Anarchaos

XIII

Violent pain in my right hand shocked me awake. I sat up, yelling, into dusty red semi-darkness, a powerful stink, a dirt floor, and a scrawny youth with the third finger of my right hand in his mouth. He hadn’t been able to get Gar’s ring off me any other way, so he’d decided to bite my finger off entirely and take it with him.

I hit him, reflexively, and he fell back, more surprised than hurt, but immediately leaped at me again, his hands going for my throat. The two of us scuffled in the dust.

There was sudden surprised movement in the darkness around us, and a man’s amused shout: “Hey, Alfie! This one’s alive!” And then laughter from the same voice, and, “Hold him, little one! Don’t let him get away!”

But he did let me get away. I flung him off, and scrambled across the floor till I hit a dirt wall. I rolled onto my back — my body was an anthology of pains, too numerous to separate into individual aches — and saw the youth leaping for me again, his eyes wide, his face rigid with terror and determination. I kicked him away with both feet and clawed in my pockets for my weapons.

They were still there! The youth and his friends must have been sure I was dead, so they hadn’t bothered to disarm me before going for my ring. I pulled the pistol from my pocket and fired it into the youth’s face as he came leaping at me yet again. He died in mid-air and crumpled into my lap.

There was a yelp from across the room, and shouting: “He’s got a gun! Alfie, he’s got a gun!” It was the same voice as before, but no longer amused.

I looked toward the sound, and saw a tall rectangle of rusty light where the steps led up to the street. A bulky figure abruptly dashed into that rectangle, bent on escape: my shouter.

I fired at him and he yelped like a stray dog hit with a stone. He ran into the wall beside the door, half-turned, and sprawled backwards onto the ground, yelping all the while. He lay there on his back, making a lot of noise and waving his arms around. He looked like a turtle flipped over onto its shell.

The dead youth was bleeding in my lap. I pushed him away and took stock of myself, trying to organize my thoughts and understand what had happened.

The finger that had been bitten was bleeding a little, but unless infection set in it shouldn’t be anything to worry about. There was an abrasion on my forehead that stung to the touch, probably the result of my fall down the steps. The other aches and scrapes on my arms and legs were either from the same fall or from the scuffle with the youth.

But these were minor. The pain that drew my attention was in the middle of my back, between my shoulderblades, a wearying ache, a pressure on my back that dulled my movements and hampered my breathing. It was, so far as I knew, the result of a gunshot wound that should have killed me.

I didn’t entirely have my wits about me yet, and was stupid enough to look at my chest to see if the bullet had passed all the way through and come out the other side, but of course it hadn’t. I was afraid to touch that spot behind me, both because it hurt more when I reached back there and because of what I might find, but it had to be done, and so very cautiously I put my left hand behind my back, and slid it up toward the ache, and felt the crumpled remains of my sheathed knife, still in what was left of the sheath.

That was why I was alive. The bullet had hit the knife, and so hadn’t penetrated my back. But the knife had curled like the edges of a piece of paper at the impact, making sharp creases on the inner side, against my skin, and the force of the bullet had driven those creases into the flesh, cutting a random design into my back as though I’d been engraved. Or branded.

That whole area was bruised and battered, the flesh sensitive to the touch, the back of my shirt sticky with blood. From the pressure I felt when I breathed it seemed to me I might have broken a rib or two besides. If I wasn’t careful how I moved, I was liable to puncture a lung.

Across the way, the turtle shape had begun to slacken, the arm and leg movements getting feebler, the yelps softer, but all at once he screamed, “Alfie! Alfie, come get me!”

We both waited. Nothing happened. The turtle shape began to groan, loud, windy, melodramatic sighs.

I began very cautiously to move, turning over at first onto my hands and knees, then moving my hands up onto the wall in front of me and slowly easing myself up the wall till I was on my feet. Then I tucked the pistol away in my pocket, undid the thong of the sheath around my neck, and carefully removed the knife that had saved me, slipping it up from inside my shirt. Moving it that way made quick stinging pains in my back, but I ignored them and looked instead in the dim red light at the knife.

It was a crumpled mess. The side of the sheath that had been against my back was cut and full of blood, and the other side had been almost completely sheared away by the bullet. The crater of the bullet’s impact was there in the knife, plus a long groove where it had deflected and scratched its way up as far as the hilt. The lip of the hilt was bent back where the scratch met it, but from that point bullet and knife had parted company.

I tossed the knife away and looked around, for the first time paying real attention to the room itself. It was sparsely furnished with a cot against one wall, a few ramshackle chairs, a battered trunk, a homemade table. Floor and walls were dirt. There were no decorations of any kind. Oh, brave new world!

There was a thin blanket on the cot. I took it and ripped off several strips, six inches wide, and wrapped two of the strips tightly around my chest, relieving the feeling of pressure and giving some support to my ribs. I thought I could dare to move more freely now.

Lastus lay on his side near the steps, not far from where the groaner lay on his back and made his noises. I went over and checked Lastus and he was dead, as I’d known he must be, his eyes wide open and full of surprise. I searched him, and then searched the room, and found nothing of interest.

The dead youth was dressed in rags so filthy I hardly searched his body at all. I hadn’t expected to find anything noteworthy on him and I didn’t.

I went over and squatted down beside the groaner and slapped his face, saying, “Shut up and listen to me.”

He blinked several times, very rapidly, and stared at me in astonishment. I believe he’d forgotten about me. When he remembered, he shouted, “You killed my boy!” He waved his arms as though he wanted to get at me.

I took out the can of blinding gas and showed it to him and said, “Do you see what this is?”

He just kept waving his arms and glaring at me.

I slapped him again, to attract his attention. “I asked you, do you see what this is I’m holding in my hand?”

“I see it, you rotten thing. I know what it is.”

“It will be the last thing you see,” I told him, “if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”

“Rotter.”

“It’s a bad life in a place like this for a blind man,” I said.

He understood me now. He blinked up at me; I saw him get frightened, and I knew when he was ready to listen to me.

I said, “You people didn’t do the shooting, you don’t have guns. You came down afterwards, to pick the bodies.”

“Why not?” he cried. “Somebody would.”

“It’s a fine system you’ve got,” I said. “You saw who did do the shooting, though.”

He shook his head emphatically. “It was all over when we got there!”

I tapped his nose gently with the can. “Be careful,” I said. “Don’t tell foolish lies.”

“It was all over!”

“No,” I said.

“Why not? Why not?”

“One, you wouldn’t have known there were bodies down here to be picked if you hadn’t seen them drop. Two, if you’d come along later you would have been too late because some other scavengers would have beaten you to it.” I tapped him with the can again. “You’re not very good at lying,” I said. “Better not try it any more, you’ll just make me impatient.”

“I didn’t know them,” he said.

“Which means you did know them. Who were they?”

“I swear—”

I hit him a little harder. “Don’t waste my time.”

“I’ll tell you what I know!” he shouted. “There were two of them. They came out and shot you.”

“Came out? Came out of where?”

“A place across the street, a house over there.”

“Is that where they live?”

“No. Nobody’s lived there for a long while.”

“They’re both men?”

“Oh, yes.”

“They were already here, eh? Waiting for me. What did they do afterwards, go back into the house?”

“No. They took your car and drove away.”

“Did they come down here?”

“No.”

“What are their names?”

“I don’t know,” he said stubbornly.

I started to hit him, then changed my mind. I said, reasonably, “What are they to you? Why protect them? Why get blinded instead of giving me a chance to get near them again? Maybe they’ll kill me after all.”

“They will,” he said. “If you go after them they’ll finish the job on you. I’ll do them a favor, telling you.”

“That’s the way to think.”

“Malik and Rose,” he said.

I repeated the names, and said, “That’s all the names they have?”

“That’s all I know.”

“Rose is a man?”

“Of course.” He seemed surprised at the question.

“What do they look like?”

“Big, like you. Young, like Alfie, or like you. They shave their heads to keep the bugs away.”

“Where do I find them?”

“I don’t know. If I knew I’d tell you, because then you’d go there and they’d kill you, like you killed my boy.”

He was telling the truth. I got to my feet and put the can away and said, “Goodbye.”

He cursed.

I went to the steps, my pistol again in my hand, and went up them cautiously, pausing midway to let my eyes re-accustom themselves to the glare of daylight. I was stopped with my body still completely within the lean-to, my head at about street level. Looking out, the narrow strip of outside world I could see looked unnaturally empty and motionless, like the remains of lost colonies on the fic-films. Across the way was the corrugated metal shack which must be the “house” my assassins had been waiting in.

The stillness and emptiness continued unbroken as I stood watching. The only sound was the heavy breathing of the wounded man down behind me. Of Alfie, to whom the wounded man had kept calling for help, there was no sign.

Yet I remained cautious. I crept out of that hole like a gopher in a desert of carnivores, moving one slow careful step at a time.

No one. I stood at last in the entranceway, one step down from ground level, peering this way and that, and still I saw no sign of life. The sound of shooting must have driven the locals into their own holes; here, curiosity was anti-survival.

I purposely made a noise, clinking the pistol against the spray can in my pocket, but nothing happened. I lifted one foot, slid it out onto the ground, waited. Nothing. I shifted my weight forward. I raised the other foot, brought it up beside the first.

The sun went out.

Confusion. Darkness. Stench. Coarse cloth scraping my face and neck. Soft heavy weights dropping on my shoulders and back, bending me, driving me to the ground.

I roared in rage and fright, but the noise was muffled even in my own ears. My arms were imprisoned, held against my sides. The pistol in my hand was useless and worse than useless. If it went off, I would be shooting myself in the leg.

I staggered, staggered, and toppled over. Out of my bewilderment came sprays of understanding.

The lean-to. Alfie — and others — had been atop it, atop it, waiting for me with a blanket in their hands. When I emerged the blanket was dropped on my head, and Alfie — and at least one other, there was more than one here — had jumped down on me, grappling me, knocking me off my feet.

Still I struggled, until someone kicked me on the side of the head. In the darkness inside the blanket I saw pinwheels of light, felt my awareness fading, tried to duck my head away, keep my consciousness, regain control.

I ducked into the path of the second kick.