The other bully was still pounding the kid, but Jayne, taking his example from Zoë, intervened.
“Pick on someone your own size,” Jayne said to the man, who responded with a sneer. Jayne, though tall, was still several inches shorter than him and a whole heap less wide in the chest.
“That,” the man said to Jayne, “is one sorry excuse for a hat, pal.”
It was the last thing he would be saying for a long time.
“I am sick and tired,” Jayne growled, spitting out each word, “of folks disrespectin’ Mama Cobb’s knitting.”
Fifteen seconds later, the man was sprawled on the floor, unconscious and bleeding in several places.
Zoë went over to the kid, who was also bleeding profusely, and whimpering too. Her leg was throbbing agonizingly where the bully had kicked her, and she couldn’t put her full weight on it. She had a feeling her shinbone might be busted.
“You okay?” she asked.
The boy tried to nod.
“Come with us. This ain’t no place for the likes of you.”
The kid was groggy and didn’t look like he could set one foot in front of the other.
“Jayne,” Zoë said, “help him.”
Before Jayne could reply, there was a sudden burst of static on their comm links. In the midst of it they both heard Mal’s voice, just audible above the surrounding mêlée.
“—berries! Str—”
The rest was lost amid sweeps of white noise.
“He say strawberries?” Jayne asked.
“Sounded like it.”
“Mighta been ‘breeze.’”
“Pretty sure it was strawberries.”
“Only I wouldn’t wanna rush outside, guns blazin’, just to find he didn’t say strawberries after all. It’d be kinda embarrassing.”
“Jayne,” Zoë sighed, “we’re leaving. Come on.”
“Okay, okay.” Jayne got an arm around the boy and half-carried him.
They made for the door again, but were thwarted. There were just too many writhing, battling bodies blocking their path. They couldn’t make any headway through the scrum.
“Window,” said Zoë. They’d thrown the card player out through it. Why not follow him their own selves?
They struggled back towards the window. Zoë had to wrestle people aside and in one instance deal with a man who blundered dazedly into her and clung on for support. He refused to let go, so she broke a bottle over his head and he disengaged.
At the window, the boy managed to get one leg over the sill. With Jayne’s assistance, he clambered outside. Jayne followed.
Zoë slid herself through the holographic glass, sensing a slight shiver of electrons around her as she went, like she was penetrating a meniscus of warm mist.
Outside, she scanned the street both ways, looking for Mal. She fully expected to see him, maybe tussling with Hunter Covington.
Not a sign of him.
She tried her comm link. “Mal? Sir? Do you read me?”
No reply.
She didn’t allow herself to feel concern. Not yet. There was an alley close by. Could be Covington had invited Mal to join him down there in order to conduct their business out of sight of passersby. She limped over to its entrance to check, unholstering her Mare’s Leg just in case. The cut-down Winchester Model 1892 carbine had a six-round tubular magazine, with one up the pipe, an oversized cocking loop, and no rear stock. It felt good and hefty in her hand.
The alley was empty. No Mal. No anybody. It was as if he had vanished into thin air.
“Where’s Mal?” Jayne said.
“That,” said Zoë grimly, “is the honking great question.”
Zoë’s comm link crackled.
“Sir?” she said, thinking—praying—it was Mal.
“Zoë?” Not Mal. Kaylee.
“What’s up?”
“‘Well, howdy there, Kaylee. Lovely to hear from you.’”
“No time for that,” Zoë said tightly. “The captain’s disappeared. Might be he’s in trouble.”
“Shén me?” Kaylee declared in shock. “What’s happened?”
“Don’t know yet.”
Before Zoë could continue, the teenage kid she and Jayne had rescued let out a low moan. He sagged to the ground.
“Kaylee? I’m going to mute you for a second. Be right back.”
Zoë hobbled over to the boy. He was in very bad shape indeed.
His face was swelling all over and his eyes had a lost, unfocused look, the pupils severely dilated. He needed medical attention, she reckoned. He might have concussion, maybe even a brain injury.
“Kid?” she said. “Kid?”
“Allister,” he mumbled.
“Allister? Is that your name?”
“Yeah.”
“Listen to me, Allister. We need to get you to a hospital.”
“No,” said Allister. “No hospital. Can’t afford. Mom… My mom. Nurse.”
“Your mother is a nurse?”
“Used to be. Got sick. Got fired. No money now. But she can help me.”
“Where does she live?”
“Our apartment. Over in the riverside district.”
Zoë ground her teeth. The kid wasn’t her and Jayne’s responsibility. Sure, they’d saved him. That didn’t mean they were stuck with him. She had more important things to worry about. Namely Mal. It was possible the captain was fine and well, just off somewhere with Hunter Covington thrashing out a deal. She didn’t think so, though. He had almost certainly said “Strawberries” over the comm link, once if not twice. The fact that she couldn’t raise him on the comms now was also worrisome. His link had already proved faulty but at least there had been some signal. Now there was none at all, implying it might have been switched off, or even smashed to bits.
“Okay,” she said. “Listen, Allister, you think you can make it back home?”
The kid nodded weakly. “Figure I can.” But when he tried to stand, he almost fainted.
“It’s no good. Jayne, you’re just going to have to take him.”
“What?” said Jayne.
“Like it or not, Allister needs our help. We can’t just leave him in the street. People are still fighting in there.” Zoë gestured at Taggart’s. The noise coming from within hadn’t quieted. If anything, it was getting louder. Things were crashing and splintering. After the ruckus was over, there probably wouldn’t be a stick of furniture in the bar left intact. “Only a matter of time before it spills outside, and Allister will get caught up in it all over again.”
“But why do I have to take him home?” Jayne groused. “I ain’t no crummy babysitter. Why don’t you do it?”
“My leg is injured,” Zoë said. “Might be broken, even. I can barely walk myself, let alone help someone else along. It has to be you.”
“What about Mal? I’d say he was more important than some kid we only just met.”
“Bad leg or not, I’m going to go look for him.”
“Two of us could do that better’n one.”
“Agreed. So as soon as you’ve gotten Allister to his house, contact me. With any luck I’ll have found Mal by then, but if I haven’t, you can join in the search.”
“And if I can’t get ahold of you?”
“Go to Serenity. I’ll be back there at some point.”
Jayne bellyached some more, but Zoë was adamant. In the end he relented.
“All right, all right. Gorramn it.” He extended a hand to Allister and unceremoniously hauled the youngster to his feet. “Which way?”
Allister waved a vague hand in a westerly direction.
“Okay, get me there, kid. Zoë, the moment there’s any word on Mal, you let me know.”
“Will do.”
Supporting Allister, Jayne headed off.
Zoë unmuted her comm link. “Kaylee? Me again. Kaylee? Do you copy?”
“Oh, good, hi,” Kaylee said. “Sorry. I got, ah, distracted. Are you guys coming back anytime soon?”
“D
istracted? What’s going on there?”
“River says Serenity needs to take off. She keeps saying it over and over. She can’t exactly explain why, but she’s getting a little— well, a lot—jumpy.”
“Jumpy? Jumpy how?”
Something clattered and then someone shrieked in the background at Kaylee’s end of the transmission. Maybe it wasn’t so much as shriek as a laugh? A wild, crazy laugh. Either way, Zoë was sure it had come out of River. Wearily, she touched her fingertips to her forehead and felt wetness. Blood. She didn’t think it was her own.
“Jumpy how?” she repeated.
“Oh, like really scared,” Kaylee said. “She made a fort.”
“In her room?”
“No. The dining area. Table’s all sideways. She’s brought in her blankets and pillows for the walls.”
“What about Simon? Can’t he take care of her?”
“Well, he’s doing his best,” Kaylee said uneasily. “Inara too. We all are.”
“Okay, Kaylee. Keep a lid on things there if you can. Also, tell Wash to try to raise the captain. Let me know if, when, he gets through.”
“Aye-aye. What do you figure’s happened to Mal?”
“I wish I gorramn knew.”
Zoë set off down the street in the opposite direction from the one Jayne and Allister had taken. She estimated it had been five minutes since Mal’s alarm call. He couldn’t have gone far in five minutes.
However, Zoë couldn’t walk anywhere near as fast as she would have liked. Each time she put weight on her injured leg, it was like a jolt of electricity was shooting up from shinbone to kneecap. She told herself to ignore the pain but the pain told her it wouldn’t be ignored. Soon every step was eliciting a curse from her, while sweat broke out on her forehead and dampened her armpits. Maybe she should have listened to Jayne. Maybe they should just have ditched Allister. Mal was the priority. But then the kid was their responsibility, and even Mal, she thought, would have said she had made the right decision. The captain might be big on self-interest but he wasn’t selfish.
She pushed on, but after a good quarter-hour exploring some of the city’s grimiest, most deprived areas—neighborhoods that were run-down even by Eavesdown’s admittedly low standards—she had to stop and rest. Murmuring “Zāo gāo” to herself and panting hard, she leaned against a wall.
Just as she was preparing to renew the search, Kaylee buzzed her on the comms. “Zoë? Any luck finding Mal yet?”
“No. What’s the situation like with you?”
“Not shiny.” Kaylee sounded agitated, which, for someone as usually upbeat as her, was disquieting. “River’s getting more’n a mite antsy now.”
“What’s bothering her so? Why’s she so anxious Serenity should take off?”
“It’s the boxes we took on board. You know, Badger’s big metal crates. She’s saying they’re not safe and then all kinds of other stuff like there’s going to be a surprise, a nasty one, and that’s why she’s made the fort. It’s like the worries in her mind are suddenly too much for her.”
“Put Simon on.”
Moments later, Simon’s well-educated voice came on the comms. “Hello, Zoë.”
“Is there something you can do about River? She seems to have Kaylee spooked.”
“I’m sure she’s going to calm down soon.” He didn’t sound convinced.
“Could you perhaps tranquilize her?”
“Tranquilize her?” Simon echoed.
In the background, River cried, “No needles!”
“I don’t think that’d be a good idea,” Simon said. “As you can hear, she’s not likely to be cooperative, and when River won’t cooperate…”
“Needles!” River hollered.
Zoë knew that if Simon attempted to sedate River, she would fight back. Someone would get hurt, and it wasn’t liable to be River.
“Okay, then can you just talk to her? Maybe settle her that way?”
“What do you think I’ve been doing?” Simon’s well-to-do upbringing prevented him from giving vent to his true feelings, but Zoë could hear the exasperation underlying his words.
“River, no, sweetie, don’t touch that,” Kaylee said in the background.
Then came Inara’s voice, also gentle and soothing. “She’s right, darling. Someone might get hurt.”
There was more crashing.
“Fire the thrusters!” River cried.
“River, no!” said Simon. “Put the cleaver down. Don’t wave it around like that.” To Zoë he said, “I have to go. I think she might do something to Kaylee and Inara if I don’t stop her.”
“Okay.”
“Oh, Shepherd Book’s just walked in. Thank God.”
Book’s voice said, mock-sternly, “Taking the Lord’s name in vain, son?”
“Sorry, preacher,” said Simon. “Can you see to River? You’re good with her.”
“I am when my hair’s tied back, at least. Who are you talking to on the comms? Is it Zoë?”
“Yes,” said Simon.
“I’d like a word with her, if I may. Pass me the handset. Zoë?” Book’s warm tones fell on Zoë’s ears like honey. There was something about the preacher—an aura he had—that put you at ease. He managed to remain unruffled in even the most trying circumstances. He was a living, breathing argument in favor of the spiritual life. “I infer, from what I’ve overheard, that Mal has gone missing.”
“That’s right.” Zoë said. “He went out of Taggart’s to meet Hunter Covington alone. Now he’s gone and I can’t find hide nor hair of him.”
“Then perhaps I can bring you some succor in that regard. I’ve just come from the bridge. Your husband reports that not five minutes ago Guilder’s called. They want their loaner shuttle back. Our shuttle has been picked up.”
“Huh,” said Zoë.
“Is that not good news? The captain has collected the shuttle. He’ll be here shortly, you and Jayne can join us, we can take off, River will quieten, all will be well.”
“Yes, it’s just… If Mal’s taken the shuttle, why didn’t he let me know? Sure, we’re having comms difficulties, but it seems like at the very least he’d do is try to get in touch, especially since he could have used the shuttle’s link, which has to be working better than his own. Also, he could have come back for me and Jayne at the bar after his meeting with Covington. Why go straight to Guilder’s without us? It just isn’t like him.”
Not to mention the “Strawberries” distress signal, she thought.
“Anyway,” she went on, “wasn’t his plan for Kaylee to make sure the repairs were complete before we paid and turned the loaner in?”
“Now that you put it like that, it doesn’t seem to add up, does it?” Book said.
“Listen, Shepherd, would you do me a favor and go to Guilder’s? Check out if it really was Mal took the shuttle. Take along a picture of him and have them verify he was the one.”
“I think I can manage that.”
“Meantime, I’ll keep looking for him around these parts. I’m thinking if I head back to Taggart’s, there’s a chance things will have cooled there. If Mal isn’t aboard the shuttle and everything is in fact okay, it’s a good bet he’ll go back to try to find us the last place he saw us.”
“Cooled?”
“Yeah, the situation got a little hairy. Bit of a dustup.”
“What happened?”
“Jayne happened.”
“Say no more. I’ll contact you as soon as I have any further information, Zoë.” Book cut the connection.
* * *
Zoë was clutching at straws, she knew it. Eavesdown Docks was a vast, sprawling place, crammed with people, many of them transients passing through. The odds of her finding Mal just by wandering around looking were close to nil. The odds of him returning to Taggart’s were also pretty low. Her suspicion was that the meet with Hunter Covington had somehow gone badly wrong and that if Mal was aboard the shuttle that had taken off from Guilder’s, he wasn’t there wi
llingly. In the absence of any other plan, though, Taggart’s it was. You never know, she might get lucky.
Lucky? Zoë said to herself as her damaged leg sent up a fresh protest of pain. She and luck had been barely on nodding terms these past few years, not least since she’d thrown in her lot with Mal as his second-in-command. The one undeniably good thing to come out of her signing on with the crew of Serenity was meeting its pilot. Hoban Washburne was hardly the handsomest man in the galaxy, nor the best built, nor even the bravest. He suited her, though. He was funny and wise and loving. He respected her and deferred to her, but without being a pushover. She and Wash were a perfect fit.
As she neared Taggart’s, Zoë saw that the fight had indeed run its course, as she’d hoped. A couple of hover ambulances had arrived and were taking on board the people most badly injured in the brawl. A paramedic was kneeling beside the man she and Jayne had tossed through the window, tending to him.
She was about to venture back into the bar when her gaze lit upon a familiar figure. It was the man in the ten-gallon hat and mustard-yellow duster, the one who had passed Mal the note to go outside. He was loitering on the sidewalk some distance from Taggart’s, looking on with a bemused detachment. A matchstick was clenched between his teeth and he rolled it back and forth in contemplation.
Zoë approached him with as much casualness as her injured limb would allow. She had her Mare’s Leg cocked and ready.
“Hey, pal,” she said, lodging the barrel of the gun in the small of the man’s back.
“Whoa there,” Yellow Duster said, raising both hands and looking over his shoulder. “Take it easy.” He squinted. “I know you?”
“Come with me.”
“Well now. Beautiful lady like you, that’s an invitation I’d gladly accept, whether or not you had a gun in my back. So what say you drop the firearm?”
“Not a chance.” Zoë ground the Mare’s Leg harder into his spine. “Please don’t think I won’t hesitate for one moment to fire.”
Firefly--Big Damn Hero Page 5