by Ted Weber
He slowed a little to let his pursuers get closer, and downloaded the whole Dwarf Eats Hippo catalog from the cloud. BPD sucker had saved his passwords in memory, so he’d pay list price.
“Random play,” Dingo told the computer. “Dead Eyes” cued up first.
He addressed the internal camera. “This is the baddest band in B’more, Dwarf Eats Hippo. Check them out, yo. Then buy their songs – they’re too poor to serve meat for dinner.”
Waylee’s voice was almost sweet at first, Pel’s electronics mild. Then she wailed hell’s bells on the guitar and screeched like a starving banshee.
“Skin stretched
Over empty skull,
Painted for the carnival…”
Damn girl’s a firebomb. She’s as noisy when she’s fucking Pel as she is on stage. How’d she end up with a boring dude like him? Must be a musician thing. Dingo started fantasizing about a trio with him, Waylee, and Kiyoko, what it would be like.
Yuck. Housemates too long, too much like incest.
Someone honked. He’d just blown through a red light. He was driving too fast to daydream. This shit was just like Grand Theft Auto X, except when the game was over, it was over for real.
Traffic picked up. Rundown townhouses crowded either side of the road, people staring from their stoops. He saw more cop cars ahead, approaching with flashing lights.
“Enough of U.S. 1,” he told the camera. He swung left onto Monroe Street, another red light but fuck it. The tires screeched, he smelled smoke, and a panicked sedan swerved out of the way.
I should put on the siren so people’ll get out of the way. “Computer, siren.”
Nothing happened.
He scanned the console. Ah. He pressed the siren and overhead flashers icons. The weoo weoo weoo blended well with the music.
Mother fuck. He’d gone the wrong way down a one-way street. Cars honked and swerved to avoid him.
He glanced at the rear camera display. The cops hadn’t followed. Limpdicks. Must be planning an ambush.
Boarded up, crumbling tenements lined the road. Addicts shambled around like zombies.
“Dear viewers,” he told the camera, “you’ll notice what a shithole this city is. Look around, the whole world’s a shithole thanks to the greedy bastards at the top.”
He swung to the left at the next intersection, but an approaching car tried the same route and he smashed into its side with a loud crunch. He bounced off and tried to keep the car straight, but it spun out of control, everything a blur.
* * *
Kiyoko
Kiyoko’s anger at her sister gave way to fear. Cops were coming? She hoped they’d get Charles well away. He was a nice kid, and nice kids were the ones who suffered the most.
She plugged the power strips back in and put on the helmet. There wasn’t anything incriminating there that needed deleting, but she cleared her passwords and everything from the cache. She exited immediately afterward.
She pulled off her suit and dropped it on the treadmill. She just had a nightie underneath. Couldn’t get arrested like that. She opened one of her wardrobes, flipped through it, and pulled out a white silk dress. Purity and innocence in Western mythology, but death in Chinese. She threw on the dress and matching slippers and started brushing her hair in the antique mirror nailed to the door.
Laelaps barked furiously outside. She heard shouts, then gunshots. The brush slipped from her fingers.
More shouts and gunshots, and a crashing noise from the back.
Kiyoko started to cry and couldn’t stop. This is undignified. No, her sister was right, she was nobody, and now even the pathetic life they had was over.
A huge crash came from downstairs, followed by unfamiliar voices shouting in the living room. She dabbed her tears away and breathed deliberately like the samurai did to steady their minds before battle. She opened her door, prepared to face their enemies.
Soldiers in body armor, their faces walled off behind clear plastic, ran up the stairs. Two aimed complicated-looking guns at her, and the rest fanned out, checking the other rooms in pairs.
She tried not to panic. “What are you doing?”
“On your knees, hands on your head,” one of the soldiers said, voice muffled by a filter over his mouth.
“I bend my knee to no one.” Her courage had returned. “Please don’t point those guns at me. I’m unarmed.”
A man and woman in FBI windbreakers and caps walked up the stairs. “Cuff her,” the woman, no faceplate blocking her pretty features, said. One of the soldiers hurried behind Kiyoko, pulled her wrists together behind her back, and slapped on a pair of metal handcuffs.
“Do you have a warrant to barge into our house like this?” she asked the FBI woman.
Her partner pulled a piece of paper out of an inner pocket and held it in front of her. She couldn’t read it. The tears had returned and blurred her vision. “Did you kill my sister?”
The woman moved closer, her eyes soft. “Just your dog, ma’am. And I’m real sorry about that, it attacked us.”
“He’s never bit anyone. He just barks.” She collapsed in tears, unable to wipe them away and unable to see. Her sister was okay, that was the important thing. But nothing would ever be the same again.
The FBI agents lifted her up.
“My cat, what’ll happen to my cat?” Nyasuke could starve to death. Or end up on the street or Death Row, like the kitten her evil father took away.
The woman put an arm around her and walked her down the stairs. “Just cooperate with us and this will all be over soon,” she said. “I promise.”
* * *
Pelopidas
The industrial park near their house was big, but full of dead ends. Waylee hadn’t been able to locate a stormwater or sewer map on the Comnet.
“The caltrops only gave us a few minutes,” Pel said. “And that Watcher is overhead. Even if we find a manhole around here, how are we gonna pry the cover off and get inside before the cops arrive? And without the Watcher seeing us?”
Waylee swiped her comlink screen. “There’s a big factory at the end of the road we’re on – that printing company Dingo used to work for. It’s right against the river and all those trees.”
“Perfect.” He knew where that was – Dingo worked there briefly until management fired him for trying to organize an Industrial Workers of the World local. They could follow the river to the nearest stormwater outfall, then take the pipes as far away as they could get.
“Charles,” Pel said, keeping his eyes forward. “Get ready to run, we’re stopping soon.”
No reply.
“Waylee,” he said next. “Get the flashlight and tire iron out of the tool kit.”
“Tire iron?” Charles said behind him. “Expecting zombies?”
Waylee said nothing as she left her seat.
All the buildings around here were huge and featureless. The printing company was no exception. Pel drove through the parking lot and slammed the RV to a stop right against the main entrance.
“Let’s go!” He grabbed the duffel bag lying between the front seats. It was heavy. He hopped out and ran up a short flight of stairs, headed for the glass doors beyond. Waylee followed with the tire iron and flashlight, then Charles, carrying his bundle of sheets and clothes.
Once they were all inside the factory, Pel locked the doors.
A morbidly obese male receptionist stared from behind the front desk. “May I help you? Why’d you lock the doors?”
He heard sirens. Cops would be here soon. We need some confusion to slow them down. “Boss fired me so I’m back to blow the place up.” He held up the duffel bag. “Get on the intercom and tell everyone to get in their cars and get the hell out of here. The place blows in five minutes. I’d rather not kill anyone.”
The receptionist looked at him blankly, as if trying to process what he’d heard. Pel pointed the bag toward his face and screamed, “Now!”
That did it. Eyes wide with fear, he picked u
p a phone and hit a button. “Uh,” the voice on the intercom began, “we have a bomb threat. It’s set to go off in five minutes, he said.”
He hung up the phone and waddled toward the door, but Pel held up a hand. “This door is staying locked. Go out the loading docks.”
The fat man ran off to the left, huffing with exertion. Pel motioned for Waylee and Charles to follow him, and headed for the back of the building. He saw a fire alarm just past the reception desk and pulled it down to emphasize his point. Loud bells rang and white lights strobed in the ceiling.
Past the entry room, the interior was as big as a Wal-Mart. Envelopes, flyers, and magazines ran from digital printing presses down conveyor belts to stuffing machines, sorting machines, and machines whose purpose he didn’t have time to guess at. Some of the equipment had been stopped, but most kept churning.
People sprinted past them, some screaming. A balding man shouted, but the bells drowned him out.
A young woman, terror in her eyes, ran up to them and pointed toward the front. “Get out, there’s a bomb!” She took off, not waiting for a response.
Waylee grabbed Charles’s bundle from him and tossed it in a bin marked “hazardous waste.”
“Fitting end to lame-ass clothes,” Charles said.
“Don’t know why we bothered bringing them,” Waylee said.
Pel didn’t waste time arguing.
Once they reached the back of the building, now deserted, Pel scanned the walls for an exit sign. There. He followed the arrow to an emergency exit. It was plastered with warnings about activating the alarm system, not that it mattered now.
He opened the door and heard police sirens on the other side of the building. Outside, ragged trees and a thick understory of invasive honeysuckle bushes stretched as far as he could see, even overhanging the exit itself. Although it was December, the weather was still fairly warm and most of the leaves hadn’t dropped. Great cover, although it’d have been better before the last derecho. And the Watcher might be able to spot them on infrared.
Pel looked up but didn’t see any drones. He motioned for Charles and Waylee to follow him. “Hurry.”
Waylee shut the door after they exited. “Now where?”
“DG, aerial image.” He panned along the translucent map and zoomed in. The river was obvious, not far away, but the tree canopy obscured the banks, and street view didn’t cover river beds. There would be a stormwater outlet somewhere, though. “Let’s go down to the river and look for a storm drain,” he told the others.
They reached a trail just past the first line of trees, but it was partly open overhead, so he kept going, forcing his way through tangled twigs and vines. Just past the trail, the ground sloped sharply downward. Pel slipped and fell hard on his ass. Embarrassed, he jumped back up and continued forward.
Behind him, Charles said, “Ain’t there a way ’round this?”
Pel turned and put a finger over his lips. They continued down the slope, grasping tree trunks and branches to keep from falling.
The river—just a wide shallow stream, really—flowed just below them now. It smelled faintly of piss. Trash littered the banks. To their right, an old stone railroad bridge spanned the river. And just beyond the bridge, a concrete pipe jutted above the water, presumably to drain the acres and acres of rooftops and parking lots they’d left.
Pel followed the river but kept under the tree canopy. He shifted the bulky duffel bag to his other shoulder. If I was a drummer, I’d be in better shape.
They crossed below the bridge and made their way to the pipe. It was about three feet wide and completely dark inside.
“No way I’m going in that,” Charles said.
“You sure as fuck are,” Waylee said. “Otherwise we spend the next decade or two in prison.”
Pel’s data glasses had low light vision but that was useless with no light whatsoever. “Pass me the flashlight.”
Waylee handed it to him.
He wondered how long the batteries would last. A couple of hours? Pel strapped the duffel bag to his back and scrambled in.
Three feet was plenty of room to crawl through, but it wouldn’t be quick. The inside smelled awful, like petroleum, sulfur, and dead things. The bottom was damp, and soaked his jeans.
Charles followed, then Waylee. “It’d better not rain while we’re in here,” Waylee said.
“No talking,” he whispered back. “Who knows where it’ll echo to.”
* * *
Dingo
When Dingo’s police car stopped spinning, it was on the sidewalk. Nothing felt broken. The console was dark—no power.
A couple of drug zombies, men of indeterminate age, shambled toward him. He heard sirens in the distance.
He hit the power button and the cruiser returned to life. He opened the door, grabbed his backpack, and hopped out.
“Want a ride, yo?” he said to the approaching creatures, who looked like they had the critical thinking skills of mashed potatoes.
“Wuh?”
“Take this car to Moo-Boy at,” and he made up an address, “and he’ll give you cash for it. But you gotta hurry, before he leaves.”
Dingo ushered one of the men into the driver’s seat and the other into the passenger. He shifted the car into drive and smacked the new driver in the head. “Get going, yo.”
The police cruiser lurched onto the road, leaving the rear bumper behind.
He didn’t wait to see more. He spotted an alleyway across the street between two boarded-up buildings, and bolted for it.
He reached the alley and stomped through waist-high weeds and jumbles of fast-food wrappers, plastic vials, and faded lottery tickets. Rats scurried out of the way.
The sirens grew louder. He ducked behind a concrete block wall.
High pitched wailing pierced his ears, then receded.
He peeled off the Dick Clark mask and shoved it in his backpack. Then he opened the navigation app on his data glasses.
Waylee’s safehouse was four miles to the northeast. A long ass walk, but best to stay off the buses, which had cameras. Maybe he could take a taxi to Hopkins and walk from there. Except he only had $5 in his wallet, only a mile’s worth of fare. We should have prepared better.
With Homeland on their ass, he’d have to be extra careful. He switched off the data glasses and removed the battery. He fished through his backpack for his old comlink, which he still used sometimes, and took its battery out too.
He peeked back into the alley. No one there. He started walking north, planning to stick to alleys. Would be nice if someone tried to jump me in this shithole. All this shit going down, and no Krav Maga yet.
* * *
Pelopidas
The stormwater pipe sloped gradually upward. The air grew still and humid, and stank of oil, mud, and rotting leaves. Despite the chilly temperature, sweat dripped from Pel’s brow and into his eyes.
The pipe’s rough concrete jarred his knees. His jeans provided almost no padding. But with only three feet of clearance, especially with that bulky bag on his back, he couldn’t move any other way. The cement scraped his palms, but pushing with his forearms banged the elbows. He pulled his flannel sleeves forward to cover his hands, providing some protection at the expense of dexterity.
He heard rapid breathing behind him. Sounded like Waylee. He stopped and turned.
Charles halted, a grimace on his face. Further back, Waylee’s lips trembled.
“Waylee,” he whispered, “are you okay, love?”
“I… can’t see… back here.” Tears glistened at the corners of her eyes.
“Take my data glasses.” He activated the low light vision app and passed it back to her via Charles. Trouble was, low light seriously hogged the battery. “And pull your sleeves up to protect your hands.”
“Thanks, Pel.” She sniffled.
The slope leveled off. Muddy, dank-smelling water pooled on the bottom. The pipe continued in the same direction. He kept crawling.
The flashlight revealed an opening in the distance. A maintenance tunnel? They’d be able to walk then.
Pel heard something approaching, a pattering noise. He swiveled the light. Two orbs stared back at him in the semi-dark. He focused the beam on them, revealing a huge rat with long, bacteria-coated incisors.
The flashlight dropped. He rose up, and smacked his head against the top of the pipe. Pain shot down his spine. “God—”
“What is it?” Charles said.
Pel fumbled for the flashlight, teeth gritted. It was still on and just at his knees. He swung it around, searching for the rat.
There it is. The rat turned and scurried off ahead of them. He hoped it wouldn’t return with reinforcements.
Pel explored his aching head with his fingers. It felt damp, but maybe from moisture or sweat, not blood. His fingertips didn’t look red. “Just me being stupid,” he told Charles. Best to keep the rat a secret.
He resumed crawling. Definitely an opening ahead.
He hurried forward and reached an intersection. Unfortunately, with a cross pipe that was smaller, not larger.
Rungs headed up to a manhole cover. At least he could stand and stretch.
Pel let the others enter. They crowded together in the vertical space, their clothes and hands coated with grime.
Waylee looked up. “Can we get out here?”
“No, too close. Still in the factory district.”
“I can check.” She pulled her comlink out of a pocket, even though she had his data glasses on, which were easy to command. She opened the navigation program and peered at the screen. “No signals.”
“Wouldn’t think so,” he said. “Which is good, that means no one can see us.”
“So we keep going straight?” Charles said. “I mean, we’re not gonna go down those little pipes, are we?”
A joke rose toward Pel’s tongue, but his exhaustion smothered it. “Can I have the tire iron?” he asked Waylee.
