Part 14 (1/2)

Some of the Free People love this game-called it spaghetti snakes-but all but the best played it with a safety net or at least a catcher below. She has neither.

When she opens her eyes. I ease up on all but the lightest vibration. I see her spot me, check her situation. Realize. If she doesn't retreat, I can shake her down. There is no way she can touch me, crouched as I am out of reach, our only connection the tension in the line I control.

She moves forward, testing. I start shaking the snag-rope. She stops. So do I. The lights go out, but I can feel her motion and start pulling again. She stops.

I wait, expecting her to retreat, but when the lights come on again, the erratic flashes reveal that she has somehow gotten to her gun and is aiming at me. Even as the Law warns me against killing, my hands pull again on the snag-rope. Hard. The motion sets me swinging and my next jerk is harder.

Her shot goes wild.

I haul again, roughly, violently. She falls. The lights go out, but not before I see her hit in a staccato splatter of bright blood.

Looking up, I see most of the erstwhile prisoners have left the Jungle. All that remains is for me to follow. I make my way to the ladder and scramble upward, my sneaker toes bouncing against the metal wall in my haste.

From below, I hear a shout. The voice is commanding, female, familiar.

”Forget these! The one we want is getting away!”

I climb faster and hear a pair of dearer, closer voices.

”Hey, Sarah! You're shaking us loose!” yells Betwixt.

”My claws are slipping!” screams Between.

I stop and leaning precariously from the ladder, jam the rubber dragon deeper into my pack.

”Ouch! Not so hard!” Betwixt grunts, his protest m.u.f.fled by the nylon bag.

I grin and keep climbing, but the pause has enabled my closest pursuers to catch up with me. There are two: a man and a woman in the same blue jumpsuit uniform as the woman I killed. The man's left eye is swollen shut; the woman's sleeve is ripped. Both look grimly angry. Dr. Haas follows a distant third.

Ducking through the no longer concealed doorway into the abandoned building, I concentrate on remembering the steps into the maze I must run. Some light s.h.i.+nes through the broken windows and gaping roof and as I set my foot to the trail it begins to call out to me.

I run as quickly as the uneven surface will permit, rejoicing that my Pack members have escaped and that in a few moments I, too, will be free.

The maze's song guides me until suddenly it is broken by the dissonant wheeze of a dart gun firing.

On reflex, I flatten myself against a post and then resume running, unable to dodge much beyond the erratic demands of the maze.

”Cut her off!” the man's voice yells.

His answer is the dusty Sheetrock giving way beneath his feet and his partner's cry as she also begins to fall.

”s.h.i.+t! The floor's bad,” the woman calls.

Glancing back, I see her pulling herself up.

”No s.h.i.+t!” her partner agrees. ”And I'm wedged here. Get me a rope-if I wriggle, I'll fall.”

I keep going. Only a few yards more.

”Fools!” a cool calm voice cuts the darkness. ”She's getting away.”

I hear a click, a wheeze. There is no way for me to dodge as the tranq sliver solidly hits my shoulder, knocking me off-balance and cras.h.i.+ng down through the floor. I concentrate on falling, slowing my descent when I can by grabbing at protrusions. One hand is badly skinned when I thump down into a foot of stagnant water.

The stuff in the sliver is s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up my head, but not so much that I can't hear a voice from my back wailing, ”G.o.d! We're hit!”

Dragging myself to my feet, I a.s.sess my position. From the distance I've fallen, I'm probably in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the abandoned building.

The sliver pierced through my pack and apparently through some portion of Betwixt and Between before hitting me. I guess that this is why I haven't been knocked out yet. Still, I am feeling woozy. I can tell the direction of the Jungle and slog that way. Above me I hear shouting, but the words are indistinct.

I crawl out of the pit, breaking the fragments of a rotted wooden door. While I am crouched in the doorway, two figures in navy jumpsuits run by. ”She can't have gone far....”

They're out of my erratic hearing before I can find what they are going to do. I stagger out, my course a jagged line. I'm not sure where I'm going, but the vague idea comes that if I can find the Lesser Trail we used to enter the Jungle, I can hole up there and surely Grey Brother or Abalone will find me.

I hide again when two figures appear, but I am too dizzy to pull my feet in from a patch of light. As I stare stupidly at them sticking out, wondering if they might be mistaken for soggy shadows, a hand touches my shoulder.

I look up and see Abalone's blue lips curl in a smile, a smile that fades as I try to speak and only manage to faint.

Eleven.

TWO DAYS LATER, I AM FINALLY WELL ENOUGH TO GET UP AM FINALLY WELL ENOUGH TO GET UP and move around. It seems that Dr. Haas-or one of her cadre-managed to hit me twice. One dart spent most of its drug piercing through Betwixt and Between's foot before hitting me. The other hit squarely. The force of the combined impacts was enough to make me fall and though Professor Isabella mutters about the damage I did myself wading to get out of the bas.e.m.e.nt, she admits that I was lucky. and move around. It seems that Dr. Haas-or one of her cadre-managed to hit me twice. One dart spent most of its drug piercing through Betwixt and Between's foot before hitting me. The other hit squarely. The force of the combined impacts was enough to make me fall and though Professor Isabella mutters about the damage I did myself wading to get out of the bas.e.m.e.nt, she admits that I was lucky.

”Not only did you survive the fall but the doubled dosage could have killed you,” she tells me as she winds fresh gauze around my hand.

Head Wolf has not been so fortunate. Although he no longer drools or stares vacantly into s.p.a.ce, he has fallen into a coma from which he does not awaken. Members of the Pack take s.h.i.+fts at his side, patting water onto his chapped lips, checking the IV b.u.mblebee has hooked up.

We are currently holed up in a most peculiar cave: the Cold Lairs. Midline had discovered it when he was still a Cub and it had become a secret between himself and Head Wolf.

”Paid my dues for a month or so with the information,” Midline recalls when telling me about it.

The cave is a pocket beneath a freeway. Apparently, once there had been a tunnel, perhaps a water main here, but when the freeway was restructured and magnetized, the tunnel was no longer needed. Instead of filling it in, the contractors had sealed it over, no doubt padding their pockets with the money not spent on the job.

The weather s.h.i.+fted the asphalt and concrete used to seal the place, breaking a crevice to the underworld. After Midline reported his find to Head Wolf, the Pack leader arranged to have the freeway's power grid tapped, another entrance made, and then both openings concealed behind thick curtains of kudzu.

This retreat is not as comfortable as the Jungle, but it serves to keep most of our Pack together.

Professor Isabella has drawn medical supplies for Head Wolf on her ElderAid card and now the Pack views her as one of their own. I am pleased, if slightly jealous, to see the littler Wolves crowding to her, begging her for stories or asking questions.

The first night when I am well enough to walk about una.s.sisted, Abalone waits until the bulk of the hunters have left and then invites me and Professor Isabella for a walk.

She has completely abandoned her young executive guise and returned to the paints and street struts she favors. As we walk to an automatic diner, she tells me how she and Grey Brother created a false trail that would have eventually led Dr. Haas and her people to the apartment. Once there, they would have found signs of a hasty departure.

”If they looked hard enough,” Abalone brags, ”they would have found enough evidence to convince them that the three of us fled up the Shattered Coast and into the East Megalop. I bought us tickets on a shuttle and then rented a hovervan. They'll figure one is a decoy and one the real route, but they won't know which. While they chase down dead ends, they'll never be sure that we didn't find some third route. Meanwhile, we'll be here-the last place they'll look.”

”That will give us time,” Professor Isabella says, holding the autodiner's door for us.

I look first to confirm that the place is empty. Then I shake my head in query-unable to frame the question.