by Ahern, Jerry
Miniskirt notwithstanding, Annie felt suddenly naked. Her gun was in her purse and her purse was suspended from her shoulder by a thin strap that could easily be cut. Under normal apparel, she could have worn a thigh holster or leg holster. Under what she wore now, she was lucky to conceal herself. If her purse were “snatched”-as the old expression went - she would be weaponless. Even though that wouldn’t make her defenseless, it wasn’t a condition she would relish.
Annie Rubenstein remembered her father’s oft-spoken words men, It pays to plan ahead.” She did that now. She’d learned concealment techniques at her father’s knee, her brother beside her, years ago, as part of his general survival curricula in the five years he’d spent with them before re-ainiingtoThe Sleep. There are various objectives in concealment. Sometimes, you may be required to conceal a firearm or knife in such a manner that nothing short of electronic devices or a disrobed search will reveal it. And don’t think the subject of concealment under the present circumstances is merely academic. If men do return with the Eden Project, if the world grows again, well, one of these days there will be cities again. Maybe I won’t live to see that day, but hopefully you guys will. Not that cities are that terrific, but they’re necessary. And, even if laws are sensible enough tliat carrying weapons openly is perfecdy acceptable, sometimes it will be necessary to be armed so that your weapons aren’t seen. Now, when you don’t have to make the gun or knife or whatever all but invisible, when instant access is more of a requirement, then you have to remember one basic fact about human nature: people generally see what they expect to see. If you can disguise your weapon in such a manner that they still see what they expect to see, youll be all right.”
Annie Rourke Rubenstein did that now. Bending over a stall filled with tacky-looking shrunken heads made out of coconuts, she let her purse fall forward, pressing it against her naked abdomen as she picked up one of the coconut heads. “Isn’t this cute!” Annie remarked. When she looked at Angie, Angie looked back at her with an odd expression. As Annie put down the shrunken head and clasped both hands to her bag, her left hand flipped the catch on the flap. As she straightened up from looking into the stall, she drew the Firestar with her right hand and slipped the cocked and locked pistol down into the waistband of her skirt.
The metal was cold against her skin, and she shivered slightly.
As she walked, holding her purse close against her, the purse obscured the portion of the gun sticking up over her waistband. As long as she kept her purse covering the area between her navel and her left hipbone, the gun wouldn’t be seen.
Annie walked on, four men following them now, two behind and one on either side of the street.
The sounds, the smells, the press of people around her was almost overwhelming to her. But she was in it now and there was no turning back.
25
Energy rifles were peculiar devices, and objectively much more efficient than cartridge weapons; despite that, James Darkwood would have much preferred his. 45 automatic to the arm he now carried as he moved along the catwalk toward the nearest apparent means of descent to the lower level, a wide-treaded metal ladder.
The ladder touched the floor about twenty-five yards from the presumably electrified holding pen where the human prisoners were held until their turn arrived to play laboratory test animals.
There was one advantage to the energy rifle for which Darkwood was quite grateful: he could fire it into the circuit box that controlled the fence and the electrical discharge from the plasma bolt would short the entire pen. Then he could free the prisoners.
What he would do before reaching the pen and afterward, with a group of naked, half-starved prisoners at his heels, he wasn’t certain. With luck, any of the personnel in Mixing Room Nine who tried to prevent him from carrying out his self-appointed task would be personnel important to the very operation of Mixing Room Nine, and killing them would bring about catastrophic delays in Eden’s bio warfare program. Or, at least that was a pleasant fantasy to mull over while he descended the ladder.
So far, he had seen no other black-garbed security personnel, but he knew that wouldn’t last. And, as he looked below him, he saw two. They waited, flanking the base of the ladder. But their weapons were still casually slung just like his, not at the ready.
“Dave. Where were you?” The words were shouted up to him as he reached the midpoint on the ladder.
Darkwood, presuming he was supposed to be Dave, coughed, cleared his throat, answered, The door wasn’t secure. I checked it.” That matched enough with the truth that if one of the two security men had seen the door open or closed Darkwood’s words wouldn’t instantiy precipitate an alarm.
“What took you so long?” The second voice held both an edge of authority and suspicion.
Darkwood was nearly at the bottom of the ladder and nearly at the point where he’d have to commit to action, one way or the other. “Well, a funny thing happened-” Darkwood shoved himself back and dropped, his right hand grabbing the forward thrusting energy weapon of one of the two men, his left arm flailing outward into the facemask and chest of the second man.
As the man to Darkwood’s right started to struggle to get his weapon free, Darkwood let go completely. The result was just as Darkwood hoped, the man falling offbalance, sprawling across the floor. Darkwood wheeled left, hammering his right fist into the chest of the man on his left side. In the next instant, Darkwood dropped away, buckling his right leg, snapping his left leg out, catching himself on his hands as he rolled right, leg sweeping the already stumbling man to the floor.
Darkwood came out of the roll and onto his knees, the untried short-barreled energy rifle inhis hands. He fired, a plasma bolt striking the first man square in the chest. Darkwood swivelled right, firing at the second man, a chest shot, then a shot to the head. The faceplate smoldered as the man fell back dead.
Darkwood was up, firing a second burst into the first man, just to make certain. Darkwood was beside the nearer of the two men in a single stride, unravelling the sling of the dead man’s energy from the man’s right arm and shoulder. Darkwood slung the weapon to his left side, his eyes shifting from side to side as he moved, waiting for the first reaction from the knot of men near the tents.
Darkwood was nearly beside the other dead man when that reaction came. A man shouted, “What the hell are you doing?”
“Security has been breached, sir! But Tm on top of things. Stand back in case there’s more trouble,” Darkwood shouted. He took the rifle from the other dead man, slinging that to his left shoulder as well.
Three men not wearing white protective clothing emerged from beside the test tents and started toward him, one of them opening his suitandreachingunderit. “Gun,” Darkwood saidto himself. He fired the energy weapon that was in his right hand, knocking the man back into the other two, the man’s chest smoldering from the center of mass shot, the fashionably skinny necktie worn beneath the protective suit on fire. The necktie had to be polyester.
The other two men raised their hands. “Don’t shoot us!”
Darkwood looked at the man who’d spoken. “You put men into those tents and then flood the tents with biological agents and you ask for mercy? You’re nuts!” Darkwood pulled the trigger, killing the man, then swung the muzzle right a few degrees and killed the other one.
There were more men in motion, but not coming direcfly at him, and an alarm began to sound, loud to the point of being ear-splitting.
Darkwood ran for the pen where the prisoners were kept, shouting to them as he ran, “Stay as far away as you can from the fence. I’m going to short it out and that’ll make an arc. Understand?”
There were some grunted sounds, some nods, but mostiy looks of bewilderment, none of these people - men and women ranging from early teens to well past Darkwood’s own age-apparently able to instantiy handle the idea of a man dressed in the uniform of the plant security forces coming to their rescue. Darkwood stopped a few feet from the junction box.
The junction box exploded, shards of metal flying upward in an arc.
Darkwood stepped back. He swung the muzzle of the rifle toward a wooden skid not far from the fence. He fired. The energy rifle’s circuitry wasn’t fried.
Darkwood approached the fence. Blue waves of electricity still moved across it, the prisoners within the enclosure huddling in fear.
The frequency and apparent intensity of the energy discharges visibly diminished over the course of a few seconds, Darkwood’s concentration already on the lock for the gate. If everyone within the
enclosure had seemed in good shape, they could have climbed over the fence. But the people looked half-starved to death and some of mem had quite visible limb fractures and dislocations.
James Darkwood warned again, shouting over the blaring alarms, “Stay away from this side of the fence. Tm going to shoot off the lock.” Energy rifles didn’t exactly shoot off chunks of chrome and steel reinforced titanium but they could melt it.
With an eye toward both the catwalk and the two sides of the lower level, Darkwood shoved two of the rifles forward, raising them to shoulder height. Energy weapons had no perceivable recoil, so it was easily possible to fire two at once. Hedidthat, energy bolts from both weapons striking at the massive locking mechanism. Electricity flowed from it, across the bars of the enclosure, Darkwood shouting again, “Stay clear!”
He shot a glance to his right. No security guards were on the catwalk. Just the distance to be run down the tunnel would consume several minutes, but men from near the testing tents were forming up, would any moment charge toward him.
The locking mechanism on the enclosure glowed almost white hot, then exploded in a brilliant flash of light. Darkwood let the weapons fall to his sides on their slings. Some of the prisoners were starting toward the fence. Darkwood shouted, “Wait until I clear the charge!”
He looked from side to side, found a piece of apparatus, perhaps something utilized in mixing the chemicals - he wasn’t certain. But it looked like metal. Hefting it, there was enough weight. He hurled the object toward the fence.
It stuck against the fence as though magnetized for an instant, then fell away in a shower of sparks.
Darkwood ran to the gate, took a step back, kicked at the gate and the gate bounced back toward him.
Then he told the people inside, Take these rifles, use them, get clothes from the ones who were going to kill you and meet me on the catwalk! Understand?”
There were shouts of assent. A naked woman somewhere in her twenties but exhausted and emaciated looking, her right shoulder severely dislocated, dropped to her knees at his feet, hugged her arms around his legs, kissed his knees. Darkwood stepped away. “It’s all right. No time for that. Come on!” Darkwood tossed one of the energy weapons to a man of about fifty, but strongly set in his face and fit enough looking to be able to use it. He gave the second weapon to a man in his late teens.
The two armed men flanking him, the rest of the freed prisoners around and behind them, Darkwood started toward the catwalk ladder.
Some of the workers who tested the bio warfare materials, who mixed them, were running for the catwalk ladder themselves. Darkwood opened fire, cutting down two of them as they started up, the others running back to shelter. “Remember. Get clothing. You’ll need it.”
Darkwood fired at two workers running toward him with huge wrenches in their hands. He shot down both men. Darkwood reached the ladder.
It was hard climbing that way, but he kept the rifle in his right fist and started up.
26
They were two blocks into Sugar Street, the tourists fewer and fewer, the merchandise that was for sale in the grimy windowed shops and the precarious-looking stalls seemingly raunchier and raunchier. A woman-she was from the Wild Tribes but had brilliant blue eyes-came up and offered them drugs. Then, apparently she’d noticed the men following Annie Rubenstein and Angie, and she ran off like a frightened animal.
There was less vehicular traffic now, too, most of the cars having turned off Sugar Street at the intersection just past. Annie spotted two more men watching them, making for a total of six. “Just how close will Inspector Shaw and his son be, Angie?”
“Close enough I hope,” Angie hissed through her teeth.
They were directly opposite a small store front, the windows filled with packing crates and grated over, the door open, a hot, musty smell emanating from inside. The two men Annie Rubenstein had just spotted started walking quickly toward them.
Annie looked back. The man on the far side of the street was coming across. The three men behind them were closing up fast. “They’re trying to herd us into the store,” Annie said, hugging her purse against her abdomen to cover the butt of her gun.
Angie turned around, looked into the store. “Doesn’t look like there’s anybody inside, which probably means the place is loaded.” Angie made a great show of looking at the men, gesturing to Annie, then started a mincing run into the store front, saying under her breath, “No guns yet, kid.”
Annie resented the appellation “kid”; aside from the fact that she had been born more than six and one-half centuries ago, in chronological age she was no more than a couple of years younger than Angie.
She followed Angie nonetheless, but with a long-strided walk, her purse still clutched to her abdomen over the butt of her gun. As soon as they were inside the store, Annie realized this had to be a mistake. There was the smell of body odor, dust, mildew. Two light fixtures only illuminated the entire length of the deep but narrow building, all the nairower-seeming because of the boxes that were stacked floor to ceding on both sides of them.
The interior of the store was tailor-made for an ambush, a box canyon, but manmade.
Angie was talking, but evidently not for Annie’s benefit, but so that Tim and Ed Shaw would clearly understand that the hoped for robbery or mugging attempt was happening. “Do you think those men who are so close behind us want to hurt us, Annie?”
“Could be. What a yucky-looking store, and right here in the middle of the block. You’d think they’d do something about it, whoever owned it. Let’s see if we can find the owner.”
“The owner of the store? Thafs a good idea,” Angie enthused with admirable dramatic fervor.
They were halfway along the store’s length now and as Annie looked back she saw the six men from the street, two of them standing in the doorway, the other four walking after them. And when she made eye contact with one of them, first that man then the other three started whistiing, shouting, “Hey, chickie! Wanna party? Or you jus’ wanna gimme all your money and jewelry and clothes and maybe I don’ touch you, huh?”
There was laughter, dirty-sounding.
From deep within her, memories surfaced, of a helicopter ride more than one hundred twenty-five years ago with a man from the Eden Project who was really a Soviet agent, a man who’d bound her into the seat of the helicopter and much later tried to rape her.
She shivered.
As she looked ahead, she saw that Angie was stopped dead in her tracks, bare hands in the air. Annie sidestepped so she could look around Angie. Poking out from between two stacks of boxes was an energy rifle, a pair of enormous hands holding it and a skinny upper body and animal-like race. “You bitches move, I
blow your fuckin’ heads right off. All I’d screw myself outa’s the earrings and I could live with it.”
This couldn’t be part of Angie’s plan, to have someone get the drop on her. Even if Inspector Shaw and his son arrived in only a minute, both of them could be dead by then.
“Let go of the purse,” the man with the energy rifle ordered Annie.
“This purse?”
“Let go o’ the fuckin’ purse!”
Annie glanced over her shoulder. The four men who’d entered the store after them were fewer than a dozen feet away, but no weapons drawn. Annie said, “So, I’ll let go of the purse.” She let it fall away, twist-drawing the little Firestar from inside the waistband of her skirt, wiping down the ambidextrous safety with her left thumb as she shouted to Angie, “Hit the floor!” and fired.
Tim Shaw heard the shot and kept running, his ear ringing with the sound. The listening devices both women wore were ultrasensitive and Shaw ripped the plug from his ear before another shot deafened him.
He glanced across the street. Ed was running diagonally from the corner, gesturing wildly with his left hand toward the store front at the center of the block, Ed’s .45 in his right hand.
Tim Shaw was about a minute ahead of his son, nearly to the front of the store now, his own .45 coming into his fist, his badge in his left hand, clipping it to his belt. “Police! Outa the way, damnit!” People spread away from him in waves, to right and left as Shaw’s feet hammered the last few yards of pavement toward the store front. He thumbed back the Colt’s hammer.
He saw a face peer out then pull back.
There were more shots from inside the building.
As Shaw started to slow, two men darted from the front of the store, one of them holding an energy pistol, the other holding a knife.
Shaw stabbed the .45 toward the one with the energy pistol and shot him twice in the back, sending him sprawling face-first into the gutter. If the bullets didn’t kill the guy, Shaw thought, the stuff floating around in the gutter sure would. The one with the knife kept rabbiting into the street.
Shaw shouted to his son, “Eddy! Get the little bastard!”
