Blood Avatar

by Ilsa J. Bick

  She was still thinking when Dickert said, “Right.”

  She was confused. For a fleeting second, she thought he’d read her mind. “Right?”

  “Yeah. Right. As in pull over. Right here.” This time, he punctuated the word with a tap of the gun on her ear. “End of the line.”

  60

  Tuesday, 17 April 3136

  2345 hours

  “How much longer?” Ramsey shouted over the jackhammer thud of rotors. He’d forgotten how loud VTOLs were, even with headsets.

  “Five minutes, max!” The news VTOL pilot’s voice crackled with static. “The hospital said she’s stationary, has been for forty minutes. So she’s stopped along here.”

  They’d passed the lighted expanse of the landtrain trestle ten minutes ago, and from then on, there was nothing but black. The only other lights were the distant twinkles of a snake’s tail of patrol cars, forty klicks back. The VTOL was running black, and other than the pilot’s instrument panel, the cabin was dark. But Dickert would still hear them coming.

  Ramsey felt a tap on his left shoulder, craned his head round, pulled the headset away from his left ear. “What?”

  “Don’t forget we got a deal!” Ramsey and the pilot had to shout, but the reporter was screaming. No headset. She was classic reporter material: leggy, blond, perfect teeth, and a good wardrobe. “I get an exclusive with Dickert, and I get the doctor!”

  “Yeah, yeah, I won’t forget.” Ramsey faced forward again before he could say something else. Then he saw something bright, off to the right. A pinprick of light. He pointed: minus forty degrees off horizontal and to the right. “You see that?”

  The pilot leaned forward, nodded. “That him?”

  The light winked out. “Yeah,” Ramsey said. “Hit the spot.”

  The pilot pushed the VTOL out over the river then shed altitude, a sensation like going down an express elevator. The brilliant spear of the VTOL’s spot slid over crumbly gray-black rock and scree, scrub . . . and then Ramsey’s chest unclenched.

  Amanda was in the lead, with Dickert just behind. Both Amanda and Dickert looked up, and then Dickert was raising his fist, pointing.

  “Gun!” Ramsey shouted. “Gun!”

  * * *

  Dickert wasted five minutes searching the edge with a flashlight and cursing. “What is it?” Amanda asked. Her breath steamed, and she could feel gooseflesh.

  “My ropes.” Dickert bit the words. “They were all here; I had this planned!” Fuming, he turned and shoved the gun in her face and the flashlight into her hand. “Let’s go. You lead.”

  “Craig, I can’t do it,” she said. She heard the panic, couldn’t control it and didn’t care. The drop-off scared the heck out of her, all that yawning blackness and, in the distance, the muted roar of water. “I’ll fall.”

  “In that case,” Dickert said, “don’t forget to give me the flashlight before you go.”

  They made achingly slow progress. The rocks were scalpel-sharp, and slick with tongues of pea-sized rubble and scree. Within ten minutes she’d slipped twice and ripped open her left palm and right elbow. She was bloody and coated with an oily sheen of grit mingling with sweat. Dickert stayed right behind, that stupid gun aimed at her head.

  “Just make sure you’ve got the safety on that.” She was twisted like a corkscrew, her blood-slicked left hand clutching rock, her right searching with the flashlight ahead and slightly below her right foot. “All I need is for you to trip and that damn thing goes . . .” She stopped talking. What was that? A sound, like a tennis ball hitting wood. She looked up, felt the air thrumming, and then the spot caught them, and she knew.

  But so, evidently, did Dickert. Because he began to fire.

  * * *

  “Gun, gun!” Ramsey shouted.

  Two spurts—sparkles, really—and then the reporter was screaming and the pilot was swearing and the VTOL was sliding right and pushing high over open space.

  “I’m not doing that again, man!” The pilot was freaked out. “He’s got a goddamn gun! This ain’t no military, and I sure as shit don’t have no armor!”

  “Just get me down!” Ramsey was already fumbling with his harness. “Pull ahead of the car about two hundred meters then let me out right on the road. Then get on the horn, tell Ketchum where we are and get yourself some altitude, and keep the light on them, you understand? Light me up, I’m dead. You got that?”

  The road whizzed by as the VTOL skimmed beyond Amanda’s car, then dropped, bounced on the road, and Ramsey hopped out, ducking beneath the main rotor. Instantly, the VTOL was sailing up, and then slid off the gorge and hung, like a one-eyed dragonfly. The spotlight jabbed the dark, the cone of light skewering Dickert and Amanda against the rocks. Dickert raised his fist again; a spark, and then the report, a sharp clap that bounced and echoed against stone. This time, the VTOL hung steady.

  All right. Ramsey got rid of his jacket, screwed in his earbud, checked the safety on his pistol. As long as Dickert was paying attention to the VTOL, he was in business. Ketchum was coming, too; he heard the sirens clearly now and saw the flash of light bars. They’d outnumber Dickert, and then Dickert would either surrender or panic.

  All right, go, go! But then Ramsey looked down again—and watched in horror as Dickert grabbed Amanda by the hair and shoved his gun in her face.

  * * *

  Dickert was screaming. “I’ll fucking kill her, right now, right now, right now, you understand? Get the light off, get it off, GET IT OFF GET IT OFF!”

  He’d snagged her hair just behind the crown of her head, and when he jerked back, he nearly took her off her feet. She screamed, and then something brighter than the light flashed and then the gun was in her face. She lost it. She started shrieking, throwing up her arms to shield her face. “No, no no!” Her screams rebounded off stone. “No, nononono!”

  “Craig!” An amplified voice, gravelly with age and weirdly mechanical with a resonant thrum. “This is Hank Ketchum. Come on, son, you can’t get down there. Just stay where you are so we can get someone to help.”

  “No!” Dickert screamed back. “I’m getting out of here, and I’m taking her with me! Now get that light off me, or I’ll put a bullet in her ear, I swear to God!”

  A pause. Then Ketchum’s voice with steel in it: “You do that, Craig—and I’ll kill you for sure.”

  But the VTOL’s light cut out.

  Ramsey crouched a few meters down the rocky wall, facing east so his right cheek lay against moist, cool rock. He’d had only the briefest time to scan the terrain and now he concentrated, trying to recall the landscape. The wall was steep but not sheer. He remembered a jagged series of natural but irregular switchbacks and heaped boulders from landslides. Plus, he had a mental picture of where Dickert and Amanda were: about two, two-fifty meters ahead now and maybe a hundred below, moving in a rough diagonal toward him. Far below, he made out a dull glimmer of a ribbon of water, and in the glow of headlights from the patrol cars he saw the crisp silhouettes of men and even the shimmering fog of their breaths.

  He inhaled and began to move.

  * * *

  “Go,” Dickert hissed. He butted Amanda’s head with the gun. He’d released her hair but now had a fistful of her shirt. “Move!”

  Amanda didn’t argue. She concentrated, instead, on taking one cautious step at a time. Hunched over until she was nearly doubled, she crabbed along, groping with her free hand and the toes of her boots. They kept on like that for a while, even though Hank kept yelling at Dickert. Dickert didn’t yell back, though, and eventually, Hank stopped.

  Giving up? Please, God, no. Her legs wobbled, and her arms felt like shivery jelly. The burst of adrenaline that had fueled her was long gone, and left her feeling depleted, drained. Running on empty.

  Dickert was right behind. She could hear his ragged breathing and stumbles as they crept across slimy rock. Every once in a while he jabbed her in the ribs with the damn gun and hissed at her to move.

  She w
asn’t sure when she became aware of something else. But, all of a sudden, she, well, heard something different. This new sound was crisp. Then, she heard it again: the crunch of rock under a shoe. Boot?

  Someone else on the rocks. But where? In front of us? Yes, in front and above. Maybe somebody trying to cut them off, moving down another grade not far away and then she heard the faint, low murmur of a voice—or was it her imagination? She listened hard.

  No. It wasn’t.

  * * *

  Got to get closer. Ramsey took another hesitant step, then another. Stopped. Listened for movement. Caught the slip-slide of rocks almost dead ahead. Maybe twenty meters, or fifteen.

  He was caught at a crappy angle. His gun hand was jammed against the slope, and he wasn’t sure he could both shoot and get to Amanda in time.

  Have to risk it eventually. No other way.

  He tapped his earbud, whispered. “Hank?”

  “Here. Where are you?”

  “On the rocks. This is what I want you to do.” He quickly sketched it out, heard no reply then whispered, “Hank?”

  “Yeah.” Pause. “You’re not a southpaw.”

  “I know that. On my mark.” Easing out his pistol with his right hand, Ramsey thumbed off the safety then transferred the weapon to his left. The stippled grip felt odd. He crept forward with painstaking slowness, hardly daring to breathe. A half meter, a meter, three meters. Heard the scrabble of Dickert and Amanda, but getting closer. The darkness ahead had a sort of shape to it, as if the night were gathering itself into some recognizable form. Then he heard Dickert, very distinctly, swear, and Amanda’s gasp of pain.

  Dead ahead.

  “Now!” Ramsey hissed.

  Light from the VTOL and high-intensity torches from the cruisers above splashed the rocks. Dickert and Amanda and Ramsey lit up as if they’d suddenly leapt through a trapdoor. But Dickert, anticipating this with an eerie sixth sense, was yanking Amanda up by her hair, using her as a shield, even as Ramsey was pulling down with his left.

  Ramsey swore, broke at his elbow. “Hank, Hank, hold up, hold up, don’t fire!”

  “Jack!” Amanda screamed. “No, Jack, no, no!”

  “You!” Dickert reared up behind, rising like some demon from the rock, and his pistol was out, stabbing at Ramsey. “You! YOU!”

  “No!” Amanda shouted. “No, I won’t let you!” Then she was whirling round, her long hair like a whip, and she heaved back, twisting right, her right arm sweeping like a scimitar. She caught Dickert’s wrist with the flashlight just as the gun went off with an earsplitting boom!

  An orange tongue of muzzle flash and then the high zing of a bullet clipping rock someplace far above Ramsey’s head. Then everything slowed, balancing on the knife edge between past and present. Dickert, still screaming, was off-balance, and as he peeled away from the rock, his left hand flew out and snagged Amanda’s hair.

  “No!” Ramsey shouted. They were five meters apart. He scrambled frantically, trying to reach her in time. No time, no time, no time! “Amanda!”

  Amanda shrieked a loud, long wailing ribbon of despair: “Jaaaaaaack!”

  Then Dickert pulled Amanda off the rock.

  * * *

  “No!” Ramsey lunged, missed, bounced off rock with a sickening thud that blew the air out of his lungs, and then he was rolling. His Raptor spun away end over end, as Ramsey banged over stone and then flipped to his stomach. He scrambled for a handhold, but then his left foot snagged on something. Suddenly, he was slewing sideways, careening in a perpendicular to the fall line like a powerboarder totally out of control. The flesh of his palms tore, and his fingers slicked with blood. He risked a look down the mountain, saw rock rushing for his face then screamed and tucked himself into a roll as his back crashed against an outcropping of jagged gray rock.

  He stopped falling. For a moment, he lay there, still curled, blood from his hands seeping into his hair. His stomach and left side and back flamed with pain. His breath came in great, ragged gasps, and then as his heart slowed down, he heard men shouting from above and pebbles sluicing over rock with a sound like water.

  Water. He listened, caught the gush of the river. How far had he fallen? What about Amanda? He uncurled, hitching his body around onto his shrieking back and then his right side. He grabbed rock and craned around to look. His breath left him in a moan of mingled pain, relief, and horror. “Oh, my God, oh my God.”

  There, not fifteen meters away, Amanda clung with both hands to the edge of a rocky ledge no more than a meter across. Her body was jackknifed over the side, folded at the waist, her bloodied arms outstretched, her fingers clutching rock. Ramsey was so close he saw the cords bulging in her forearms as she fought to hang on—a task that was doubly difficult because Dickert clung to her, his left hand hooked over the waistband of her jeans and his right wrapped around her right thigh. Dickert was scrabbling, trying to climb up and over Amanda to safety.

  “Help!” Dickert’s voice was stuttery, panicked. “P-p-plee—p-p-please, please, I don’t want to d-d-die, I don’t want . . . !”

  “Dickert, stop moving. Stop!” Ramsey heaved himself around until he got his rear seated against the rock. Ketchum and his men, too far away, no time, no time! He started scuttling like a crab, moving as fast as he dared and knowing he wouldn’t be fast enough. “Dickert, stop! You’ll pull her off!”

  “Jaaaacck?” Amanda’s voice rose like a question, and then he saw her face glistening with tears, and read the strain in her face, the muscles of her neck, her grimace of fear and desperation. “Jack?”

  “Jack!” Ketchum, far above, too far. “Jack, get her, get her!”

  “Jack!” Amanda cried, her voice cracking now with exhaustion. “Jack, I can’t hold on! I’m slipping, I’m . . . !”

  “Heeeellllppp!” Dickert wailed. “Please!”

  “Jack!”

  “Hold on, baby,” Ramsey shouted, “hold on, I’m almost there!” And he was: ten meters, nine, come on, come on! He would not let this woman die; he could not because if he did, he might as well fling himself after because there would be nothing left for him afterward, nothing. Do it, do it, do it, come on! Dragging in a breath, he launched himself right, pivoting around the long axis of his body until he felt his left hand slap rock. Then he lowered himself down the wall, like a human spider. Almost there, almost there! Not two meters away, and now he could see her eyes, white all around, and now the tears slicking her cheeks. “I’m here, baby, I’m—!”

  Then she gasped, a crescendo scream, and her fingers crimped then fumbled—and then he simply stopped thinking. Ramsey dropped his right foot, felt it hit the ledge, and then he was twisting, hanging on with his right hand while his left shot out. He felt flesh, her fingers, and then his palm clamped down around her wrist just as her strength failed. Her fingers slid over his wrist, and then he felt her grab hold, trying to help. He heaved back, roaring with the effort and pain that blossomed in his left shoulder like a fireball. “I’ve got you, baby, I’ve got you! I’ll get you up, just hold on!”

  But he was lying. He could not possibly pull both Amanda and Dickert to the ledge. Even as he strained with all his might, they were, all three, slipping centimeter by inexorable centimeter.

  Then, out of the blackness below and ahead, Ramsey heard the whip-crack of a shot. Spotted a sudden flare, there and gone and so fast, he wasn’t sure he’d seen it.

  But Dickert screamed. Then he let go and fell away.

  “JACK!” Amanda shrieked. The sudden movement had jostled her, and she was slipping away. “JACK!”

  “No, God! No!” Ramsey made a frantic grab, snagged her, reeled her in. But they were rolling now, off the ledge and onto a drop-off not quite sixty degrees from true. Ramsey had a sense of something black and huge, and he twisted, clutching Amanda with his left hand and taking the blow with his right shoulder with a stunning, sickening jolt.

  And they stopped.

  * * *

  Someone was screaming: Dic
kert, hurtling through darkness, dragging a keening shriek that stretched and thinned to a single line of sound as sharply etched as a white line on black paper. A scream he sketched on his way down the abyss.

  * * *

  Amanda’s voice was shuddery. “Jack, who saved us? Who saved us?”

  “I don’t know, baby,” Ramsey said. He hugged her against his chest, her weight along the length of his body and though he couldn’t hear her heart, he felt the wild gallop of her pulse. His arms tightened round. “I don’t know.”

  * * *

  Dickert fell, bouncing against rock. Blood filled his mouth, and when his left leg snapped, he gurgled in agony. Somehow he was still alive when he slid off the wall: when he was, briefly, airborne without wings, or grace.

  He was still alive when he hit the water, a hard slap that shattered his ribs and smashed his spine and drove bone into his right lung. Somehow, he floated even as he drowned in his own blood. His world began to collapse, constricting the way an iris closes down against sudden light.

  Then a shadow. Someone? Yes, now there were hands reeling him in from the water. Fingers crawling like spider’s legs over his waist, stripping his pack.

  “H . . . heh . . . heh . . .” He struggled for breath. “Heeehhhlllppp . . .”

  “Of course.” A voice that was, oddly, familiar. Then metal on his forehead. The snick of a hammer being cocked.

  But, even before the shot, Dickert’s world was slipping away, the iris closing to a pinprick and then . . .

  Black.

  Epilogue

  Wednesday, 18 April 3136

  1130 hours

  The morning dawned bright. The clouds were gone. So was Dani Kodza.

  Garibaldi was apoplectic. “Bad enough Limyanovich might’ve been a Blakist or Kittery Resistance, you got more dead bodies in three, four days than most city blocks in a week, my friend, and some old vigilante cell and God knows who else running around, and now we’re talking conspiracy, my friend, and—”