The blast picked me up and tossed me sideways — I’d started todrop and roll away but wasn’t quick enough. I hit something hard, then tumbledover a curb or wheel-stop in the parking lot, never did figure out which. Bitsand pieces of car flew over me, bounced off my shield, punched holes in othercars or pitted the brick side of the apartment building or shattered windows thatthe shockwave had left whole. I never heard any of it. Too loud. I’m stillsurprised I didn’t need to learn how to read lips afterwards.
I ended up behind a pickup truck, don’t really know how I gotthere. First thing I actually heard,I was listening to a splashing sound, saw liquid pouring from the pickup, Ithought “gas” and started rolling again before my brain processed what I’d seenand smelled and turned it into antifreeze. Radiator punctured by the shrapnel.
I wanted to stand up to run away and couldn’t — right leg.Hindsight, emergency room diagnosis and x-rays: broken tibia and fibula, simplefracture, very neat. Shields don’t do a bit of good when working against threehundred pounds of flying meat landing at the wrong angle. Maybe someday somegenius will figure out magical levitation and patent it.
So I crawled, still moving, still breathing — that’s myformula for long life. Just keep moving. Everything fancier boils down to that.I tucked myself into a corner by a brick retaining wall behind some tatteredshrubbery, SIG in hand, and waited for whatever the script offered next. I keptmy shielding at full strength, full surround, no matter how much that drainedme. I knew Kratz, knew too much about the way his mind worked. He was the kindof guy who’d have more than one surprise lined up.
A long tense while after I settled into my bunker, maybe four,five minutes in objective time, I heard sirens in the distance. They soundedlike the bugle call of the U.S. Cavalry riding over the crest of the ridge,John Wayne and Richard Widmark in the lead. My ears sorted out two flavors ofpolice, different sirens, and fire and ambulance. I hoped Kratz hadn’t set upan ambush for them, the sort of thingthat guerillas did. It would fit his twisted fancy.
My leg started to ache and then throb and then catch on fireand hurt like a royal bitch, now that it looked like I had time for pain. Andfire reminded me . . . I scanned the parking lot again, mycruiser a boiling tangle of metal and flame and black thick smoke, a craterthrough the pavement under what hadbeen the rear end, glass sparkling on the asphalt, undefined charred bits andpieces lying twisted. Two other cars were burning, one across the aisle andfive spaces away, the other six or seven, must have caught flaming chunks.
I couldn’t see any other victims, living or dead. I hadn’tseen any other drivers or passengers in the cars around, nobody walking. Ninein the morning, most of the other folks in the building had already gone towork. Most of them weren’t slugabed self-employed drones like me and Sandy.
Maybe I was the only casualty. Still no sign of Kratz, eitherwith normal senses or magical. I holstered the SIG as the closest siren nearedand slowed, crawled out from behind my yew hedge, and started to review factsand fancies and priorities for the report. First thing, declare this a magicalcrime scene, get Mac or that city guy, Pendleton, on site as soon as possible,see what traces they could pick up after the blast and fire.
I moved my leg wrong and almost blacked out, the whole worldturning shimmery and hot and closing in on a tunnel of flashing lights. Bluelights. First siren on the scene was the cop. Beat cop, I didn’t recognize him.
Waved him over, dropped my shielding, let the backlash of allthat working take me like a crashing wave. Dug my badge case out, almost scaredthe shit out of the poor flatfoot, his hand twitched at his weapon before hesaw just what I was pulling out fromunder my jacket. I thought the man wasn’t used to responding to a call andfinding himself in a war zone. Found out later it was the other way around, hewas National Guard and had done a full combat tour with all the trimmings. Thescene triggered flashbacks.
I said some words, I don’t recall what, they must have beenthe right ones because next thing I noticed was him yelling into his radiomike. A fire crew blasted white stuff at orange flames, don’t know if it wasfoam or powder or CO2, hoped it was the gas because that wouldn’tmess up the evidence as much. Couldn’t find the wits or voice to tell them.Wiped sweat from my face, that waste heat I’ve told you about, magic has itsprice.
Not professional, I was dropping the ball. Cops aren’tsupposed to fall apart under stress. Someone, a couple of someones, EMT suitswith the FD patches, worked me over, checking vitals. I pointed at my leg.Verbal communication center wasn’t doing a good job. I’d used up too muchenergy hiding after the blast, shielding from a second attack that never came.
Back board, head braces, spinal injury drill, I tried to wavethem off and point at my leg again. Only thing wrong with my spine was thebackup .38 Smith digging into it from my weight. Hurt. Hurt more than my leg.
I fell into a gap, then the emergency room, sense of somethingmissing, realized they’d taken the SIG and Smith, hoped like hell they keptthem safe. EMTs and hospital staff don’t like having armed patients roaming thehalls, even ones with badges. Not that I was roaming anywhere. Masked faces ingreen scrubs kept asking me to move this and that, seemed satisfied with theanswers. Leg numb. Part of me hoped that was chemical rather than physical.Another part didn’t care. I felt cold packs around my body — some genius hadrecognized the fever of a wizard who had pushed the edge of safety.
X-rays, needles,
