'Tough guy,' a gravelly voice rumbled. 'Can't even plug a couple of punk kids.'
Randolph Corbin trotted his hulk up beside me, one thick hand grasping a Springfield M-1A. The other hand clutched at his belly. His pug face was distorted from breathing as if it were the latest fad. His brown turtleneck shirt and tan slacks appeared to have been redesigned by a chainsaw. Soot stained his clothes, hands, and face. The seat of his pants had been badly singed.
I nodded toward the hotel lobby. 'I see you didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition, either.'
'Right. And I can see that you were the answer they sought. Duck!'
I drove my shoulder into the sidewalk, rolled over, and brought the rifle up. I fired.
Corbin placed three well-aimed rounds into the chests of as many armed attackers. I dropped the other two with shots to the head-an old trademark of mine and a damned stupid habit.
Somewhere to the south whined dozens of police sirens.
'Finally,' Ann said, unimpressed. She tried to open one of the doors set in a long wall of concrete. No luck. We raced toward the main lobby doors.
Corbin wheezed in great exhausted gasps. 'You must know the Ecclesia is after you. They attacked Auberge.'
'Yeah,' I said. 'I had a sort of hunch about that.'
'Even Auberge management didn't know, and they've got informants everywhere to give them warnings about raids.' He looked behind us at the carnage. 'I guess they never thought to infiltrate the Ecclesia.'
'But you did?' Ann said.
'A Buddhist friend of mine. She dropped too much acid at Bryn Mawr' 'In here,' I said. A side door surrendered to my kick. We rushed inside.
The Bonaventure was still in use, though it no longer qualified as the luxury hotel it had once been. The radiation problems this far from Arco South posed no danger, but fear was fear. True, a higher class of derelicts and bums inhabited the less-than-gleaming towers. Most even paid rent. But bums were bums.
To our right sat a greasy hotel clerk reading a newsplaque, the racing information onscreen. His gaze drifted lazily up to us, his eyes widening when he saw the three of us armed with rifles, pistol, and knife. His grease turned to sweat.
'No trouble, man,' he said in a piping voice. 'We've got protection.'
My thumb played threateningly with the pistol's slide safety. 'You personally? Right now?'
The clerk gulped like a sea bass and added more sweat to his face. Nervous hands gripped the edge of the counter. His newsplaque clattered to the floor.
'We're looking for someone,' Ann said. 'A dark-haired girl. Have you seen her?'
The clerk shook his head.
'We won't be long,' I said. I cased the lobby area.
The light from the registration desk was the only artificial illumination in the atrium. Sunlight shone muddily through the ring of windows at the top edge of the cylindrical interior. It could have been a dim and restful medieval cathedral except for the pair of drunks snoring against each other on a mezzanine couch.
'Which elevator works?' I asked.
'The left one,' the clerk said.
Inside, Ann asked me, 'Which floor?' She surveyed the array of buttons. Outside the cracked glass of the elevator walls, what once had been a landscaped indoor pond lay dry and choked with cans and Mylar bags. There were even a few glass bottles here and there, which indicated how long the place had been in that condition.
An eerie image appeared amidst the garbage. Before meshimmeringly ghostlike-floated a view of the smoldering battle outside. I seemed to be viewing it from up high.
I punched for the top floor. 'We'll work our way down from the restaurant,' I said.
