Gunwitch: Rebirth Page 15

  ‘Yeah, same.’ He fell into step beside her since both were heading the same way. The cops on the Industrial Avenue beat had a fairly strict policy regarding the girls who worked there. It came down to ‘if we don’t actually see it, it isn’t happening.’ As an addendum, neither side mentioned what the cops knew the girls were doing. It was a matter of practicality: anyone trying to clean up the avenue would have had a very long and largely thankless task ahead of them. In reality, the enclave did not want to know what went on there.

  ‘We did have a few Cyber-Kings hanging around earlier,’ Annette said. ‘Armed ones. Haven’t seen them in a few hours though.’

  ‘They sometimes raid places over the wall looking for parts they can glue on. Probably just checking out the security on the gates.’

  ‘Maybe. They were lucky none of the Widows spotted them. Or we were. I think there might have been collateral damage if they’d got into it.’

  ‘Yeah… Yeah, that’ll ruin your day.’

  It was dark now, but there were lights all along the Factory Wall and at least some of the streetlights on the opposite side worked. Even the darker patches were as clear as day to Annette, which was why she spotted the man in the leather jacket looking out from an alley and, pretty obviously, trying to be sneaky about it. Her visual systems locked in and pulled up a record: he was one of the four from earlier.

  ‘That said,’ Annette said, ‘those guys may be back.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘That’s kind of the issue. Looks like they’re– Get down!’

  Clement did not get down, because he had not been on the job for that long and had not developed the automatic reflexes many of his colleagues had. He did realise he was in trouble, because Annette had mentioned the gang members and he could see four dark shapes emerging from an alley up ahead, maybe ten metres away. He started going for his sidearm as the gunfire started, part of his brain detecting the staccato of fully automatic fire and another part telling him he was too late.

  Except that Annette had her pistols in her hands and was firing too. Her bullets, launched as if at random, burst in the air a couple of metres out, becoming a hailstorm of tiny pellets which acted as a remarkably effective barrier against the incoming rounds. There was that brief second where four armed thugs realised they had just emptied their magazines and hit precisely nothing, and then they were rushing to reload. Annette’s pod had already resupplied her weapons and this time she was not firing defensively. Four men lost the use of their right arms and, by that time, Clement was gathering his wits.

  ‘Long Island Police! You’re under arrest. Lay your weapons down and–’

  ‘Their weapons are down,’ Annette pointed out. ‘You want me to stop the one that’s running?’

  ‘Uh… if you would…’

  Annette took aim and fired, the bullet spinning out with a soft hiss and impacting the meat of the man’s thigh. With a shriek, he collapsed onto the sidewalk. ‘My civic duty,’ Annette said. ‘Do you think you could get them hauled off fairly quickly? They’re bleeding on the sidewalk.’

  ‘I’ll call it in. Uh, thanks, I owe you one.’

  Annette smiled. Sometimes she got to do something big that made life a little better for someone. Those were the days when she really felt better about herself. ‘Not really. Believe it or not, being appreciated for something other than a short skirt is worth quite a lot.’

  19/2/2117.

  Annette took a different route back from the avenue to the one she had taken to it. She had picked up a late client and was cutting through alleys on the way back from the Sedgewick. Most people avoided the alleys at night since they were not always especially safe, but Annette had her multispectral eyes and her pistols, and the dark did not bother her. It was thanks to her eyes that she spotted the two bodies lying against a wall in one of those dark alleys, and thanks to their infrared capabilities that she knew who she was looking at.

  Her heart sank and, when she stepped closer and heard the plaintive whine from Mickey, it tried to descend into her boots. She checked the old man’s pulse to be sure, but it only confirmed what her thermal vision was telling her anyway. His body was not more than a degree or two above ambient temperature: he had been dead for a few hours now with Mickey huddled against him, trying against all logic to keep his master warm and probably knowing he had failed.

  Annette reached out and scratched the dog between the ears. ‘I’m sorry, Mickey. He’s gone. There’s nothing much you or I can do for him.’

  Mickey whined a reply as Annette placed a call to the local LIPD office. She doubted the local Frankies would bother with a body as old as this one, but she was not going to give them a chance to decide there might be something they could salvage.

  ~~~

  There had been questions. Quite a lot of them, considering, but the paramedics were putting the death down to natural causes, almost certainly just exposure. Annette was off the hook and, as with most cops in south Queens, the ones who had turned out to check on the body she had reported were disinclined to ask what she was doing in an alley at that time of night. No crime, no problem.

  Annette watched the old man’s body, encased in a black bag, being loaded onto an ambulance. She did not really know the man, but somehow she felt she was going to miss seeing him on the corner when she passed.

  Mickey had been tied to a downpipe and was now yanking as hard as his skinny body could manage on the cord. He wanted to go with his master. Almost certainly the dog knew his master was dead, but he wanted to go with him, to whatever fate awaited him at the end.

  ‘What happens to the dog?’ Annette asked.

  The cop she had been talking to seemed to have more or less forgotten she was there, but he looked up at her and then at Mickey. ‘We’ll call animal control. They’ll deal with him.’

  Annette frowned, her eyes on the grey mutt with the tangled hair. She really did not like the way that had sounded.

  22/2/2117.

  Annette woke as her implant signalled her to wake. She needed no alarm clock, or any other kind of clock really, but she still checked the time on the glowing digits of the box beside her bed. It was ten a.m. She would frequently get up a little earlier on Monday because there was usually less work on Sunday. The clock said it was three minutes past, but she had never been able to get it to work right. It gained constantly, a fault in the electronics which she could probably have fixed, but…

  Slipping out of bed, Annette headed for the small bathroom and started running water in the shower. She always started the water before she brushed her teeth because it took that long for the hot to come through. Calling the thing a shower was somehow more appropriate than usual. Or maybe drizzle would have been better. It got her wet and took the sweat off her body before she tried to get into her corset.

  Drying herself off with one of her thin towels, Annette walked back into the main room. She had not decided whether it was a lounge or a bedroom, and it probably made no real difference. Bedroom was likely the best description since it was where she slept. She spent very little time there when she was not either trying to sleep or sleeping. Wrapping her hair in the towel, she bent to take one of her pistols from her arming pod which she kept beside the bed when she was sleeping. She preferred to have her weapons handy, just in case. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed and closed her eyes.

  Images flickered over the insides of her eyelids. There was her brother being cut down by laser fire. Annette raised her pistol, placing the barrel under her chin. There was her mother, her body torn and lying against a wall with accusatory eyes staring up at her daughter. Warning indicators appeared in her vision field and the safety locked on. Annette overrode it. There was her father, staring up at her as she pulled the trigger and put another hole in his skull. Annette’s finger tightened on the trigger.

  A pair of paws landed on her knees and a wet nose snuffed at the back of her hand. She opened her white eyes and found herself looking into Mickey’s brown on
es. He gave a soft whine.

  ‘Okay,’ Annette said. ‘I won’t. Not today.’

  Mickey settled back onto his haunches, looked up at her, and gave a short bark. It had required a lot of soap and water, the judicious use of a pair of scissors, and a good bit of brushing, but Mickey had turned out to be a fairly good-looking dog under the dirt. There was no way he was any kind of breed: he looked like some insane merging of a greyhound and a Yorkshire terrier, with a few other things thrown in probably. He was eating anything Annette put in front of him too. His ribs were looking a little less obvious, but she figured he would be absorbing her spare cash for a couple of weeks yet.

  But he was paying for his upkeep every morning when she got out of bed and considered eating a bullet. She had saved him from a likely demise at the hands of the animal control people and she had the strong feeling he understood that. In turn, he saved her, every day, and he would keep doing it until she did not need it any more.

  Annette laid her pistol down on the bed. ‘Okay, let me get some clothes on and I’ll get us both some breakfast.’

  Bark! Enthusiastic eyes, lolling tongue.

  She got to her feet, grinning. ‘If you’re a very good dog, there could be a sausage in your future.’

  Bark, bark! Beginnings of drool.

  ‘That means no drooling on the carpet.’

  Slurp. Apologetic whine.

  ‘Good dog.’

  ~~~

  Sarah, of course, thought that Mickey was absolutely gorgeous and fussed over him for ten minutes every day when he arrived with Annette. Jenny was not quite so enthused and had muttered dark things about fleas and food bills, but even she folded in the face of Mickey’s big brown eyes and the fact that he was clearly a loyal, obedient, and rather intelligent animal.

  That had been Saturday. Jenny always spent Sunday with her daughter, Terri, so she had not had time to gather further views on Mickey. Jenny was older than her two working companions. Not by a huge amount, but in street-years, it was half a lifetime. She had welcomed Annette to the pitch she had shared with Sarah for a year, give or take, because it might have been competition, but it gave them the trinity of blonde, brunette, and redhead which, Jenny said, attracted more customers. Jenny was the redhead, of course, though Annette would have described her hair as a rich auburn. Objectively, she was the least attractive of the three, though not by a lot. Her face was rounder and her body tended to the narrow. However, she made up for that with a double-D bust which she put considerable effort into flaunting, and it worked. She was something of a worrier, maybe because she had a four-year-old daughter, and this morning she had something to worry over besides Mickey.

  ‘Neighbourhood is going to the dogs,’ Jenny said. Mickey gave a soft yip and Jenny added, ‘Turn of phrase, Mickey. Sorry. But it is. I heard yesterday that there’s a Juicer gang making some new designer drug around here somewhere. Widows have been trying to find them is what I heard.’

  ‘Oh?’ Annette asked.

  ‘Black Widow doesn’t like that kind of business on her turf. She thinks narcotics dull your senses.’

  ‘Well, she’s right. Not every drug is a narcotic, however.’

  Jenny frowned. ‘They’re not?’

  ‘Comes from the Greek narkō, “to make numb.” It’s something which puts you to sleep, or tries to. There are drugs that’ll do precisely the opposite, but they’ll still give you a high. That’s assuming they’re making something psychoactive and not some form of combat enhancer. Juicers are big into steroids and more specific combat enhancers.’

  ‘You know way too much about this stuff.’

  ‘Chemistry was never my big subject, but I did put in some time in Manhattan.’ Both Jenny and Sarah knew some of Annette’s history and did not care whether she was legally in the enclave or not. ‘I’m not sure I like the idea of Juicers opening a lab up around here either.’

  Jenny shrugged. ‘Not much we can do about it… Or maybe you could. If you could take the place out and word got to Black Widow… Might make life around here a little easier for you and your friends.’

  Annette chuckled. ‘Good, solid, selfish motive. I might look into it.’

  28/2/2117.

  There was a gate on the southern Sea Wall of the Queens industrial zone. Outside it was a sort of encampment they called the Rock Way which people would come to by boat and wait for their chance to enter the city legally. To do that, they had to go through the Woodmere Immigrant Centre, which housed the gate. It could take months, but there were ways to speed up the process. For example, age was a factor. Someone young enough and on their own could be passed through quite quickly. No one had really tied up the loose ends, however. Once they were in, things did not always go quite as they should.

  That was what Stacey was thinking as she walked out through the doors of the reception centre and found herself standing on a road with some signage pointing the way out of the industrial zone… And that was about it. She had a little money and some addresses she was supposed to contact, when she figured out where any of them were. No one had given her a map, though.

  So, Stacey walked. She headed north, because all she could see was large buildings which looked like they were factories or something, and south was obviously the wrong direction. There were people about, not many, but some she could have asked for directions. But they all seemed to be busy, rushing from place to place or engaged in some form of discussion. She did not want to disturb them, so she kept walking.

  She had a feeling it was Sunday – she had been losing track of the days for a while now – so the thin population was probably to be expected. She was not sure how religious people in the enclave were, but they had to take a day off sometime. Sunday was traditional. Still, she finally found the gate out, through another big wall, because there were more people on the streets, all heading one way. The sun was pretty low in the sky: it had to be home time for the workforce. She thought of asking some of them for directions, but they were all walking huddled in their coats, heads down, too closed off from the outside world for Stacey to feel comfortable talking to them.

  And once she was out of the gate, the world did not look more hopeful. She found herself on a broad roadway which seemed to run all the way along the wall. On the opposite side, it was apartment blocks and a few signs indicating hotels. She could not afford a hotel, she was fairly sure of that, but she was really getting hungry and she could see something which looked like a café down the road to the left. That was the way she decided to go, even if it meant walking along a road lined with ‘ladies of the night’ as her mother had called them. It was not night, but they were there. Stacey kept her head down and did not even think of asking them about a hostel.

  A mug of tea and a slightly stale sandwich bit into her supply of cash with more relish than she ate the food, but her stomach did not feel so empty and she had hopes of finding somewhere to stay before it got too dark.

  It was starting to get dark now. The sun had to be barely above the horizon and with all the buildings and walls, twilight was setting in. She set off east again, her pace picking up as a sense of urgency set in. Maybe there would be a sign, something to indicate there was a place she could stay. Maybe she could find someone to ask, once she ran out of women in short skirts and shorter shorts. They had to be cold; Stacey felt cold just looking at them. Actually, Stacey just felt cold. Maybe a little warmer with food in her belly, but the weather was not exactly tropical. It had been warmer at home…

  ‘I know that look.’ Stacey started at the sound of the voice and looked around to see a man leaning against the wall of an apartment block. ‘Let me guess,’ he went on. ‘They kicked you out on the street with a few bucks and a list of hostels, but no clue where they actually were. It’s getting dark. You haven’t found a place to stay. You’re starting to think staying home might have been a better idea.’ He took Stacey’s wide-eyed stare as confirmation. ‘Seen it a million times. Actually, saw it in a mirror a few years back.�
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  A fellow immigrant then. Stacey guessed he was not that much older than her and he seemed to have made it fairly well on the Long Island. His jeans and T-shirt were nothing too special, but he was wearing a long leather coat which looked expensive and he had a confident air about him. And, if Stacey was being honest, he was kind of good-looking…

  He spoke again before she could get a reply out, one thumb indicating a direction over his shoulder. ‘There’s a pretty good hostel about two blocks back. Church place. Good people.’

  ‘Uh, thank you. I… I’ll go find it.’ She glanced either way to look for a road she could use to take her north.

  ‘Huh… Look, I’m going in that general direction. I’ll walk you over. Streets around here can get a little rough when the light’s going.’

  Stacey’s critical instincts kicked in and she thought, briefly, that accepting directions was one thing and an escort was another. But he was quite good-looking… ‘Okay. That would be really great. I’m Stacey.’

  He pushed off from the wall and started off the way she had come. ‘Come on then, Stacey. It’s not far if we cut through the alleys.’

  ‘Alleys?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about. I know my way around.’ He turned left, into one of those alleys. ‘Come on. It’s quite safe.’

  Stacey followed him and, when she got in there, she found that the alley was not really that narrow and there was still light getting into it. It was not that bad and… He had never given his name, which she thought was a little odd, but okay. He would get her to the hostel and she would be safe there.

  The alley walls turned from concrete slabs to wooden fences. They were passing by the backyards of apartment blocks, Stacey guessed. Maybe she could get a small apartment, when she had found a job of some sort anyway. She was not really sure what she was going to do. She had few skills worth much in a big place like this, but there had to be something she could do.

  ‘Not much further,’ her guardian said, turning right at a corner.