“Nope” she quickly replies.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Running through holes
The next day the two descend down dozens of ladders, stairs and catwalks to the dimly lit streets between cement pillars and parking lot like cavities of the Shallows. Barely passing any people, who all seem shifty or shiftless, always turning their heads away from the sporadically placed street lamps. Which themselves hardly keep to the surrounding shadows away, giving the feeling of being in the woods at night’s moon light. He reaches for her hand to hold, seeing the fright creeping through her face, her eyes open wide scanning around uneasily. She takes his hand, and grips tighter. He's happy to feel her arm at ease, relieved she’s eased by his side. They stride more confidently, side by side, until they come to the avenue Rojo wrote for them and make their right turn. Above is a colossal crag of open air clean through the ceiling of the fragmented floating city, spanning the entire depth of its skylines stratospheric height.
Shining through to down below from the open sky they can see clearly the poverty of the imprisoned peoples. A few hundred feet ahead of them there's a salmon colored car sitting under a street lamp, stopped by a traffic light. The man inside seems to be waiting patiently, when another man slips out from under a structure and runs unseen through the intersection to the driver's side with a shotgun. With the flash of the barrel and the crash of a small cannon the man’s head is smeared on the windshield and seat. The shooter ruffles through the man’s pockets and vanishes into a dark lot a second later. The smoke of the man’s cigar leaks through the shattered window as he lays lifeless across the passenger’s seat as they walk past.
The inside of the Laundromat is dingy with flickering overhead lights and filled with mostly broken washing machines. The few still running are spinning and cracking discolored linoleum tiles as they stomp in circles. They reach the back room to a door that's been kicked off the hinges. Cider draws his guns and presses against the wall as she fumbles with her piece.
“Ready?” he whispers stealing a peck from her cheek. By the time she has her weapon out he sweeps through the door. She steels herself to follow, to silence the rampant racing thoughts of fear and panic. Focusing only on her breathing and physical senses elevating sensitivity. Inside a TV shows a screen of static, lighting the cracks on the ground and holes broken into bullet battered walls. There's a buzz of a broken radio that’s been smashed to pieces, and a crude bulky typewriter beaten to bits on the ground. Along with a bed, paper, guns, ammunition and explosives thrown around.”
“This seems like the right place,” he says, their noses are clothed in Rojo's musk, the smell of the sola leaves mixing the same mold permeating everywhere in this place.
“Smells like it,” she says.
“A perfume for a man,” Cider scoffs. The bed is gutted and the furniture's smashed to splinters. The fireplace is filled with the embers of a half burned pile of paper, and there's an open window with its curtain wavering in the wind.
“What do you think happened here?” she asks.
“Somebody was looking for something, or someone,” he says.
“I think we should get out of here.”
“We can't afford to have frogs to close to our pond,” he says “but first let me just see.”
“What?” she asks.
“What's in the fridge, start grabbing some guns or something, bullets! get those, pocketfuls. Make sure there…”
“The right ones, yeah, yeah,” she says, looking around the room for nothing in particular, just absorbing the shattered scene she's standing in. Nervous, trying to wind down the adrenaline of her entry, trying harder not to flinch or shake with the gun in her hand.
“Cider,” she says. No one answers, adding to her feel that something has went wrong here for somebody, likely Rojo, she thinks.
“Cider, stop stuffing your face. I don’t like this place. I want to leave...Cider!” Hearing nothing but a repetitive pip pip pip…sound of drizzling humidity collecting and dripping onto the window sill. Seeming to her to be set against the pace of her anxiously racing humming bird heart. Anna stalks toward the kitchen with her gun drawn, and trembling in her hands. There are two open doorways to the kitchen. She picks the one to her left, furthest from the fridge, which she can see through the other door with no Cider rummaging through it. On the verge of hyperventilating, as quietly as she can she pauses at the cusp of the doorway. She sweeps around the corner and freezes in an awkward shape. Leaning with her shoulders off balance and the gun twisted in her left hand to meet the blue suited Ribbit with his gun pointing down at Ciders head.
“Freeze!” the Ribbit commands with all of his authority.
“Shoot him,” Cider says, laying face down on the ground.
“Shut up or I'll blow your head into the linoleum,” the Ribbit says before busting the inside of Cider's cheek with a kick from his polished brown shoes.
“Ha, that's against the law,” he laughs, spitting red onto the linoleum.
“Real smooth, huh punk. We got you this time.”
pip pip pip pipip pip....
“You should be overwhelmed with joy, you'll be an honorary member of the club,” Cider says.
“Oh yeah what club? the guys that have had your chick?” the Ribbit laughs.
“No, of the fumbling pencil pushers I've given the slip. Anna, anytime now.”
“I think,” her voice breaks, “I've got his nose,” she strains to speak through her nerves strung as tense as tightened steel cables.
“Can it! put the gun down. Now! silly little girl, you don't know what you’re doing, you'll be hunted to the ends of eternity. Look, you can barely even look me in the eye,” the Ribbit says down to her.
“Shoot him,” Cider insists.
“She can't even shoot if she wanted to. The way she's holding that gun she'll break her little wrist. Looks like you picked the wrong bird to run with. Not so clever after all, huh,” gloats the Ribbit.
“Anna.”
Pipip pip pip pip..pipip..pip...pip…
“She dont go’t it kid, she just d-”
“POP!”
“Click.”
“AHHHHHHH....Dammit!” she screams. The click is the sound of her wrist breaking to the .38's recoil. She drops the weapon, and falls to her knees in pain. Cider crawls out from under the faceless Ribbit to console her and lift her to feet, throwing her good arm over his shoulder.
“I can walk, Cider, I can walk,” she says. He lets her go but keeps his hand on her shoulder.
“Tuck your arm into your stomach, try not to move it.”
“Thank you” she says.
“Thank you, you saved me from an eternity in the tombs,” he says. “Anna I’m sorry but we can't go to a hospital or anything, we have to go now.”
“I know...as always,” she sighs, turning her face to his. He hugs her lightly, being mindful of her arm.
pip pip pipip pip...
“He would've killed me too?” she asks.
“He would've.”
“We should be running,” she says.
“Quickly please,” he says pulling her by her good hand into the dripping rain. Onto the a narrow straight away then catwalks clinking under their fleeing feet. The two are already in full flight down several flights of stairs, avoiding the ladders when they hear a Ribbit shout, “You there Freeze. I said Freeze!”
“It's coming from the next buildings over, it’s not us,” Cider says.
“We're not going to stop,” she huffs.
“Stop now or I'll shoot!”
“Yahaahaahaaahaaaaa” they hear a voice resembling Rojo's yell through the air, as though shouted into a canyon from the next street over. Immediately followed by a fervent exchange of bursting gunfire.
“Do you think he made it?” she asks.
“Aahaahaaa!”
“I'm sure he'll be fine,” he says assuredly. The two keep on through the narrow fire escapes built unevenly between the monolithic build
ings and massive floating fragments of city. Passing curtain covered arched windows resembling tombstones.
“Where are we going?” she asks him, who's leading the way.
“We have to get up, so we have to go down,” he says.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Down is where our ride is.”
“Our ride?” she asks.
“There's more surface space in the Shallows, more shadows to hide in, more crime, more cops, and we need a ride,” he says. He stops at a window and lights a smoke, taking a deep breath and leans his shoulders against the stone gray facade.
“What're you doing?” she asks.
“Were gonna go through this window, door whatever,” he says, and she snatches the smoke from his lips and throws it from the hundredth floor of this structure, the thirty second of the one adjacent, and the seven hundred and twelfth of the one across from that.
“What's wrong with you,” she slaps at him.
“What is wrong with you?” he asks like a scolded child. She contemplates the thought for a minute, of what is wrong with her, with all that's around her. That she’s already in too deep, too guilty to complain and unable to conjure a better way to survive. She follows him through the open door just as a Ribbit shouts and shoots at them. Chirping chips off the stone facade around the window, she makes it through just as the glass shatters and splashes around her feet. They're standing in the living room of a stain shirted man sitting in a beaten recliner, whose dead eyes reflect perfectly the pornography he's watching. Paused holding fork an inch from his fat red sauce smeared cheeks to look like a clowns smile. His neurotic, shouting yellow gloved housewife is chastising her child while chasing the kid around the dinner table with a rolling pin.
“Let's keep moving,” she insists.
“Yup,” he agrees.
“You think we'll find a station?” she asks.“I don't know, maybe,” he says, “whatever we’re looking for it ain’t this.” The two continue through to the next window and the next, each a different room of people cooking and arguing, playing, living lazily indoors. They trample through people’s homes and gardens, through scenes of the private joys and outdoor sights. Each an entirely different place from the last but for the vaulted ceilings always above their heads, the only sign of continuity through the stairwells, lobbies and halls, though even this is fleeting. Leaving no shred of continuity when they reach the first open prairie, running right under its clear blue skies through an open window and onto the next. Once running off a cliff and falling a hundred feet hitting the hardwood flooring of an amphitheater stage while a full orchestra plays to a crowd. Anna gets up embarrassed, as lady like as she can she shuffles to the exit doors and onto the next. Sometimes hallways or the catwalks break their dash from one window to the next space. Passing through a powder pigment throwing festival, then to a conjuring sorcerer standing on the shoreline commanding the oceans to rise miles above sea level. Cider knocks down a cameraman when running through the filming of a sitcom based on the degradation of theater in newer media. The live studio audience button calls for a laugh and a sob as they pass. Another having a mouse faced man looking at them with the unsightly white eyes of blindness, there are two others in the room which go unnoticed by the two already passing onto the next. Housing a Chef still wearing his hat, but bottomless, cooking scrambled eggs and flapjacks in the comfort of his own kitchen. They fall through what looks like the skies of a thunderous Jupiter's atmosphere. Then running through a lush sun baked brown bark forest with saturated green foliage filling their eyes, and the pungent aroma of a primal place salivating their mouths through their noses in the seconds it takes to pass into the cold metal of a capsizing submarine. Then into an empty tree house before reaching a green field giving Anna the chills and stillness of meeting Mickey. A violinist is sitting alone in a room under a spotlight with his head down, playing the skins of his forearm with the violin bow. Slashing his wrist deeper with each stroke and splashing his blood to the carpet and walls around him. Onto the next to see the universe from afar, as merely a membrane of an even bigger mass, moving, resembling the growth of a baby's brain forming in the womb. A massive lush lucidly detailed fungi filled jungle with bundled tents suspended by bungee cords forty feet off the blue foliage forest floor is before a dense technologically advanced society’s city square brimming with screens and moving lights. The places begin to blur, blending together in their peripheral as they pass through as fast as they can. Through the mechanized men and crude machines of an early assembly plant, then wading waist high through a freshwater pond. Each having their own effect on the senses for the second they pass each scene enveloping them. Window after window, each scene's bleeding into the next and blending more smoothly than the last. Until they all become rushing colors spinning into a tunnel swirling around them. Lasting for minutes or seconds or maybe hours, they feel nothing of the passage of time as they pass from room to room. Each time shifting faster until there's only a single unblemished black spiraling around them too quickly to be seen as color, encasing the two as their feet pitter patter through its vortex vacuum. They suddenly spill out of the last window onto pavement, deep in the depths of the Shallows, far below the massive blue light hovering a mile higher than the highest buildings. Looking up they see what seems like a massive scar of light cleaved between the brown brick walls reaching miles skyward.
“That was a trip huh” he says, his eyebrows arched in amazement, and instinctively lighting a smoke. Her face is holding a similar gaze.
“We should stay off the main streets,” she says.
“We have to stay close to it.” The two stick to the left at every fork of their broken path, following the avenue as stealthily as tribal hunters stalk a river. Each tired step scuffles against the sandpaper like pavement and metal. Each breath echoes, and returns to them in faint clapping sounds. After seeing no one for nearly a mile, she nudges him with her elbow, nodding over her shoulder for him to see an establishment vehicle parked on the opposite side of a four lane main avenue. It's white and silver color scheme is clothing what seems like a small stout rocket topped by two bulbous sirens.
A block further they tuck into a closed metal doorway sunken three feet into the side of a building.. with emptied lungs, Anna's scared and hurt, her fragility in these situations vividly show in her wild frightened eyes, at least compared to his almost always steady as a stone slate blue's. She's obviously overwhelmed, her shell is shocked, and she's speaking with wavering words.
“What do we do now?” she asks.
“Hold out your hand,” he says.
“It's fine. Let’s keep going, we can't stop now.”
“We have to get that ride.”
“How can we?”
“A damsel in distress my dear,” he says “If you dare to?”
“Dare to what?”
“I don't know. I don't know if you can pull it off.”
“Pull what off? asking the guy for a ride and saying we got lost down here or something, that we're actually from up there?” she says doubtfully.
“Yeah actually, that's exactly what I was thinking,” he says.
“That's not going to work.”
“Oh yeah, and why not?” he asks.
“Well,” she says returning his defensive tone. “We don't know anything about what's up there, past the halo. So they won't believe us,” she says. He resigns his demeaning disposition and leers at her, moving his lips around his face for a minute.
“I think...you're right,” he says.
“So...what do we do?”
“Improvise,” he says. The two sink into contemplative poses, leaning this way and that, interchangeably rubbing their chins and scratching their heads. Deeply contemplating their circumstance, looking around, exchanging passing glances in pondering their present predicament.
“I got it!” she shouts, pointing into the air as though switching on a light bulb.
“What is it,” he asks.
“I got it!” he shouts.
“What is it? what?” she says dancing ecstatically in place.
“It's a girl who’s to cry wolf then,” he says excitedly.
“What!? What's that? a pet name from your petty crook playbook?” she quips.
“Exactly, but I'm not petty. I don't think so anyway,” he says. Stopping her reply by holding a single finger over her forehead, confounding her face to a bemused quiet.
“I'll be right back, stay here, I'll be right back,” he says, then disappearing around the corner, leaving a puff of his smoke over his shoulder. He peeks around another corner to the main street, fixating on one of the open stores. The store sign’s yellow light outlines the youths in their natural place posting in front of it. He hurries back as quickly as he can, in dread of the Ribbits reaching her first. She looks up and around in awe of the immense skyward depth of the brick, vanishing in a horizon high above before it even reaches the open sky.
“Okay,” he says startling her with his sudden reappearance, trailed by a puff of his smoke. He begins to quickly explain while she stares and him listens, intently watching his words.
“It's that, here's what we’re going to do” he says.
“Uh-huh,” she nods.
“There's a store over there with a yellow lit awining,” he says.
“Uh-huh.”
“I'm going to go to the store to get some smokes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes, and what you will have to do is...can you act?” he asks.
“I don't know.”
“Well, you'll have to cry and weep and cry some more. Sob as sorrowfully as if you were lost and tired, and injured and in pain, and in fear for your life. Say that you were attacked by the kids who're standing in front of the store, okay?” he says.
“No. Why do we have to blame the kids, what if the cop shoots one of them?” she says.
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