Alphonse was already scanning his own team. He had lost an Engineer and a Cleric: Peggy the Hook and Friar Duck.
Al did some quick addition. In the first engagement there had been six fatalities: one each for Apple and Army, two each for Tex-Mits and General Dynamics. Acacia, damn her soul, hadn't lost anyone.
Al felt queasy. 'Well, we got stretched a mite. Hardball, is it?'
Smoke tendrils still wafted through the graveyard, muffling the anguished sobs of the injured and mourning.
Nakagawa's Law #3: There are no expendables. A Loremaster takes the best he can get, in every slot, and loses them only when he must. Law #3 fit the California Voodoo Game better than most. Each dead Ganner was a serious loss.
Alphonse shook himself out of his trance. 'Scout!'
He got Crystal, and Acacia's Scout, Corrinda. 'Scan, please.'
They joined hands and pointed toward a side corridor. Warriors Holly Frost and Appelion joined them.
En masse they moved down the corridor, Alphonse in the front. He tested the flooring with the tip of a toe. 'Crystal, can you do a structural check?'
Crystal Cofax checked her power ratings and gritted her teeth. 'I can give you an eighty-percent yes. Best I can do, chief.'
'Let's get it done.'
'All right.' He studied the older man. 'No offence, Trevor.'
Trevor's smile was tight and plastic. 'None taken.'
The weeping was closer now, and Alphonse flattened himself against a wall.
A woman's voice: 'Please. Please help us…'
She was no more than twenty, and dressed in rags. She was dark-skinned, with a face like a Michelangelo cherub in negative, but her nose was narrow and her lips were thin. What was she? A darkly tanned white person?
At her feet lay a young boy.
'O, gevalt,' Top Nun whispered.
He'd been eviscerated.
But was still alive.
The girl looked up at them earnestly, sniffling, wiping tears away from her cheeks. 'Oh,' she said. She batted huge, incongruously blue eyes at them, and then continued rapid-fire. 'My name is Coral, and this is my brother Tod, and those zombies got him all icky and everything and he's like probably going to die if we don't do something but I can't figure out what to do 'cause like there's guts everywhere and did you like maybe bring a Band-Aid or something?'
A beat of five passed in shocked silence. Then somebody passed a Band-Aid to the front. A big one. Alphonse watched, aghast, as she put the adhesive strip onto a rubbery wet red length of intestine. She looked up at them brightly, an edge of hysteria in her voice. 'There,' she said. 'That should be all better now '
Then fell over sideways in a faint.
11
Thursday, July 21, 2059 9.50 A.M.
The native girl had fainted twice more, but managed to last long enough to lead them through a labyrinthine network of corridors, catwalks, and stairwells, going up, down, and sideways.
Al thought that they might be on the second floor. Crystal would be mapping, and he could catch up later. Meantime, keep the eyes open.
Tod was alive but hardly lucid. He babbled to himself while his frantic sister babbled to them. 'Thaddeus sent us looking for coffee. He's sort of our leader. Some of the boutiques still have a little of it, if you know where to look.'
'Why coffee?' General Poule asked.
'Ceremonies. We don't-' Coral paused. 'Well, they don't always let us in the other ceremonies.'
'Which ones?'
Coral combed her fingers through her tangled hair and cast sad blue eyes at her brother. 'Poor Tod. He found two shakers of that low-sodium salt-substitute stuff, you know, for diets? I told him it wouldn't work against zombies…'
And she was off again.
After a few more attempts to communicate, Nigel had given up. Whatever benefits voodoo conferred, intellectual agility was not among them. She led, and twenty-four remaining Gamers followed, but with no great confidence.
Every team had lost someone, except the UC Manhunters. Al had graciously offered his services to Tammi and Twan as official Beheader, just a precaution, wouldn't want old friends to get up and go sniffing for kidneys… Tammi had responded with a string of invective that should have peeled off her lipstick. Then she'd performed the task herself. God, he loved Gaming.
The rabbit warren of tunnels opened out into what had been a main Mall area.
Alphonse was shocked.
Despite marquees and displays gone cryptic with burnt-out light panels, it was as well lit as an outdoor pavilion. There were few machine-tooled items for sale in the stores, but the shelves were stocked with arts and crafts and handmade items of every description. Fresh meat? Vegetables? Handmade clothes? Scuba gear? These people had impressive resources.
And power! Neon and incandescent bulbs burned with no thought to economy.
Coral's clan strolled the Mall like Angelinos out to enjoy a summer day. Her people were every color of the human spectrum, from coal black to pale white. They dressed in a wide range of fabrics and colors. Alphonse looked more closely at Coral's clothes: they weren't rags, really, just eclectic and stained. Seen in this improved lighting, they might have made an attractive ensemble, a bizarre fashion statement scavenged from a dozen different scrap heaps and consolidated by a blind seamstress with eight thumbs.
Tod had been sheet-wrapped and strapped onto a makeshift stretcher. His ranting had ceased, and Alphonse couldn't guess whether he was dying, or something worse.
And Coral kept up her line of mad chatter. It was driving him to distraction.
All two dozen Adventurers had collected in the center of a Mall walkway before anyone noticed. Then a tall barrel of a man in a Hawaiian flower T-shirt and a neatly trimmed beard saw them, and yelled in pleasure. 'Visitors!'
He dropped his hoe (dropped a potential weapon!) and ran over to them, shaking hands like an incumbent running for reelection. 'Why, as I live and breathe. You're outsiders, aren't you?'
'We have one of your people here,' Nigel said. 'He's badly hurt-'
'Why, as I live and breathe. You're right!'
A crowd of people had gathered around them. Concerned, polite, and speculative, but still a crowd. Al felt twitchy.
'My name is Thaddeus Dark,' the big man said. 'Coral! Dear child! I was worried about you.' She tried to twist away from the immense arm that Dark draped around her, but he just chuckled at her efforts. He pushed Coral off to the side and whispered to her genially while she squirmed.
Finally she said, 'No!'
Coral and what was left of her brother were guided off together while Dark returned to the Adventurers. 'Now then. Unfortunate, of course, but we warn the children not to go snooping about on the upper levels. Dangerous, you know.'
Acacia's lips curled faintly. 'Evidently.'
