Nohar made for the stairs.
As he descended, the odor of tar receded. He became aware of a familiar perfume-The Vind came out. Nohar backed toward the wall FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
183
and crept down the steps. He rounded the landing, sliding under the window to the street, and pointed the gun down toward the third floor. No one. There was the ghost smell of blood-He was getting a sick feeling.
Bottom of the stairs, nobody in the third-floor hallway. Three meters away, his door was ajar. The frame was splintered, proving Nohar's belief in the useless-ness of an armored door in a wooden door frame.
No sounds. The perfume was still ghostlike, but the blood was stronger. Nohar flattened himself against the right side of the door frame and pointed the Vind through the opening as he pushed the door open with his foot. Blood, feces, the burning smell of terror filled the apartment—
Nohar covered all the rooms in record time, but the bastards were gone.
They had left Cat in the shower. Nohar found his pet, strips of skin removed from the back and chest, lying in a pool of blood, urine, and feces. They'd hadn't even had the decency to kill the animal before they left it. Cat had bled to death, limping around the stainless-steel pit.
Shaving is a different thing to a morey than it is to a human. To a morey it is a gesture of hatred and contempt. Removal of hair is still the basis of it, but the skin is often removed as well. Survival is rare.
The Zips couldn't find Nohar, so they had shaved Cat.
They left a message on the mirror for him, in Cat's blood. "You next, pretty kitty."
Nohar put his fist through it.
FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
185
CHAPTER 17
Nohar wanted to kill something.
It was an effort for him not to listen to the adrenaline and finish trashing the apartment. What was worse, every time he thought of Cat, he couldn't help picturing Stephie—
He tried to calm himself by making a methodical inventory of the damage. The Zips had wrecked his comm, along with most of his apartment. They had shredded his clothes out of spite. The couch was dead; it had been ailing to begin with. The kitchen was a disaster. It looked like the Zips had been trying to burn down the building.
But they had missed the two extra magazines forthe Vind. Those were where Nohar had left them, on top of the cabinets in the kitchen. The rats weren't particularly thorough, just violent.
Once he made sure the ammo was the only thing he could salvage, he took a sheet—one they had shredded—and wrapped Cat's stiffening body in it. The blood soaked through immediately, and Nohar wrapped him in another sheet, and finally stuffed him into a pillowcase. He didn't know what he was going to do with the corpse, but he couldn't leave it here.
On the way back to the cab, Nohar had the gun out. He hoped the Zips would show themselves, but the way was clear through to the garage. He bolstered the gun as he closed in on the cab.
The cabbie interrupted him before he could get in
J the back. "What hit your hand? No, don't want to | know—stop right there." Now what?
"No shit, piss, or blood in the back of my cab. They lemme drive, but I clean it up." She got out of the cab and walked around to the back and popped the trunk. She pulled out a first aid kit. " 'Spect one hell of a tip for this.
Come 'ere."
Nohar hadn't bothered dressing his right hand. It hadn't seemed important. There were several deep cuts on the back of it, from punching the mirror.
The cabbie cleaned off the wound and tied it up.
"There—what's in the bag?"
"A dead cat."
"Won't ask if that's a joke. Put it in the trunk."
What now? Nohar got in the back of the cab and tried to think clearly, putting his head in his hands.
"Where to now?"
"Sit tight for a minute. We're still running off the forty bucks I gave you." "Sure 'nuff."
Damn good thing Angel didn't want to be left alone in the apartment.
Should have ditched things when he had the chance. Now he was waist-deep in shit river no matter what he did. Ziphead had a serious in for him. Guess the limit for rodents in this towns topped off at six-He shook his head. That kind of thinking didn't help.
He wanted to claw the upholstery, but it wasn't his car.
The Zips had trashed his comm, that was bad. If Terin knew what she was doing, she would have dumped the call record and read or copied the ram-cards before her muscle scragged them. The Zips would have his Binder database. That was public info, not too bad. They had all his photographs. Again, something he could live without.
But now they had the forensic data base, and that was bad. Nohar didn't want to think what could hap-
186
S. ANDREW SWANN
pen if they figured he had a contact in the Medical Examiner's office.
Worst of all, he had no idea what messages had been waiting for him.
Nohar cursed under his breath. He was looking out the cab's window, across the garage and the bridge. He was looking at the Triangle office building-Wait a minute. He had another comm! If the calls were being forwarded—and most of them were—there would be a copy on the comm in his office. Did the Zips know about that? Were they watching his office? Did the gang even know he had an office?
"So, you want a big tip?"
She turned around and gave him a look ranking that as a stupid question.
"Like to make a quick hundred?"
"Nothing illegal?"
"No." Nohar pulled out his card-key to the Triangle. "You just go to my office and pick up my messages."
The cabbie only took a few seconds to make up her mind. She took his key and left the garage.
She took her own sweet time getting back. It gave Nohar some more time to think. As Angel would say, things were beginning to look like they were going to ground zero on him.
The Zips' nationwide spree of violence made things loom large. MLI's pet congressmen were as ominous, and scared him more than the Zips—especially if MLI was as reactionary as Binder. He wished Smith wanted to have the meet tonight. Nohar didn't want to wait for tomorrow.
The cabbie came back with a ramcard and sat back behind the wheel. "Like you, but I'm nearly off shift. Last ride, where to?"
Nohar told her to drop him off downtown, near East Side. He was going to pay
press secretary Thomson a
visit.
* * *
FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
187
He had the cabby drop him off next to the lake.
Nohar walked out on a pier, carrying Cat. He picked a chunk of crumbling
asphalt and placed it into the pillowcase. After making sure the knot was tight, Nohar picked up the bundle and looked at it. It was a shapeless mass, but blood had seeped through and the outline of Cat's body was becoming visible in red. "Good-bye, you little missing link."
He walked up to the end of the pier and looked over Lake Erie. There was an overwhelming organic stink from the reclamation algae that hugged the shore.
He spared a glance to the light-green plants that shimmered slightly in the evening sun light. Then he tossed his package over the water like an ungainly shot put. Cat hit the water about five meters out, splattering algae. He watched as the pillowcase ballooned up with trapped air, then slowly sank with the weight of the asphalt, pulling the algae in behind it to cover the surface of the water again.
He looked back behind him.
A few blocks away were the massive East-Side con-dos. On top of one lived Desmond Thomson, Binder's press secretary. Nohar was angry enough about recent events to not even consider how the pinks would react to him. He needed to take this out on someone.
Thomson would be a convenient target.
Nohar started walking toward the condos. The sun was setting, coating the windows of the buildings in molten orange. As Nohar walked toward the building, he amused himself by picturing Thomson's reaction when he unfolded th
e conspiracy MLI represented, and how deeply the Binder campaign was involved. It wasn't something you could hide, once someone knew what to look for.
Nohar smiled. When this got out, the vids would have a field day. Bobby had been right, Binder was the congressman to involve in this.
As Nohar walked into the valley between the ritzy condominiums, reality set
in. These were security
188
S. ANDREW SWANN
buildings. How did he think he was going to get in to talk to Thomson in the first place? Bad enough, being a morey. But he was dressed like a gang member and he was armed.
If he walked into one of these lobbies, he'd be lucky if security didn't shoot him and claim self-defense. Nohar got as far as the front door to Thomson's condo before he realized his chances of talking to Binder's press secretary was somewhere between slim and none.
For one of the few times in his life, Nohar wished he wasn't a morey.
He was sitting on the biggest political scandal of the century and he couldn't even confront someone with it. He felt positively useless. What now, he asked himself. Sit here all night and wait for the guy to leave for work? Go back to Manny's?
He thought of Stephie waiting back there and decided to call it a day.
He turned away from the door and smelled something.
Pink blood, and canine musk. Nohar turned back to the door and looked through the glass, into the lobby. There was a guard station in a modern setting of black enamel, chrome and white carpeting. Nobody was behind the desk. That wasn't procedure. The whole idea of security in ritzy places like this was to be high-profile. There should be a pink guard there.
Nohar tried the door. Locked.
He tried to buzz the desk. A guard wouldn't let him in once he saw him, but the guard would have to come to the desk to see who was buzzing. Nobody showed.
Nohar looked deeper into the lobby because he thought he saw some movement. It was an elevator door. It was opening and closing, opening and closing, again and again.
The doors were blocked by a blue-shirted arm on the ground, extending out from the inside of the ele-FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
189 vator. The arm belonged to a pink, and in its hand it held a large automatic. "Shit." Nohar could barely produce a whisper.
There was the echoing squeal of tires from his right. Nohar turned that way and faced the exit of the condo's underground parking garage. A green remote Dodge Electroline shot out and bore to the right so hard it jumped the curb and almost ran Nohar down. Nohar jumped and his back hit the lobby door with a dull thud.
The van shot by him, accelerating, going east.
It made no sense to do so, but Nohar drew his Vind and started chasing the van. Five seconds after he started running his limp had gotten bad to the point where he was in danger of toppling over. There was no way he was going to catch the van anyway. Not unless he shot out the inductor or a tire—and that would be pointless when he didn't know who was inside the vehicle.
Nohar bolstered the Vind and began massaging his
hip-Something behind him exploded. A tearing blast that made Nohar immediately turn around, jerking bis wounded leg. The shot of pain he felt was forgotten when he saw what had happened.
The top of Thompson's building had erupted a ball of flame that was being quickly followed by rolling black smoke. Nohar felt a hot breeze on his cheek as he heard the distant bell-like tinkle of cascading glass. There was a secondary explosion and the floor below belched black smoke through shattering windows.
Nohar had chased the van three or four blocks away from the condos. He still backed away involuntarily. Within seconds, the top of the cylindrical building was totally obscured by thick black smoke. Nohar was starting to smell the blaze.
It was the choking smell of melting synthetics and burning gasoline. Nohar was
stunned. He stared at the burning build-
190
S. ANDREW SWANN
ing until, a few minutes later, five screaming fire engines blared by him. By then, the entire top three floors were belching out smoke like a trash can that had caught on fire. Nohar backed into an alley. Cops would be arriving soon, and he didn't want to be questioned.
Nohar found a vantage point on a fire escape. At that point, a dozen fire vehicles surrounded the condo, twice that many cop cars. The vids had showed, like a flock of carrion birds. Three helicopters arrived in tight formation and aimed foam-cannons at the top of the building.
The copters pulled a tight turn, carrying them over Nohar. They were flying low and the loud chopping of the rotors made his molars ache. More smells hit him, ozone exhaust from the choppers, the dry-fuzzy smell of the foam—it made him want to sneeze—above it all, the choking, nauseating smell of the burning building. Up there, with all the synthetics, the smoke was probably toxic. Streams of foam from the cannons cut through the air in precise formation. Three thin bands of white flew from the copters in parallel ballistic arcs, expanding as they went, until all three hit the building as one stream. Nohar watched the foam hit the east side of the building and smash through a window on the top floor. The stream displaced volumes of smoke, and after a short pause, white foam began cascading out windows, dripping down the sides of the building.
Desmond Thomson, MBA, press secretary for the Binder campaign, had lived on the top floor.
Nohar doubted Thomson lived anywhere anymore.
CHAPTER 18
Nohar waited for the chaos at Thomson's condo to die down before he walked out on the street again. Harsk had called him a paranoid bastard, but he didn't want to deal with cops. Being this close to blatant arson, Nohar doubted he'd be let alone. Nohar had the feeling if he got too close to the cops now, he'd be hung out to dry.
He hung by a public comm, painfully aware of Angel's comment, "Moreys this far
west shine," He was glad rush hour was long over. The pinks had abandoned downtown Cleveland for another day, and the cops were involved elsewhere. The only pink Nohar had to worry about was an oriental rent-a-cop staring at him from the lobby of the Turkmen International Bank. The pink's suspicion was ironic. The pink was probably a Japanese refugee—during the Pan-Asian war Japan and India would have been on the same side, and both had been nuked into a similar fate.
Species before nationality, Nohar guessed.
The cab pulled up. This time, better neighborhood, the cab company sent a remote Chrysler Areobus. Nohar got into it, to the visible relief of the pink rent-a-cop. The van was brand new. Nohar could still smell the factory scent from the upholstery. No one had pissed in this one yet.
"Welcome to Cleveland Autocab. Please state your destination clearly.''
The computer started repeating itself in Spanish, Japanese, Arabic—
192
S. ANDREW SWANN
"Detroit and West—" not too close to Manny, just in case— "63rd. Ohio City." "Five point seven five kilometers from present location—" Nohar would have walked if not for his leg and the neighborhood. "ETA ten minutes. Please deposit twenty dollars. Change will be refunded to your account.''
Nohar slipped the computer his card, punched in his ID, and deducted the twenty dollars. There was a slightly overlong pause while the computer read his card.
"Thank you, Mr. Rajasthan."
The cab rolled out onto the Midtown Corridor, passed through downtown, and got on the Main Avenue bridge, heading west. Night had wrapped itself around the West-Side office complex. The buildings had shifted from chrome to onyx. Traffic was dead with the exception of Nohar's cab and the endlessly running cargo-haulers.
The cab reached the Detroit Avenue off-ramp—
The cab passed it, still doing 90 klicks an hour.
What the hell? "You missed the exit."
The computer was mute. Nohar tried typing on the keyboard provided for passengers. It was dead. So was the voice phone sitting next to it. Nohar began to worry about that pause over his card.
The cab passed the Detroit on-
ramp, and two cars pulled off the ramp to follow it. Even in the dark, with his vision, he knew their make. Late-model Dodge Havier sedans.
Unmarked police cars were always Dodge Haviers.
Stupid. Of course the cops would put a flag on his card. They were probably going to have Autocab dispatch send the cab straight to police headquarters.
As if the cab was reading his mind, once it had picked up the shadows it took the next off-ramp, circled around under the bridge, and got back on the bridge—going east, cops in tow.
FORESTS OF THE NIGHT 193
If he was going to do something, he'd better do it quick.
Now he wasn't so glad he'd gotten a new cab. An older cab would have been fitted with a seat and controls for a driver. This cab's interior was totally filled with pseudo-luxury passenger space. Nohar had little chance to override the controls.
He got down on one knee and felt around the carpet between the forward two seats and the passenger console. When he found the edge, he clawed it up.
There had to be a maintenance panel in here. The cab had no hood, and the design people didn't have hatches on the outside to mar the plastic-sleek lines of the vehicle. The only other place for a maim panel would be under the damn cab, and if that was the case, Nohar would be in trouble.
Nohar held his breath until he saw the maint panel under the carpet. It had a keypad, and a red flashing light. A breach would alert the cab's dispatcher. Nohar looked back at the two Haviers behind him. Alerting dispatch wouldn't be a very big problem.
Nohar unholstered the Vind, wishing for the standard teflon-coated rounds, and fired a point-blank shot at the keypad. The gun bucked in his hand and the keypad exploded under him. Little plastic squares with numbers on them went everywhere in the van. It set off the car alarm. He looked back at the cops and saw them activate their flashers.
Where the keypad had been was now a smoking rectangular hole. The sour odor of burning insulation filled the cab. The magnetic lock had only been on the maint panel for the deterrence value. The dumdum had scragged it. Nohar hooked his hand into the remains of the keypad and pulled out the panel.
Forests of the Night Page 17