Beluga Fay (Dragon Bone Hill)

by Wellhauser, David S.

  The Captain turned while continuing to step backwards. “I have no idea what happened out there—but for the safety of everyone, you are going to have to surrender your weapons here. On the other side of the gate, they will be returned to you.”

  “This is not what you agreed to.” Chrislann was now stepping up, and his voice was breaking with fear. Glenna closed her eyes and tried not to think of what he was about to do.

  “We agreed to allow you through and receive the stones from Mr. Pym. Again, I do not know what happened out there—excepting something that should not have. Because of this, we cannot allow you through armed.”

  “Then we cannot go through.” This was not going to work and Glenna knew it—ultimatums had never worked with the guards in the past, and there was no reason to believe they would this time around.

  “Very well.” The Captain offered the group his back and swung around towards his vehicle.

  “Return the stones!” Chrislann’s register was scraping an octave higher than it was normally comfortable with, and the erratic fracturing of the voice deepened.

  Tomás ignored the elder Budiman and kept walking. As he approached his vehicle, he turned and smiled. “Disarm them.”

  Chrislann turned back to his sister, an impotent rage building on his face. Glenna knew what was coming and took a couple steps back, her face slackening and a sick feeling rising with a quiver from the pit of her stomach. Really, she thought, this felt more like her intestines. With this, a wave of determination took Chrislann, and he reached into his jacket.

  “No.” Glenna’s voice was very small—almost a whisper. Even as she heard the shout, “Gun!” Glenna was twisting around and running for the imagined safety of the abandoned stores.

  There were a few hesitant barks, which he was all too familiar with, when suddenly these were strangled by a wash of light weapons fire; then a deeper, heavy caliber report. Titus knew what this would have been. Pulling up around the corner from this, he took his automatic and edged up along the wall and toward the intersection. Ducking behind a parked, or abandoned, car, Titus fought with the vertigo that faded and surged with an almost regular pulse. Behind this was a growing headache that hung behind and above the eyes. Pushing the meat of his palms into his eyes, he rubbed the lids gently. A knot of tension was growing at the base of his spine and releasing a billow of agony in time with the surge of pain behind his eyes. The beating he’d taken had damaged something, but he wasn’t sure what.

  Titus suspected any number of things, but now wasn’t the time. If possible, he still needed to get to Glenna and stop whatever had begun. Forcing himself up, there was a hard chakra of pain, and he doubled over—what he’d left on his stomach ripped out of him and he was gagging on digestive acid. As the episode passed, Pym leaned back on the car and slid to the ground. The world went liquid with bright bursts of light the consistency of soap bubbles. With the release of the energy stored in these balloons, the pain and tension at the base of his spine eased, and he could breathe again—testing the hypothesis, Pym took several short, shallow breaths and released these. No problem. Then he took a deeper one and a deeper one still.

  Stable, for the moment, he reached for purchase on the car and edged himself upwards. The wall remained whole, with a hint of the liquids surface he seen only moments before. His hearing seemed to have cleared up, and from the intersection, the screams were becoming louder, though the gunfire had ceased. There were the occasional reports, but these weren’t directed at anyone because they were followed by cheers. As he stood, still beyond the glare of the LED floods and the lights of the vehicles, there were simultaneous shrieks and shouts from the guards. Although Titus had not yet seen these, he knew their rhythm, idiom, and pattern. The shouts came again as he was turning. For a brief moment, there was a mutual recognition.

  Glenna had kept running as the shouts and shots tore up those behind her. They were killing everyone; she was certain of that—the screams telling her all she needed to know. Once there was Chrislann’s voice, strong but frightened, and a shot followed. A moment or two later, this came again, farther away, in a faint, plaintive tone. After the second plea for help, there was nothing. Glenna didn’t stop—then she was hammered to the ground, hard. At first she thought she’d been hit by the canon, but it wasn’t that. In her ear, there was a sick panting, and she could feel the man on her back, grabbing her by a hank of hair and dragging her up. There were more screams, but this time some of them were hers.

  Then the shirt was torn from her back while the waistband of her light slacks was split. With the ripping came her panties beneath this. In a heartbeat, the man’s cock was out and rubbing against her—then she was thrown to the ground again. It wasn’t the first time the guards had done this—wasn’t the first time it had been done to her. When he finished, a second one was on her. The second took what seemed forever—maybe he was older. Glenna attempted to lose herself in the pain, but this was only partially successful. Above the rack and humiliation were the sporadic shots and cheers. Behind these were the cries of the women, and some of the men; mostly there were the pleas of the women. Glenna assumed the men were mostly dead now. They should never have taken Titus out; every time something bad happened to her it was when she’d allowed her brother to make the decisions, or when she simply acquiesced.

  Then it was over. There were no more men, just the panting of the two standing over her and the casual conversation. She heard these conversations before and the laughter, the sick laughter, that came with them. Another call, this time from an officer, and the men turned and took a few steps toward the intersection. As they turned and shouted back, Glenna rolled over and pushed herself up. What remained of her clothes fell to the ground. Beginning to run, it did not matter that she was naked, or mostly so. She’d one sandal still on, but it was a low pump, so her run had a shambling lurch to it. A sleeve of her shirt clung to her right arm, and a piece of a pant leg was still holding on to her left calf. The last could have been something else, but she wasn’t going to slow down to brush off whatever it was.

  For the first few strides, it were as though the men had forgotten her—if things held to form, this might just be the case. Then somewhere around her fourth or fifth stride, someone had called attention to the movement, and the men were yelling at her. After the seventh or eighth stride, there was a ping on the tarmac beside her—a warning shot. She supposed they couldn’t let her go. They were important men and women—at least the children of the distinguished. A rape, or several, could be swept under the carpet. After all, what were these people doing up here when they knew they were not to be out after dark? What were they doing in the abandoned shopping district that everyone had warned them away from? It would be easy enough for the guards to argue that they had scared off the real villains—almost certainly they would have blamed the Hill. Colonel Torres may still blame the Hill, and he would be believed.

  Now, though, people had died, been killed. No one could be left alive to carry the story back to Makati. Glenna understood there was no point in stopping, so she hit her next stride hard. Somewhere around this last extension, the sandal fell off, and she could feel the small stones bite into the pedicured feet that her father had lain out a lot of money for over the years. She would be bleeding, but she was already bleeding about the face, genitals, and knees. What did it matter if the stones tore up her feet some more if she could just get around the corner? Another ping grabbed the tarmac in front of her, and it was at this moment, she supposed, the guards understood that she was not going to halt. Just a few more meters—maybe five in all—and she’d be at the corner.

  Five more meters.

  The moment Titus shared with Glenna was brief. Even in that moment, he could see the recognition in her eyes; see the hesitation in the stride; see the shame emerging on her face.

  Shame?

  He was certain this was what opened the face and produced a pinched grief to go with it. At the same moment, the face disappeared a
nd a ragged crater belched meat, blood, and bone in a misty spray. What remained of Glenna stumbled, took another part stride, and then collapsed to her knees—though this was less collapse than fold. Once on her knees, Glenna did not continue forward, but sat back on her haunches. The woman’s arms dangled lifelessly with the last of their kinetic energy dissipating in a vague, rubbery wobble. Following this, there was a moment of stillness as Glenna’s center of gravity shifted, and the mannequin fell to its left and rolled face upward. The clouds slipped quickly past, and a new moon shone down.

  Two more rounds hit the body, but she was gone.

  Titus slipped back to the ground behind the car and waited for the guards to leave. When the crunching of their boots disappeared down the street, he rose and withdrew around the corner to his car. The vertigo was returning, and he would need, he feared, to throw up again. His right hand was also beginning to tremble. This Pym put down to what he’d just seen—wouldn’t anyone tremble a bit after that?

  Slipping the key into the ignition, it took a couple of tries for the engine to turn over, but when it did, it left a dull roar in his ears, and Pym worried the guards would hear it. But the roar from their vehicles had drowned out his own, or blended in with it. Apparently they were still involved in mopping up their mess—there were a few screams from the women of the cabal and the bark of a small caliber weapon. Automatics, he supposed, but with the roaring in his ears, it was hard to tell. The bawl of sound just made itself known as a new symptom, and it was apparent Titus was going to have to see a doctor as quickly as possible.

  First, though, he needed to get back to the Beluga.

  Without turning his headlights on, he slipped back into the city down a series of side streets. It would take awhile for knowledge of what had happened before the gate to reach Salazar and his Cabinet. Possibly it could take longer than awhile. It would be impossible for Torres to admit the Wall guards had been behind the assault and murder of the elites. This would have to be fobbed off on the Cartel, Beluga, or the Hill. The Hill seemed the most likely candidate—the barbarity of the act would be in keeping with their general behavior. How accurate this was, Titus had no way of knowing—there were a great many stories and myths surrounding Dragon Bone Hill, but no facts that he’d come across. The only facts, as he saw them, were the two women: Dian and Putri. These gave the lie to the stories.

  Right now he needed to focus—don’t get pulled over; don’t stop for columns; don’t run into any columns; don’t head south because this would be alive with patrols and refugees; don’t get caught by anyone from the Hill; make sure he had a good cover for the condition the Beluga would find him in. As he went over this list, he could feel his head droop forward, and he needed to force himself awake. He pulled over, climbed out of the car, threw some water on his face, and took a couple of caffeine pills. The vertigo had faded into the background, but it was still there. His headache had returned, and this time there were shivers to go along with it. With the latter, there was a mild nausea as well. Pym’s condition was difficult, that much he could acknowledge, but it was not yet desperate.

  What would be desperate? He was trapped in the city, and there would be no way out without the help of the guards or Torres. That was desperate. If they learned he was alive, they would certainly want him dead for fear of what he might tell Salazar. That’s if they thought he’d seen what had happened. The Wall may even try to turn the mass murder on him. This stopped his pacing. If they found out he was alive, Torres would have to turn the affair on him, if he could come up with a probable frame to drop the man in. The Colonel was no fool, nor was Tomás. Pym, sooner or later, would be dropped in the middle of this; then it would be a big question as to whether or not the Beluga would stick with him.

  That would be a golden opportunity for Lander. With the murder pinned on Pym, Lander would take the Beluga and probably turn them against him. But there was still a window of opportunity—get back to the Beluga and bury himself deep within for a few days. Then he could gather up enough supplies to keep him through the rest of the Sweats, or to help him find another way out. Titus wasn’t certain what that was, but it would come to him once he cleared his head—which again was pounding behind and above his eyes. Rubbing these once more, Titus climbed back into the car and headed west.

  The streets drifted by, and there were few street lamps now that worked, even though not all of the neighborhoods were being subjected to the rolling blackouts. This time of the week it would be the South and southeast. However, the repeated surges of power had damaged the transformers, junction boxes, or lamps. Titus had no idea what it was, but others had been speaking of the damage the blackouts could and were doing to the city’s infrastructure. He never paid much attention to these discussions; because no matter the circumstances, he would not be able to control the blackouts or the outcome of these.

  As a result, tripping through the side streets of districts, some lamps would be illuminated while others were guttering as a candle, and still others were as empty as a ruined eye socket. Trying to choose the streets with the least light, he would often stop and get out to take a closer look at an intersection. Now and then he’d find a hill from which he could take in an entire neighborhood. From these hills, he could plan a route that kept him as far from the Hill as possible but at the same time steered him away from the north end of Makati. Sometimes, unfortunately, he would be required to drift too close to one or the other.

  This was caused by too many lights sometimes, but at others there was a lot of local action, and he needed to keep his distance from the local organizations which had grown up to deal with crime and desperate needs. These self-policing groups were in the process of descending into gangs led by jumped up warlords—mostly modeled on historical figures local to the islands. For the most part, they were ineffectual on more than a street level, but they had, on occasion, caused trouble for the police, the Cartel, and even the Beluga. For Titus, the problem with them now was that he was cut off from the Beluga and didn’t even have the advantage of numbers with Glenna and friends. Normally, when he was away for such an extended period of time alone, he would be much better armed.

  Right now, he had the automatic, four or five clips, and an extra box of ammunition. This would be a deterrent to the less organized and desperate, but if he met up with any organized group with assault weapons or heavy ordinance—which was very unlikely unless he bumbled into a Cartel unit—he could be in for a lot of trouble. For these reasons, Pym skittered away from one lit area to another; why he, also, pulled away from any signs of movement on the streets and neighborhoods he was running through—lights still off.

  Titus, for the first time in a good long while, was seeing the collapse that had been increasing these many long months—now that he was going to be stuck in the city, Pym was taking note of the disintegration with a far keener eye than he had. The houses were often abandoned or boarded up; some, still occupied, were reinforced so they appeared more forts than homes. Streets were occasionally littered by abandoned, stripped, and burnt cars. There were homes and businesses in hardly better condition. These were not just in those areas buttressing the Hill but farther south and west. It was in one of these that Pym had not been paying attention but had allowed his mind to wonder over how he was going to survive in this place—even with the Beluga—that he ran into his first problem.

  Coasting quietly through a neighborhood just south of the Hill and north of Makati, supposedly safe, there were a series of shots from homes that had appeared abandoned. One round took out the back windshield, while another took out the passenger’s window. Several more hit the car from both sides. They had to have seen him coming down from the hill and knew, or hoped, he’d choose this quiet, dark street. He did, and whoever was out there had been ready for him.

  Speeding up, he took the corner as several figures ran out—all were firing wildly and shouting. They had to have been organized better than most, because they’d firearms and the rounds to
waste on a passing car. This meant there might be more—with this in mind, he twisted south to the main road running along the northern frontier of Makati. Pym knew he had to get off this as soon as possible; if he stayed, he would run into a security patrol. Still, he stayed on it for a few more blocks; then hoping he had gotten beyond the territory of the shooters, he turned back north and slipped into the side streets. With each block, he was one step closer to the Beluga; one step closer to finding a safe place where he could figure out what he was going to do next.

  For a moment, Titus considered turning north and toward the Timog apartment. There, however, he would be alone, and how long before the security forces would learn he was there once they learned of Glenna’s death. Soon that place would be little more than a death trap. Knowing he could not return to the place, he made a mental inventory of what was there. Nothing he could not leave behind, and little enough that could connect him to the place. He could think of nothing that connected him by name to Timog. Still, once the security forces began to look into the place, they would interview everyone there, and sooner or later someone would have a description they could share.

  How would this affect him if there was no name to go with it? Security would have to match a description to the man, and that would be impossible once he was buried in the West. There were descriptions of him out there now, but these were vague because he had such a general appearance. What worked against him was that he was foreign and a northerner. That part of the description would stick out like a sore thumb, which meant they would know who he was and where he could be found—or make a good guess about this. Guessing was proof, and proof from the security forces would not play well with Synon and Bannly. Nor, he supposed, with Lander—though he would be taking a good, long, hard look at them once the information came to light.