Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

by Cory Doctorow

If you don't leavehim, I'll get you. You made this situation."

  Billy was back now, in the doorway, holding the hammer. He'd hand it toAdam if he asked for it. He could use it. After all, once you've killedyour brother, why not kill his Renfield, too?

  Krishna looked scared, a little scared. Andrew teased at how that feltand realized that it didn't feel like he'd thought it would. It didn'tfeel good.

  "Go, Krishna," he said. "Get out of this house and get out of my sightand don't ever come back again. Stay away from my brother. You willnever profit by your association with him. He is dead. The best he cando for you is make you dead, too. Go."

  And Krishna went. Slowly. Painfully. He stood and hobbled toward thefront door.

  Mimi watched him go, and she smiled once he was gone.

  Benny said, "Kurt's shop is on fire."

  #

  They ran, the two of them, up Augusta, leaving Mimi behind, wrapped inher blanket. They could smell the smoke as soon as they crossedKensington, and they could see the flames licking out of the dark blackclouds just a moment later.

  The smell was terrible, a roiling chemical reek that burned the skin andthe lungs and the eyes. All those electronics, crisping and curling andblackening.

  "Is he in there?" Alan said.

  "Yes," Barry said. "Trapped."

  "Call the fire department," Andrew said, and ran for the door, fishingin his pocket for his keys. "Call 911."

  He got the door open and left his keys in the lock, pulling his shirt upover his head. He managed a step into the building, two steps, and theheat beat him back.

  He sucked up air and ran for it again.

  The heat was incredible, searing. He snorted half a breath and felt thehair inside his nostrils scorch and curl and the burning was nearlyintolerable. He dropped down on all fours and tried to peer under thesmoke, tried to locate Kurt, but he couldn't find him.

  Alan crawled to the back of the store, to Kurt's den, sure that hisfriend would have been back there, worn out from a night's dumpsterdiving. He took a false turn and found himself up against therefrigerator. The little piece of linoleum that denoted Kurt's kitchenwas hot and soft under his hands, melting and scorching. He reorientedhimself, spinning around slowly, and crawled again.

  Tears were streaming freely down his face, and between them and thesmoke, he could barely see. He drew closer to the shop's rear, nearlythere, and then he was there, looking for Kurt.

  He found him, leaned up against the emergency door at the back of theshop, fingers jammed into the sliver of a gap between the door's bottomand the ground. Alan tried the door's pushbar, but there was somethingblocking the door from the other side.

  He tried slapping Kurt a couple times, but he would not be roused. Hisbreath came in tiny puffs. Alan took his hand, then the other hand, andhoisted his head and neck and shoulders up onto his back and began tocrawl for the front door, going as fast as he could in the blaze.

  He got lost again, and the floor was hot enough to raise blisters. Whenhe emerged with Kurt, he heard the sirens. He breathed hard in the nightair.

  As he watched, two fire trucks cleared the corner, going the wrong waydown one-way Augusta, speeding toward him. He looked at Billy.

  "What?"

  "Is Kurt all right?"

  "Sure, he's fine." He thought a moment. "The ambulance man will want totalk with him, he said. "And the TV people, soon.

  "Let's get out of here," Brad said.

  "All right," he said. "Now you're talking."

  Though it was only three or four blocks back to Adam's place, it tookthe better part of half an hour, relying on the back alleys and the darkto cover his retreat, hoping that the ambulance drivers and firefighterswouldn't catch him here. Having to lug Kurt made him especially suspect,and he didn't have a single good explanation for being caught totingaround an unconscious punk in the dead of night.

  "Come on, Brent," Adam said. "Let's get home and put this one to bed andyou and me have a nice chat."

  "You don't want me to call an ambulance?"

  Kurt startled at this and his head lolled back, one eye opened a crack.

  "No," Alan said. "No ambulances. No cops. No firemen. Just me andhim. I'll make him better," he said.

  The smoke smell was terrible and pervaded everything, no matter whichdirection the wind blew from.

  Adam was nearly home when he realized that his place and his lover andeverything he cared about in the entire world were *also* on fire, whichcouldn't possibly be a coincidence.

  #

  The flames licked his porch and the hot air had blown out two of thewindows on the second story. The flames were lapping at the outside ofthe building, crawling over the inside walls.

  No coincidence.

  Kurt coughed hard, his chest spasming against Alan's back. Alan set himdown, as in a dream. As in a dream, he picked his way through the flameson his porch and reached for the doorknob. It burned his hand.

  It was locked. His keys were in Kurt's door, all the way up Augusta.

  "Around the back," Bentley called, headed for the fence gate. Alanvaulted the porch rail, crashing though the wild grasses and ornamentalscrub. "Come on," Bentley said.

  His hand throbbed with the burn. The back yard was still lit up likeChristmas, all the lights ablaze, shining through the smoke, the ash ofbooks swirling in it, buoyed aloft on hot currents, fragments of wordschasing each other like clouds of gnats.

  "Alan," Kurt croaked. Somehow, he'd followed them back into theyard. "Alan." He held out his hand, which glowed blue-white. Alan lookedcloser. It was his PDA, stubby wireless card poking out of it. "I'monline. Look."

  Alan shook his head. "Not now." Mimi, somewhere up there was Mimi.

  "Look," Kurt croaked. He coughed again and went down to his knees.

  Arnos took the PDA in hand and peered at it. It was a familiar app, thetraffic analysis app, the thing that monitored packet loss between thenodes. Lyman and Kurt had long since superimposed the logical networkmap over a physical map of the Market, using false-color overlays toshow the degree to which the access points were well connected andfiring on all cylinders.

  The map was painted in green, packets flying unimpeded throughout theempty nighttime Market. And there, approaching him, moving through thealleys toward his garage, a blob of interference, a slow, bobbingsomething that was scattering radio waves as it made its way towardhim. Even on a three-inch screen, he recognized that walk. Davey.

  Not a coincidence, the fires.

  "Mimi!" he called. The back window was blown out, crystal slivers ofglass all around him on the back lawn. "*Mimi!*"

  Billy was at his side, holding something. A knife. The knife. Serratededge. Sharp. Cracked handle wound with knotted twine, but as he reachedfor it, it wasn't cracked. It was the under-the-pillow knife, the wingsknife, Krishna's knife.

  "You forgot this," he said, taking the PDA.

  Then Davey was in the yard. He cocked his head and eyed the knifewarily.

  "Where'd you get that?" he said.

  Adam shifted his grip for slashing, and took one step forward, stampinghis foot down as he did it. Davey retreated a step, then took two stepsforward.

  "He set the fires," Bentley said. "She's as good as dead. Cooked. Won'tbe long now, she'll be cooked."

  Darren looked at him for the first time. "Oh, yes," he said. "That'sabout right. I never found you, no matter how I looked. You don't getfound if you don't want to."

  Brent shook his head. "He set the fire, he used gasoline. Up the stairs,so it would spread up every floor quickly."

  Aaron growled and lunged forward, slicing wildly, but Davey's scurry wassurprising and fast and nimble.

  "You're going to stab me again, cut me again? What do you suppose thatwill get you?"

  "He's weaker than he was, then. We got six years, then. He'sweaker. We'll get ten years. Twenty." Billy was hopping from foot tofoot. "*Do it*."

  Alan sliced and stabbed again, and the knife's point caught Danny'slittle band
y leg, like cutting through a loaf of stale bread, and Dannygasped and hopped back another step.

  "He gave you the knife, didn't he? He gave you the knife last time. Lasttime, he took me to the school yard and showed me you and yourgirlfriend. He explained all about girlfriends to me and about what itwould mean once our secret was out. He taught me the words, taught me tosay *pervert*. Remember, Billy? Remember how you taught me?"

  Andrew hesitated.

  "He taught me the ritual with your thumbtip, how to make the little you,and then he took it away from me for safekeeping. He kept it in one ofhis rabbit cages, around on the other side of the mountain. It's