all his weight on his left leg. "You heard the rabbit, hurry up. That sound back there was your backup."

  "Done, it's done . . ."

  Mad Bomber was shaking now. Nohar could see why he didn't get the job of diving in on the pinks. The rat couldn't handle it. He was going to die. Not from the cops or another gang's guns. He was going to die from his own stupidity—or the gang would kill him itself. Nohar waved the two females over.

  "Some advice. Quit the gang before you make a fatal screwup. Take the mine, stand over there."

  Nohar motioned with the gun and Mad Bomber did meekly as told. Angel ran up, Stephie in tow, and leveled the shotgun at the rat. "Shell left, let me vanish the ratboy."

  At least she asked. "Self-defense, no preemptive strikes." The migraine was getting worse.

  "Fine with me, Kit. Saves the ammo."

  Stephie eased behind the wheel and Nohar hustled Angel into the passenger side. Bomber was still blubbering under the stare of the Vindhya, but he managed to say something. "You said I would start the car ..."

  "I lied."

  Nohar dived into the back seat. The fire in his hip totally blacked out his vision when he hit the seat. As Stephie floored the Antaeus, the door slammed shut. Nohar heard the cables tearing out of the metered feed. He hoped they had some jumpers in the trunk or they'd only have one full charge to go on. A car this size didn't go far on one charge.

  They were topping sixty klicks per as they jumped the curb on to the Midtown Corridor. Nohar's sight came back a little as he watched the destruction from out the rear window. Smoke billowed out from the car in front of the Arabica. Black, brown, and white rodents were bugging out of the place, heading toward Moreytown. All attention was riveted on the coffeehouse, or the flashers coming from the east. Except—