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Everyone but Delon gives me a yes.
“You have something to say, Paul?”
He looks at his feet.
“I didn’t know about this. I’m not good with heights.”
Beautiful. So Norris Quay is afraid of heights. What an exciting piece of trivia. You’d think fucking Atticus would fix something like that when he made his windup clones. Maybe crossing the Grand Canyon bareback never came up before.
“We’re all going. That means you too.”
“I’m not sure I can.”
“We’re going to need the map in your head when we get across. That means if I have to tie your arms and legs and kick you across like a soccer ball, you’re going.”>I move the beam of my small LED flashlight over the empty storefronts as we move beyond the food court. They look ancient. Like caves for Neanderthals. This is the part of town the Flintstones don’t come to after dark.
Sofa cushions lashed together are makeshift beds for whoever lived there. Pits for cook fires are gouged out of the linoleum floors. Gray piles of ash dumped outside the folding-glass doors.
Scuffling sounds and a whisper come from a derelict high-end stereo store. Something glitters inside. Eyes. I look around at the other stores. Lots more eyes in there. I pull the Colt and cock the hammer, holding it up so everyone can see.
“Sit back and watch the show, folks. Do nothing more.”
We walk for over an hour, sticking to shadows when we can. We only move out into the open when there’s no other way around piles of rubble. I don’t know about anyone else, but I can hear footsteps keeping pace with us one or two floors up. I walk closer to Hattie.
“Friends?”
She shakes her head.
“No one to be worried about. A mongrel Lurker pack. Bunch of softies. We’ve put them in their place before.”
Diogo and some of the other boys throw stones up into the dark. They bounce off the walls and shatter already broken windows. You can tell from the sound that they never hit whoever’s following us.
One of Hattie’s other sons, a tall boy she called Doolittle, drops his pants and moons the upper floors. A second later, a stone flies down from the dark and hits him in the ass. He screams and curses. Hattie cuffs him on the ear.
“That’s what you get when you act a fool.”
Up ahead comes the unmistakable sound of skin slamming into skin. Boots colliding with something soft. Heavy, short breaths. Three gulping air hard. One grunting and coughing as each kick threatens to collapse bruised lungs. I run toward the sound.
The three on their feet look like extra-hard-luck street people. Layers of filthy coats and patched pants give them the look of bears in wino costumes. Whoever is on the floor is trying to fight back, throwing kicks and punches, but from that angle they don’t have enough power to make the grizzlies back off.
Still running, I kick the closest one in the small of the back and he goes down on his face, teeth or something else important clattering across the tile floor. The one on my right swings a wedge of scalpel-sharp glass mounted on the end of a chair leg. I punch him in the throat, take the homemade hatchet, and slam the wooden grip into his knees, knocking him off his feet. The last of the guys is smaller than the other two. He has a butcher knife, and by the way he moves, it looks like he knows how to use it. I point the Colt between his eyes.
“Put it on the ground.”
He does it.
“Now scoot before I get a finger cramp and this thing goes off.”
He backs away slowly until he’s out of the light. I hear someone running away and put the gun back in my pocket.
Whoever was taking the beating is still on the floor, but at least his eyes are open. He’s skinny. Young-looking and small. Not much bigger than a kid. He’s dressed from head to toe in dirty, loose gray clothes that look like heavy pajamas.
“You okay?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“I don’t think they’ll be back for a while. You can get up.”
The kid struggles to his feet, holding his left elbow tight to his side. His face is bruised and bloody, his upper lip swollen.
