blank, and he hit the floor in an untidy heap. Good. Smug bastards piss me off.
I kicked the.44 out of reach, checked his pulse, and found it was steady. Sasha seemed somewhat casual for a teenaged girl. “Is he dead?” She retrieved the.44 and held it barrel down.
I frowned. “No, but you hit him awfully hard. I’m surprised his head didn’t fly off.”
Sasha hit the cylinder release, checked to make sure that all five of the.44’s chambers were loaded, and flipped the weapon closed. The whole thing was done with a degree of expertise that should have bothered me but didn’t. Her voice was casual but tight. “He tried to rape me.”
The bra and panties suddenly made sense. As did the swellings around the sides of her face. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged and smiled crookedly. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Well it was my fault, or so I assumed at the time, but there seemed little point in dwelling on it. The door shook as something heavy hit it. “Get your clothes on. It’s time to leave.”
Sasha nodded, strode towards the side door, and disappeared inside. I drifted that way and caught a glimpse of a rumpled bed and the leather straps that had connected her hands to the headboard. She grabbed her tights and pulled them up around her waist. They were ripped. She nodded towards the straps. “They were long enough to use my teeth on.”
I nodded my understanding. The girl was more than I’d thought at first. She had guts, and I admired that. I gestured to our surroundings. “Any way out of here? Other than the front door?”
Sasha settled the miniskirt into place and turned her attention to the high-heeled boots. I tried to imagine someone running in them and couldn’t.
“Yeah, I think there is. I didn’t exactly have the run of the place, but there’s something towards the back.”
I nodded, hit the.38’s magazine release, and slipped the near-empty magazine into my pocket. The backup slid home with a satisfying click. I pumped a round into the chamber, checked to make sure the safety was off, and slipped through the door. Rats always have more than one way out of their nest. All I had to do was find it.
There was a dull thump, a wave of air hit my back, and the door crashed inwards. I turned, waited for the inevitable rush, and punched three rounds through the smoke and dust. Sasha appeared by my side, held the.44 with both hands, and loosed a round through the doorway. The recoil pulled the gun up overhead. She brought it back down. Someone screamed and she grinned.
“Come on!” I grabbed her hand and jerked her towards the rear of the office. There were cubicles, storage rooms, and yes, a door with the words “Emergency Exit” lit up above it. Bullets whipped past us as we pushed it open, spied the circular staircase, and started downwards. The corpies were only seconds behind us. I had my client back. The question was, for how long?
5
“We’re not proposing to pump it dry, for god’s sake…just pave it over.”
Land Commissioner Donald Siranni on plans to “cap” Puget Sound
A massive concrete pillar ran down through the center of the spiral staircase. One of Sasha’s spiked heels caught in the open mesh. She managed to pull it out and continued on tiptoes. A door slammed and the stairs shook as the rent-a-cops started down. We had a two-or three-minute lead. Not enough at the speed we were traveling. “Sasha! Lose the boots! We won’t make it otherwise!”
The kid grabbed the rail and stopped. I squeezed past, turned, and gestured for a boot. She shoved one in my face. I grabbed, pulled, and felt it come loose. The second boot was easier. I threw both aside.
I heard a shout, sent a slug up the stairwell, and headed down. Sasha followed. We took the stairs two, sometimes three at a time, always conscious of the fact that the corpies were close behind. There were lots of landings, and doors off each, but all of them were locked. I kept going, knowing the stairs had to end sometime, and hoping that maybe, just maybe, there would be a way out.
The landings were numbered and the numbers got larger. Finally we were on “Level 50,” and nothing but a door stood between us and whatever lay beyond. I pushed and nothing happened. We were trapped.
“Stand aside.” Sasha held the.44 in both hands. She was already in the process of squeezing the trigger when I yelled “No!” The word was lost in the boom that followed.
The bullet bounced off the steel plate that protected the lock mechanism, hit the wall next to my shoulder, and whined up the stairwell. I hoped it would hit a corpie and knew that kind of luck had been reserved for someone else. My ears rang as Sasha brought the gun down for another try. I told her what to do.
“Ebertok asu nabledock!”
Sasha frowned and her finger tightened on the trigger.
I tried again. “Aim for the keypad instead!”
She nodded and corrected her aim.
I turned and was watching the stairs when she fired the next shot. It was as loud as the first. A few more of those and I’d be deaf.
“Maxon! Look!”
I looked. The slug had transformed the keypad into a mass of shattered plastic and tangled wires. Sparks sputtered and a tendril of smoke drifted away. I kicked the door and it swung inwards. We entered together. I saw a corridor and a second door. There was no sign of a lock. Good. Sasha gestured to the corner next to the door. “Stay here and slow ’ em down. I ’ll scout ahead.”
Who the hell had died and left her in charge? I started to ask, but she was gone before I could organize the necessary words. So I stayed where I was, watched the stairs, and fired when I saw legs. They retreated upwards in a hurry. The corpies yelled something, tried to draw me out, and I ignored them. I heard the now-familiar boom of the.44.
“Maxon! Come on!”
I wished there was some way to lock the door, couldn’t think of one, and backed away. Sasha held a second door open and gestured with the.44. The bore looked big enough to drive a truck through. I made a note to teach her something about gun safety. Assuming we lived long enough to make the effort worthwhile, that is.
I moved through the door and out onto a concrete jetty. Dark water lapped all around. There was a variety of equipment, including a pair of light-duty cranes, fuel pumps, cargo modules, and a high-speed launch that sat on a cradle. The line of bullet holes just above the heavily stained waterline gave mute testimony to what had happened. That, plus the fact that the security station resembled a small-scale fortress, hinted at unseen dangers.
The apparent dangers, both naked from the waist down, stood with their hands behind their heads. The woman had nice legs and an attitude to go with them. Her nudity didn’t bother her in the least. She looked at me and smiled. The man kept his eyes on the deck. Sasha was pleased with herself. “They were busy playing hide the submarine when I surprised them.”
I frowned to demonstrate my disapproval of her unladylike analogy and gave thanks for the human sex drive. Assuming that our pursuers had called ahead, this pair had been too busy to notice. “I heard a shot.”
“Oh, that,” Sasha said nonchalantly. “I fired a round to get their attention.”
Sasha seemed to be of the opinion that ammo grew on trees. I scowled at the guards and gestured towards a cargo module. “Climb to the top and sit on your hands.”
The man hurried to obey. The woman followed, and so did my eyes. My lust was rather short-lived, however, since the corpies chose that particular moment to arrive, firing as they came. The fact that they were shooting at Sasha, and not at me, should have set some thoughts in motion but didn’t.
Sasha brought her cannon up and squeezed the trigger. A rent-a-cop was plucked off his feet and thrown backwards into the crowd. I grabbed the girl’s wrist with my left hand and towed her towards the far end of the jetty. The.38 bucked and corpies dove for cover.
A man, hidden until now, appeared from our right. He wore mechanic’s overalls and held a wrench in his hand. Sasha swung the.44 in his direction and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell on an empty casing. I shot the man through the thigh and lectured Sasha as he fell. “This ain’t no movie, kid…you gotta count your rounds.”
She looked ashamed, and it was then that I noticed the bloody footprints. Sasha had come down who knows how many stairs in her bare feet and cut them to shreds. All without a whimper. I felt like the biggest sonofabitch in the world and wished I could take the comment back. Her attention was elsewhere. “Maxon, look!”
