by Dave Swavely
“Christian and his friend,” she said softly, and was choking up already. “They’ve seen the Celestial City, but to get there they have to pass through a river. And there is no boat, and I guess they can’t swim too well, because they ask the Shining Ones, ‘How do we get across these waters?’
“‘You have to walk through them!’” She said this with a low growl, which she imagined to be the way an angel would talk. “And when the pilgrims ask if they were deep or shallow, the Shining Ones say, ‘They are deep or shallow, depending on your faith!’ So they start through the river, and sure enough, one of them starts to sink—I can’t tell which one—because he didn’t believe very much. But the other one says, ‘Remember the promises that the king made!’ That’s the king of the city where they were headed, of course.”
Angelee stopped to look toward the door into the other room, because her voice had grown louder.
“Well,” she continued quietly, “when the man who was sinking remembered the king’s promises, when he had faith instead of so much fear, he found that his feet touched the bottom of the river, and he could walk across! It got more shallow, because he believed now, you see?” She stopped again, this time to see if her son was really asleep, or just keeping his eyes closed. It looked like he was out cold, but she continued anyway, for her own sake. She had difficulty getting the words out, because she was straining to hold back tears.
“By the time they got to the other side of the river, their old clothes were gone and they had new ones. Really nice new clothes.” She looked down at hers, then closed her eyes and imagined herself dressed like an angel, in shining white. But when he opened them, she still wore the slinky dress that Simon had given her.
She kissed Chris, looked up at the cracked ceiling, and did something she hadn’t done since her husband died. She had prayed many times with her little boy, but that was more out of a sense of obligation to his father. It seemed ironic that this would be her first time praying on her own, because she thought it would also likely be her last, especially when she heard the door open in the other room and Simon say, “Lady Lee … c’mon out here.”
She wiped the wetness from her eyes, stood up and went through the door, which she closed firmly behind her. Then she turned to face Simon and a much fatter man, who was wearing a coat and tie.
“You two kids have fun,” Simon said with a smile that was now more nervous than mischievous. “I’ll be outside.” Then he left the room.
The fat man didn’t waste any time or words. He moved closer to Angelee and pulled out a small but very sharp knife, which he used to saw through the front of his belt and waistbands so that his pants fell to the floor. Then he held the knife ready and lurched toward her. Whether in her traumatized mind or in reality, she wasn’t sure which, she saw saliva dripping from his mouth.
As she closed her eyes and felt the cold steel of the knife on her skin, under the strap of her dress, she suddenly heard the lock open on the door to the outside. She opened her eyes, and then was really not sure about what she saw …
Simon stumbled into the room through the door, having been pushed from behind. Half of the pimp’s gun was in his hand, but the other half was stuffed into his mouth, painfully straining his lips and cheeks. Another man stepped in right behind him, and this one had a very intact gun in his hand, a wicked-looking thing with two barrels.
The fat man wheeled around and put his hands up, dropping the knife on the floor.
Angelee instinctively moved away from her molester to one side of the room, and it was only then that the shock lifted and she recognized the new person. He was the beautiful rich man who had visited her at the shelter a month before. Her body shuddered—this was all too much for her to take—and she staggered back against the table behind her.
The man with the gun waved it toward the door just once, and the fat john immediately scrambled to gather himself and waddled out of the door faster than one would think he could move. Then the handsome angel pushed Simon’s neck down with his free hand and held the gun to his head with the other. He pointed the pimp in the direction of Angelee and told him to apologize to her.
Simon couldn’t speak with the gun in his mouth, of course, but he forced out something that sounded like he was trying to say “Sorry.” So the man lifted his head back up and spun him around.
“Does your mouth hurt?” he asked. Simon nodded furiously. The man said, “Good,” and pistol-whipped him right across that part of his face. The half-gun stayed inside his bloody mouth as he fell to the floor, groaning in agony. “Now it’s worse.”
Despite her resentment toward Simon, Angelee cringed and recoiled at the violence, because she wasn’t used to it. But that reaction quickly faded when the man moved close to her and tenderly grasped her arm.
“Angie,” he said, and she didn’t correct him. “I am so sorry I didn’t come sooner, but I need your help. Please get your boy and your things and come with me.”
He’s asking me for help? She couldn’t believe it.
“Are you okay?” he asked, when she didn’t move or speak.
She nodded, then practically skipped past Simon’s sprawled form and into Chris’s room.
* * *
As soon as they were safely in the man’s car and moving north across Napa City, Angelee began sobbing uncontrollably. She alternated between tears of trauma and tears of joy, but it must have seemed all bad to her savior, because he was visibly worried about her and obviously searching for something to say. Chris, on the other hand, rested quietly on her lap, being used to his mother crying, especially in the last month or so.
“Do you not want to help me?” he asked. “I won’t make you.”
This gave her the motivation to gain some control of her emotions, because there seemed to be an implication that he might leave her somewhere if his plans didn’t work out.
“Your boss could come looking for you, though,” he added before she could respond. “So it would be good for you to disappear with me for a while, until he moves on with his life and forgets about you.” She wondered briefly if he had let Simon live for this reason, so she would be inclined to accept his offer. But she didn’t care if he was manipulating her, because all she wanted to do was please him and be with him. Besides, she knew that Simon was too much of a coward to take the chance of tangling with this kind of man again.
“Disappear?” she asked, wiping at her face.
“Yes. I know this will sound odd, but I’m going to a place for a few weeks where no one will know, and I can’t leave there and risk being seen. So I need someone to stay with me there, who can go out to get food and other things I might need. We might need.”
Angelee’s body shuddered again, and she felt light-headed.
“It’s only for a few weeks,” he said, misreading her reaction. “And it’s a very nice place, nicer than you’ve probably ever seen.” As soon as he said that, he cringed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. Please don’t be offended.”
“No” was all she could get out, feeling like she might faint.
“It has a pool, and everything else,” he continued. “Your son will like it there. And remember your boss…”
“No,” she said again. “I’m not offended.”
“Good. So you’ll help me? You know, I feel like this is all meant to be, somehow.”
She overcame her hesitation to look his way, and moved her eyes more than her head, so she could stare at him. As she drank in the sight, she started to feel faint again, so she looked away. I can’t believe this is happening to me ran like a loop through her mind.
“What’s your son’s name again?” he asked.
“Chris,” she said.
“How old is he?”
“Four,” she said, then blurted out, “My husband died.”
“I know. That’s why I came to visit you at the shelter, remember? He worked for me.”
“Right, I’m sorry. I’m a little out of it right now.” The reference
to the shelter made her think of Mariah, and the agreement they had. “How did you find me this time?”
“I went to the shelter asking for you, and a lady there told me what you were doing and where.”
“Was she big and black?” she asked, and he said yes. “She was the friend who got me the job with Simon.”
“With friends like that, who needs an enema?” he said, laughing.
“Well, at least she kept our deal,” Angelee said. “I went to work for Simon, she got some cash, and she promised to watch if you came back.”
“Hmmm,” he said, smiling warmly. “I guess there is honor among thieves.”
He was not only her savior, and one of the best-looking men she had ever met, but he was able to put her completely at ease, too. He even reached out to her son …
“Chris, do you like to swim … in a pool?”
“I can’t swim by myself yet,” the little boy said sheepishly.
“Yes, he loves it,” Angelee said. “But we haven’t done it very much.”
The man wore the same apologetic look as before, realizing that they were too poor to enjoy a pool very often, and there were probably not many in the urban sprawl of Napa City.
“What’s your name?” she asked, feeling comfortable enough now to do so.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I never told you? It’s Michael Ares.”
“That’s what I thought, but I wasn’t sure. Some of the people at the shelter said it, but I never know whether to believe what they say.”
“You didn’t look me up on the net?” he asked.
“No,” she said, and then hesitated, feeling embarrassed about what she was about to say, and fearful that he would dislike it. But she was nothing if not honest. “We try not to use the net. My husband had to at work, of course, but our church didn’t believe in going on there for entertainment, or even to learn things.”
“So you don’t know who I am?” he asked incredulously, and when she said no, he shook his head and said mostly to himself, “This couldn’t have worked out better.”
Angelee didn’t know what he meant by that, but she knew what it meant to her. God was back in her life, and He had not only sent her a savior, but hopefully a new lover, too. And she wanted to thank him for saving her, in any and every way she could.
17
FIRED AND HIRED
Stephenson and another Gotham Security agent, who was also tech savvy, transferred quickly to the backseat of one of the converted taxis. They called up the access to the two other ones on the scene, and placed their hands and feet on the virtual steering wheels and gas pedals that appeared from the holo projectors. Then, by remote control, they sent the two empty cars screeching into the underground parking garage as their diversion maneuver.
As he watched them go and made his way with the other three agents toward the elevators inside the garage entrance, Korcz couldn’t help but think about the dream his partner had shown him earlier. According to Stephenson and the precognition software at Dreamscape, both of them were destined to die in a fiery explosion in one of the taxis, but that was clearly not going to happen right now. One or both of those cars might end up being blown up by the armed criminals coming out of the hidden drug lab three stories down, but they were empty, and Korcz himself would be on foot in another part of the facility. All of which confirmed his skepticism about Stephenson’s dream theories.
But he didn’t have any time to think about it more, because he and one of the men had reached their destination, and the other two had rushed into the stairway nearby.
“At the elevator,” he said into his comm.
“Okay, we have control of it,” Arvit said from back at the base. His boss must have had a tech with her, because Korcz knew she wasn’t skilled enough herself to do things like that. “Have fun, and remember we want Tyra Ponchinello alive.”
Korcz watched as the door slid open and the elevator moved down, stopping just low enough that he and his partner could step onto its top. As they rode downward for three floors, the other agents on the stairs encountered some of the Black Italians trying to leave that way, and engaged them with grenades and gunfire, killing some and forcing the rest back toward the room that was serving as the lab where they made and stored the drug called Money. The criminals were effectively trapped now, not even trying to use the exit on the third level of the garage, because Stephenson’s two empty cars had arrived outside it, their sirens blazing and windows tinted to preserve the illusion.
When the elevator reached the lab, Arvit sent it past the door, and stopped it when its top was about four feet lower than the bottom of the door. Korcz pulled out something that looked like a black curtain rod, stretched it out so it reached from one bottom corner of the doorway to the other, and pulled the thin film off the adhesive on its bottom. Then he positioned it across the bottom of the doorway and pressed it down till it held fast. When he turned it on, a crackling transparent wall of energy filled the doorway behind the closed elevator door.
This contraption was commonly called an OWCH. Korcz knew that it stood for “one-way” something, but he didn’t know the fancy words that the other two letters represented. He knew that he was glad for it, however, because when Arvit opened the elevator door everything within a few feet of the doorway was now suddenly pushed back, including some boxes, a chair, and two men who were standing near it. Most projectiles would not penetrate the field, or at least would be slowed and diverted by it. And most importantly it would repel any grenades, which were the biggest threat to them in their current position. But the “one-way” of the OWCH was the most helpful part—unlike their opponents, Korcz and his partner were able to shoot through it unobstructed. And they had to start doing that right away, because the noise of the field and the sirens outside in the garage prevented them from telling the criminals to put down their weapons. It didn’t matter anyway, because the mob men were shooting at them before the door was even completely open.
The OWCH gave the yellow-armored Gotham agents a major tactical advantage, providing cover for most of their bodies. So they made short work of most of the criminals who were visible to them, with the exception of the mob boss’s daughter, who was crouching on the right side of the room, not too far from them. Perhaps she knew that they were told not to shoot her, because she didn’t seek cover on the other side of boxes or tables. Or maybe she knew that the other Gotham agents would be coming through the door to the stairway soon, and there wouldn’t be a safe angle for hiding.
The agents on the stairs hadn’t fought their way through to the room yet, so some of the armed criminals were well covered for now, even by small obstructions, because Korcz and his partner were basically firing from the floor. When Korcz figured this out, he told Arvit to raise the elevator under him, and when she did, a few more of the crouching enemies suddenly became visible, much to their surprise. Then they would never be surprised by anything again, as the caseless hollow points from the agents’ rifles rained down on them.
Just as Korcz was deciding whether to have the elevator lowered again, because of the greater exposure and risk of a bullet getting through the field, one of the thugs in the room threw a golfball-sized grenade at the elevator, obviously not knowing how the OWCH worked. Korcz yelled some profane words ending in “You idiot!” and at the same time Tyra Ponchinello said some other profane words ending in “idiot!” The similarity of their reactions was so uncanny that they actually looked at each other for a second until the grenade, which had bounced off the force field, exploded with a deafening concussion that killed or immobilized half of the resistance left in the room.
Tyra was among the immobilized, and Korcz immediately felt responsible for her, because of his orders but also because he felt like he may have delayed her from diving away when their eyes locked. It wasn’t really his fault, but he was moved to help her nonetheless. So when he saw the other two Gotham agents coming through the stairway door, he told Arvit to lower the elevator, turned off the OWCH, and
stepped through the elevator doorway toward the wounded woman. His partner looked nervously at him, then back to the room, tensing at the increased danger they were in without the barrier. But he didn’t know the half of it yet.
Korcz strafed the rest of the room as he moved to Tyra’s side, then stooped to check her out, leaving the other three armored men to mop up the resistance. She was bleeding, but not profusely, so he was hopeful that no artery or major organ had been hit by the shrapnel. He was even more hopeful when he heard the firing cease and one of his fellow agents yell, “Clear!” But that hope faded fast when the same man called him over with a panicked voice and showed him the explosives that were rigged to blow in less than three minutes, according to the timer that was counting down.
“Can you or anyone else in here turn it off?” he asked, returning fast to Tyra’s side.
“No,” she croaked. He thought this was strange, but he didn’t have time to confirm it by torturing someone. So he just said, “Neither can we, danyet?” in the direction of the other agents and his comm link. The other men in the room all shook their heads, and Arvit’s voice soon confirmed their dilemma:
“We have a bomb man here who was ready,” she said hurriedly, “but he says three minutes is not long enough to talk you through it over the comm. Damn! How did they get the jump on us?”
Before she even finished talking, Korcz had lifted Tyra to her feet and sent the other three agents into the stairway ahead of him. He made the five unarmed criminals who were still alive stay behind him, however, as he started to help the wounded woman up the steps. They were visibly nervous and resentful about the slow progress, but Korcz figured if he was going to die, they should too. For all he knew, one of them might have triggered the explosives.
After about a floor’s worth of steps, he realized the assault rifle was inhibiting him from moving Tyra fast enough, and he began to worry about the criminals jumping him so they could get out faster. So he made one of them help her, and moved backward behind them so he could cover the others. It was amazing how fast a lab worker could move two bodies when a bomb was about to go off.