Blood Avatar

by Ilsa J. Bick

  He’d tested the leg, limped around the kitchen. He made a point of walking every half hour to keep the leg from seizing up. Had to remember to filch a tetanus shot from supplies once he made it to the hospital.

  Gabriel brewed coffee, sat at the table, ruffled the cat’s ears and waited for sunrise. He lived in the finished basement of a split-level. The apartment—an in-law’s apartment, really—had a separate entrance and gravel walkway. The apartment was spare and functional, and that suited Gabriel fine. He spent his money on computer equipment and gadgetry, and one very fine prize: a black-market police scanner. So he heard when the sheriff’s dispatcher relayed the alarm, knew which units were called to the scene, and even when Ketchum put in a call to New Bonn for help. He had police lingo down cold.

  At half past seven, he heard the crunch of tires on the gravel drive, then the slam of a front door followed by footsteps thudding overhead, the flush of a toilet.

  Oh, joy. Gabriel’s mouth turned down. Daddy’s home.

  His father clomped around, showered, clomped some more. When the front door slammed again, Gabriel tensed. The last thing he needed was to deal with Dear Old Dad. But, a few moments later, he heard the whomp of a car door, then an engine revving, and tires crunching as his father pulled away.

  At eight on the dot, he retrieved his sat-link from his nightstand and hobbled back out to sit with the cat. Gabriel screwed in an earbud, told the link which number he wanted and waited while the link connected.

  The other end punched in. “Yes?” The Handler’s voice—older, smoky, with the slight burr of an accent—against a background of tinny music.

  “It’s done,” he said.

  A pause. “Is this line secure?”

  “The link’s scrambled.” Gabriel had downloaded the program and prepped the link himself. He stroked the cat’s head, and the cat responded with a throaty rumble.

  “Good.” Another pause. “A very flamboyant exercise in pyrotechnics that will not go unnoticed. But why the trestle? You could not burn the car in the cemetery?”

  This was the part he’d been dreading. “There were complications.”

  “What kind of complications?”

  “I’d rather explain in person. Can I come over now?”

  “No, no. Too many people might see you, and I cannot break away. Tonight, when you are through at the hospital. Did you get the crystal?”

  “No. I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t on him and it wasn’t in the car.”

  “I see.” Silence. Then the Handler said, “Nothing should be out of the ordinary. You need to stick to your routine. Do not return to the cemetery. I know you are tempted, but do not. The task now is to draw in another operative, perhaps this Limyanovich’s shadow agent. You left identification with the body, yes?”

  He told the Handler about the wallet, omitting the part about the money. “What if another agent doesn’t show? We need that crystal to expose the operation.”

  “All in good time. Perhaps it was destroyed in the fire.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Gabriel said. “That code we used worked the last time. So if he came here, he brought the data crystal because that’s what the code told him to do.”

  “Then we wait and see. If no one else comes, we still might be able to lure other conspirators here through his sat-link, and barter. Limyanovich cannot be the only one with this information.” The Handler paused. “I presume no one saw you.”

  “Of course not,” he lied.

  6

  Friday, 13 April 3136

  1930 hours

  Troy saved his life.

  Noah heard the boom of the second shot, ducked, and took three more running steps when something smacked his right shoulder, and he went down. A wave of nausea made his stomach buck, and he groaned, rolled to his right and screamed when hot pain lanced the middle of his back. He groped for his shoulder, felt something sticky and more pain.

  I’m shot, I’ve been shot, I’m shot . . .

  Run, he had to run! But he was dizzy, sick, and he panted, sobbed, “Troy, Troy, Troy . . .”

  A hand clapped over his mouth. He tasted grit and sweat, and then Troy was hissing in his ear: “Shut up, Noah, shut up. He’s coming, he’s . . . !”

  Over the thrum of his blood, Noah heard the tall grass crackle and snap. His chest squeezed with terror. His senses went laser-bright, and he smelled everything, heard everything: his sweat, the copper scent of blood, the thud of his heart, the liquid pain in his shoulder. Troy lay, hand clamped over Noah’s mouth and never let up, never let go.

  Then the killer went down. Noah didn’t see it happen, but he heard it. A clatter of metal, and then a shout of surprise and pain, the heavy sound of a body hitting the ground, and then bam as the gun went off.

  Tripped over Troy’s bike . . .

  Eventually, the killer got to his feet and shuffled away, his steps slow and uneven because he was hurt. After they heard the distant roar of a car fade away, Troy helped Noah sit up. “Thanks,” Noah said, but it came out as a moan.

  “You’re not going to die, are you, Noah?” Troy’s voice came out little-kid scared. “You going to be okay?”

  “I’m okay.” Nothing was further from the truth, but Troy sounded bad, worse than he felt. “But we got to get out of here. We . . .” His stomach bottomed out when he heard a dry rustle. Oh, no . . .

  A harsh whisper: “Guys?” Pause. “Guys?”

  * * *

  They couldn’t tell how bad Noah was, and after Joey’s tentative forays—pokes and prods that felt like red-hot daggers—Noah decided he wasn’t too keen on finding out any more. As long as his arm worked well enough, that was all that mattered.

  “We got to tell somebody,” said Joey, his face a white blur. “You got to go to the hospital.”

  “No way.” Noah’s head felt woolly. “If we tell, he’ll know it was us. We just go home. We just make like this never happened.”

  Joey said, “Oh, yeah? So what are you going to say about your arm?”

  “I can move it and it doesn’t hurt much,” Noah fibbed. “Probably not too bad.”

  “Yeah,” Joey said, “but there’s a dead guy.”

  “You ever seen him before?”

  “No. But just because we don’t know him . . .”

  They were still arguing when Troy said, his words a little slurry, “Guys . . . we . . . I don’t feel so good. I think I . . . I think I need to eat.”

  “Oh, heck.” Noah groped for Troy’s face and came away with sweat. “Joey, you got any food?”

  Joey had half a smashed candy bar. They made Troy eat the candy and then Noah said, “He can’t go home alone. Even if we find his bike, he—”

  “I can ride,” Troy said, weakly. “I’ll be okay.”

  “Like hell,” Joey said. “I’ll take you home and then I’ll double back. Besides, what happens if you pass out or something? No one will find you until morning, maybe.”

  “But . . . but what about my bike?”

  In the end, they decided to worry about Troy’s bike later. No one really wanted to stick around in the dark. They walked Joey’s and Noah’s bikes out, Joey guiding both bikes and Noah coming up behind with Troy. Once they hit asphalt, Joey boosted Troy onto the handlebars of his bike, waited until Noah had mounted his own and then they took off.

  * * *

  The ten klicks home were the longest of Noah’s life. Noah was wobbly, and his right forearm was wet clear through his parka.

  Probably shock, just like in the holomovies, and I’m still bleeding . . .

  The houses thinned, giving way to farmland and old two- and three-story houses, ringed with islands of trees, set far back from the road. Once he hit the Tanner place, which was the first farm north out of town, he started counting. Noah’s place was the seventh out: a centuries-old homestead that Noah’s father inherited. Not a working farm anymore, though the barns in summer still smelled of hay, warm oats, and horse manure. Noah spotted his house from the ro
ad because the trees were still bare, and his heart sank. Every light in the place was blazing: square and rectangular yellow lozenges suspended against an inky black sky stippled with stars.

  As luck had it, his mother wasn’t home, but his younger sister Sarah was. “Oh, boy, are you in trouble. Mom is going to—” Sarah stopped when she got a good look. Then she went wide-eyed: all ocean blue ringed by sandy blond curls. “Holy cow, Noah. Is that blood?”

  In the upstairs bathroom, Sarah helped Noah peel out of his jacket. His jacket was a light blue, but the right arm was stained dark purple from blood. There were holes, too, front and back and holes in his shirt which was saturated with blood. The bullet hadn’t tagged his shoulder at all but the fleshy part of his upper arm. In the yellow light of the medicine chest, Noah saw a long stripe of raw, angry-looking flesh slashing just above his biceps as if a little kid had drawn a horizontal line in bright red crayon. The wound was more of a trough: ripped skin, red meat, yellow fat, and crusted blood.

  “Just a flesh wound,” Sarah pronounced. Sarah already knew that she wanted to be a doctor and volunteered at the hospital. She made him scoot his butt around until he straddled the toilet and his right arm hung over the edge of the bathtub. Then Sarah washed off his shoulder with soap and lots of hot water. That hurt pretty bad and made the wound ooze bright red blood.

  “That’s good blood. Gets the poison out.” She waited a few minutes, then dabbed away blood, unscrewed the cap from a brown glass bottle, said, “This is going to hurt,” and poured peroxide over the wound.

  Pain detonated in his shoulder, and he felt queasy again. The peroxide foamed pink with an audible fizz, like soda. Sarah sponged the foam off, doused the wound again, and Noah jerked his arm away. “Will you quit it?” he demanded.

  Sarah gave him a hard look. “You want Mom to do this?”

  That shut him up. Sarah rummaged then came up with a tube of antibiotic ointment, a coag gauze, and clear tape. With brisk efficiency, she smeared ointment then flattened and taped the gauze around the wound on all four sides. “That should be okay. But you need a tetanus shot.”

  “Nuh-unh.” Noah leaned back against the toilet’s tank. He’d broken into a sweat again, and his stomach rolled like he was in a tiny dinghy in the middle of the ocean. “But . . . thanks. You did really good.”

  “You’re my brother,” Sarah said simply. She gathered up the soiled sponges and his shirt and wadded them together. “I’ll put these all in the trash outside before Mom sees them.” She cast a doubtful eye at Noah’s jacket. “I don’t know if that blood’s going to come out. Maybe if I soak it in cold water first . . .” She looked at Noah and said, “What happened?”

  Noah just shook his head. Sarah waited a beat, said, “Mmmm,” then scooped up his jacket and marched out of the bathroom. He heard her tromp downstairs and then the bang of a door.

  He’d dozed off, leaning against the edge of the sink, his forehead propped on his left forearm, when she came back. She woke him up, helped him get to his room at the end of the hall, and fussed with his sheets and blanket while he dragged on a sweatshirt, being careful of his arm. When he was in bed, she pulled his shades, clicked off the overhead lights, came over, turned on a black reading lamp on his nightstand, and then handed him a glass of water and two aspirin. When he’d taken the aspirin, she retrieved the empty glass and said, “You’re going to have to tell Mom.”

  “Tell her what?” The aspirin left a bitter aftertaste on the back of his tongue, and he grimaced when he swallowed. He was bone-tired and starting to feel warm. He pushed back a handful of blanket and said, “You can’t tell her. You got to promise.”

  “Noah,” Sarah said but then stopped as a shaft of light crawled over the drawn bedroom shade. Noah’s bedroom overlooked the end of the driveway, and now they both heard the rumble of tires over gravel, the sputter as someone killed the engine, the hard bang of a car door being slammed.

  Sarah looked down at her brother. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  * * *

  Hannah Schroeder was a small, too-thin woman with the kind of dry, withered looks of a beautiful woman grown bitter by tragedy. Her brown hair was dull and brittle; the corners of her mouth hooked down in permanent disapproval; and her dark brown eyes had the furtive, darting, hunted quality of a stalked house wren.

  First Isaiah, then Scott, and now Noah . . . “You lost track of time? You stay out until it’s dark as pitch outside, come home after dark while I’m making calls and driving around town, sick with worry, and—”

  Noah cut in. “I’m sorry. We were fooling around, that’s all. Jeez, in summer, you don’t get upset if I—”

  “In summer, it stays light until nine o’clock. In summer, it’s thirty C, not four degrees outside!”

  “Mom,” Noah said, “I’m sorry. I just . . . we got busy. We . . .” He moved his left shoulder in a half-shrug. “I’m sorry.”

  She was so angry she wanted to smack him. Slap his face good and hard. But she’d never hit her children because, with her Isaiah dead, she was frightened she might not stop. Instead, her restless fingers found a length of gold chain at her throat, and she worried it, sliding a gold medal of the Virgin back and forth. The metal over metal made a sound like a zipper. “You know how much I worry, Noah. You know—”

  “I know, Mom.” Noah was pale. His eyes were gray-green, like Isaiah’s, and just as hooded. It hurt her to look at them. “Jesus, I said I was sorry.”

  “Don’t blaspheme.” She said it automatically, like a tic. Then: “You’re sorry, you’re so sorry, but not enough to come home, not sorry enough to keep me from worrying myself sick! The sheriff out looking for Joey, and you boys, you never . . .” Her fingers worked her necklace. Then she squinted as a new thought leaked in. “You were out with Scott, weren’t you? You went to see him and that slut he’s living with. I’ve told you to stay away from Scott. He’s not good for you, and that little whore . . .”

  She’d gone on like that for another five minutes, haranguing, berating—hating herself for what he made her do; hating her husband for dying; hating everything. Then, abruptly, she’d run down like an old wheezy grandfather’s clock with rusty gears. “I’m tired. I can’t worry about you any more right now.” She turned, shuffled to the door, suddenly so weary her legs felt like water. “I need to sleep. I need to go to work tomorrow. Someone has to be responsible. Someone has to . . .”

  She turned to look back at her son. Noah’s face was very white beneath the cap of his wheat-colored hair, and he looked miserable. Well, let him suffer. What didn’t destroy you made you stronger. Lord knows, she suffered.

  Her voice was flat. “Don’t think this is finished. I don’t want you leaving this house Saturday. If I find out that you’ve even called Scott . . .” She left the sentence hanging. Her throat balled with tears, and she turned away, ashamed of her tears and angry all over again at the ingratitude and injustice of the world. Was this a trial, her cross to bear? None of this was fair, it wasn’t fair! “You’d think that after everything that’s happened, after your father and Scott, you’d think the least a boy could do is listen to his mother. No one will ever care for you as much as I do, Noah. No one.”

  She’d clicked off his light and closed the door and left him behind in the dark.

  And that was Friday.

  Saturday, 14 April 3136

  0930 hours

  Hot. He was burning up, and something drilled, bored into his head . . .

  Noah cranked open his eyelids, blinked. Blinked again. His eyes were gummy, and his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth. He could smell himself: sour with sweat and sickness. His right arm had settled to a constant dull throb. He tried an experimental swallow, grimaced at the bad taste in his mouth. His room was suffused with light filtering through his shades.

  The scratching came again and resolved itself into a tapping at his door. “Yeah,” he croaked.

  The door opened a hair and Sarah stuck her h
ead through. “You awake?”

  “I am now.” Noah pushed himself to a sit and instantly regretted it as the room spun. He gulped air, forcing his stomach to stay put.

  “You don’t look so good,” Sarah said. She came to sit on his bed then put a hand against his forehead. “I think you have a fever.”

  “I’m cold.” He was burning up and freezing at the same time. He shivered and pulled the blanket up to his chin. “Where’s Mom?”

  “Gone to work. I would’ve let you sleep but . . .”

  The look on her face scared him. “What?”

  Her face was solemn, her blue eyes bright with scrutiny. “Someone got killed last night. It’s all over the news. A car went over the gorge near the landtrain trestle, and then it exploded. There was someone in the car, and he’s dead, only now they’re saying maybe he was murdered.” When he didn’t say anything, she said, “You have to tell what you saw, Noah. You have to tell somebody what happened.”

  A light flashed in Noah’s brain, as if the events of the night before were a holomovie playing out on the black screen of his mind: the hum of a bullet splitting the air over his head; the bang of a shotgun, the way the big man jerked and crumpled like a discarded puppet. The flat bap as the old man killed him.

  He looked up at his little sister. “No, I don’t,” he said.

  7

  Saturday, 14 April 3136

  0930 hours

  Dawn had brought fog and the news people. By the time the sun burned off the chill, a clot of news vans and reporters clustered like agitated geese behind a hastily erected police line. Above, a pair of news VTOLs droned, circling like vultures. Ramsey had hung way back, made sure he turned away when the holocameras swept the crime scene people and police. He didn’t hate news people the way other cops did. He viewed news people as opportunistic feeders, like Terran remoras, skimming under the belly of a shark and snapping up the leavings. It was just that he couldn’t become the story.