fire. I’ll have to kill him later. And I don’t know where Aelita is. The little girl is the only clear line to anything I’ve got, and if she isn’t out slicing and dicing, I know where she’ll be. That’s what Bill would do. If he couldn’t find the head of the bad guys, he’d find the arms and break them. It’s time to say
“When the doctor leaves, we’ll get you to the dreamer safe house.”
“Okay. Is it all right if I take a nap while we’re waiting?”
“I’ll get you some aspirin. You’re going to need them.”
After the hotel doc stitches me up, I take Patty downstairs and we catch a cab just like regular schmucks. No limos today. I don’t want anyone at the hotel knowing where we’re going. All the cabbie will see is me taking my half- tanked squeeze to Universal to throw up on the big plastic shark.
The hotel is practically empty. Even in L.A., the Apocalypse is bad for business.
The freeway north is a joke. Angelinos and tourists are fleeing the city, locking traffic in a snarl of bumper-to-bumper traffic like a university experiment demonstrating just how impossible it is to flee L.A. And it’s not like the sky is any closer to normal up here. Clouds shoot overhead at double speed, like the whole sky is on fast-forward. The volcano and ash have disappeared as cleanly and thoroughly as Catalina but it seems to have made an impression on the unwashed. If that wasn’t enough, the cabbie’s radio explains how as part of its clever plan to panic even the nonpanicked population, the powers that be have shut down both LAX and the Burbank Airport.
I have the cabbie drop us off by the office buildings at the edge of Universal City. Instead of heading back in to town, the cab gets on the freeway north with the other abandon-the-ship types.
Patty leads us into the heart of Universal City, past huge glass buildings and to a squat four-floor building hidden behind a row of trees, just off the regular tourist route. There’s a guard station but it’s empty. I get the feeling the big office towers are deserted too.
Patty takes a pass card from her purse and lets us in. She seems perfectly sober now. The girl can hold her liquor. I’ve never seen anyone mix Hellion and civilian booze before. I hope she doesn’t explode and destroy the rest of the world.
The first floor of the dreamers’ building looks like any unfinished office space. A big open area with cable for DSL and phones. A couple of offices roughed in at the back. Walls a neutral shade of suicide beige. How could you work in one of these places and not seriously consider going apeshit postal at least once? An optional murder-suicide pact ought to be part of the hiring agreement right next to the 401(k) plan.
The stairway to the second floor is locked. Patty waves her card again and the door clicks open.
It’s dark inside and smells faintly of asphodel and belladonna. Forgetting and stimulation. Sounds like a party to me.
A cobweb brushes my face. I start to push it away but Patty says, “Don’t touch it. Don’t touch any of them.”
Through the dark I see more of the webs. They grow thicker the higher we climb. As my eyes adjust to the dark, I see that they’re not webs. They’re long, almost invisible filaments, like fishing line. Only they seem to hum and whisper.
