The Road to Hell, page 8
“I’ll bring him with me,” yelled Artemis. “You have to go now.”
Artemis was firing a wide spread, desperately trying to keep the spiders at bay and buy them some time.
Olivia was firing at Kane. She sprayed the spiders, keeping them at bay, but something deep with her felt a sense of injustice at Kane escaping their grasp. It was irrational, emotional, but of all the officers that died that day, this was the one that deserved it, and yet he was going to live. She couldn't let him live.
For his part, Kane leaned forward over a broken desk, propping himself up and trying desperately to steady his aim. In front of him, the spiders, sensing the danger to an officer, streamed in front of the incoming rounds, sacrificing themselves to protect him. Several other threads of spiders weaved their way across the ceiling. Olivia shifted her aim sporadically, firing wildly at the other groups of spiders, but always returning to Kane, always trying to get a shot through to him.
Kane’s blaster ran hot and jammed. He forced himself up, standing defiant behind the swarm of spiders constantly throwing themselves in front of him, throwing themselves in the path of the incoming rounds fired by Olivia. It was almost as if he was willing her to break through and end it all.
The spiders on the ceiling had reached Olivia, but her focus was Kane. If she could take him out, it would be worth the sacrifice, she told herself. She should have killed him when she had the chance.
“Olivia,” cried Artemis again, holding the zip-line in one hand and firing his pulse rifle wildly with the other.
Above her, spiders began dropping from the ceiling. She no longer cared. The counter on her pulse rifle flew down through fifty, forty, thirty, but she only needed one shot to go through. Just one.
Thin mechanical arms wrapped around her legs as spiders began climbing up to disarm her, and still she fired at Kane, consumed by rage.
Artemis had no choice. He couldn’t carry both her and the senator. In a blur, he dissolved, pushing through the pain and reaching out through frozen space-time he grabbed Olivia and escaped down the zip-line.
The bitter wind at eight thousand feet chilled them to the bone as they travelled down the thin filament wire toward the next building. Above them, police cruisers jockeyed for position, their spotlights illuminating the shattered windows behind them. In the distance, Olivia could see Taylor already warming the engines on their cruiser, preparing for their escape. If only she could have killed Kane, she thought. They had hoped to take both Kane and the senator as hostages, but to leave them alive felt like a bitter defeat.
And yet Olivia comforted herself in knowing that both she, Artemis and Taylor had cheated death once again. They’d lived to fight another day.
Chapter 08: The Astor
A decrepit wire-framed lift wound its way up the massive support pylon leading from the Underworld back to the surface. More of a cage than an elevator, the rusting frame was a relic of The Great Leap Forward, the Herculean effort to build the new world above the rubble of the old. The concrete pylon was over two hundred feet in diameter, extending almost quarter of a mile beneath the ground. It was one of the numerous foundations upon which the new world rested so securely.
With no cables supporting it, the lift ran up a saw-tooth track on the side of the pylon. The gears of the lift meshed with the teeth on the track as the cage crept higher.
The lift had a gentle rocking motion that put Harrison to sleep. His head rested in the corner of the lift, his hat tilting down over his face. A cool breeze ran through the shaft, chilling Susan as she sat next to him on a bench seat, amazed he could fall asleep so easily.
A light drizzle fell gently from the sky, blowing in through the open sides of the lift.
After almost an hour, the lumbering cage approached the surface. At first, a faint glow appeared above them. Then the sounds, sights and smells of the old city grew slowly around them as the lift approached the top of the shaft. Voices, shouting, music and the odd scream drifted on the breeze, growing in intensity as the elevator struggled on. Flashes of light cut through the clouds. The sound of hover jets cutting through the air high above them eventually woke Harrison.
“Did you have a good sleep?” Susan asked as he sat up, looking around, momentarily startled to realise where he was.
“Not bad,” he replied, stretching his neck from one side to the other as the lift slowly ground to a halt.
Across from them, a sea of people swarmed through the night markets. After the solitude of the lift, the commotion was almost intimidating. Barbecued meats and the smell of oriental spices filled the air. Most of the stalls were nothing more than a steel frame, with canvas sides and all sorts of commodities within. Clothing, holo discs, kebabs roasting on skewers, ornate cooking pots and a variety of electronic goods were all for sale. Street musicians lit up the night with songs choreographed to holographic laser light shows.
Susan looked down as she stepped off the elevator. The darkness below scared her. It seemed to stretch on into eternity, a seemingly bottomless pit. Traditional visions of hell had always revolved around the idea of an underworld, she realised, some sinister place beneath the ground. In religious mythology, hell was a place of pain and torment, of fire and brimstone, but for her, the thought of the cold, bitter darkness swallowing her whole seemed worse, far worse.
Although Susan was barefoot, she was wearing a change of clothes. Brains had given her an old denim work shirt and some shorts, which looked baggy on her small frame.
Harrison pulled her aside, whispering in her ear, “You’re on my turf, now. These streets are a dangerous place at the best of times. Stay close and you’ll be OK.”
A shanty town spread out before them. The old city had never really been abandoned. It had become a melting pot for the influences of both the new world and the Underworld.
“This place is huge,” cried Susan, looking around at stalls selling parrots, wooden carvings and ornate rugs. Fresh fish lay on slabs of ice with fans blowing both the smell and the flies into the surging crowd. Steam rose up from cane dumpling pots while flashes of fire burst out from various woks as street-side chefs tossed their stir-fry over and over.
“These dirty streets may not look like much. But what you see is what you get. Down here there’s no facades, nothing’s hidden. You see things for what they are without any pretence. Up there, everything’s clean on the surface so you never know quite what you’re dealing with. Here in the mud, grime and grease, there’s honesty.”
Damn, he thought, I'm starting to sound like Brains.
Susan picked up a designer watch from a stall the size of a phone booth and an old lady began haggling with her, trying to talk her into a purchase she was never going to make.
“You buy. You buy,” the old woman said.
“No. I’m just browsing.”
“I give you good price. One hundred credits. You very pretty. Watch look good on you. Impress your friends.”
Harrison came up beside Susan, saying, “It’s a black economy. The government tolerates it because it’s easier to turn a blind eye than to repopulate everyone.”
“I’ve heard about this place,” said Susan, putting the watch down. “But never realised how big it was. From up there, all this seems like just a footnote on progress.”
“What’s your price?” the old Asian lady cried in her broken English, yelling above the commotion from the stalls around them. “I give you best price.”
“Not today,” replied Susan.
The woman grabbed her by the sleeve, tugging at her arm.
“Fifty credits. I give it to you for fifty credits. Best price.”
“No thank you. I’m not interested.”
“OK, forty credits. Last price. Forty credits.”
Susan fought to pull her arm away, half-dragging the old lady along with her as she cried out, “Let go of me.”
“OK,” the lady replied, letting go and feigning defeat while still hungry for a sale. “You name the price. You give me your price. I give it to you at your price. I give it to you on your terms. You tell your friends, OK? You tell many friends. You bring your friends to buy more watches, OK?”
Susan turned and walked away. As much as she hated to be rude, there was nothing else she could do. She didn’t want the watch and no amount of refusal was going to placate the old lady.
Behind them, the old lady screamed, “You stuck-up bitch!”
Harrison grabbed Susan’s hand and melted back into the sea of people moving through the markets. Susan was stunned.
“I thought you said they weren’t pretentious?”
“They’re not,” replied Harrison.
“You said they were honest.”
Thinking about it he added, “She told you what she thought of you, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, but…”
Susan was still a little taken back at being verbally abused for not buying the watch. Harrison laughed.
“Would you rather she smiled and lied to your face?”
“At least that would have been polite,” Susan protested.
“OK. So if you’re going to be ripped off, you’d rather someone was nice and deceptive instead of brutal and honest.”
“I’m not saying that,” replied Susan, still on the defensive. “It’s just...”
“It’s just you’d rather your ego wasn’t crushed.”
“How can she be so rude?”
Harrison smiled.
“Welcome to the real world, kiddo. WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get.”
Rain pelted the sheet metal roof above the markets like a drummer hitting a snare. Gaps in the roofing allowed the overflowing gutters to pour down into the narrow alleyways between the seemingly endless rows of stalls. Susan was surprised to see how much merchandise could be stacked and packed into an area only marginally larger than her bathroom.
Harrison stopped to talk to another old lady selling kebabs by the side of the alley. Susan kept her distance. A little more weary after her first encounter.
The old woman had a row of skewers arranged over a thin metal grate, set above a bed of glowing hot coals. Spits of fat lit up the coals as the meat roasted over the heat. Susan couldn’t hear what was being said, but Harrison paid the old lady kindly, giving her more than the meagre two credits she was asking.
“You want one?” asked Harrison, turning to Susan.
“No thanks. I’ve had enough rat for one night.”
“Hey, don’t knock the rat. There’s worse things you could be eating around here.”
“Like what?”
“Bugs. Roaches. Some people consider them a real delicacy, especially when deep fried.”
Susan shuddered at the thought.
Harrison pointed at a stall selling plastic bags full of crickets and other insects, all still alive, with perforations in the bags allowing air to circulate.
“Or, if you’re really hungry, we could go get some live witchetty grubs. But you’ve got to be careful. They’ll bite you if you don’t bite first. So whatever you do, don’t swallow them whole.”
“I think I’ll pass.”
As they walked on, Susan said, “You really love this place, don’t you.”
“I love real people,” replied Harrison. “Not everyone, mind you, but I love people that are genuine. See the old lady back there selling the kebabs. She lost her husband and her two sons in the war. Governments are always keen to have men fight for them, but once the dust settles and the bodies are buried, they’re nowhere to be seen. Sure, she gets a pension, but even that’s just a token gesture. I don’t like to forget. I don’t like to forget that people are real, that life goes on. You know what I mean?”
Susan was quiet.
Harrison bit off some of the kebab.
“Tell me about your sister.”
“Olivia,” replied Susan. “Well, she was always the mature one. She’s seven years older than me and always seemed more like my mother than my sister. I’d play with dolls; she’d just want to read, mostly romance, I guess. Dolls were too childish for her. I’d want to go to the movies, but she’d rather study. Just over fifteen years ago, she disappeared. We thought she'd been killed. There was so much chaos in those last days of the war. So many people went missing.”
Although there were throngs of people all around them, Susan felt like she was talking to Harrison in private. There was something about his demeanour. He just listened. It was as though she’d known him all her life and he was prepared to hear without judging, listening without prejudice.
“At first it was incredibly painful. You never think you’ll get over it, you know. At the time, it seems like life had come to an end. But life moves on, like you said. It never stands still.”
As they moved out from beneath the sea of market stalls, the rainfall increased, slowly building into a torrential downpour. They stepped out of the markets and dashed across a narrow alley and under a leaking shop front.
“Everything was being rebuilt,” Susan said, continuing on, oblivious to the rain dripping on her shoulder. “Not only the city, but our own lives. Eventually, we stopped thinking about her. Not deliberately, of course. It just kinda happened. Slowly, I guess, we forgot. Then, two days ago, those photos turned up and opened old wounds. For almost twenty years we thought she was dead and now it seems she’s alive.”
“How do you know it’s her?” asked Harrison.
“The birthmark on her right ankle. It’s pretty distinct and unique. You can see it clearly in the picture.”
“It could be a shadow,” replied Harrison, recalling the picture to mind. He really hadn’t notice the birthmark at all. But then again, he realised, he was probably focusing on other anatomical characteristics of the naked woman.
“I know it’s her. I know she’s alive out there somewhere.”
“How old are you?” asked Harrison.
“I’m twenty seven.”
“You don’t look it. So your sister disappeared when you were around eleven, when she was, what, eighteen or nineteen?”
“Nineteen going on thirty-five!” exclaimed Susan.
Harrison smiled.
“Seems like yesterday,” said Susan. “I feel like I’ve been a teenager forever, like I’ve never really grown up. But Olivia, she seemed to skip those years and go right into adulthood. Funny, that, how two sisters can be so different. But I guess that's what war does to people.”
Water flooded the gutters in the street, rolling out across the pavement.
Above them, dark clouds rolled across the brooding sky. Harrison hailed a cab while sheltering beneath the eves of the derelict shopfront.
Most of the cab drivers ignored them. Either they were too busy, or just indifferent. Robots could get like that. The emotion circuits worked a little too well, making them just as cranky as a human when their power cells began to run down. It seemed long hours and thankless work were a universal curse.
After a few minutes a yellow hover car with the traditional black and white chequered strip running around its waist descended from above, its bright headlights flooding the sullen street. Harrison opened the door for Susan, allowing her to jump from the curb, through the curtain of rain streaming from a broken roof gutter and into the cab. Following hard behind her, Harrison slammed the door shut behind them.
Water dripped from the two of them onto the slick leather seats. The butt of the sawn-off shotgun hanging from Harrison’s shoulder harness dug into his ribs as he slid across the seat. Whenever he stood, the cut-down shotgun beneath his trench coat was, for all intents, invisible, but once he sat down it became readily apparent that something nasty was hidden beneath the soft fabric. It didn’t escape the robotic driver peering at them through his rear-view plasma screen. A sheet of blast-proof Plexiglas slid up from the back of the driver’s seat.
“The Astor, driver.”
“Yes sir,” came the pre-programmed electronic reply as the craft lifted effortlessly back into the air.
“My records indicate there are three hotels named the Astor in Old New York and one in New New York. Could you be more specific about your destination?” asked the robotic driver.
“The Astor, South-side, on Maple,” replied Harrison.
Outside, flashes of yellow and red whipped by the smoothly accelerating cab. Rain pelted the roof, streaming past on the windows, distorting the image of reality around them into a blur of colour. Neon signs lit up the night. XXX Shows, No Loan Refused, Jackal on Primetime, Phase-Cola, pawn brokers and Turkish bath houses all called out, yearning for business.
Inside the cab, warm air began flowing from the ceiling. Music played softly while various advertisements rolled across the back of the driver’s seat.
“Why the Astor?” asked Susan.
“That’s where this all began,” replied Harrison. “From what I’ve heard on the street, some serious heat came down there about three or four days ago, which fits in with the time stamps on your photos. I figure that’s where your shots were taken, so if we’re going to pick up the trail, that’s the place to start.”
The cab rolled slightly, weaving its way through the old town, around buildings and spires, passing several pylons supporting the new city above. Susan stared out at the rain, watching as other craft whipped by just a few feet on either side, their computerised collision avoidance systems constantly correcting their course, ensuring order in the midst of the chaos in the air-lane. Slowly, the fluorescent neon signs began to fade as the cab moved out of downtown and into the old industrial area that had once been Newark, New Jersey.
The cab descended next to a burnt out factory and pulled up in front of the Astor. Vacancies shone in red neon, flickering in the darkness above the hotel entrance. Harrison paid in hard currency, not something uncommon in this part of town, where no one knew anything and nothing ever happened, nothing that could be proven at least.
Susan questioned him about it, so Harrison explained.
"Hard currency is a convenient way of avoiding an electronic trail, which is the sort of thing the police data mining department is always scanning for, some confluence of seemingly unrelated, benign events that together revealed criminal activity. Too much Big Brother for my liking so I stick with cash."
