I didn’t stay to disable him further and search him for guns. I took it on faith that he’d not have attacked me without having first set his firearms aside. They didn’t know if I might have retrieved a gun myself, but they certainly weren’t going to risk supplying me with one. And there was no hurry as far as killing him. I knew where he was and where he would be for at least the next several moments.
I shifted ground again. We all did. Those of us free to do so.
The two men I’d not incapacitated would be changing to firing positions. Their initial advantage over me had been numbers, firepower, and well-being. Their need to capture me alive had negated that firepower. My survival compulsion was compensating for the damage that had been inflicted upon me. And the numbers were beginning to even out. Seeing as my advantages were my knowledge of the terrain and the desperate nature of my situation, they would be calculating the risks and rewards involved in taking a few shots when the opportunity presented itself, letting the chips fall as they would.
A tattoo of finger snaps went back and forth across the room as they established who would cover which fields of fire. Privy to this code, the injured men would flatten themselves on the floor to avoid stray bullets.
I was breathing again. I’d accomplished this feat with no small discomfort. After digging the wire noose from my neck and pulling it over my head, I indulged myself in air. Opening my mouth wide, minimizing the risk that I might gasp.
Crossing the room to my new hiding place, I’d avoided the alpaca rug. I wasn’t concerned about bloodstains, it was well ruined already, but I was not so pale that I could blend with that whiteness, and in the dark it would have revealed me all too clearly. Indeed, at the edge of the rug I could see the black cube of a Shuttle computer I’d used to teach myself Linux. One of the bits of hardware they had taken from my office to be searched for data that might pertain to my suspicious behavior in Afronzo Junior’s vicinity.
The wire noose had a tail of about a half meter. The wire, while of a thick gauge, was flexible. I opened the noose a slight bit, took aim, tossed it underhand, and heard it give the slightest of clicks as it dropped over the computer and nicked a corner.
No one opened fire, indicating either that they had not heard the sound or that it was too faint to allow for any accuracy. I made up for that faintness by yanking hard on the wire with a sweep of my arm that sent the Shuttle clattering onto the wood floor in the direction of the glass wall. A heartbeat’s pause, followed by a series of three well-spaced shots that traced the path of the computer, another pause, and a fourth shot placed just ahead of where the computer came to rest, another pause, and a fifth shot placed just behind the point where the computer began its journey. That final point was the one I’d occupied a scant second before.
But I was no longer there.
I was pinned in the corner of the room farthest from the front door. The jumble of my computer equipment, and the man who had been lookout, were between myself and the glass door. And I would have to climb over the length of the daybed if I wanted to reach the hallway to the back of the house or front door.
Cornered, if that is not redundant.
The shots had come from the battle-scarred side of the room. In such tight quarters his flash suppressor had done little to hide his position. Irrelevant, as I’d not had a gun in my hand with which to return fire. And he’d shifted yet again, in any case. Still, it seemed clear he was covering the living area and at least half the dining area. The last shot he’d fired had punched a hole in the thick glass wall. I mentally drew a line from that point to where he’d been when he pulled the trigger. The remaining man would be covering the other half of the dining area and the kitchen. And he would be doing so from a point just beyond where that last round had struck the glass.
Of course, I couldn’t be certain of any of this. I’d been tortured for hours. The wounds inflicted on me were still causing extreme pain. I’d been deprived of oxygen, and I’d lost blood. The room was dark and littered with objects and the remains of the Sui table. The two men I’d disabled were not by any means crippled and would likely be reentering the fray. My circumstances were dire and I was beyond desperate. My strategic evaluations had to be considered questionable, at best.
Thank God I had a winged cat taxidermy sculpture in my hands.
The artist who created the winged cat had been amused when I told her why I wanted one of some girth. She’d embraced the concept, along with the various custom features I’d requested. She told me she “enjoyed the James Bond irony.” I didn’t tell her that there was nothing ironic about the piece at all. To my sensibility, a dead cat with crow’s wings stitched to its back and a rocket pistol concealed in its hollow carcass was a grim foreshadow of what humanity had in store for itself.
To be clear, what was inside the winged cat was not an actual rocket pistol. It was, in fact, a Lund and Company Variable Velocity Weapons System. The “rocket” nomenclature was popular among bloggers with a fascination for fanciful weapons technology but little understanding of actual weapons. A VVW was essentially a self-contained launch system for both lethal and nonlethal projectiles. Buttons on the side of the gun determined how much fuel would be released into the combustion chamber behind the projectile when the trigger was pulled. It did not at all fire rockets, which are self-propelled. Rather, a controlled explosion, localized within the weapon, created a preselected muzzle velocity that could be changed from round to round. Designed for use in combat environments where civilians and hostiles mixed and were difficult to differentiate between, only a handful of VVW prototypes were ever produced. When I’d heard that one had come on the market a year prior, I’d spent a foolish amount of money to own it. It came with only a handful of the specialized ammunition and two refills of the fuel. Unable to help myself, I’d test-fired half the rounds. Loaded with rubber bullets it was combat-effective nonlethal as close as five meters. Loaded with full metal jacket it was lethal to as far as a thousand meters, though not at all accurate to even a tenth of that range. Multiple vents kept muzzle flash all but nonexistent and minimized sound. Because the amount of propellant was not dictated by the size of the round, a small bullet that loses little of its energy to air resistance could be fired at muzzle velocities generally reserved for high-caliber rifles. Set to red, the VVW can fire a .22-caliber armor-piercing round at one thousand meters per second. Comparable to a .300 Winchester Magnum round fired from an Accuracy International AWM sniper rifle.
I’d placed it inside the winged cat, loaded and primed, the red button depressed. When I slipped my hand into the belly of the cat and pulled the weapon free, I didn’t bother to change the setting in favor of the orange, yellow, or green buttons. My mood quite suited red.
On my belly, in my corner, I aimed under the couch at an angle, using the sound of a man gargling his own blood as a guide. I pulled the trigger, there was a slight flicker under the couch, as if a cap pistol had been fired, a sound like two overstuffed feather pillows being plumped against each other, and an almost instantaneous human grunt, followed by another distinct sound, this one as if a large and very wet paintbrush had been vigorously shaken at a wall.
Despite the vents, the recoil was tremendous. It was just as well my wrists were still bound and I was forced to use a two-hand grip.
Fire was being returned from the battle-scarred man’s side of the room, but with less consideration for decorum this time. I put a stop to this sloppy behavior before it could reach the point of general mayhem. There were ample muzzle flashes. I could see them clearly from the point I’d rolled to after firing my first shot. I took a bead on the ghost of one of the flashes, made a slight adjustment to the right, following the trail he was leaving as he moved and fired, moved and fired, and pulled the trigger again.
Less splatter this time, and an echo of broken crockery. The bullet must have pierced the body armor under his light jacket and struck the inner surface of a ceramic back plate, the bullet and plate both shattering
on impact.
There was a respite of silence. Just a faint burble as the last bit of pressure in the battle-scarred man’s circulatory system pumped a few milliliters of blood from the tiny wound that would be in his torso. He’d probably not lose much blood from such a small wound as the one the .22 would leave. But even if it hadn’t fragmented when it hit the plate, the static shock from a bullet traveling at that velocity had no doubt killed him before he dropped.
On red, the VVW would fire only four rounds. Even if I had been tempted by dialing down to gain a few more shots, the symmetry of four men and four projectiles would have stopped me.
The silence wore on the man who had been lookout. He snapped a quick rhythm with his fingers, attempting to strategize. Before the man I’d stabbed in the foot could answer him, I did. The pillow sound again, splatter of paint, and the sharp tink of a crack appearing suddenly in a cold glass when something hot is poured inside. I could only hope that the bullet had expended most of its energy passing through its target and the glass and that it would drop harmlessly to some empty spot in the basin.
The last of them was still behind the kitchen island. One of his socks was no longer white. When I approached, he rose with his knife in one hand and the shears in the other. I ended any suspense by placing the last round in the middle of his chest.
I set the VVW on the island, picked up the bloody poultry shears from where they’d fallen, angled the blades between my wrists, and clipped the wires that bound them. Setting the shears aside, I walked down the hallway to the master bedroom and into the bathroom. In my first-aid cupboard I found gauze bandages, silver sulfadiazine, scissors, tape, an IV needle and hose, and two bags of saline fluid. Standing at the sink, I began using gauze pads to blot pus and blood from the insides and backs of my legs. The pain was intense, largely focused at the edges of the wounds where the burns were only second degree. The nerves at the hearts of the worst of the burns were entirely dead. Still, I’d need to salve and bandage them to stave off infection. And I’d need to rehydrate. And there was other business that needed taking care of.
Tending my hurts, I began plotting a route that would take me from my ruined house to the home of Officer Parker Haas.
21
PARK WASN’T SLEEPLESS. HE KNEW HE WASN’T SLEEPLESS. After Rose had been diagnosed, he’d been tested at once. Rose had been typically explicit. If we both have it, I’m ending the pregnancy.
Park’s results had been negative. He wasn’t sleepless. Whatever Ian Berry thought he saw in Park’s eyes, it was just fatigue and stress and amphetamine.
But tests could return false negatives. And it had been almost a year since the test. If the test had been wrong, or if he had contracted SLP soon after the test, he could be symptomatic by now.
But he wasn’t. He knew he wasn’t sleepless. How could he be? If he was, who would take care of the baby? It was unthinkable. Therefore, he didn’t think about it.
Faking as if he had received a vibrating call, he took the phone from his pocket, nodded at Cager, and walked from the room. Standing in the hall with the phone to his ear, he watched while Cager simultaneously bought several of Berry’s photographs and talked Chasm Tide with the teenagers who had overcome their awe long enough to request autographs.
Automatically, he spoke into the dead phone.
“I don’t know when I’ll be home. I hope soon. At a gallery. A house, really. But they have art. You’d like some of it. I think you’d make fun of the people. Too much money, mostly. Yes, but trying to look like they don’t have any money. Or the opposite. The funniest I’ve seen is a guy at the foot of the stairs right now. He has a comb-over, but it’s a Mohawk comb-over. I can’t really tell. It’s like it’s so long he can push it up in the middle. I can’t. Because it’s embarrassing. And I don’t like taking pictures of people so I can make fun of them. It’s different to just talk about them. Anyway, I’m not making fun, I’m just telling you who’s the funniest person here. Business. A guy I have to see. It’s about business. He may know something I need to know. Because. Because I think the world is getting too dangerous. Just too dangerous. Too dangerous for everything. For you. For the baby. I have to go. I love you.”
He put the phone back in his pocket as Cager came out of the room, one of the photographs in his hands.
“Kuru. Do you know this one?”
Park was sweating; he could feel it running down the small of his back.
“A little.”
Cager held up the photo.
“The first identified prion disease. Papua New Guinea, the Fore tribe. Supposedly they were cannibals. Kuru was thought to spread when they ate the infected brains of their enemies. It made them crazy. Of course, they didn’t think it was a sickness. The Fore didn’t need to be told what it was. It was a curse. They put the kuru on their enemies, and their enemies went mad and died.”
He traced the shape of the kuru prion with his index finger.
“And I think sometimes, what if the scientists were wrong and the Fore were right? What if kuru was a curse? Maybe SLP is also a curse. Which leaves a big question.”
He looked up from the photo.
“If mankind has been cursed with SLP, who did it? Who is the enemy that cursed us?”
He pointed a corner of the photo at the ceiling.
“It must be God. No other explanation.”
He lowered the photo.
“Cursed by God. How can there be any escape from a curse like that?”
Park wiped sweat from the back of his neck.
“I don’t believe in curses.”
Cager opened his messenger bag and slipped the photo inside.
“If you spent a little time in Chasm, you would.”
“That’s not real.”
Cager was parting his hair again. He stopped.
“It’s real. What’s happening in there, that’s what counts. God is done with us out here. Reality is what we make now.”
Park shook his wrist from side to side, winding his father’s watch. He wanted a new watch, one that would tell him there was time left, enough of it to make things right again. A watch that would still be poised before midnight, allowing him the time he needed to repair his world.
He took the toilet paper tube from his side pocket and showed it to Cager.
“Same as before.”
Cager had finished with his comb and was looking at his phone.
“No signal. Adrift.”
Park was cradling the tube in his palm.
“Yes or no?”
Cager flicked the screen, and a long string of names rolled across it.
“I have the numbers for over fifty dealers in here. None of them are interesting at all. You seemed interesting. Smart. Emotionally opaque. I thought if I showed you amazing and beautiful things it would elicit an emotional reaction. But mostly you just act anxious. I think that’s the emotion. Like you want to be somewhere else. That’s boring for me. And I’m tempted to call another dealer and let you go where you like.”
“I don’t care, Cager.”
He stopped scrolling, took out his comb, and raked the tines with a thumbnail.
Park displayed the tube.
“I don’t care about your pronouncements. I don’t care about your attitude. I don’t care about your bodyguards. I don’t care about your game. I care about if you can pay me. I’m a drug dealer. I’m not here to play straight man. I’m not here to give you all the cool lines. I’m here to sell you drugs and to sell your friends drugs and to go home. This is Shabu. Same stuff as last night. Same price. Do you want it, or should I sell it to one of these other lame people?”
Cager looked over his shoulder at nothing, smiled, and looked at Park.
“You are smart.”
He reached into his bag. He brought out his hand. He opened it. And he began to shuffle through a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills.
“If you’re really this focused in your business, you may be the first dealer to retire wit
h a dime. Not that the money will be worth anything.”
He held out a sheaf of bills.
“But if it’s what you want, here’s your fifteen thousand.”
Park was looking at the money as if Cager had offered him a handful of kale.
“What?”
“I placed some bets on the War Hole tournament. Inside information, really. The gladiator Comicaze Y was facing in the Final lost his twin sister the day before the match. I know that’s the kind of thing that bothers people.”
He offered the money again.
Park took a half step back.
“I don’t want that. I want the other thing. Like last night.”
Cager brought the comb out.
“The other thing.”
Cager was waving to Magda at the end of the hall.
“I don’t have that. I have money. You want my money. Here it is.”
Magda approached.
“Boss?”
“Do you have signal?”
She touched her Bluetooth, took a slab phone from a pouch on her gun belt, and looked at it.
“No signal.”
“I’m becoming disconnected.”
Cager pocketed the comb and held his hand out to Park.
“Your phone, please.”
Park didn’t move.
Cager folded the thick wad of money and stuffed it in his bag.
“If you want to work something out, give me your phone, please. I need signal. It will take me hours to reenter the flow of my communications if I’m away for too long.”
Park took the phone from his pocket and handed it to him.
Cager looked at it, frowned, dialed, looked at it again.
“Where’s your signal?”
He moved a few steps to his right.
“Is this where you were standing when you took that call?”
Park shook his head.
“I.”
“No signal.”
His thumb flicked across the navigation buttons just below the phone’s screen.