From: bb316@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Alex Anderson)
Subject: REPOST: Squirmings of a Myopic Roach
Date: Sun, 4 Dec 1994 18:56:29 GMT



                The Squirmings of a Myopic Roach

                        By Alex Anderson
                       Copyright (C) 1994

     He knew his life was over when the terminal blew up in his
face.
     He saw the Horseman; His baleful stare, the scythe glinting in
ethereal light, the pounding hooves an inexorable thunder across
the Earth.
     He could actually see Death in the chemical smoke pouring from
the tortured guts of his terminal.
     But the Reaper's touch hadn't claimed him.
     Not yet.
     In his chest his heart still beat; his lungs continued to draw
the stale air of his flat; the electrical synapses continued to
fire in his brain, carrying commands and information as and when
they were supposed to. Indeed much faster than they were supposed
to as the particular synapse carrying "You fuckhead! You've really
done it now" fired, quickly followed by the synapse suggesting
panic as the next appropriate action.
     Blood hammered through his veins and the hair on the back of
his neck stood on end.
     The cessation of these things was a mere impending formality.
In the not too distant future those things that said 'I am alive'
so eloquently would stop as the meat vessel carrying them became
too damaged to support them.
     It was his own fault. Suicide. As surely as if he put the gun
in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He could taste the barrel.
     Oh Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
     He didn't have to be dead. If he'd stopped to think about what
he was doing for only a second before he did it he would have
realized he was in way over his head. He might've even had time to
stop before it was too late.
     But he hadn't and now it was.
     Panic welled up in his throat like vomit, escaping in a whiney
giggle. It was funny; his predicament; in that cosmic, God-smiting-
the-proud type of funny.
     Just like a damned Sunday School Bible story.
     Imagine someone who makes his living, buys his groceries and
gets all his entertainment; someone who literally lives his life
through an interface failing to believe that what happens on the
WeB is real. Real action followed by real reaction.
     Or, in this case, real action followed by real consequences.
     By allowing pride and curiosity to drive him he'd fallen into
a well of false security fuelled by the absence of immediate
danger.
     Now that it was too late to do anything about it he'd woken up
to the realization that he was dead meat. His rank sweat felt like
cold water dashed in his face.
     They were probably already zeroing on his shabby bachelor
apartment. On their way to slab him.
     A sob rose in his throat, trying to spew out after the giggle.
It lay there unvented like a blood clot. He was too scared even to
cry.
     He looked around at the little flat that had been his shell
for nearly three years. At the lush green of the plants he played
Mozart for; at the frayed baby quilt he'd owned since childhood; at
the futon with the rumpled sheets he'd ordered when he moved in
here from his parents' home.
     He was anything but a neat freak.
     Candy bar wrappers littered the counter in the small
kitchenette and hundreds of multicolored data chips lay on every
available surface.
     The interface terminal still oozed acrid chemical fumes from
the overload caused by IMAGE Corp's countermeasures sec-system.
     A droplet of cold sweat crawled down his back setting off
nerves and making his spine tingle. He jerked out of his chair;
muscles tense and heart pounding.
     What...? Where...? How...?
     They'd be here any minute to finish the job they'd started on
his interface terminal. He had to get out; get away from here
before they came for him.
     He started for the door before the thought finished its
panicked percolation through his brain.
     Wait!
     If he left like this he was dead as sure as if he waited here
for the hit team to show up. He wore only a pair of boxer shorts
and a t-shirt.
     He turned and ran to a cramped closet. Clothes were strewn on
the floor and hung haphazardly on hangars. He didn't have many
clothes. He almost never went out, and hardly ever saw anyone from
the neck down so he didn't need them.
     He fished out a pair of jeans and a jacket and pulled them on.
Then a pair of running shoes and a nylon knapsack.
     Into the knapsack went half a dozen candy bars from the
kitchenette, a portable WeB interface, his most valuable remaining
possession, and the small roll of cash he kept for drug money.
     He ignored the small bag of dermal patches. He used drugs
because he liked to, not because he had to, and another of those
cool, calm synapses told him getting stoned wasn't going to extend
his life span.
     He didn't have any weapons per se, but tossed a couple of
steak knives in the bag too, despite the fact that he didn't have
the slightest idea what to do with one if it came to it.
     Then he took a red data chip from the still smouldering
terminal, put it in a case with two others, and tossed the case in
the bag. A primordial, instinct-driven part of his brain told him
that was the most important item to his survival.
     A sudden wave of fear washed over him.
     He'd taken too long. He had to get out now.
     He felt the panic start to rise in him again, a many headed
chimaera, eating away at the foundations of his sanity.
     They had to be here by now.
     He didn't close the door on his way out.
     He bypassed the elevator and hit the fire escape door at a
run, absorbing the shock through his shoulders. He didn't notice
the thick, dank smell of urine. Two floors and four flights of
stairs later he blasted through a fire escape door. He was on the
street and running.
     He squinted in the blinding glare of sunlight he hadn't seen
more than five times in three years, and breathed in the noxious
odours of Rochester. His UV shield and breathing filter lay
forgotten in the bottom of a dusty drawer in his abandoned flat. He
wasn't going back for them now.
     He didn't think about direction, or destination, just
distance.

     The Reaper arrived six minutes too late.
     Gonzo Gonzales knew it when he saw the apartment door standing
half open. His quarry was gone.
     Shit!
     The fire escape door opened admitting two people. The first
one barely recognizable as female, the other barely recognizable as
human.
     His colleagues. He'd not so affectionately dubbed them the
Grog Twins.
     Subbie freaks.
     He stood six-seven and had to weigh close to 175 kilos, all of
it iron-hard muscle and reinforced skeletal structure. She was five
inches shorter and maybe 50 kilos lighter than her creche brother.
They were both as ugly as genetic engineering could make them.
     Gonzales used hand signals to pass instructions to his team,
just in case, then drew his pistol and flicked the safety off. The
Twins did likewise and the male exploded through the door, while
the female covered him.
     He sighed. This shit was getting real old.
     As expected the place was abandoned, but not necessarily
empty. He sent the Twins down to the ground floor to make sure
Target wasn't still in the vicinity. Sometimes they did that. Ran
but not far enough, or long enough.
     In the long term it was all academic of course. No one could
run that far or that long. But it sure did save time when they
screwed up early.
     Target's name was Michael Thomas Rushton, Gonzales learned
from printout mail. A letter from Mom. He'd check her out. At least
half of them went home seeking the illusion of security.
     Home wasn't safe for anyone. Not even Mom.
     Target was 21 years old. Target had light brown hair. The DNA
in the hair Gonzales picked out of a hairbrush in the bathroom
would give full genetic breakdown and would match-up to Rushton's
medical records, giving Gonzo his full history.
     Target was a green freak. There were at least a dozen ferns,
flowers and philo-things cluttering up the place.
     Judging by his wardrobe Target was anorexically thin, despite
lousy eating habits. And, from the lack of any appropriate clothing
or equipment, he was physically inactive.
     Target was a Gopher. A member of that subculture that sprouted
around the WeB. People that made their living looking for
information for other people who were too lazy to do it themselves.

     Target was single. Target had shitty taste in music.
     Target had about 90 minutes to live, figured Gonzo. He had
enough here to nail him down tight and fast.
     He grabbed all the data chips he could find and put them in a
plastic bag. It might be that Object was among them. It would take
several hours to find out and it didn't really matter. Not as far
as Target was concerned.

     He was in a park about two miles from his apartment. He'd run
almost non-stop and his lungs were killing him.
     He'd come here to play as a kid. The grass had a yellow tinge
from UV, and the air hurt his lungs, making his already laboured
breathing asthmatic.
     The people he passed, all wearing respirators and UV shields,
gave him looks that said, "you're an idiot. You're going to die".
They didn't know the half of it.
     He sat in the shade of a tree, trying to rest and get his
breathing under control. "P.F. + E.N. 4-ever" was carved into the
tree trunk right above "Fuk the pigs " and next to an anarchy
symbol.
     He had to think.
     He needed to get out of the open, into a closed environment
with an airscrubber. He also needed to pick up a filter and a
shield.
     That would be easy. Most convenience stores carried cheap
versions of both those things. But what then? Where could he go? He
couldn't go to his parents. They had to know where his parents
lived by now and have it staked out. Where could he go?
     Rushton made his living, such that it was, on the WeB.
     On the WeB he was the Miner; a skilled, professional Gopher
who could find just about any piece of information, regardless of
how obscure or closely guarded.
     That's not to say he was an industrial spy. He didn't have the
stomach for espionage. Nor the stupidity. At least not usually. But
he did have the ability.
     He dialed in every day and surfed the breaks looking for
requests for assistance with some information problem or other. He
answered these requests, offering his unique skills to locate the
required data on the nebulous, anarchic World Band network.
     They'd tried, in the past, to enforce some kind of
organization on the WeB. But it never took. The WeB was too big.
And too many people survived the way Rushton did to allow that kind
of system to pass unmolested. If the WeB was easy to surf then
anybody could do what they wanted on it and there was no need for
the likes of the Miner.
     Sometimes it was corporate execs looking for stats on gum
producing trees in Southeast Asia and other days it was grad
students needing help on overdue research projects. He always got
paid, and it was never dangerous.
     Until now.
     It was a basic call he'd seen that morning, nothing mysterious
or threatening. Somebody wanted a batch of files located in a
corporate database, and posted to a generic address.
     Normally that would be impossible, there was no way Rushton
was going to burn a corporate d-base, even if he could, it would be
worth his life to do so. But the client had the access codes for
the databatch.
     If he had the codes then he was entitled to the data. He was
probably a highly placed employee and had to have passed security
clearance.
     Rushton had checked the return address. Sure enough it was a
corporate address.
     It was all legal.
     Then why did his workstation get fried, and why was he on the
run for his life?
     More to the point, why did he download a copy of the batch. He
didn't have to do that. It wasn't part of the contract. All he had
to do was copy it from A to B. Maybe there was some sort of secsys
on the batch so the code he'd been given would allow him to
complete his contract, but still protect the data. That made sense.
     So why did he try to steal it?
     Because I'm an idiot, that's why. Besides I didn't try to
steal it. I did steal it. How many people could do that?
     That thought brought some small comfort to his ego. He was one
of the best all right. But soon he was going to be one of the dead
best.
     He never considered the possibility he might be over reacting.
That it might be perfectly safe to go home. They torched his
interface. They had to want to do the same to him. Home was a
deathtrap.
     All he had was the chips. Somehow he had to find a way to use
them to keep him alive. But how? That depended entirely on what was
on them.
     Idiot! He railed at himself. How could you get yourself into
this? Everything was fine before. No one knew who you were. No one
bothered you. Was that so bad?

     The house was small. A typical adobe for the people who lived
in it, thought Gonzo. Or rather, used to.
     Blood was spattered across one living room wall, marring its
pristine whiteness. Gonzo never failed to be amazed at the way a
slit throat squirted like a water pistol. He could watch it shoot
for hours without getting bored.
     Mrs. Rushton was in the kitchen. Tied to a chair. Mr. Rushton
was in here in the living room.
     He could hear Mrs. R sobbing quietly; the sound muffled by her
gag.  Mr. R was silent.
     Gonzo wondered if Mrs. R missed her husband yet. She knew he
was gone, because Gonzo had forced her to watch while He-Grog had
first snapped his arms, then his legs and finally made the cut that
painted the wall.
     She'd tried to scream and struggle but she was old and weak
and She-Grog had no trouble handling her.
     Junior hadn't been back here, nor had he called. Mrs. R
would've told if he had. Would've said anything when Mr. R
screamed that shrill pain as his left thighbone went.
     Gonzo was sure the kid wouldn't show up here now. He was
obviously a little brighter than the average streeter punk.
     That was troubling. Gonzo hadn't been given a deadline, but he
rarely was. He knew time wasn't something he had a lot of. There
were other players in this game.
     It was beat the clock and he had three kings showing.
     Damn.
     Still, the kid'd screw up sooner or later and the Fat Lady
would hit high "C".
     He looked down at Mrs. R. Saw the terror so plain in her eyes.
The lonelyness.
     For a second he pitied her. She hadn't asked for what was
happening to the life she'd worked so hard to build for her family.
Then the moment was gone.
     Mrs. R wouldn't have to miss hubby for long. She was on her
way to see him and Junior would join them both soon enough. Then
they could be a happy family again, joined around the dinner table,
enjoying family conversation over meatloaf. In Hell.
     "Make it easy on her," he said to She-Grog, turned and walked
out the front door.
     As he walked to the vehicle he wondered why he didn't feel
anything.

     He was in a donut shop not far from the school he'd gone to as
a kid. He remembered stopping here after school and at lunch-hours
to buy Apple Fritters.
     He must have eaten 500 fritters here.
     He sat at a corner table staring out the window, coffee
cooling in a ceramic mug before him.
     Alone.
     He couldn't go home. He couldn't call his parents. He didn't
have any friends. All he had was his self-pity, and too much of
that by far.
     He rolled the piece of wax paper his fritter had been wrapped
in into a ball. Maybe he'd just sit here until they came for him.
     "You look like you got a problem."
     At first he didn't realize the comment was aimed at him. He
waited, hoping someone else would answer. He didn't want any
company.
     "Hey, you in the jeans. I'm talking to you," the voice had an
edge to it now. The hint of a threat.
     He turned.
     The speaker stood about 15 feet away from him by the counter.
     She looked to be 15, was about 5'6" and wirey with dirty,
dyed-black hair. Dressed in torn black pants that might've been
sprayed on, an army night-ops jacket over a black t-shirt and
scuffed combat boots she looked like a street hood. She scared him.
     "I'm Rip," she said, waited for him to answer. He didn't.
     "Hey if I'm botherin' ya just tell me an' I'll fuck off. I
don't need your shit." That edge again.
     "You're not bothering me," he said, not sure why.
     Rip took that as an invitation to sit down and slid into the
seat opposite him, facing the shop's interior.
     When she moved he could see the t-shirt was ripped revealing
a small, pale breast with a dark, pointy nipple. The glimpse sent
a thrill through him, and started a tingling in his pants.
     Her eyes would settle on him for a second, then scan the shop
behind him. The door. Always moving, always alert.
     "So who you running from?" Her eyes met his for a full second
before passing beyond him again.
     His heartbeat went into overdrive. What could he tell her?
Certainly not the truth. What would be believable? He racked his
brain, on the verge of panic, for almost a full minute of silence
before she threw the lifeline.
     "Don't want'a talk about it, huh? That's okay. Nobody really
wants to hear it anyway.
     "So are you going buy me a coffee and a donut, or what?"
     Not knowing what else to do, he nodded and she signalled the
clerk.
     She dumped a ton of sugar and three whiteners into the
steaming mug. Sipped, grimaced, added more sugar.
     "This coffee sucks," she growled; then looked up at him
through long eyelashes. "Better than nothin' though. Thanks."
      Rushton watched her while she sipped her coffee and devoured
her donut. She hunched over it, like an animal guarding her kill.
Or maybe a streeter getting all the warmth she could out of it.
     She was tapping her feet under the table. A high speed rapping
on the tile floor. No one ever tapped their feet through the
interface. It was irritating.
     The airscrubber hummed away in the background.
     "So what's your name?" Rip asked. Tap, tap, tap.
     "M-Michael." No point in lying about that.
     She smiled, nodded. "Nice to meet you Mike." Scanned again.
The door again.
     "So what do you do for a living, Mike?" Fidgeted.
     "I'm a Gopher," he found himself saying. "You know, on the
WeB. I help people find things."
     "And they pay you for that? Savage." By her tone that seemed
to be a good thing. "So how much do you make being a Go For?" She
pronounced it as two separate words. Drumming her fingers now.
     "Enough to live.
     "Let me ask you something. Where'd you get a name like Rip?"
     She smiled, teeth stained yellow, gums inflamed. "Guys rape
girls, but anyone tries me since I wus 13 gets ripped. So I'm Rip.
     "Don't 'member my real name. My mom name. Don't 'member my mom
neither."
     He stared at her, mute.
     The door opened making her look up. A look he couldn't
identify crossed her face and her fist clenched. He didn't know why
or what it meant. No one clenched their fists on the WeB.
     "C'mon. We should get outta here." She rose, swigging back the
dregs of her coffee.
     "Why?"
     "Hey, if you wanna stay here by yerself that's up to you.
Thanks for the coffee and donut."
     Frozen by indecision he just looked at her. Who was she, and
why did she offer to let him come along. There was so much he
didn't know.
     But the one thing he did know was that he had no friends,
couldn't risk going to his parents', had no one to help him
whatsoever.
     Except, maybe, Rip.
     He looked around him, rose, left some money on the table to
cover the tab. Followed her out the door.

     Gonzo was actually surprised. And, though loathe to admit it,
impressed. He'd seen them work before but not like this. He'd had
a perfect vantage from the roof a nearby walk-up when the Grogs
took out the TTI retrieval team.
     TTI was the games' other player.
     The Twins had wiped out the whole four-person team, without
raising a sweat. Well three-person team once Gonzo had his fun with
the Ruger long gun.
     TTI never got off a shot.
     A bit of a history buff, Gonzo likened the Twins to Theban
Sacred Banders. Lovers and warriors.
     They rarely spoke, didn't seem to need to. They were a well
oiled, well programmed machine; a symbiotic complex organism with
two physically separate parts.
     Gonzo tried to imagine them copulating but the mere thought
sickened him.
     The Grog Twins were GEnies. Genetically engineered.
     To Real People they were Sub-human, subbies, SHit, freaks, and
a host of other colorful terms. Whatever you called them they
weren't real people, born of woman. Not like Gonzo.
     They were engineered for speed, strength, hostility, technical
wizardry, blind devotion. And trained from the creche to kill. All
things that make a super-soldier.
     Gonzo used to be a soldier, but there was no need for him on
the front lines any more. That's why he was in 'wet ops'. It was
the only way his skills could continue to make him a living. Now
they were moving in on him here too.
     His sniper skills and experience were all that was keeping him
effective and employed. And a certain amount of anti-GEnie feeling
just below the board level.
     But for all their super-human abilities, they weren't perfect.
The scientists had screwed up in their genetic design. A built-in
design "oversight" that meant they could never last.
     Each time a GEnie engaged in combat adrenalin levels shot up
above normal human excitement levels. This was where they got much
of their boosted strength and speed.
     Each time adrenalin rose above a certain point a DNA "command
code" was triggered causing cell degeneration to commence.
     Degeneration first attacked tissue areas where adrenalin was
strongest, then moved to the neural command centres in the brain
and spine.
     The degeneration ceased once adrenal levels returned to
normal.
     The subject, if not killed in combat, would become a bed-
ridden vegetable by age 26 and die, as decay continued to spread,
by 30.
     The scientists swore on Momma's grave that this was not a
deliberate feature of the genetic engineering. But it's not
something the corp was investing a great deal of money or time on
fixing.
     The corp got its supersoldiers without old age pensions.
     Gonzo had received a communique from IMAGE Corp; the
competition was moving in. Something had to be done to make sure
they didn't retrieve Object before it could be recovered by its
rightful owner.
     The TTI team was sitting in a van opposite a park about two
miles from Target's apartment.
     He took out the driver with the Ruger, then the Twins
descended on the van like a pair of rabid wolves with silenced
machine guns. They riddled the van with bullets, then tossed
grenades through the shattered windows.
     Scratch one TTI retrieval team.
     Pandora herself must have wept when they uncorked the bottle
these particular genies came in, thought Gonzo.
     Greasy smoke from the blazing van obscured his view but Gonzo
knew the Twins were already away from the site. Moving to the
rendezvous point.
     Gonzo broke down and packed up his rifle, picked up the spent
shell casing, and quit the roof.
     He wasn't afraid of running into the cops; they couldn't do
anything to him. But they would slow him down, giving Target a
chance to get further away.

     Whatever Rip was waiting for was late. And she was getting
royally pissed.
     She was standing, obviously agitated, at the mouth of the
alley, watching while vehicle after vehicle passed by. None of
them, apparently, the one she was waiting for.
     Rushton was sitting against one wall of the alleyway, trying
to stay out of sight of the road.
     He imagined he could see through her jacket, through the dirty
t-shirt underneath. Remembered that nipple and constructed the
breast it was attached to in his mind. Smooth, small and soft.
     He adjusted the respirator so its hard plastic didn't dig into
his cheeks and chin. It was a cheepie, but had still cost nearly
third of his cash.
     Night had fallen on Rochester, driving the threat of a
melanoma away. At least until tomorrow.
     He cradled his knapsack in his lap, running his hands over the
portable interface through the nylon material. He needed a place
where he could login. He'd been out of the WeB for a whole day. Too
long.
     If he could get back into the WeB he might be able to find out
what was happening. He could call his parents, see if they'd heard
anything; his landlord, see if his place was all right, if it was
safe to go home; the police, see if they had a warrant on him.
     He needed to get back into the loop.
     And he needed a patch. God, he needed a patch.
     If he could login he could find out what was on the chips and,
maybe, trade it for the protection of another company. It was scant
hope but all he had.
     Rip came over and flounced down in the dirt beside him. She
looked upset, but Rushton didn't know what about, or what he could
do about it. He decided not to ask.
     "We should split," she said in a low voice.
     His heart leaped into his throat. Fear. She wanted to split
up. He hadn't realized how much he needed her. She was all he had
and now she was going to abandon him.
     "W-w-why," he squeaked.
     "Because the streets are weird. Quiet. I figger it's 'cause of
you, Go For." She sounded confident, aware. "We should go to the
Sprawl."
     First profound relief, then more fear, shot through him. New
York. He'd never been to the monstrous metroplex. Hated the very
idea of it.
     The bigger cities, especially those where urban growth had
absorbed the suburbs and the sun never hit the lower levels of
"downtown", were dubbed Sprawls by the media. The New York Sprawl,
The San Fran-Diego Sprawl, etc.
     He called them Smears, because that's all they really were:
smears of grime on the surface of the Earth. Smears big enough to
see from orbit. He hated them. There were no trees there.
     And that's where Rip wanted to go.
     "I'm not sure I want to go," he managed to utter.
     She looked at him, a look on her face that might be disgust or
understanding.
     "Hey, if you want to stay here and collide with whatever yer
runnin' from that's fine wi' Rip. Just make sure yer nowheres
around me when it goes down. I don't want to catch any collateral
awright?"
     This close her breath was rancid on his face.
     "Who are we waiting for?" He asked, not sure why. Not sure of
anything. Especially not sure of the little voice that told him to
grab the chips on the way out of the house, and now prompted this
interrogation of his only benefactor.
     "Some friends who can help us," she answered quickly,
smoothly, staring at her boots. "Doss us out for the night. Give us
food. Maybe even a piggyback out of here."
     She paused for a moment; seeming to gather her thoughts, her
guts.
     "Now we have to find our own way out."
     Back to it. Abandoned or the Sprawl. Which was worse?
     "Do you have friends in New York?" He asked in an unsteady
voice.
     "Absolutely," she said, monotone. "Great friends. Some even
like you. I bet you'll fit right in."
     He'd go.

     Gonzo was frustrated, angry and growing more so by the minute.

     More than 15 hours and Target hadn't shown up yet. The little
puke didn't know it but he was making Gonzo look bad with his
higher-ups.
     No one had ever gone 15 hours. Hell, no one had ever gone five
hours before this.
     The worst Gonzo had ever had was three hours 17 minutes. A
skate-courier who tried to lighten a package. That rabbit had lots
of little warrens to disappear into, but it did her no good.
     Gonzo caught up to her, without any GEnie help, recovered the
package, a parcel of Christmas cards for the Portland Office, and
ventilated her head.
     This time he wasn't supposed to damage the cranium too much.
No extra holes.
     IMAGE Corp. needed Target's educational implants. Especially
his memory chips. The only thing IMAGE wanted more than Target and
the return of Object was to find out how he got Object in the first
place.
     Apparently the access code he used to enter the system was
impregnated with its own killer virus that corrupted it so bad that
not only was it unreadable, but it locked up everything it touched.

     There were some really pissed off people downtown.
     Target probably wouldn't think so at the time, but dying would
be the best thing could happen to him today.
     He didn't want to come in alive, that's for sure.
     It wouldn't make any difference in the end - all roads do lead
to Rome after all. But one takes the high road, the other the low,
and one of those roads was much longer than the other.
     Much, much longer.
     Gonzo sat in the back of the security van, waiting. Watching.
     She-Grog was behind the wheel, ready to kick the van into
gear, while He-Grog cradled a machine pistol in the passenger seat.
     No one said anything. The Twins didn't have anything
intelligent to say and he had no orders to give.
     All the orders were given. Only one thing to do now, wait. He
hated waiting.

     The little voice was back. The one that seemed to be trying to
keep him alive. It was yelling at him now. Mad. Calling him all
sorts of rude names.
     He knew he was in withdrawal. Knew paranoia was part of it.
Told his voice to fuck off.
     Rip was at the pub-access phone, trying to scarf up a ride to
the Sprawl. It was an old audio-only model and she held the handset
jammed into her ear.
     "This is Rip. Me an' a friend..." She smiled at him. "...Are
lookin' fer a ride to the Sprawl. Can you help us out?"
     His voice didn't like that, the way she looked at him, but he
did. Liked her calling him friend. Made him feel warm, wanted.
     "Savage." She sounded happy. A look of concentration crossed
her face. She nodded a couple of times. "Got it. See ya soon." Hung
up.
     "That was my friends." She stared him right in the chest and
spoke quickly. "Said somethin' came up so they're late, but we got
ourselves a piggyback. Say they'll take us to the Sprawl."
     She started walking, motioned him to follow when he didn't.
     "We're going to meet them," she said as he fell into step.
     The voice was screaming now. Telling him he was rat meat. It
was over. All for nothing. Don't worry he told it. Rip's my friend
and she'll take us to the Sprawl where we can hide.

     The Mall seemed like a reasonable enough place to meet Rip's
friends. A rendezvous for lovers, associates and friends for near
50 years; there was no place more fitting.
     And, of course, there was no mistaking it. It's not like there
were a lot of them.
     Rip led him past gaping store fronts, a veritable cornucopia
of gaudy advertising and useless product lines. Clothing, computer
hardware, toys, entertainment chips, appliances and sex toys made
up just a fraction of what was physically available to the
consumer.
     Rip set a torrid pace down the main corridor on the ground
level. Mike was having difficulty keeping up, had fallen back about
20 meters.
     Rip kept checking over her shoulder, making sure that he was
still there and that he was all right. Waving.
     Mike, gathering breath to plead with her to slow down, thought
he saw her soul leave her body when the bullets arrived.
     The words died on his lips.
     Rip walked along, obviously in a hurry. She raised her hand;
she'd found her friends. Rip spun, blood gouting from her chest.
She didn't look at him but he saw her eyes. The light was gone.
     He heard the shots. A short burst, like a loud belch. Dove
behind a porcelain planter.
     He stared at Rip's lifeless form for a second while a
firefight erupted around him. Rip's friends were exchanging
machinegun fire with a pair of real-life monsters.
     Her jacket had fallen open and he could see her breast. Torn
by bullets. Torn and bloody.
     The feeling of loss was profound. He was alone again.
     Alone and in the middle of a firefight. Time to leave.
     He turned to run. Sprinted back down the mall, the way he'd
came with Rip. Beautiful, sexy Rip. Ripped apart.

     Gonzo had a great perspective on the action from where he
crouched on the second level of the mall.
     He could see the Twins laying down a shitload of fire on the
TTI positions; the bodies of TTI agents crumpled in the middle of
the floor; Target cowering behind a planter, eyes so wide they
might fall out.
     Target trying to jackrabbit. Snapped his weapon up, watched
the little red dot settle squarely on the back of Target's neck,
just below the base of the skull. Pulled the trigger.

     His voice screamed "Duck!" But too late. The horseman caught
up.
     He'd always thought the Reaper's grip would be painful. A
boney, vise-like pinch that ripped the soul from his body. He was
wrong; it was as warm and comforting as a mother's hug.

-5848 wds

--
Alex Anderson     Don't open your eyes, you won't like what you see
Freelance writer  The devils of truth steal the souls of the free
(613) 745-8097    Don't open your eyes, take it from me
                  The blind have been blessed with security.....nin