A few seconds later the driver returned. I noticed she didn't even look at Revik that time, which was just fine with me. I wasn't sure why my radar was so finely attuned right then, but I'd had to restrain myself from threatening her when she'd done it the first time, and the last thing we needed was me causing some kind of territorial scene over Revik in the middle of an op...and with one of our allies, no less. Waving me over, she handed me the second mask and I nodded a thanks. I waited for her to leave before I glanced around the empty alley and up the brick building we faced. Fitting one of the masks around my head to free my hands, I let it hang around my neck as I rose to my feet and walked back to where Revik stood near the organic wall. Without the VR projection or the boxes, the wall itself stood visible and naked-looking with its open living circuits.
Revik seemed to have figured out what I'd been up to.
"We can get more for the others later," I told him, quiet, handing him the second mask. "It might help them blend in more as humans...or be a little less conspicuous anyway."
Revik gave me a wan smile, glancing at Jorag and Yumi. "Doubtful," he said, his eyes settling on the tattoo covering Yumi's bald head and face, only to flicker back to Jorag's six foot seven height. "...But it's worth a try. We might have more luck with the contacts."
I nodded. Our plan depended mostly on us moving under the radar, and moving fast. In and out, before the Sweeps even knew we were in town.
Hopefully before the Lao Hu did, too, but I felt less optimistic on that score.
I didn't realize how tense I still was until Revik caught hold of my arm and I jumped. He pulled me closer and bent down, kissing my mouth. He kissed me again, longer that time, deepening the kiss before he pulled back, caressing my cheek with his. Pain shivered through me before I could suppress it. I found myself glancing at the driver again, but she was talking to Neela and Jorag now.
"Relax, wife," Revik murmured. "They can't help it...we're still in that place. I've seen Jorag looking at you a little more than strictly necessary, too..."
I nodded, exhaling. "We need a good, long vacation when this is done. Personally...I vote for somewhere with a beach."
Revik nodded, kissing me again. "Agreed." He nudged me with his arm. "Think up a good honeymoon spot, wife. It's your choice...I picked the last one."
I laughed. Something about talking about that now just struck me as surreal.
He smiled faintly too, glancing at Jon, who stood only a few feet away. "Your brother's as bad as we are, which probably makes it worse all around...and part of the reason Wreg had a fit about being separated..."
"Was he really that angry?" I said, relaxing a little more. I found myself wrapping an arm around Revik's waist and massaging his lower back.
Coiling his own arm around me, Revik rolled his eyes up towards the truck's ceiling. "Let's see...called me a 'fucking hypocrite'...twice. Also, a self-absorbed prick, a robot, a racist and accused me of deliberately trying to sabotage the two of them. He also accused me of thinking Jon was too good for him...and of wanting to pull Jon into a threesome with you and me..."
"Ewww," I said, crinkling my nose.
Revik laughed, gripping me harder with his arm.
Jon, who must have been listening, snorted a laugh, too. Rolling his eyes at the two of us, he said. "Can you guys get snuggly somewhere else? We need to go, don't we?"
Revik nodded, once. "Yes." Kissing me a last time, he released me, then moved towards the tail end of the truck. Jorag, Neela and Yumi stood waiting for the rest of us there. I don't know what the driver had been saying to them, but they looked like they were in military mode already, and halfway prepared to shoot someone at the slightest provocation. Even so, Yumi winked at Jon when he got closer, smiling as her voice turned teasing.
"You can be in a threesome with me anytime, little brother..." she joked.
Jon laughed, as if in spite of himself.
"Okay, chill out everyone," I said, pulling the face mask up over my mouth and checking the gun I'd re-holstered in my thigh holster under the coat. "Martial law out there, remember? No more sex talk until we get indoors..."
I watched Revik pull up his mask as well, adjusting it over his nose right before he touched his headset, turning it on before he glanced at me.
"You take up the rear, Allie. Don't use the telekinesis except as a last resort...they'll ID you in a second and then you'll be a target." His eyes settled on each of the others. "Barrier silence." He gave Jon a stern look. "That means you, too, Jon..."
Jon nodded, his fingers tightening on the gun he had holstered to his own leg.
After a quick pulse through to each of our sets to make sure we were all connected, Revik jumped off the end of the truck bed.
I waited for the others to do the same before I followed, my light holding the shield around all six of us as we began walking up the narrow alley that led to a wider road. It took me a moment of looking around to get my bearings, then I glanced behind me and realized I recognized the twin spires of a church-like structure that stood south of us, at least if I could trust my headset's GPS. Glancing at the street sign, I saw that it said McAllister, and that the next block was Stanyon and suddenly the pieces fit together.
I subvocalized via the headsets, "University of California. They must be using it as one of the drop-zones for hospital supplies and food..."
Jon glanced at me and nodded, pointing past the church, indicating the next road down.
I didn't need to see the sign that time, though; I knew exactly where we were.
Jon was pointing us up Fulton Street, to the house where Jaden and I had lived together a little over four years earlier.
WE’D TOLD GAR and the others to bring whatever refugees they could find there, to Jaden's house. Revik still knew the locations of most of my friends' houses from the surveillance he'd done on me back before he yanked me out of my human life. After a few days of hanging over a map of the city with all of those locations noted, we all agreed Jaden's would work best, although I knew that hadn't exactly thrilled Revik. We sent that same rendezvous point to Gar. Balidor and Revik decided to risk the transmission so we wouldn't have to waste a week trekking all over the city, looking for them.
Unfortunately, we hadn't had time to find out who they'd managed to pull out of the wreckage so far, or whether any of them had been killed, wounded or lost.
Revik kept Jon with him, towards the front. I suspected that partly had to do with whatever deal he'd worked out with Wreg...but I also felt his light on mine, probably more than it should have been, given that we were supposed to be operating without a Barrier imprint. When his light got even more insistently wrapped in mine, I finally opened a private channel in my headset, glancing around at the dead-seeming buildings with a slight shiver.
"What's up, baby?" I said. "You okay?"
"I changed my mind," he answered at once. "I don't like you back there..."
"Why?" I said, surprised. "Two telekinetics, right? One in front, one behind?"
"The Lao Hu are targeting you, wife...and I don't like this. It's too quiet."
I couldn't really argue with that. I could see the park up ahead now, and I found my hand didn't want to leave the handle of the Glock I had shoved into that right thigh holster.
"Would you be able to feel them, if they were here?" he said then.
I thought about this. "Maybe," I said. "Give me a sec...I'll try to do it as we walk."
Revik opened up the main channel in his headsets then, and asked Jon, "What do you think? The park? Or do we want to stay on the road?"
Even as I focused most of my aleimi on what Revik had asked me before, I watched Jon think about the question.
I said to him, "There'll probably be a ton of squatters in the buildings...we'll stand out like sore thumbs on the street..."
Jon nodded, glancing back at me.
"The park's got a lot of security," Jon said. "Will it be on, do you think?"
I felt Jorag and Yumi sca
nning the perimeter with the low-range sensors they brought. After a few minutes, Yumi shook her head at me.
"Nothing," she added, without moving her lips.
"The park then," Jon said, and I sent a ping of agreement as he spoke. Then, after a tenser pause, Jon added, "...Can anyone else hear that?"
"What?" Yumi said.
"Gunshots," Jon subvocalized. "Four of them, north of the park, I think. Just strange. Not the gunshots. More that there were only four of them..."
The others looked at him, but no one questioned his words.
"Weapons out," Revik said. "I'm not getting the sense we'll get arrested for being armed right now...I can feel the chaos in different parts of the city, even without reaching out..."
"So why is it so quiet here?" Jorag muttered.
No one answered him, but I had my gun in my hand by then, too, and I could see that everyone else had unholstered theirs. It hit me, suddenly, that Revik was right. I could feel sparks of violence and a lot of people jarring parts of the construct over the quarantine zone, even while staying out of the Barrier proper. I also felt glimmerings of a more familiar flavor. One light in particular made my aleimi retract involuntarily, bringing a thread of revulsion.
"They're definitely here," I said, speaking to Revik, although I didn't bother to make the channel private. "The Lao Hu..." I swallowed. "Ditrini's here. I felt him."
"Did he feel you?" Revik asked at once.
"I don't know..." I shook my head, feeling my jaw harden. "We'd better assume he did."
"How far?" Yumi said, giving me a worried look. I noticed she'd moved back down the line somewhat, positioning herself at a more protective angle to where I stood. "Can you feel how far away they are, Alyson?"
I shook my head. "No. I mean...yes. But I don't trust what I felt." At Revik's questioning pulse, I added, "That was one of Ditrini's favorite games, to throw his light signature around...pretend to be somewhere he wasn't."
Revik looked back at me, frowning. Seeing that Yumi had moved out of formation, he made a series of motions to her. He translated for me and Jon only a second later.
"I'm changing formation. Pull the Bridge in...Jorag will bring up the rear. Yumi and Neela on protective detail...all of you, keep your eyes sharp. I can handle anything coming at us from the front, but I suspect they won't come that way..."
Yumi nodded, looking relieved. Motioning towards me, she waited for the line to reform with me behind Jon then stepped directly behind me, with Neela on my other side. I glanced back at Jorag, who had already moved into position to bring up the rear, then spoke into the public channel again.
"They'll try to neutralize Revik, first," I cautioned. "Any sign of guns and fire a shot in that direction. Don't bother with a ping, they'll count on the lag..."
Revik glanced at me again, and nodded, sending me a pulse of warmth.
"Keep feeling for them, Allie...you're our only chance of advance warning. But try not to be seen, too..."
I nodded, showing him where I was at with the shields.
So far, they seemed to be holding. I'd been practicing again, even since the bank op, so I knew I'd improved since we broke into the Registry building in São Paulo. Considering that I'd managed to make the shields work even inside a high-security building owned by Black Arrow, I had to hope they'd be good enough for walking around the city, especially given that a lot of the security we'd been expecting to run into appeared to be down. Even so, I could tell Revik was on edge. I switched to private for him again.
"You all right?"
"No," he sent back, brief. "I'm actually wishing you hadn't come with us, Allie..."
Perceiving the dense array of feeling behind his words, I nodded to myself, but didn't answer. I knew how he felt. I felt pretty much the same way about him going to South America, with or without me. When another dense pulse of fear left his light, all I could do was try to send reassurance back through the connection between us, while doing my best to stay away from edges of the shield, where either of us might be felt on the outside.
As if regretting he'd spoken, he said, "What's the cross street again?"
I knew he had a photographic memory, but I didn't hesitate before answering.
"33rd. Fulton and 33rd. Right across from Spreckels Lake..."
He pinged an acknowledgement, but his light didn't feel any calmer.
We crossed over to the west side of Stanyon Street, looking up and down Fulton as we neared the intersection. Instead of making a right to follow the street down to Jaden's house, we followed Revik as he crossed over Fulton at an angle and entered the edge of the park through the stone gate.
In all that time, I hadn't heard a single car engine, car horn, feed station, video player, snippet of music, headset conversation or any other sign of human existence. I'd heard seagulls and even some finches in the planter trees along the sidewalk. I'd also seen and heard a number of crows, but all that did was make me feel like I was in a remake of Hitchcock's The Birds.
I hadn't heard a dog bark, either...or seen a single one of the previously ubiquitous cats that haunted the streets and alleys and window boxes just about everywhere in the San Francisco I remembered. I'd been staring up at and across to windows, too, but all of them appeared to be dark. I saw no movement, no reflections, no one staring at us from any height. Most of the windows on the lower levels appeared to be boarded up, as did the few houses I glimpsed down Fulton itself. The gas station on the corner was entirely deserted, and the one shop I saw, what had been a coffee shop I used to like to go to, had all of its windows smashed, and the espresso maker lay in pieces on the street, along with a few chairs and part of one table. It looked like someone had been chopping up the furniture for kindling.
"Where does a whole city go?" I murmured to Jon via the headset.
He glanced at me, his mouth grim.
My eyes tracked up the length of Stanyon I could see, following the course of a sloping hill as I crossed onto the park's path. I hadn't seen a single car since we'd gotten out of the truck, other than those parked along the side of the road. Most of those had all of their windows bashed in, as well as their headlights, windshields, fenders, trunks, mirrors. The majority had spray paint tags on them as well, and had been stripped of their seats, wheels, and in some cases even the steering columns and parts of the electronic panelling inside the dashboards. I couldn't help wondering how many had engines left at that point.
"Jesus..." Jon muttered aloud.
Revik immediately hushed him, signaling with his hand, but by then all of us had come to a dead halt, looking in the same direction where Jon had been staring.
When I first saw them, I could only stare, too.
The images my eyes sent to my brain had to be wrong. Either that, or my brain had to be interpreting the information incorrectly.
Yumi covered her mouth then, wincing as she turned her face away.
From her expression, she looked like she might be trying not to get sick.
We'd stopped on one of the paths inside the park by then, just past the stone gates on the corner of Stanyon and Fulton. I knew the horseshoe pits stood off to our left somewhere, where mostly old men used to hang out on Sundays, smoking cigars and throwing shoes as they gossiped and called out to people they knew strolling through the park. I also knew that if we kept walking along that same path, we'd reach the conservatory and the flower gardens, which had always been one of my favorite parts of the park. But Revik had already started to move us off that path and into the lawn and trees more parallel to Fulton Street, which ran pretty much due west towards Ocean Beach and not far from the Camera Obscura and the old Sutro Baths.
I forced my eyes to take in the forms littering the ground on either side of the path.
The way they sprawled there, it looked like someone had shoveled them aside to keep the walkway clear. They lay tangled into one another in inelegant heaps, arms and legs bent into patterns that would never happen in a natural fall. I took a step clos
er and then the smell hit me, enough that I had to cover my mouth with a hand as well, closing my eyes as if that might help to shut it out.
Somewhere in all of that, my mind had clicked back on.
Then, I knew exactly what I was seeing.
They weren't street people, with dirt on their faces and matted hair or whatever. None of them wore ripped up, second-hand clothes or looked like they'd just come down off a speed bender or too many months of drinking Thunderbird wine. Not like any of that makes it worse or better, really, but the image hit me harder, I think, in that they looked more like people I used to see walking around the neighborhood, pushing strollers or jogging in the park, talking on their headsets on the bus on their way to some city office job downtown, or maybe going to classes at one of the half-dozen campuses in and around the city.
They wore jeans and T-shirts, business skirts and suit jackets, jogging suits and bathrobes. I don't know how they all got into the park. Maybe this was where they dumped the bodies...or maybe these ones never made it to one of the quarantine hospitals at all. They were all different ages, different ethnicities...some looked like they had a lot of money and others could have been one of my artist slacker friends who hung out at Lucky Cat in the middle of the day, or at one of the tattoo parlors where I did side jobs for extra cash.
In only one way were they the same.
Their faces, frozen in different expressions, with different skin tones and different rates of decomposition, all had the same crusted, dried, trails of blood in lines from their eyes and ears and noses. On some of them, the blood obscured their features almost totally, making trails through eye makeup and foundation and lipstick and beard stubble and sticking glasses to faces. Most of them lay there, open-mouthed, as if choking on their own blood, but their tongues were all uniformly black and swollen, making them look like they'd choked on some part of themselves. Making them look like they'd died in pain.
Forcing my eyes off a woman and a little boy who lay wrapped up together next to the path, I covered my mouth again, feeling another surge of bile. When I glanced to the side, I saw Jorag throwing up in some bushes a little ways further off the path. Revik just stood there, holding Jon back protectively with an arm as he stared down at the line of corpses.
Allie's War Season Three Page 60