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With a deep feeling of relief and satisfaction, Mike sat at the
corner table in Antone’s with Chong near him. Part of these feelings came from
the fact that Creel was face down on the table across from the two men, not
slumped and sighing on his shoulder.
He spotted Benny at once. The kid came in worming his way through
the crowd and into a storeroom. Mike cursed the fact he couldn’t go to the
kid. Go to him and break his neck.
Toying with a whiskey and soda, Chong was watching him. A faint
smile made the eyes more normal, more Asian.
“What’s it like to be an Afro?” Mike asked, forcing a smile
on his face.
“I couldn’t say, old boy. I’m supposed to appear as a Cuban
Taino with some African ancestry.”
“Hm.” Mike peered at the dark, faintly smiling face. “OK. I
still say you could have come as Asian. In this ‘hood, who would notice?”
Head tipped in a small bow, Chong said, “Thank you. It’ll play
hell removing the skin dye. The hair, though, will grow out after I shave my
head.”
“Purification?”
“This country, despite its immersion into slavery, is still very
. . .” Chong grimaced.
“Draws you in, don’t it?”
Smiling again, Chong chortled. “Let’s just say it hasn’t the
serenity of the mountains of home.”
“Wild and wooly, no matter how Europe tries to civilize us.”
“Very.”
The men watched Benny ease around the bar to disappear into the
kitchens.
Mike raised his glass for a refill. “Why haven’t you taken him
yet.”
“I did, once.”
Scowling, Mike glared at Creel.
Voice smooth, Chong added, “My superior decided we should wait.
There is a young girl he’s watching out for. She’s very ill, and at this
time needs a protector. A Sue Hannah.”
Mike turned the full blaze of the scowl on Chong.
“My ho? The little bastard is shacked with my ho after he
knocked up my sis–”
The aircar swooped down to enter. Wheels dropped and it rolled to
a halt near the shon:gili.
A rifle slid out.
Peering up at the light, Carl screamed a warning, and the shon:gili
jumped away. A dart hissed and plunged into the corpse. The shon:gili
spun away, out, into the acres of parkland in the North American Dome. The
aircar lifted, pushing after him.
He dived under a copse of maples and chestnut trees, startling a
herd of deer into flight.
The car charged after the deer. It spun in a tight circle to play
a light over the trees. It dropped fifty feet and began to move between the
trees.
Staring up at it, a light stung the shon:gili full in the eyes. He snarled, backing away. There was a
hiss, and he felt a dart strike his leg. He jumped from the pain and ripped it
out. A second hit the ground. He ran to the edge of the trees.
They were thicker here, older, with young maples forcing their way
up into the light.
The car dropped to just above the ground. A gun flared, but the
dart tangled in the brush. The car bounced on the ground, and the men clambered
out. One carried the dart gun, but the other was armed with a long black stick
Carl’s memories called a Garand sniper.
The shon:gili searched
for the meaning.
A high-powered rifle capable of killing at a distance. The memory
dissolved into how to take one apart to clean or repair and darker memories of
hiding. Of being crouched unmoving for days and nights with cramps tearing at
the host’s back and legs, of insects feeding on him, waiting for a chance to
kill. An act of revenge, it involved one called Benjamin Greylov, the father of
the wolf’s brat and was fraught with pain unto tears of love.
The demon bared the shon:gili’s
teeth in contempt. But another thought drifted to the top of Carl’s memories.
The bullets would be filled with an explosive.
He edged back. Moving with caution, the men entered the shadowed
woodland. On their heads were the things called night vision goggles.
He slunk back till he came to a massive bole of a maple. The acid
scent of ants was strong here. Echoing from the depths of the well, Carl voice
muttered at the shon:gili. Carpenter
ants made the trunk rot so they could raise a fungus.
Slipping around the trunk, the shon:gili
scanned the tree. Fifteen feet up there was a shadow of a hole. It was small,
but he leaped up, catching the edge. He pulled himself up and backed down, into
the hole.
Warmed by the furnace blast of heat coming from the animal, ants
stirred from a winter lethargy. By ones and then by the dozens, large warrior
ants crawled into the thinner hair of the hindquarters and began to bite. The shon:gili’s
eyes widened.
At the point of leaping away screaming, he heard a twig break.
The men had split up. They walked parallel to each other, some
twenty feet apart.
Shuddering at the sting of the carpenter ants and where they were
biting, the shon:gili pulled up. He
tensed. Crawling out of the well. Carl pointed the broad head at the one with
the Garand. Ready to scream in pain, the shon:gili
snarled a grin. He launched himself, sailing through the air and crashing
through a bush with a black snow of ants snapping at the cold air. The man was
flatted to the ground, and the shon:gili
had the satisfaction of hearing ribs snap. Blood rolled from the man’s mouth.
Whining and desperate, he spun in a circle biting at the ants.
Carl shouted, and he lunged away. A dart hissed by him. Cursing the
shon:gili, the man started to reload.
Roaring and seething with the sting of ant bites, the shon:gili
clawed at the man.
The dart gun was thrown at the shon:gili,
and the man screamed. An ant hit just the wrong place, and the shon:gili
howled. Running towards the car the man slammed into the tree; in a flash he was
up and gone with the shon:gili
dragging his rump over the ground, then reaching down to snap at the ant.
Spitting out the mangled remains of the ant, the shon:gili
jumped forward. Blood was on the tree. The shon:gili
raced after him with the demon screaming in delight at the prospect of another
kill and the shon:gili’s thighs and
belly on fire.
The car was whining, already rising into the air as the shon:gili
burst through the trees. He leaped on the hood, and the man began to punch at
buttons. The car spun, and the claws gripped the plastisteel.
©2004 StoriesByEmail.com
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