them were also old and in disrepair. They looked shabby. We saw a few rickety two-stories, but most of the homes were small gray shacks, fronted by yards littered with old cars, busted furniture, and every kind of accumulated garbage.
“Looks like a good place to dump a vehicle,” Chunk said.
“Yeah. I was thinking the same thing.”
We drove on, still looking, and I was surprised at how many of the houses didn't have doors. Strange, I thought. Why take the front doors? What could you possibly want with somebody's front door?
“I think your friend back there was kind of an asshole,” Chunk said.
“He certainly was a man with a mission.”
“Why do suppose hippo woman didn't tell us about Dr. Strangelove back there when we asked her what Bradley was doing out here.”
“I wish you would stop calling her that.”
“What?”
“You know what. Hippo woman.”
“Why?”
“Because I'm gonna end up calling her that by mistake the next time we see her.”
Chunk laughed. It sounded like a cough behind the mask.
“Seriously, though. What do you think the deal is there?”
I thought about that for a second, wondering if it was me, or if there really was someone watching us from the houses out there.
“Maybe Cole's right about the prejudice part. I mean, I don't hang around with doctors or anything, but I've seen the way they treat people from the MHD. It's like they're second class citizens.”
“So you think maybe Cole's on to something and Laurent thinks there's a chance he may be right?”
“Maybe.”
“So what? She sends her star player out to check it out?”
“Possible,” he said. “But it sounds like a bunch of unnecessary politics to me.”
I didn't answer him right away. One of the houses on my side of the street was missing a door, and I was pretty sure I saw a guy standing inside, watching us from the shadows.
But when I looked again, the doorway was empty.
“Yeah, well,” I said, “things are the same all over I guess. Tribes within tribes. That kind of nonsense. Remember when the lieutenant had us take the Resendez case away from the Stranger Rapes guys over at Sex Crimes? It's the same thing here. It's a high profile deal and everybody wants to be able to put it on their resume.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
I saw a flash of movement. A man ran between two houses off to my right.
“Chunk,” I said.
He heard the tone in my voice and slammed on the brakes. “What?”
“Look there,” I said.
The man was gone.
“What?”
“Somebody just ran between those houses over there.”
Chunk leaned over me, trying to see. “Where?”
“Chunk!”
Ahead of us, a young Hispanic guy in his early twenties, dressed in a blue t-shirt and jeans and no protective gear of any kind was running into the street, coming at the front of our car, waving his hands over his head like he was trying to flag us down.
He was shouting something.
“Chunk?”
“Not good,” he said, and glanced into the rearview mirror. We both felt it. Like it was a trap.
Chunk put the car in reverse.
The man was still coming at us, still waving, when we heard the pop of gunfire. A moment later, we heard the zing of a shot glancing off metal. Off the hood of our car. More pops came from off to our right. The windows shattered. Chunk stomped on the gas and we lurched backwards down the street.
Suddenly gunfire erupted all over my side of the street. I could feel the bullets thudding into the side panels, rocking it with the force of all those impacts. As I ducked my head down, I saw the white spurts from the muzzle flashes.
I screamed.
The car rocked to Chunk's side of the street, both of the tires on my side shot out. The man who had tried to wave us down was firing at us then, and bullets slapped into the hood of the car.
Over the rolling bark of the guns, I heard something snap and then slap the inside of the engine compartment, and the car rolled uselessly to a stop.
Chunk opened his door and spilled out, keeping his head low.
“Come on,” he yelled at me, his hands ready to grasp mine and pull me out of his side of the car if necessary.
I didn't need the help. I scrambled across the seats and poured out of the car on my hands and knees. We both crawled to the grass, got to a crouch, and ran for the cover of some oak trees and the corner of a nearby house.
Bullets whistled all around us, slicing through the limbs of trees and foliage and smacking into the sides of the house. Behind us I heard angry shouting, crazy voices, like madmen on the war path.
Chunk and I ducked behind a small flight of concrete stairs and listened to the shouting, trying to figure a way out.
“Who are those guys?” I asked Chunk. My breathing was so fast my lungs felt like they were on fire.
“Looters,” he said. He looked me over. “You're not hurt?”
“No. You?”
“No.” He glanced over the top of the stairs and quickly dropped back down. “Damn!” he said. “I wish we had our guns.” The guns were back in our car, in the trunk. Pistols don't do well in the decontamination chambers.
We heard more voices. Not just the ones behind us, but more from the back of the house, coming closer.
“Chunk?”
“We can't stay here.”
In front of us was a busted chain link fence. On the other side of that, a low line of tanglehead grass. Not high enough or thick enough to hide behind, but high enough to wrap around our feet and tie us down if we tried to run for it. Beyond that was the side of a weather-beaten house, a busted window midway down its length. In the backyard, I saw a small metal tool shed and a few trees.
The shooting stopped. Then, laughing. They cackled like witches, taunting us, calling us out. I saw movement in the backyard and a man shouted. “Over here! Over here! They're over here.”
He fired at us. The bullet hit the concrete next to my head, powdering me with dust. Chunk jumped up and cleared the chain link fence in a single stride. I was right behind him. I grabbed the top of the fence and swung my legs over. Another shot rang out. It hit something beneath my hand. The fence collapsed, and I hit the ground face first. I saw a flash of purple as my mask smashed into my nose.
When I looked up, men with rifles were running from the street into the front yard and Chunk was disappearing into the cover of the trees along the front of the house, running away from them.
I heard more shouting from behind me, and in an instant I realized I was cut off. I couldn't go forward after Chunk, and I couldn't go to the backyard. I jumped into the broken window of the house in front of me and tumbled to the floor. The wood was rotten, spongy beneath my weight. The house was dark, musty. No furniture that I could see. Dust was everywhere.
“Go that way,” the voices shouted from outside. “Get that one!”
“The other's in the house.”
