by Terry Brooks
Ponce roars with laughter. “Biggest damn animal in the jungle!” he crows. “Big enough to take down Street Freaks! You got a lot of people who don’t like you, you know that? People willing to pay a whole lot of credits to anyone who hands you over. People who should have taken you out the first time I told them who you were hiding. But somehow they botched it. So now they need a pro who knows how to handle this kind of job. Oh, hey! That would be me!”
So it was Ponce who first reported him to ORACLE. Ash tamps down his rage. He doesn’t dare move; if he does, Ponce will almost certainly shoot him. He takes a quick inventory. Five besides Ponce. Penny-Bird and four boys. They carry various types of weapons, none more dangerous than Ponce’s Gronklin, but dangerous enough. Penny holds a short-barrel chopdown—the shotgun Holly referred to when she rescued him that first day he came into the Zone. An ancient weapon, but deadly. She stands off to one side, wincing at Holly’s screams, looking decidedly unhappy.
Ponce is still talking, only now he’s looking directly at Ash. “You must have done something really stupid to piss off ORACLE. Not that you don’t do stupid things all the time anyway, just that you usually know enough to keep it in-house. But when they come into the Zone looking for you, it’s clear you colored outside the lines. They put out the word. Offered a nice reward. Can’t imagine anyone more deserving than us. So here we are, ready to collect.”
“You don’t know what’s going on,” Jenny says. “This is more than you . . .”
“Shut up! I don’t need to hear it. You’re dead meat no matter what you say. Where’s the Shoe? Not sure if they want him, but if he’s around I’ll throw him into the mix with the rest of you. Why not?”
He saunters forward, the Gronklin shifting once more, a predator in search of a target. Holly has stopped screaming and lies curled up in a ball gripping her shattered leg, her eyes squeezed shut.
Ponce walks over and stares down at her. “Think you’re so clever. We spotted your boy there out on the Straightaway from a block down, waited to see where he was going. He led us right to you. How stupid is that?”
He kicks her injured leg. She screams anew. “That’s better. That’s what I want to hear. I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying this, you cyborg bitch. I can’t get enough of it.” He pauses, studying her. “You know what? I don’t think I’m quite done with you. Wasn’t anything said about what shape you had to be in when you got delivered to the black-clads. Alive, sure—but there’s all different sorts of being alive, right? I wonder how you’d like losing an arm too? Maybe I can take off enough pieces that when they put you back together, you’ll just be a bot with a head. Like your boxy little friend.”
He gestures at Woodrow, who stares back in fear.
Ash knows he has to do something. He can’t just stand there and let this happen, but he needs a weapon and there’s nothing close at hand.
“Ponce, let’s get this over with,” Penny-Bird says suddenly. “Tie them up and give them to Achilles Pod. Forget the rest.”
Ponce glances over at her. “Feeling all choked up about your old girlfriend. Think she might not be quite the same once I’m done with her? Don’t tell me you still care?”
Penny-Bird goes white. “I don’t like where this is going. You’re making this personal. It’s supposed to be about credits and influence, isn’t it? Why are you making it about something else?”
“It’s what I say it’s about!” Ponce screams at her. “This ain’t no fucking Speedway and you ain’t driving! Think you’re such hot stuff because you got Lonnergon’s to put you behind the wheel? Well, you’re nothing! Just another street slut! Shut your mouth and keep it shut!”
He turns back to Holly. “I think maybe taking off your arm would be a good place to start. This might hurt a little, so maybe you better grit your teeth, cyborg bitch.”
He swings the Gronklin about so that it is pointed at her arm. Holly isn’t looking. He levers a charge into the containment chamber, sights down its barrel.
Penny takes a step toward him. “Don’t do this!” she shouts angrily. “Ponce, you hear me?”
“Not listening!” Ponce answers, laughing.
The barrel of the chopdown lifts. He grins.
“Ponce, look at me.”
Penny-Bird doesn’t scream it, doesn’t shout it; she just says it as if she were asking when they might eat. But something in her voice causes the leader of the Razor Boys to turn. He sees she has her weapon pointed at him and starts to bring the Gronklin around. It’s a big mistake and way too late. The shotgun discharges, and a dark rain of pellets hammers into him, blowing him backward like a rag doll.
Jenny screams. Everyone stares.
Ponce lies sprawled on the warehouse floor less than a dozen feet from Holly. His body is shredded, and his eyes are open and staring. For a moment, no one does anything but stare at what’s left of Ponce. Then Penny-Bird swings the shotgun around so that it is pointing at the remaining Razor Boys.
They stare at her uncertainly. “You got one charge left in that chopdown, Penny,” one says. “You can’t get all of us.”
“It’s a shotgun, doofus!” she hisses at him. “I can get parts of all of you! I can mess you up good!” She pauses, glaring at the speaker. “Especially you, Torque. You’ll be missing your head if you make one move I don’t like.”
“You can’t do this,” says another.
“Ask Ponce what I can do. Drop your weapons.”
She gestures with the chopdown, and they toss their weapons aside hastily. Everyone stands very still, waiting to see what she intends to do.
She walks over to the scattered weapons and kicks them toward Ash. “Pick them up. Throw them in the back of whatever that thing is you’re driving. Is that some sort of assault machine? Frickin’ weird! You build it?”
There is a manic sound to her voice, and her Goth features are darkened further by the intensity that reflects on her face. She makes it look as if killing someone isn’t new to her, as if she’s done it before.
Ash picks up the weapons and throws them into the Onyx, glancing over his shoulder at Penny-Bird, who is watching him closely.
“You killed Ponce!” one of the club members wails suddenly. It’s the boy who danced on the hood of the Razor Boys’ street machine. “Why’d you do that?”
Tears run down his cheeks, but Penny-Bird ignores him. She acts as if he isn’t there. Ash thinks she must have been a good match for Holly. Might be again, now that she’s terminating her relationship with the Razor Boys. She crossed a line back there, made a choice. It seems to him she’s doing what Holly asked her to do. She’s coming home.
Jenny steps forward. “Holly needs a doctor, Penny. Right away.”
The other girl nods. “Not any of the ones at Red Zone Medical. They’d give her up to the Preventatives. Do you know someone else?”
“I do,” Jenny says. “It’s not far. These people are skilled, and they don’t ask questions. Holly will be safe with them.”
Penny doesn’t need to hear any more. She hands the chopdown to Jenny and turns to Ash. “Help me pick her up and put her in your machine. Be careful how you do it. Don’t hurt her.”
Together, they manhandle Holly off the warehouse floor and into the rear passenger seats of the Onyx. Holly is quiet now; Ash thinks she is unconscious—hopes it is only that and not something worse.
“You drive,” Penny-Bird orders him, taking back the chopdown. “You seem to know your way around street machines.” She walks over and picks up Ponce’s Gronklin and levers in a charge, swings the barrel up and into a firing position. “You four,” she says to the Razor Boys, who have been standing off to one side, keeping quiet. “Get out.”
She keeps the Gronklin trained on them. “You say anything to anyone about what’s happened here, and I’ll come looking for you. You know I mean it. You keep quiet about this. You keep your mouths shut. You forget everything you’ve seen.”
The Razor Boys trudge back through the side do
or, casting sour looks and muttered threats over their shoulders as they do. A few furtive glances are directed at what’s left of Ponce. No one says anything to Penny-Bird.
Once they are gone, she slams the side door and throws the locking bar, effectively sealing them out. “Dumbass jerks!”
Ash is already inside the Onyx when she climbs in the back with Holly. “Hey,” she calls out the window to Jenny. “You and the bot, you’re coming with us.”
Jenny lifts Woodrow, then climbs in herself, buckling them both in place. Without waiting to be told to do so, Ash powers up the Onyx, triggers the opener to the big warehouse doors, and drives out onto the surround and from there out the back gates. In seconds, they are on the Straightaway.
Jenny provides directions, and Ash makes the drive as if he has been handling the Onyx all his life. He glances in the rearview mirror and sees Penny-Bird with Holly’s head in her lap, her hand stroking the other girl’s forehead, carefully moving aside loose strands of black hair. She’s crying now, her face crumpled, her tough-girl attitude abandoned.
Ash glances over and looks quickly away. She’s only fifteen. Where did she find the courage to stand up to Ponce? The threat to Holly must have given it to her. She might put up with a lot, but not this. The fact that she acted so impulsively, however, is telling. Holly and she are two of a kind.
When they arrive at their destination, Ash has to look twice to be certain Jenny hasn’t made a mistake. They are in front of a large tumbledown residence of several floors, many windows, and lots of sheltering trees. It stands out in a landscape of few trees and smaller buildings. A sign out front reads PSYCHIC HEALING & SPIRITUAL
COMFORT. The curtains that hang in all the windows have been pulled, and there is no sign of life. The surrounding neighborhood looks abandoned.
“Wait here,” Jenny tells them.
She leaves the Onyx and goes inside the building. She is gone only a short time before returning with two very strong-looking nurses pushing a gurney. They reach in and lift Holly from the vehicle onto the gurney and wheel her into the building. Jenny and the others follow, although at the entrance, Woodrow announces he will wait outside.
“I don’t like medical facilities very much,” he mumbles.
The others enter and go down a hallway to a room with an examination table, where the nurses have placed Holly. The doctor who waits is young and scruffy and intense, his face bearded and marked by scarring. He begins examining Holly at once, cutting away her clothing to reveal the extent of her injuries. He appears unruffled by what he sees. Ash, on the other hand, is appalled. Holly is unconscious and breathing irregularly. Her leg is a mess of ravaged flesh and bone.
“The laser cauterized the wounds or she would have bled out on the spot,” the doctor says. “I think maybe we can save the leg using a regeneration wrap. We can at least try.”
He begins work with the nurses, prepping Holly for surgery. While Jenny stays with Holly, Ash and Penny-Bird are sent to another room to wait. They sit side by side without speaking. Ash checks his vidview log for communications he might have missed. Nothing.
“She’ll be all right,” he says finally.
Penny doesn’t speak. She swings her legs like a child would; she’s so small that her feet don’t even touch the floor.
“That was brave, what you did back there,” he adds after a few more minutes
“What’s your name?” she asks.
“Ash Collins.”
“Thought so. You’ve been all over the reader boards for weeks. You’re the one she helped out on the Straightaway several weeks ago. The newbie. She saved your ignorant ass. But you don’t look the same. They’ve done some work on you.”
He nods. “Didn’t like me the way I was.”
“Yeah, that must be it.” She takes a deep breath, exhales.
“I should have known this would happen a long time ago. When I first knew what Ponce was like. When I saw how much he hated Holly. Then maybe she wouldn’t be here.”
He doesn’t respond, not sure what to say.
Her dark Goth features turn even gloomier. “She was always so stubborn.”
“Is that why you left her?”
She gives him a look. “Oh, you know about that, do you?”
“T.J. told me. Before the accident.”
“None of your business, really. Is it?”
“No, I guess not.”
Penny-Bird sighs. “Well, what’s the difference now?” She gives a brief shrug. “It’s simple. She acted like I didn’t know anything. She treated me like a child, even though I was every bit as tough as she was. She couldn’t stop bossing me around, even when I told her to stop it. She kept trying to control me.” She shrugs. “She wouldn’t stop. That’s why I left.”
“She didn’t understand, I guess.”
“She understood. She just couldn’t change.” Penny’s lips compress. “I suppose it didn’t help, my being stubborn too. I thought by leaving I could make her sorry about how she was treating me. But it only made her dig in. She’s so stupid proud. She couldn’t admit she was wrong.”
“She must have realized it once she saw how you could drive. That race with T.J. showed everyone how good you were.”
“That race killed him.”
He thinks to tell her she is wrong, but decides against it. She doesn’t need to know about the Shoe.
She faces Ash squarely. “I was born and raised in the Zone. I lived on the streets for years until I met Holly. I know what it’s like. I’ve learned to take care of myself. But Holly acts like I need to be protected. She doesn’t understand that it’s too late for that. All the bad stuff that could happen already has. Or if it hasn’t, it will find me ready and waiting when it does.”
Ash doesn’t say anything. They sit together in silence until Jenny reappears. She enters the room and sits down across from them.
“They sedated her, gave her antibiotics and cleansers, cut away the flesh they couldn’t save, and wrapped everything in a regenerative compress. If the synthetic tissue takes a liking to her body, it will stimulate her cells to grow back the muscle and flesh she lost. It will regenerate blood vessels and heal major arteries. The doctor says her bones are exceptionally resilient. But healing will take time and care. Someone will have to be with her until she’s much stronger.”
“I’ll look after her,” Penny-Bird says. “I’ll take care of her.”
Jenny nods. Her brown eyes have a calm, measured look to them. “Do you have a way to move her? Do you have someplace to take her?”
Penny nods at once. “I can find something. I was already planning to leave the Razor Boys when this happened. I was thinking my future would be a lot better if I just struck out on my own.” She paused. “How long before she’s ready?”
“Days. Weeks. Depends. They can’t be sure. They want to wait until she’s awake so they can see how she is responding.”
“Can I go in and see her?” Penny-Bird’s young face is stricken, but hopeful too.
“You can go in. But only for a few minutes. She’s sleeping and won’t be able to talk to you.”
Penny-Bird rises and leaves the room. When she is gone, Jenny faces Ash. “We’re going into hiding, all of us. Just until we can figure out what to do next. Cay is coming to get you.”
He experiences mixed feelings on hearing her name. On the one hand, he is still angry about seeing her with Cyrus and wonders what he will say to her when they meet. On the other, he is relieved that nothing has happened to her. No one is safe, after all. Not even her. T.J. is dead, Holly is so badly damaged she might never walk again, and the Shoe hasn’t been seen since yesterday. Street Freaks is locked down and under watch by Achilles Pod. Their refuge has been compromised, and they can never, in all likelihood, go back again. The hunt for him continues, and he doesn’t see it ending until he’s caught. There is no way out of this mess. It feels as if everything is falling apart.
“You wait for her out front,” Jenny says. “Te
ll Woodrow what’s happened. And Ash?” She takes his arm. “Behave yourself. No random acts of heroism, no charging off to confront your uncle, no stupid decisions that might lead to disastrous consequences. You’re a big boy. You can tell the difference between smart and stupid.”
He nods, not much caring for her tone of voice, and leaves. He goes back down the hallway to the front entry and out to join Woodrow. He sits with the bot boy and tells him of Holly’s condition and the treatment she is receiving. Woodrow looks relieved, his face losing some of the strain that has marked it since Holly was shot.
“She’s very strong,” he says. “Physically, but emotionally too. She will get better if she’s kept safe.”
Ash smiles. “I think Penny-Bird will see to that.”
They sit together after that in companionable silence. They sit for a long time. He is thinking about going back inside to ask Jenny what might be keeping Cay when he hears the rumble of an engine reverberate in the afternoon silence. A moment later, a bulky all-purpose Bryson Utility rolls into view and comes to a stop in front of the building. He doesn’t move. The tinted windows are so dark he cannot see who is inside. He would run, but he is beyond doing much of anything at this point.
Then the driver’s window slides down. Cay leans out, grim-faced. “We don’t have all day, Ash. Get over here!”
“Better do what she says,” Woodrow whispers.
Ash reluctantly obeys.
- 24 -
Ash walks over to the passenger side of the Bryson and climbs in, slamming the door harder than is necessary.
“So where have you been while Street Freaks has been getting blown up?” he demands.
He says it with much more force than he intends. It sounds like an accusation rather than a question. His anger at seeing Cay with his uncle momentarily overrides his sense of relief that she is safe.
She gives him a look. “That’s not a question you are allowed to ask me. You know that. I had things to do. I came as quick as I could.”
“Not quick enough. Holly could have used you.”
“There is nothing I could have done to help Holly. I was able to warn you about Achilles Pod. That was risky enough. What’s this about, anyway?”