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It was rough work, climbing down twenty flights of
stairs. The gurney folded into a stretcher that was strapped to one man’s
back. Every three flights they switched to a fresh man. At the bottom the lights
were burned out or stolen, but each carried a glow stick. At this point it
wasn’t needed.
A word had the stretcher reassemble itself into a
gurney. Rats whispered of pain and hunger. Spirits slid through the walls, for a
moment pulled out of their own sorrows and shame to watch the ghost of a bitter
young man trailing a still warm body and four fleshies.
A tall, angry spirit with glowering golden eyes
stalked after them. Rats shrank away from the guardian, and spirits ran. Two
Swords glanced at the ceiling and cast a despairing glance at Heaven.
He muttered and groaned, and the four with the gurney
frowned.
“Old building on her last legs.”
“Yep.”
One flicked on his light, and rats scattered. The
stench of their urine grew thicker as the brothers walked along, the rats
bigger. Another took out a zapper, a gun that shot bolts of electricity.
“Use it, they attacks.”
“Be us attacked, anyway,” he said. “Ain’t no
more morgue they feed from.”
“True.”
The Guardian, Two Swords scowled, and the boldest rat
faded into the dark. The animals couldn’t see the angry spirit. The ones that
directed them did, and fled. The brothers slowed, then moved a little faster,
the wheels bouncing a little over piles of manure and a few bones. Rat skeletons
crunched under foot.
Behind them rats again filled the void, gnawing at the
concrete walls.
With a collective sigh of relief, they reached a door
marked DO NOT ENTER: RADIOACTIVE. None could read, but the symbol was plain enough.
They pushed through anyway, half-running by machinery wrecked during the
political riots a decade back. A tiny Geiger counter clicked a few times, but any
radioactive material was long since stolen by hungry tecs. Where it went was
beyond reason.
Few rats came through this way. The men pushed into
another room, and a chill wind hit them with the reek of the city at night. The
far wall had rags of plastic sheets that snapped and shuddered from the ceiling.
Beyond that was a hole made by a blast that was never explained, nor repaired
beyond a few sheets of crumbling plywood. A heap of rubble had been scraped away,
and they lifted the gurney over what remained, the wheels and legs retracting.
Once into the parking lot the legs slid down, and the
men raced to a waiting van.
Benny was put in the back and a curtain tied down.
“Gurney, home,” the oldest said. It slid away, up
through the lot towards the front and was gone.
They split up, each going a different way. The driver
snapped his fingers. He eased down through wind-driven heaps of trash in the lot
to a hole in the fence, then bounced through that to an alley.
Once there he moved into a garage and parked the van.
“Truck, off.”
The engine shuddered to a halt. Whistling to himself,
he walked away. Minutes later a woman appeared in the door.
Kat palmed the door, then the starter. The engine
grumbled but shuddered to a start.
She backed out and took the first road on a roundabout
way to a friend’s apartment in a Safe Side blockhouse.
Cindy VanTur had the luxury of a bath. She knew her
privileges and bathing was one of them. With her in the now slightly
illegal hot tub kicked a giggling little Benjamin, her son, and her new toy,
Mike Donnelly. She turned up the heat on Mike and pressed a button that called
for Benjamin’s nurse.
The aging woman averted her eyes from the mistress’s
man, scooping the baby laughing from the water into a thick cotton towel and
whisked him away. Because her skin was so dark, the nurse wore a collar rather
than a series of codes marking her as someone rented from the Welfare Bureau.
The collar was Cindy’s idea, and welcomed by the Bureau.
One hand on Cindy’s knee, Mike grinned and sank
beneath the hot water. Cindy laughed, but yanked on his hair.
“Miky, be a sweetheart and find us some music,
please?”
“Add a few pralines,” he said, his hand stroking
the knee.
“Pretty patty please?”
Inwardly, she cursed herself for even asking. That
damned Donnelly owned her just as she owned Martha’s contract and the collar
the woman wore.
Grabbing him by the ears, she raised Mike up, nibbling
on his lips while his hand slid over her and soon any desire for music was gone
in a riot of gasps and whispered shrieks.
With Kat heaving at Benny’s arms and the man his
legs, they got the body to a Baptist bed, a pallet on the floor, in the back.
The man scowled and shivered as Benny walked through him to the body. Benny
glanced back. That uglier-than-a-Mack truck guardian was scowling at something.
With a small shrug...the dude wasn’t acting all weird
or trying to beat on him again...Benny lay down to the sizzle of nerves and cells
and let himself drift away to a small house in the middle of a row home and Sue.
Kat came in after midnight and went to the back room.
Her friend came up behind her and touched one shoulder.
Not looking away from Benny, Kat asked, “Any sign,
Jim?”
“A bowel movement. I cleaned him up.” Smiling, but
his gaze edging away from Kat, Jim said, “When I did he got a woody.”
Grinning, Kat glanced up and winked. “Just means
he’s alive. Don’t worry. I doubt he’s the type to think you’re as cute
as I do.”
Smiling at Kat, Jim laughed. “And he was muttering
about some babe named Sue.” The hand on Kat’s shoulder moved in a light
stroke. “Competition?”
“For him or for you?” Kat stepped away and the
hand fell.
With a small sigh, Jim left the room. A mild look of
surprise on her face, Kat stared after him.
She knelt by the pallet and checked Benny. One hand
peeled up the eyelid, the other held a penlight. His eye was unfocused and
rolled up in his head at the touch of light. She pried a little harder on the
lid and his head turned away.
The light was snapped off and returned to her purse.
When she looked up, Jim was holding a cup of coffee out to her. He was smiling
with a sort of resignation on the lean face and a scar over one eye was bright
red. The rest of Jim’s face was closed, but that scar told of anger.
“Stern is gone,” she said, murmuring the bad news,
taking the cup.
“Israel?”
Jim settled down next to her, leaning back on one elbow.
At the slight shake of Kat’s head, he winced. Leaning back on one elbow, he
sipped his coffee. She sat with her head down, the face closed. On her other
side Benny shivered, and in an automatic response Kat drew a blanket up over his
naked body.
“Lord Penn was raided again,” he said, his voice a
mutter. “Took a direct hit, and the news stations are claiming it’s a drug
war. They’re demanding the feds step in.”
“They do that, he’s gone. We’re all gone.”
“They only echo the party line, hon. Penn is
finished. It’s inevitable.” His face tight and bitter, Jim said, “Vive la revolution.”
Drifting from the body again, Benny found himself
sitting on Sue’s bed. She was asleep, her face almost angelic and at peace. He
stroked her hair and bent to give her a kiss. The old woman Sue called Ama
stumbled into the room opening drawers and looking in the tiny purse. Benny gave
her a cold look. She gave him a weary smile in return.
“You got to wake up, boy,” Ama said. “Got to get
my baby girl out o’ here a-fore they kills her.” The hoarse voice dropped to
a mere whisper. “Like they done kilt me.”
Saying that, she turned and wandered out of the room
with several plastic creds clutched in one sweating palm.
Benny’s scowl became a questioning frown. He looked,
and there was a tiny dot of blood on Sue’s arm and a reddish mark that circled
just above it.
Oh, baby, no . .
.
A rat came sniffing for blood. Benny kicked it
away.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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