Virtual Vandals

“L-looks like one heck of a ride,” Cat Corrigan called from her place on the top of the roof.

Matt made violent shushing gestures. From his dangerous perch, he could see that the Buzzards had posted guards around the church. The one on this side was the Asian kid. What was his name? Ng.

It was not exactly like watching a military sentinel. Ng sort of slouched along the street with Willy’s pistol stuck in his belt.

But Ng could pull out that gun and use it if he heard the prisoners calling to one another.

At least the others took his hint. Their heads went together, and they came up with a pretty good plan. They formed a human ladder. Serge held on at the top while Luc worked his way down until he was holding onto Serge’s ankles. Then it was Caitlin’s turn. She slid down, clutching at the others to keep from going too fast.

She still had to let go of Luc’s feet and slide free the last six feet or so, but Matt had braced himself to catch her.

Even so, they almost went over together. Cat dangled for a heart-stopping minute. But she quickly transferred her grip to the stick dug into the roof instead of Matt’s arm.

“Phwooooh!” she breathed long and hard. Then she spotted Ng patrolling below. “Now I see why you wanted us to shut up,” Cat whispered.

Matt nodded.

The girl glanced uneasily from the guard to their two companions stretched across the roof. “They can’t hold on up there forever,” she whispered. Then she nodded toward the wooden hook. “And I don’t know how long this will hold, either.”

This time Matt didn’t answer. He was busy watching Ng slouch along on his return march.

When the guard was under them, Matt released his hold.

Maybe he should have warned Caitlin. She gave a sort of strangled cry, which made Ng look up. The Asian boy’s eyes went big, and he tried to haul the pistol from his waistband.

Then Matt landed on him. They both tumbled to the ground, but Matt was on top. This time, Ng didn’t have a hostage to hold Matt frozen. Matt applied a quick but painful hold, and the gun dropped from Ng’s nerveless fingers.

Then Ng yelled at the top of his lungs.

Matt swore to himself. He knew he should have gone for a knockout blow, but he’d been too worried about that gun. Now he didn’t worry about finesse. He hit, hard, and Ng flopped back, silent.

“Move! Fast!” Matt hissed, looking up at the two pairs of legs dangling over the edge of the roof. Caitlin dropped down, and Matt caught her. Luc’s legs waved wildly, and then another pair appeared. Serge had made it.

They both dropped together, just as a Buzzard guard came around the corner — Matt’s old pal Willy.

“Yo, Ng, what’s the big problem?”

The blond boy stared in astonishment at the escaping prisoners. His mouth opened to yell a warning as his right hand tore under his shirt to get his gun.

Serge snatched Ng’s pistol from the ground.

The sound of the two shots seemed to blend together. Willy screamed and spun, his left hand clamping to his shoulder. Serge charged forward.

“Serge, you idiot, you’re heading the wrong way!” Luc called. He, Matt, and Caitlin were already pounding down the street to the east.

Scooping up Willy’s gun, Serge shouted back, “I go to the road!”

There was no time to argue. The sound of the shots would definitely bring the Buzzards out of their staging area.

Matt risked a glimpse back as he and his companions reached the nearest street corner. Gang members came boiling out of the abandoned church like ants from a disturbed anthill.

Then the gunfire began by the church entrance.

“Guess somebody spotted Serge,” Luc said.

But a loud, growling voice rose over the scattered shots. Matt recognized it. James was giving orders to his troops. “Where are the others?” the gang warlord yelled. “Find ’em! Find ’em now!”

Matt whipped around the corner, herding the others in front of him. “Come on,” he said. “They’re going to have search parties out in a minute.”

“We won’t even make it down this street before they get around the corner,” Caitlin said.

“So we hide.” Matt scanned the rows of houses opposite them and chose one at random. It still had a door rather than a plywood barrier or a rough wall of cinder block across the entrance. He was afraid it might be locked, but there was neither a lock nor a doorknob. They’d been chopped out of the wooden panel, which simply swung in when he hit it with his palm.

They stepped into the shadowy interior, lit with a couple of streams of light coming from chinks in the warped plywood panels that were supposed to seal the glassless windows. Matt shut the door, peering out through the chopped hole. It gave him enough of a view of the street to show gang members in their green and black Buzzard colors running down the street the escaped prisoners had just left.

“Now they’ll have people ahead of us,” Luc said. “And they have enough people left to begin a house-to- house search.”

Matt turned from the doorway. “We’ll barricade the door to slow them down. While they fool with that, we’ll get out the back.”

They were in the front hallway of the old house. Obviously, a long time ago it had been cut up into apartments. To the right, a flight of stairs rose to the second floor. On the left was an apartment entrance, its door hanging at a drunken angle from broken hinges.

Matt went inside. Once this had been the front parlor, but it had been turned into a studio apartment. A soggy foam mattress squished with rainwater as Matt pulled it aside. The furniture in here had apparently been left as junk, and Matt had to agree with that assessment. Everything was cheap and shoddy. Still, enough of it held together to be potentially useful now. He wedged the rusty metal bed frame against the door. “See what’s in the next apartment,” he ordered as he started pulling a warped chipboard bookcase forward to add to the barricade.

Luc called out, “There’s an old trunk in here that must have been too heavy to carry.”

Matt had joined him, and they dragged the big, moldy leather trunk toward the door. That was when they heard Caitlin gasp. “We’ve got to get out of here — and quick!” She ran back toward them, and Matt and Luc abandoned the trunk.

Caitlin led them up the hallway. This was a larger apartment, and they could see daylight coming from the doorway of a room in the distance. Light also came from a wrecked window on the air shaft, where rainwater had lapped like a miniature lake. The leakage had also done a job on the hallway floor. Part of it had crumbled away, falling into the cellar below. A six-foot hole stood between them and the rear of the house!

Matt stepped toward the hole. The floor gave way sickeningly under his feet. “We might make it with a running jump,” he said.

“Or the impact of landing might take us through the floor and down there.” Luc peered into the shadowy cellar.

What they needed was a bridge, and fast.

“The door to the front apartment!” Matt said. The three of them rushed back to the front of the house, twisting and pulling at the door to free it from its bent hinges.

Maybe the noise carried. Maybe it was just bad luck that Buzzards came to check the house. When the outside door didn’t give immediately, a yell went up. Fists crashed on the old oak panel, and Matt heard more voices outside — the search party must be gathering at the doorstep.

He heaved desperately, and the door came free. “Let’s go!” he hissed, and the three of them stumbled down the hallway with the heavy door.

At the same moment, one of the gangbangers outside decided to try and shoot his way in. Pistol shots echoed down the hall, and a bullet whined off the bed frame in the hastily assembled barricade.

He’s seen too many holos, Matt thought. There’s no lock for him to break.

Even so, other Buzzards followed their gang-brother’s example. Bullets tore through the outer door and the