From Out of the Outlands
Part 15
Police file:
I’d seen his kind before, smart alick punks before, too clever they think to ever get caught, telling me with his arrogant stare that it was simply bad luck that led to his arrest – not his mistake.
If I was still a cop I would have belted him a few times. A beating don’t wise up his kind, but I would have felt better.
The kid was born to that attitude, and he would die with it – mostly likely via lethal injection.
His arrest record was like a history of the Outlands, a dabbling in nearly every vice as if trying them all out to see which one he would take up as a career.
How the kid got probation I can only venture a guess.
Maybe he had credits enough to slip a little into the judge’s pocket. Though if he couldn’t afford a lawyer, how could he afford the price judges get these days?
My feeling is he sweet-talked his way through it all. He had charm enough to fool a judge. With me, it’s a different story.
I was onto him, and he knew it, and still he grinned at me as if challengine me to find something on him – some violation that would allow me to lock him up.
I ran the usual tests, a full spectrum – usually reserved for harder criminals than him – and to my surprise, he came up clean.
In fact, I kept up those tests week after week, adding a body search to the mix when he got too cocking. I even smelled his breath for the scent of the newer drugs our tests didn’t yet catch.
Nothing.
The whole time, he just grinned at me, staring back with his laughing eyes as if to say he had me where he wanted me, and there was nothing I could do about it.
It was that look that made me quit my beat, too many of his kind making mockery of the system of justice designed to create order in the Outlands.
They knew more about law and civil rights than any cop and most lawyers.
While we had to prove conclusively his kind commited a crime, he weaved through the Constitution with the skill of a Indy 500 driver.
It was always: “Catch me if you can, copper!”
Okay, as his probation officer, it wasn’t my job to nab him at anything. I had so many cases to deal with I had a difficult enough time putting a face to all the names. I never did get to know much more than what could be found on their rap sheets. Who could tell from that how life treated them growing up, or what influenced them into becoming the beasts they were?
Yet for some reason, this one got to me. I wanted to know more. I wanted to get to him, even if I couldn’t put him in a cell.
I went to the kids in his part of the city – a Latino quarter to which he no more belonged than he would have in the poshest of walled neighborhoods.
The local gangs didn’t laugh at me when I asked about the boy. They just stared.
“Never heard of them,” they said.
I couldn’t believe that. His kind didn’t settle anywhere without making waves.
Then, I went to check the place the kid claimed he was employed. All along I figured this was a dead end, a lie to satisfy the requirements for maintaining his probation. Most of his kind lifted a name out of a phone book, then earned their money by way of something less than legal.
So it was a shock to find that he really was employed there. But the manager said the boy had been having problems lately.
“Some personal matter,” the manager told me, “ with his girlfriend or something.”
All in all, however, the manager considered him “a great kid.”
I said nothing to change his opinion, though I knew better. You didn’t win arguments with people who had been conned.
The boy’s landlord had a bigger gripe.
“He’s two months behind on his rent,” the woman said. “While he’s been behind before, he’s always managed to come up with a payment in time. I would sure hate to put him out on the street. He’s such a good kid.”
What was with this punk? He was liked where he worked and lived? Was he trying to pass himself off as an ordinary working slob?
If so, I didn’t believe any of it, and I was going to prove everybody wrong even if I had to trail that punk through the whole of the city’s Outlands. I would catch him in the act.
Which was exactly what happened, and where I hit pay dirt.
It started when he came into my office for his weekly check in, and he was acting queer. He didn’t seem high on anything, but mostly angry. He had a look in his eyes a little less cocky than usual. Maybe he knew I was on to him. But he seemed to take no notice of me when he left my officie and I trailed behind him. I wasn’t wearing body armor or anything else that might give me away at a distance. I carried only personal defense system and hoped he didn’t lead me into an ambush.
I follow him into the worst parts of the Outlands, where street gangs, prostitutes and others didn’t feel even the need to wait for dark to perform their diviance.
He seemed to be searching for something, and the deeper we got into the middle of that world of human filth, the more he seemed on the hunt.
He was getting figity. He stopped people on the street, barked at them, and they either pointed down the street or shook their heads.
I concluded he had been ripped off in some drug deal or skin-trade situation by one of his girls. By this time, we had reached the Outlands’ shopping district, where anyone could indulge in any form of vice provided you had the credits.
He moved on, passed loads of pathetic characters that lived on the steps of crumbling tenaments – too poor even for the dirt cheap rents landlords required.
Perhaps I might have learned more if I had closed in and caught some of the verbal exchanges. But I felt too close to nabbing him to make such a mistake as letting him see me now.
Then for a moment, I lost him.
I heard shouting from one of the tenaments, and concluded that was where the punk had gone. I was half way up the stairs when a half naked woman charged down, struggling to dress herself as she ran. She didn’t exactly look frightened; more annoyed. Almost immediately behind her came a man, also dressing, through pushing his credit dispenser back into his pants pocket as he did: a well-groomed Inland man from my reading of it.
Niether of them looked at me. Neither seemed to care.
I found the punk sitting on the top step of the first aldning, head wrapped in his arms. He was crying.
He glanced up sharply when he heard my approach on the stairs. Then he recognized me.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he demanded.
On the surface, he didn’t look smug, but deep in his eyes it was there, that sense of defiance I had come to hate.
Maybe it all just broke down in me then – all the years of watching his kind get away with murder. I didn’t exactly throw him down the stairs, but I beat him until he fel, and by the time the ambulance arrived, I was felling a lot better.
That punk wouldn’t have no smug look the next time I saw him.
*****************
They did not travel fast. Vincent couldn't, struggling to keep up with the boy, over the rough terrain, nor could Hilda whose pale face showed an expression of such dispair that she seemed more dead than alive, stumbling forward with Cromwell behind her. The only blessing was the shock that seemed to numb the pain of her wounded hand.
It seemed a pathetic march to Vincent, the desperate and the dilapidated, thrust into each other's arms for a dance of doom, traveling through dark passages Vincent didn't remember. He was sure the boy had brought them out different from the way in. At first, he kept expecting the passage to open up, to that via duct through which the flying bikes had come. But the passage remained narrow, and grew rougher in texture, something dug out a long era earlier, with pick ax and shovel, the strokes still visible on the walls, frozen in time.
“What kind of trap does he have planned?” Vincent wondered. “Something in a dark passage ahead, something I have to prevent, though I don't want to.”
The passage turned, then turned again. sank a little, and rose a little, until Vincent lost any sense of direction, except for the feeling that they were gradually rising despite the ups and downs. He could smell a change of air, too, whiffs of moving air that -- while not fresh -- suggested something pushing it, a train car or perhaps some flow of liquid from an open water viaduct. But if such things were nearby, he neither saw nor heard them, only the passage, moving along as if made for one purpose, and that purpose long forgotten.
Those side passages that did crop up from time to time clearly descended, and stank of the lower mildewed air out of which they had just climbed. The boy at this places always stopped, always listened, sniffing, too, as if expecting to catch the scent of something dangerous.
But each time that danger remained unrealized and they moved on again, twisting and turning, going up and down, but always gradually rising.
Then, Vincent heard the sound, the distant rumble that could have been thunder except for the remakable steadiness of it, like a groan echoing through the hollowed earth.
“What's that?” Vincent asked when he had caught up with the boy at yet one more side passage.
“Flying men,” the boy said.
“You mean those men on the motorcycles?”
The boy nodded. “This their place.”
“You mean these tunnels?”
Again the boy nodded. “They come through here.”
“Are we safe?”
“No place safe, down here,” the boy said, then began to move again, and soon the tunnel grew more straight and its angle more directly up. The sound grew, too, now less a moan than a buzzing, with Vincent able to pick out the sound of several engines in competition with each other.
Then, without warning, the sounds exploded upon them, and so did the lights, a crashing mad invasion of man and machine barrelling toward them down the the tunnel.
“Down!” Vincent yelled, and threw himself flat as the machines roared less than a foot above his head.
He counted five machines. He might have missed one. But they were enough, leaving him deaf even after they had fled down the passage. He could barely pull himself to his feet.
“What do they want?” Vincent asked, staring back after them, as Cromwell rose, pulling up the lethargic Hilda.
“Nothing,” the boy said. “They just ride.”
“Can’t we ask them the way out?” Cromwell demanded. “You seem to be taking the long way up.”
“Don't you worry, you'll get your jail cell soon enough,” Vincent said, then shone the light on the smaller creature and repeated his Cromwell's request. “Do you know the way out?”
“Out?” the boy said, with a glint of evil in his eyes.
“To the street, asshole!” Cromwell shouted and waved his pistol.
His voice resounded through the passage, echoing as distinctively as an explosion.
“Shut up, fool!” Vincent said. “Are you trying to get us killed.”
But the echo of Cromwell's curse went on and on, a clear advertisement that someone from above had descended to the depths, and almost immediately, Vincent heard a change in the noise around him, a sudden halt in motion and a refocused movement coming down towards the sound.
The boy let out a sudden howl. “Run!” he shouted.
But Cromwell clamped a big hand on the boy’s shoulder. “No,” he said. “We’re staying right here until you give me some idea as to how we get out of here. Don’t think I’m not wise to your little plot to do me in.”
But the noise stirred elsewhere in the passage grew louder and it was clearly not that of the flying motorcycles.
“Forget all that,” Vincent said. “Just show us a passage up from here.”
“Up?" the boy said, staring at Vincent as if betrayed.
“Up,” Vincent said, figuring they might get lucky, stumble upon a subway tunnel or sewage duct, the way he had earlier, either one of which would lead to repair access ladders and eventually to the street.
Then, Vincent hear the music., the volume of which grew as it advanced, but suggested it was loud, but still at a great distance.
But this perception was wrong. The sound was loud, but came through the wall of the tunnel itself. A moment later, an explosion burst through the wall – and amid the falling stone, flowing dust and flash of explosive, it was difficult for Vincent to determine which was louder, the attack or the music.
WE WILL ROCK YOU!
The explosion was the result of some projectile weapon like a bazooka, and this impact didn't just raise the dust, it shattered the wall above the hole into a thousand fragments, each of them the size of bowling balls, each of them dropping down on their heads like a shower of heavy hail.
The boy howled, and tried to leap into one of the tunnels leading down, but Vincent grabbed him up by the chest and carried him away, dodging the attack of the boulders as they fell. Cromwell had already started to run. He ran side by side with Vincent, and they both charged down the passage as it continued away from the hole, neither aware of where it went or what they might find -- though this new explosion had brought yet another change in the sounds of the other tunnels, as echoes of it shuddered up through the layers to those above.
Then, Vincent saw lights ahead, blazing, wobbling bright lights accompanied by the rush of feet towards them.
“Stop, Cromwell,” he said shoved the boy aside into a narrow passage, something long ago collapsed a few feet in, now forming a kind of dark alcove. Not a great hiding place, but something.
“What?” Cromwell said, clearly out of his head with fear.
“In here, lie down. It's our only chance.”
Cromwell did not agrue. He seemed beaten down, his face streaked with sweat and dust, denying him his dignity as an Insider. He fell to his knees beside Vincent and to his face as the lights and the thump of boots neared. The boy whimpered and struggled to rise, moaning about his daddy and betrayal. Hilda said nothing. Not even a whimper about her wound.
And then, they came, a hord of Blue Skins full of light and fury, faces so pinched with peircing their looked made of metal, freaks by choice who had tatooed their skin into a huge of blue as a uniform, tough, gangly, men and women strapped with ammuntion belts and machets, and double and triple holsters with protruding automatic pistols. Each also carried a rifle, and advanced on the hole and the now emerging security force like the invading army it was.
Vincent shivered, recalling his earlier order to have the underground closed down. How was that possible. It seemed as if the whole city was burrowed, and the clans of gangs roamed here at will, petty little armies waiting for their opportunity to rise and conqueur, training themselves in the dark recesses for this moment. How was a police force as thinly staffed as his to put a halt to this, police verses army -- no multiple armies, and armies better armed.
Behind them, gangs clashed in dark. Vincent could not tell which side was winning or if any could. But after a time, he sensed one side retreating – fighters that had blown open the wall firing tenative shots as they ran, most of which ricochetting off the walls of stone, the laser aiming lights dancing like faries along the walls.
“Up,” Vincent said. “It’s time to get the hell out of here before this whole place falls down on us.”
The closeness of the conflict seemed to shake Cromwell from his lethargy. Even though he still carried the pistol, he clearly no longer commanded their little troup. Instead, he glanced towards the tunnel where the fighting went under way.
He seemed to sag, as if the appearances of these conflicting armies stirred some deeper sense of civilization inside of him. Perhaps he was mentally ill after all, Vincent thought, and his violence part of some inner conflict of savage and civilization.
Yet Cromwell, for all his is savagry, was never so savage as the forces he was witnessing now, and the shock of it made him doscile. Vincent gently removed the pistol from his hand.
“Let’s go,” Vincent said.
“NO!” the boy howled. “You said we kill him.”
“We will,” Vincent said.
“When?”
“After a court of law convicts him. Now which way is up from here?”
A sudden surge of fighting turned his head, blue skins machine pistols filling the tunnel with red flashing, while the more highly calibrated weapons of the other army responded with sharp flashes of blue -- their small explosive shells knocking dust down on the heads of their attackers. But from all indications, the first gang did not have the numbers or the supplies to hold the hole for long, most already moving back down the inner tunnel.
“Come on!” Vincent growled, giving the bigger man a shove. “You have a date in court.”
Then he glanced at the boy. “Show us the way out,” he said.
Then, after about twenty yards, a loud thump sounded behind them, and the concusion of the explosion shoved them all forward, followed by a rushing cloud of stone, dust and smoke, stinging at their explosed skin like thousands of bees. They fell foward under the impact. Behind them, the tunnel fell in on itself, burying the boy's mutant father and that whole life, sealing their way back better than the city could have every done. No one would be coming or going this way without a bulldozer.
But now, Vincent could see movement in the tunnel as the blue skins made their return, and a wavering light that suggested the fanged intruders now coming towards them had not spent a great deal of time at this level, more familiar with the cycles of day and night than the boy or some of the lower life forms that existed here. The boy seemed aware of this, too, easing them along until he found another small tunnel leading off the main, some kind of water drainage duct from the smell of it, too small to stand up straight in, but large enough for the three of them to slide into without having to crawl, Cromwell's head bent the most when the three finally settled in, the metal ribbed walls pressing into one of his cheeks. He wanted to complain, but with the rising volume of voices and stomping feet, even he thought better of it.
Vincent instructed the boy to make for another hiding place, somewhere they could lay up again when the fang faced gang made its return. The boy, still sniveling, nodded and led the way, keeping to one side of the passage, motioning for Vincent and Cromwell to do the same. Vincent did not use the light, making travel difficult. This was not a smoothly hewn passage the way many of the more modern subway tunnels were. It lacked even the graces of the less formerly designed rail way tunnels dug during New York's long history since the first air tube of the post civil war era. This tunnel had come as convenience, the designer using it as a means to reach some place else, gutting out one of the aged steam tunnels of the late 1880s as a means of access. The floor was uneven with numerous pointed stones sticking up at inconvenient places, often causing one of the two men to stub his toe. The boy hushed them often, never once himself falling or stumbling, as if he had each marked off in his head, each indentation memorized, feeling his way along the wall as the lights from the fang face gang faded behind them, and the voices of the gang grew less pronounced, though changed in tenure as they clearly discovered the desolation. He heard the shouts and curses, though not the words. He knew they would find some sign of their passing in the dust. Vincent could not have covered their tracks even with more time.
“They're coming,” the boy said, pausing for a moment to listen, and indeed, the sound of the gang grew louder again, and more hurried, and Vincent could see the brightness of their lights filling the passage again, so bright he could see Cromwell and the boy clearly, and feared that the gang could see them, too. Just when the first beam of the gang threatened to fall upon them, the boy yanked Cromwell, Vincent and Hilda into another passage, this with a much lower roof, and of a texture much less even than the passage they abandoned. Vincent and Cromwell couldn't just bend their heads to fit inside, they had to bend at the waste and still walk, stumbling and bumbling after the boy as the boy led them deeper into this shaft, something small scurrying and squealing ahead of them that Vincent supposed were rats. Behind them, making too much noise to notice the squeel, the fang faced gang lumbered passed the opening of this passage. If they noticed the opening, they gave no sign.
Then, the gang was too far away to notice, lost in the thump of that small herds feet charging back towards their own turf, higher up, farther away.
“Hey, boy,” Vincent whispered. “They would have a way up, wouldn't they?”
“Yes, maybe,” the boy said.
“Can we follow them?”
“That would be dangerous.”
“This place is full of danger,” Vincent said. “If we don't find a way up, it won't matter what we do. You know some stairs up, but not the way out. That gang is used to light. They have to have a turf closer to the street.”
Again, the boy looked back the way they had come, his dialated pupils just visible in the wavering illumination of the retreating lights, the echo of the fang-faced gang's singing starting up in the passage again: WE WILL, WE WILL, ROCK YOU. The boy's gaze seemed to take in the passage in a familiar way, like the victims of fires Vincent had seen, each looking over a former residents in terms of memories and imagining how things would never be the same. The boy shivered. He seemed to have nothing left here, and then he turned, motioning Vincent and Cromwell to follow, and they did. Vincent anxious to reach some point where he could ascend, Cromwell, with his face gripped in an expression mingling rage and fear, stumbled on as well, lacking a choice of any other direction.
But no light showed in these tunnels, and unlike the Second Avenue subway which was never finished, the tunnels through which the boy led them had suffered long under the impact of trains. Vincent didn't know how far down they were, despite the short elevator journey. He knew tunnels went down as far as 80 stories under the former Chryler Building on 42nd Street. He knew that even ordinary subway tunnels could rise and fall with remarkably sublty, leaving someone many stories lower at one point than when they began. One tunnel along upper Broadway went down as far as 18 stories.
Vincent knew they had gone much lower, but could not calculate how far they had risen before the attack. He found it difficult to breathe, as if the air had gone stale or lack sufficient ventilation. He could sense significant human occupation, water tunnels opening to either side of them, filled with the sound of scrampling too loud to be rats, startled by the passing of the fang faces. Apparently most residents of the lower world did not belong to gangs, scrambling for survival the way the boy and his mutant father had -- many, Vincent presumed, were mutants, too hidious to panhandle or do minimum wage jobs on the surface, too distinctive to survive much in the way of petty crime, surviving the way the boy and father had by wit, by stealing from the gangs and other thieves, surviving by stealth.
“How many people are there down here?” Vincent wondered. “How can we live up top so smuggly without taking this part of the city into consideration?”
From time to time they came upon more specific signs of human occupation, smelling the fesis and urine before arriving at vast deposits, coming upon piles of junk so thoroughly recycled as to look as if maggots had devoured it, leaving only bits of plastic or paper, and even these served someone’s purpose, if only for fuel.
Nothing got wasted here. Someone had a use for everything. And in a way, this world mocked the world above, where neighborhoods required so much in the way of goods and services yet threw out as much as they took in, requiring fifty models of TV set when one might have done, requiring twenty brands of catsup when they all tasted the same, demanding new model vehicles every year which required whole new sets of knobs and parts, none of which fit any other model of that year or any other year. It was arrogance that became more evident here where every knob, every piece of part took on value never intended by the manufacturer, these people scraping the remains of catsup from fast food wrappers to mingle with water drippings to make soup.
From time to time, the boy paused over some of these remains, his own instincts getting the better of him before he realized his new duties, and hurried away from a pile of junk to resume tracking the fading lights of the gang ahead of them. In someways, the fang faces benefited Vincent's purposes, scaring off many of the other preditors Vincent might have had to fight without the gang's fearful war cry: WE WILL, WE WILL, ROCK YOU!
But Vincent knew this shield would not last long. The leader of the gang would catch onto the fact that the intruders were not lurking in the tunnels ahead, but somewhere, anywhere, and he would begin to fear an attack from behind or side, and he would begin to set out guards and traps to ensnare them.
Yet this was a level still far below fang face's turf, and the boy who guided Vincent and Cromwell knew these tunnels too well for any trap to succeed, at least, so far, and when he sensed a guard ahead, he stopped, grabbing Vincent, whispering about someone ahead in the tunnel, forcing delay, each of which pushed the main body of the gang further and further ahead, leaving plenty of time for the other elements of this dark world to reemerge.
But the boy seemed to grow more confident as they rose, coming into a territory in which he had previously scrounged. Finally, they came out into a train tunnel – one that clearly had not been used in a century, and from which many of the ties had been torn up for use as fuel.
Far down the line, the lights of the retreating army showed, and the echo of their singing flowed, although the words were now lost to the echoes.
The boy turned that way, with slump-shouldered Cromwell and wounded Hilda behind, Vincent staying back a few steps with weapon raised, watching the cave for signs of tretchery.
Vincent's light helped illuminate the dismal interior, the rib-like rusting metal arches that held up the stone and dirt above them. He occassionally saw blue sparks from some constant electrical short farther down.
“Be careful of that rail,: the boy said, pointing to the larger of the three rails. “It still has juice.”
The light also showed the trickles of water making passage down the walls. The air smelled of rotting things as well as bore the faintest scent of natural gas.
Life, as Vincent recognize it, reappeared in number, as rats and mice stirred at their approach. Yet this was not the only stirring Vincent heard. The sound of footfalls sounded from behind them as well as ahead, and did not always stop when the boy halted the group for a rest.
Vincent said nothing to the others, but he also heard whispers as well, and when they rested, he pressed the boy for a passage up.
“We need to start rising again,” he said.
“Soon, soon," the boy said. “I remember stairs somewhere along here, but I don't remember exactly where. Never used them. Never wanted to.”
“Did you ever see the street?” Vincent asked.
"Once, when I was very small,” the boy said
But the sounds grew louder and the whispers more intense. If the boy noticed them, he made no sign, until Vincent pulled him aside at their next rest.
“If we don’t find a way up soon, we’re going to be in real trouble,” Vincent said. “We have one gun and that has about five bullets. That’s hardly enough to hold off the horde that’s growing behind us.”
Vincent didn’t want to think about the blue-faced gang somewhere ahead.
“Soon,” the boy assured him, but hardly seemed confident in the prediction.
They had just started when the point men from the gang behind them appeared, three or four fanged-men bearing ancient rifles. One tired to aim. Vincent fired, dropping the man on the tracks. The others fled, howling as they went.
Cromwell stared after them. His vacant stare seemed full of disappointment, as if he had hoped death would end his misery. Hilda sagged, but showed little consciousness at all. The boy looked very concern.
“Not good,” he said. “They come again. More next time.”
“I agree,” Vincent said, then retreated down the track to the fallen figure. He was a pathetic character, ribs so exposed as to suggest steady bouts of hunger. Vincent removed a half-exhausted belt of cartleges from around his chest and took up the rifle. All in all, he had now about 30 rounds. Better, but not good. The rifle had not been cleaned in recent memory and was as likely to explode in any attempt to shoot as not.
The shooting did little to discourage pursuit. Indeed, those behind them seemed to grow more reckless, abandoning any effort at stealth. They did not sing, but Vincent heard their grumbling and knew they were working themselves up for another attack.
“The next time, they’ll come in a bunch,” Vincent said.
Then, the boy cried out.
“Found it!” he said, and pointed to an ancient stair. Vincent poured light into the area indicated and this revealed a stone arch and roughly hewn stairs, the product of some older construction that did not care much about keeping things even. Cobwebs decorated its face, suggesting few if anyone had used this passage in a long time, giving Vincent hope that it remained free of gang members – at least, those that had preceded them along the tracks.
“All right, we go up,” Vincent said.
At that exact moment, the gang from behind made their attack, a reckless charge of nearly savage beings, many of whom were clearly mutants of some sort, or hunted people from the uplands that had sought refuge here from the police. Not all of them were armed with guns. Some had spears of sorts and tossed these as they ran.
“Up!” Vincent ordered, then bent, cocked his rifle and fired.
The gun did not explode. But the bullet didn’t hit what he intended, striking the ground near the lead attacker. He adjusted, fired again, hit one, fired again, hit another, fired, missed, fired hit, fired, fired, fired, until he ran out of bullets for the rifle, threw the rifle, and then charged up the stairs after the others, hoping they had made enough progress to escape – which, of course, they had not.
But they had reached a door at the top of the flight of stairs. He pushed them through into whatever lay behind, and managed to get himself through and the door closed by the time the gang reached the other side.
“Lean on this!” he commanded Cromwell, and the complacent Cromwell complied, lending his shoulder to the door as Vincent waved his light around seeking something with which to hold the door more secure.
All he can find are stones – crumbled pieces of ceiling each about the size of a bowling ball. He grabbed one, pressed its point into the crack of the door, then grabbed another and another, piling them up against the door, hoping the accumulated weight will hold back the hord until they can escape.
The gang on the other side bangs on the metal, the booms of which echo around them.
“All right, where to now?” Vincent asked the boy.
“That way,” the boy said. “This tunnel goes to another, and then to a ladder up.”
Vincent sighed. It was almost pointless. Already the stones shifted behind them, and the gang would soon be through. This tunnel was wider, smoother and straight, lacking even a curve around which to hide.
He has also lost strength, his wounds dragging on him nearly as much as Hilda’s hand did her. He could not run. He would not be able to put up a sustained fight, even if the other side did not have guns.
How many bullets did he have? Three? He had enough to kill Cromwell, Hilda and himself. The boy could slip away.
But was that the answer?
Surprisingly, the door held longer than Vincent imagined, and the wounded group was significantly down the new tunnel before the gang managed to break through – and for a moment, the gang did not pursue, apparently sniffing out the limited wind as to which way the group had gone.
But once they picked up the trail again, their howl announced their pursuit. Some, angered by the previous deaths let off rifle rounds – the bullets whirling through the passage round Vincent and his companions, striking stone and metal, but not flesh.
The next tunnel opened to the right and the boy hurried down it, followed by stumbling Cromwell and Hilda. Vincent urged them on, but paused at the intersection, pistol poised in his hand waiting for the first of the gang to come into range.
Something hit him from behind, a glancing blow from a large stone, apparently weilded by Cromwell. The weakened Vincent fell even though the blow did not hit him hard enough to do real damage. His pistol clattered away, out of reach.
Cromwell reached it first, and pointed it at Vincent’s chest.
“So it’s come to this again,” Vincent said as the sound of the approaching gang grew louder with their advance. “So, why don’t you shoot me?”
“Oh, I will,” Cromwell said, and would have, but for something stirring behind him – Hilda leaping out of the darkness with her one hand reaching for the gun. The pistol fired. The shot went wide. Vincent leaped at Cromwell, but didn’t make it. One of the beasts had grabbed him at his knees and they rolled in the passageway, kicking and biting. But Vincent knew that school and had earned his degree in it, and weakened as he was, he managed to twist free of the beast, kicking at the fanged mouth until the attacker ceased moving. The next attacker appeared, bearing a rifle, but could not lower it in time before Vincent disabled him and took the gun for himself, swinging it’s stock freely at the next batch of beasts. When they had fallen, he gathered up several belts of bullets, and as well as his pistol.
Hilda was on the ground stunned. Cromwell had vanished.
Vincent helped Hilda up. Both hobbled in the direction the boy had taken. Cromwell was ahead of them, making so much noise Vincent could have put a buttet in the big man’s back even without light.
After a moment, Vincent saw Cromwell and the boy where both had halted at the foot of a metal ladder up. The boy had a knife at Cromwell’s throat.
“Don’t!” Vincent shouted, and stumbled ahead slightly more quickly, reaching them both before the blade could do any damage.
“I kill him,” the boy said.
“Don’t,” Vincent said. “I promised he’ll see justice, and I’ll keep that promise.”
The boy glanced at Vincent, uncertainty showing in his dark eyes. “How I know?”
“You come with us and see for yourself,” Vincent said.
“Up there?” the boy said, nodding his head towards the top of the ladder.
“Yes.”
“But home not there.”
“Home is nowhere now,” Vincent said. “You have no other place except with us.”
The boy shook his head, more out of confusion than denial.
Then, more of the gang howled, apparently at finding their fallen comrades.
“Up,” Vincent insisted, then bent down with his newly acquired rifle, fired off all the rounds into the dark, caring little as to whether he hit anything or not, aware of the return fire that went equally wild. When he was certain the others had reached the top, he threw down the rifle, and made his way up the ladder coming out into fresh air, if not daylight.
They had come out of a manhole in the middle of a neighborhood where several apparently wealthy kids halted their anti-gravitational scooters in shock at seeing them. This was not Chelsea. So the children had no clue as to who these invaders were, dashing off in a panic calling ahead of themselves for security.
They had come up in the walled neighborhood of Grameracy Park.
Cromwell looked triumpant.
“Poor luck, Chief,” he said.
“Poor luck for you,” Vincent said. “I know the chief of security here. He isn’t one of your common thugs.”
Vincent thumbed his previously useless transmitter.
“Hudson?”
The rasp was in his second officer's voice, not in the connection.
“Chief? Is that really you?”
“Alive and well and with our suspect. You want to come and get us? We have a date with the prosecutor.”