He waited on the street, jogging on the spot or rubbing his hands together. When the post office opened, he dashed inside, hoping against reason that a new card had come.
No luck.
He shivered as he trudged back towards his place. He stopped on the way to pick up steaming hot coffee and a paper sack loaded with fresh, sweet blueberry bagels. He sipped the coffee, and chewed on a bagel as he walked, his brow twisted, heart low.
His mind was so absorbed in anxiety for his brother, he didn't notice anything was wrong until he walked into it.
As he turned the corner, and saw his block up ahead, he saw an unmarked black van parked out front. That wasn't remarkable, but the two men leaning against it were something else. They worse plain black overalls and peaked caps pulled down low to shield their eyes. They looked like TV repairmen or furniture movers, except that they bore no insignia, and neither did their van. And it was early, surprisingly early for the service industry to be alive and active.
He shrugged, thinking nothing of it, except that it might make an interesting picture series: Men of the Dawn. No, he thought, if there are men about this early, there must be women, too. What about The Dawn of-
He was juggling his coffee and bagels as he fumbled with the door, when he felt a rough hand grab his shoulder, and yank him off-balance.
Soro was not a large man. The fellow who caught his shoulder pulled him with a lot of force. Soro spun like a top, and the sack of bagels exploded, rings of bread flying in all directions.
And then there was the coffee.
Soro had a splintered glimpse of a crew-cut blonde, his peaked cap sitting on the back of his head, with a jaw better suited to a barbarian pit fighter than a modern son of the streets. Then his hand closed in an unconscious convulsion, and crushed the tall paper cup full of steaming coffee. The hot liquid sprayed up into the man's face, which turned an ugly red. He fell away, clutching at his eyes, moaning like a broken old man.
Luck saved Soro once, but he couldn't see it happening twice. The crew-cut blonde had a partner, a heavyset man with fat fingers and a fat nose, who snarled at him like a vicious dog, and clawed at his arms with those huge, powerful hands.
Soro fell to his knees, a move that his assailant hadn't expected. He then dove forward, under his outstretched arms, and rolled across the tarmac, causing the driver of a battered green semi to scream curses at him.
He ignored the swearing, jumped up, and ran. More shouts, and the squeal of brakes, told him the fat fingered attacker was on his tail. He didn't bother to look behind him. He ran.
"Left, left, left," he repeated to himself, but some quirk of unkind fate took him down a bunch of streets and alleys with no left turns. He began to feel as if he was running, not a rat's maze, but one of those winding processional routes the ancient Celts followed, circling, ever circling around and around to the altar at the centre.
And at the altar, his memory told him, oh, such fun they had.
He hoped, he wished, he prayed for a real intersection, a crossing place, a choice. If he had a choice, whichever choice he made, he'd have a fifty fifty chance of throwing off his pursuer.
Good enough.
But there were no choices. The breath rasped in his throat, his legs felt heavier and slower, and he developed a pain his side. Sweat poured down his brow, and soaked through his polo neck, so it clung to his chest and back. He wanted to look over his shoulder, hoping to see the fat fingered man running out of steam. A guy that big, surely he was taking a bad chance with his heart, running a chase like this.
The sound of heavy, thudding footfalls told him a different story, and even to think of hearts reminded him of nightmares and the agony of the dark hours.
He turned a corner, and gasped when he saw a blank wall ahead, but then he realised his prayers must have attracted the attention of some beneficent archangel. The alley stretched away both left and right; both choices were shrouded in solid shadow, for the sun still lay close on the horizon. His choice was blind, but at last and at least he had a choice, and his pursuer would face the same difficulty as he.
Habit and reason pulled him left, and he did not argue. He willed forth a spurt of extra speed, and dashed down the dark alley. In moments he found he had to slow down, because the shadow was so thick, so profound, that he couldn't tell where the air met the wall, or which was which.
He had a sudden urge to giggle, which he suppressed with an effort, because it seemed just too splendid; how could anyone find him now? In the effort to run him down, the fat fingered man would be likely to run right past him, close enough to touch, close enough to taste his breath.
He considered that, but soon realised he didn't want to stand in the shadows all morning. And even if he had wanted to, he couldn't; the sun would rise, and the shadows would vanish. He could still hear those heavy footsteps, though they came quieter to his ears. He didn't know if that meant his pursuer was running in the other direction, or if by some evil chance he'd chosen the same path, and was following at a slower, more cautious pace. In either case, standing still could only serve him for a short time, and the alley was narrow enough that the fat man might brush against him by accident.
To be caught by accident would be as bad as to be caught by intent. He would still be caught. Whatever these men wanted with him, they hadn't even bothered to try a peaceful approach. He couldn't gamble on their goodwill.
He plunged on along his dark path.
He kept his hands stretched out in front of him, and that was a good thing, otherwise he would have discovered the end of the alley with his face. As it was, when he banged his fingers against the cool bricks, it cost him no more than some scraped skin.
He could hear those heavy steps behind him.
He felt along the wall to his left, and came up against another hard wall. A moment's exploration told him he couldn't go that way.
The footsteps sounded closer.
His heart thumping in his chest, he felt his way along cold bricks to the right. The wall continued, and continued, and... He realised that he'd turned off the alley, had entered another branch. And a few moments later brought him into a lighted section.
His hoped raised, and he drew breath, overjoyed to see the dark red bricks he'd followed, the cracked grey pacing slabs underfoot, the green moss that crawled up the walls. Then his heart sank.
He'd entered a cul de sac. Ahead the wall rose to a high ledge, beyond which he guessed lay another street, much like this one. He saw a smelly old dumpster against the wall, and, on the sides of the buildings to left and right, he saw a few dirty windows, and the blocky white shapes of air conditioning units.
The footsteps at his back came louder and faster.
He knew a moment of panic, as his heart hammered faster, and his legs trembled, weak, almost exhausted. He felt dizzy and sick, and he felt angry with himself, for making such an effort when the outcome was so stupid, so worthless.
He wished Sam was there. He wished Squiz was there. By Hell, he even wished that annoying jeep girl was there. She knew how to keep her head, and even if she lost it, he'd be better able to handle things if he knew her fate was riding on his success.
Tired, afraid, alone...
"Not alone. Never alone. I am large," he said. "I contain multitudes."
The familiar words, so often repeated in the past, took on new meaning. He drew comfort from them, and strength.
He was boxed in, but if he jumped up on the dumpster, he might be able to clamber over the wall.
"Good plan," he said to himself. "But it needs a spot of finesse."
Getting up on the ledge of that wall took an effort that wrenched his joints, scraped patches of material from his clothes, and skin from his hands. His instincts screamed for him to cross over the wall, and run, but he knew it wouldn't be enough. He had to end this, so he bent back down, and worked, though the smell appalled him, his heart seemed to beat a hundred times a second, and he could hear those steps drawing closer.
>
That worried him. If the fat fingered man found him too soon, all his work would be wasted, and he'd be unable to escape.
So he worked.
It proved easy enough to climb over the dumpster. The hard part came when he leaned back into it, reaching for the thing he'd seen. Lowering his head over it, he felt as if he was clutched in the clawed grasp of a winged demon, held face down, to dangle over the stygian abyss. A mephitic reek of rotten cabbage, unwashed socks, and the decaying flesh of some small animal wafted up into his face. He tried not to breathe, but his lungs laboured as he worked, clinging to the wall, his face red, his head too full of blood. Small insects shone and scurried in the dumpster, and something brushed his hand. He prayed it was just a piece of worn out clothing, but from the softness, warmth, and matted fur, he swore it was a rat.
With a squealing noise, he yanked the thing into place, and then he hauled himself up on top of the wall, with no time to spare. If the fat fingered man hadn't been sure where he was, the metallic scraping had to have alerted him. He walked out of the darkness, and glared up at Soro. His flushed face shone with sweat, and he'd lost his peaked cap. "I got you. Get down from there, you dirty little monkey," he said.
Soro perched on the edge of the wall, and looked down at his pursuer. He got ready to jump down the other side, and he'd do it if he had to, but he had a chance to examine the man who'd ambushed and chased him. It wasn't the first time he'd got into trouble, and he felt confident he could handle it, but trouble did not make a habit of sending burly chaps to his front door. He was in the dark, and he liked a mystery even less than trouble.
"You slobbish ape," he said. "You couldn't get your saggy ass up here, not with a team of sherpas and an elephant!"
"Why you scrawny pipsqueak! I'd like to..." he trailed off, but the clawing, strangling motions of his big hands were eloquence enough.
"You'd have had three heart attacks before you laid your littlest finger on me."
If the man had been flushed before, now he was a scarlet beacon. He looked as if he might really have a heart attack, or a stroke. What did the old time doctors call it, thought Soro, death from an apoplectic fit? He's not just on the threshold, he's walked right in and sat down by the fire.
Soro let himself slip just a tad.
The other man gave him a cruel grin. "You're trapped, little monkey," he said.
Soro chewed his lip. "Maybe your saggy ass has a point. But I could hold on here a long time, and I bet you don't want to wait."
"So I'll come and get you. With my little finger," he added with thick sarcasm.
"I’ll kick you in the face."
The man scowled.
"That's right. You're too strong to fight, but if you come up after me, you'll be caught between my leather hammers and gravity. You'll get me, I guess, but it'll hurt."
The man shouted filth at him, and kicked the dumpster so hard it shook. Soro felt himself turn pale; he tried to keep his eyes off the thing, but he feared that another kick would mess up his handiwork.
He'd have to accelerate matters.
"Think you can knock me out of my tree with a few bad words? It'll take more than that. A lot more. Come up and get me, elephant boy."
"I'll make you wish you'd died in your sleep," said the fat fingered man, and he began to clamber up the dumpster.
Soro found, to his surprise, that he really did want to jump over the other side of the wall. He wanted to escape. He felt it in his muscles, his bones, his writhing gut. He forced himself to hold on as the fat man climbed up to get him.
"I'm gonna take it out of your pretty flesh," said the fat fingered man. He hauled himself upright on top of the dumpster.
On top of the metal sheet Soro had placed over the open mouth of the dumpster.
Soro saw his moment, and he struck! He gripped the wall with his hands, and lashed out with both feet, and struck the projecting edge of the metal. He'd balanced it just so, and he'd been unsure it would even hold the heavy man's weight. Now, as he kicked it with both feet, it slid aside, and tumbled into the dumpster.
The fat man in the sweat soaked overalls had time to gape at Soro, unbridled horror on his slack face, and then he slid down the falling metal sheet, into the yawning mouth of the dumpster.
Moving with a speed that would have surprised even Squizzle, Soro hopped down to the ground, grabbed the lid of the dumpster, slammed it shut, and snapped the catch in place.
The entire dumpster shook as the fat man pounded and screamed. Soro couldn't make out the words over the pounding; it sounded like an elephant playing the drums.
"I want to know-"
The drumming drowned out his words.
"Tell me-"
The noise made it impossible to hear himself speak.
"You wanna get outta there or not?" he yelled, hammering the side of the dumpster to lend emphasis to his question.
Silence.
He drew a deep breath, paused, and let it out in a long, relaxing sigh.
"I can't have shaved trolls come to my house and loom by my door. It lowers the tone."
He heard muffled swearing, but no drumming this time.
"So I want you monster types to back off, give me some space."
He heard a word, too low to make out.
"Say again, hefty pants."
The man shouted it, loud enough to be heard through the thick plastic. "Can't."
"I know, you're just the hired oaf."
Curses.
"Keep spouting that filth, and I'll leave you in the trash!"
Silence, except for the rasp of harsh, heaving breath. Couldn't be a lot of air in that space, and none fit for human types. He began to feel guilty.
"Tell me who sent you."
A painful groan.
"Tell me! You don't give the orders, so tell me who does."
A brutal curse. Then, "Gell. Gell Shield. I work for Gell Shield."
***
He hurried along lightening streets, trying to ignore the crawling fear in his belly, and the chills that ran up and down his spine.
Gell Shield. Gell Shield wanted him. Worse, they knew him, knew his home. He shook his head. It didn't make sense. If they had his picture, if they'd recovered his prints from the charred shell of the smoke bomb, they could have had him arrested weeks ago. If an investigation had only just turned up some such damning evidence, they must have had the police contacts to get him locked up without the rigmarole of staging an ambush at his front door.
Ambush.
He didn't want to go home. The Gell Shield mob had to be watching it. If they were Gell Shield. He didn't know if he could trust the fat fingered man that far. He didn't know why he would lie, and if he was working for someone else, he couldn't see how that someone else would know he'd tangled with the apes from Gell. No, he had to have told the truth, no matter how strange it was.
But Soro had an eerie certainty that it wasn't the entire truth. He half wished he'd stuck around and carried on the questioning, but no matter how angry he was, he couldn't have kept any man locked in a reeking dumpster for all that long, and he could never have left him to suffocate. His hand had trembled when he'd flipped open the catch, and then he'd run before his prisoner had time to emerge.
Prisoner. They had planned to take him prisoner. But why? He'd crawled under their fence, taken a few pictures, and bruised his knuckles against some dude's jaw. What the hell?
He still didn't want to go home. Gell Shield did have a record of brutality, even if their excesses rarely came to court. They did not, as far as he knew, have a record of tracking citizens to their homes and abducting them, or of taking them to some Rancho Muerte to be slaughtered with chainsaws, but who knew what didn't hit the papers and blogs?
He circled around to his home, avoiding the direct approach. He climbed up the fire escape of the building adjacent to his apartment block, and eyed the front of his building from the roof. The black van had moved.
A few minutes more careful o
bservation revealed that it hadn't vanished; it had been driven into a small side street, close by his building, and a man in dark overalls and a peaked cap stood on the corner, ostensibly cleaning graffiti off the wall, but Soro noted that his head tilted more to the nearby apartments than to the job under his nose.
He began the most risky part of his return. In fact, he would not have gone back at all if he'd had a choice, and he intended no more than a flying visit. But he did have to go back, for two compelling reasons.
As soon as he'd seen that flight was necessary, they'd come to his mind, so close together that he couldn't say himself which one had come first, which second.
His camera.
Squizzle.
He could pick up new clothes anywhere, he could access his accounts from any computer, organise train or plane tickets, hotels, whatever he needed. As long as Gell Shield didn't have a hacker to track him, though he wasn't too sure of that.
There were other personal items at his home, most especially the cards from Sam, and his copy of Leaves of Grass. Besides those few things, he didn't own much that couldn't be replaced. But two things could not be replaced: Squiz, who was a live and unique person, and his camera, which was a part of his body. Detachable, hungry for batteries, and mortally afraid of water, it was nevertheless as much a part of him as his tongue.
He had to leave town. So he had to swing by his home.
He went to the rooftop corner nearest his building, found a convenient drain pipe, and slid down. The thing was damp and slick, and it shook with his weight. He bumped his knees on the wall, and scraped some skin from his knuckles. He was light, small, and he made it. He found a guy in black overalls and a peaked cap watching the back of his building, but he'd been expecting that.
About halfway down, he'd noticed that the drain pipe jutted out to go over a concrete lip, like a narrow path running around the outside of the building. He felt good to have something firm under his feet, although he didn't dare look down; just thinking about how narrow was the ledge made his legs tremble, and his insides try to pull free of his body.
He moved along the ledge with minute, cautious steps, hugging the wall, although there were no handholds. So intent was he on each creeping step that he never noticed the barrier until he barged into it.