And be sure not to miss
LEAP POINT
The Exciting Novel By
KAY KENYON
Available Now
Its name is Nir, and it’s the latest craze in VR technology: the ultimate retina game that promises a payoff of total ecstasy. But what it actually delivers may be far more final—and far more frightening.
The year is 2014. And in the small town of Medicine Falls, no one is expecting anything unusual to happen. Certainly they are not expecting to become the proving ground for a very sinister invasion indeed. But linked in with Nir and a strange cult figure named Zachariah Smith is a deadly truth. And an antiques dealer named Abbey McCrae is about to discover what the rest of the galaxy collects.…
They chose Medicine Falls for the Leap Point because it was average and unremarkable in every way—except for being just a little desperate. At the same time, the town was isolated, twenty-five kilometers from the closest node of civilization.
Gazing up at the starry night sky, a typical citizen might remark how the stars were like diamonds sprinkled on velvet, or how bright the Milky Way was, far from city lights, or a few odd ones might wonder if the sun was atwinkle in someone else’s night sky at that moment. As of course it was. A signal fire. What some might call a lighthouse beacon.
But Medicine Falls didn’t look up very often. Folks were preoccupied with alfalfa to be baled and shopping to be done. And at night most people gave themselves up to vids and the Net, never looking up.
Except for Rachel.
At the moment, she was gazing up into the recesses of the station’s ceiling far above, where a flaw in the roof metered out a slow plunk, plunk of melting snow.
Zachariah Smith followed her gaze upward, seeing more, immeasurably more, than the cracked and abandoned roof of the Lowell Street Train Station. In his mind’s eye he saw a bustling tide of shoppers and travelers under the brilliant station lights. The glory days of Medicine Falls revisited. The glory days of Zachariah Smith—lightning rod to the city’s new life.
It wasn’t the kind of new life that most folks probably had in mind, but they were about to get it anyway.
“Can’t you tell me what it is?” Rachel asked for the dozenth time. Her voice reverberated in the empty mall hall, with its row of dead view-screen store fronts.
“It’s a secret. Like I said.” He kept his voice low, but the echo swooped out like a long, velvety tongue to snap up the remains of Rachel’s question. The only other sound was the slap of their boots through the oily, tie-dyed water.
A spray of light bulged into human shape in front of them. “Say, neighbor,” the promo holo said, nearly causing Rachel to climb up Zachariah’s arm. “Make your mo a real show.” The female image was wearing a short gel-fit, with tiny fish swimming through its transparent depths. She turned her forearm to display the glittering band of light nodes from her high-fashion cuff computer.
As the holo disintegrated, Rachel pushed at her hair, trying to force it back under her woolen cap. “My hair is crashed,” she said, pressing for some compliment perhaps. Poor dummy, to worry about her hair at a time like this, trying to compete with a holo, to trivialize what was about to happen. They passed the sagging remains of a food-o-mat, with its boxes full of desiccated pie and long-dead mildew. It wasn’t the smell, but it was bad enough. He hurried her along.
Leaving the retail corridor, they entered the central rotunda. Here, the great domed ceiling loomed over them, with a few meter-long icicles marking the roof’s slow leaks.
Rachel looked up at them dubiously, as though one might pick this very moment to come stabbing down.
Like most folks, she didn’t know much of anything. But then, he had to admit, there was plenty he didn’t understand either. Like what they did with his donations. He succeeded in keeping that curiosity at bay, tucking it away in a little box, to open later, if need be.
When, for instance, it was time to come back here.
Behind them in the mall hall, another promo holo strobed in and out of life. For a fleeting moment it festooned their shadows in front of them, moving across the glistening pond and up the far wall. Ghosts, Zachariah thought, the station is filled with ghosts, ghosts of other Rachels, ghosts of past glory, the bustle of commerce, the piercing whistles of trains coming, trains going: Minneapolis, Duluth, Madison, Great Falls, Jackson Hole, Sioux City, and points beyond.
“Zachy …” Her voice wheedled at him.
He sighed and turned to face her. “Rachel, if you want to go home, just say so.” He threw a snappish edge into his best creamy-deep voice.
Her eyes turned flinty. “This place stinks,” she said. “What if there’s Freakers here? What’s so damn important, anyway?”
“Well, you won’t find out unless you come look, will you?”
Another glance up at the toothy dome. “How far is it?”
Rolling his eyes, Zachariah took her by the arm, sloshing ahead. “The longer we stand under those things, the better chance there is of becoming a kabob.”
“Zachy!” she giggled, in feigned delicacy.
If she called him that again, he’d slap her silly. Unwillingly, the image bobbed into his mind of shutting up that high-pitched shred of a voice … an image he quickly filed out of sight. Violence was not his way. He was a healer, a Server. In truth, it wasn’t Rachel that set him on edge. It was the smell.
And here it was again.
They entered a corridor leading out to the eastbound train platforms. In this darker and more confining space, he felt Rachel stiffen slightly as he kept his hand on her upper arm. With a quicker step now, he pulled her along, their boots clicking on the tiles as they left behind the orange pond in the rotunda.
“What’s that smell?” Rachel asked, stopping and planting her feet solidly.
“Could be a cat died or something.” In fact, the smell was so thick he could taste it, as though he’d licked something foul. But Rachel was the sort who looked to others for validation of her own senses. “Guess you never smelled a dead cat before, eh, Rachel?” he said, and she started on again.
Halfway down the concourse he stopped at a door, a door like all the others. “This is it. We’ll just stay a second.”
She placed her hand on the doorknob and looked back at Zachariah irritably. “Are you coming?”
Well, no. Not that he was afraid. Ordinary people feared new things. That was the difference between them and him, between Rachel and him. He was pretty sure she’d throw a fit—probably fry her motherboard—in that room. No spirit of adventure at all.
Rachel looked at him, and he nodded his encouragement.
She opened the door.
In that instant he shoved his hand into her back, just hard enough that she staggered forward into the room. Quickly, he slammed the door shut behind her, holding the doorknob firmly as Rachel banged on it from the other side.
“Zacheeee!” she wailed. Then: “Please, Zachy,” her voice soft and close, through the crack next to the door frame. “It stinks in here.”
Her uncannily normal voice sent a little shiver up over his scalp as he gripped the door handle, now twisting slowly first in one direction, then the other. For a few seconds he heard the sound of shuffling and the soft scrape of her clothing against the door. Then:
“Oh …” Her voice broke into a surprised crack and began ratcheting up in pitch. “Oh. Oh. Ohhh …”
He would have plugged his ears but the door needed holding shut, so he squeezed his eyes closed, but still he heard several rhythmic gulps of air, which might have been Rachel, filling her lungs to accuse him … and then a thumping sound, and a brief, soft buzzing, like an insect incinerated in fire.
After a few moments the room grew quiet and he opened his eyes.
Head pressed against the door, he was forced to pull that hot stench into his lungs while fighting to distill some oxygen. He pried his fingers loose from the molten door handle and waited for a semblance of calm. Then he slowly pried the door open and looked into the room.
A glint of light from the hallway struck the shattered faces of built-in computer wall displays. He stepped into the room, leaving white tracings in the fine dusting of ash as he walked. On the ceiling, a scorch the size of a tire surrounded the cracked globe of the overhead light.
Rachel was gone.
In the center of the floor lay a heap of oblong packets coated with long, waving filaments that snapped as he touched them. He fumbled the packets into his knapsack. Then, looking up, he saw it, lying in a pile of glass near the wall: Rachel’s wool cap, with a thread of steam rising from it.… Zachariah crammed the last few packets into the sack and stood swaying in place, eyes riveted on the hat.
“I’m sorry, Rachel,” he said finally. Then the stench really did get to him, and he stumbled backward from the room, slamming the door and sprinting down the hall. At the main doors he sidled through the hole he’d cut, staggering out onto the old train platform, inhaling great gulps of searingly cold, sweet air.
Abbey McCrae cradled the World War I Fokker triplane in her hands. Its balsa wood frame was in nearly mint condition after seventy years, a relic from the days when kids played with real things instead of the electronic bits. She carefully placed it back on the shelf next to a plastic-encased pamphlet entitled “You and the Atomic Bomb,” and amidst a thousand other twentieth-century acquisitions here in the storeroom of Abbey’s Anteeks. She set her morning cup of tea on the typewriter stand next to the faux leopard multi-lounger, electronically dead but otherwise still damn comfortable, and breathed in the aroma of decades of dust, rusting metal and the attar of sachet bags. Wonderful.
Among the golden era favorites, inventory from the mid-twenty-first century dotted the shelves like poor cousins among royalty. The more sophisticated, the more electronic people got, the less they were rooted to life in real, honest-to-gosh stuff: behemoth pink ashtrays flecked with gold, Avon automobile cologne bottles, and framed posters of Martin, Bobby, and John.
She held up a twenty-year-old velvet painting of Lennon, Cobain, and Garcia. Not bad. And where was that avocado bread box with the rooster decal on the roller door?
Renalda clambered down the stairs from the upstairs apartment, followed closely by their dog, Harley, his huge neck graced by a chain collar that Renalda had recently chromed for his sixth birthday.
“Hola!” A sharp spike of perfume hit Abbey’s nostrils like spilled pop on a shag carpet. Her roommate was dressed to kill, long hair curled and the Sex/Mex earrings dangling beside her rouged cheeks.
“Let me guess, a date?”
“Well, Monday’s a slow day.” She pirouetted on four-inch heels, a feat only Renalda, with a couple of decades of experience in trying to be taller, could accomplish.
“Monday’s shelf day, so you can work, same as me.”
“Come on, Abbey! I got people to do, things to see.” As proof, she flashed her wrist mobes, fringed with lace and alive with calls waiting.
“If you’re in love again, I think I’m going to scream,” Abbey said. Even at thirty-two, Renalda believed each love affair was The One, not so different from her old high school buddy, Abbey herself.
“This guy’s different.” Their eyes locked for a moment. Renalda backed off first. “And turn up the heat, it’s cold.”
“It’s almost April!”
“I don’t care if it’s July, it’s fucking freezing in here.” Harley sat transfixed as Renalda roughed up his face and ears with her fingernails, long as gangplanks.
As Abbey edged by, arms piled high with inventory, Renalda tossed her hair back, highlighting the Sex/Mexes. In the earring displays, Abbey saw a high-reso graphic of herself copulating with a Ken doll.
“You ought to stop that, it looks cheap.”
Renalda followed her into the front store. “Somebody’s gotta do the marketing! Here, I programmed lots more.” She grabbed a cigar box from the counter, rattling the earrings inside. “Come on, they sell great!”
Everything Renalda said came out with a little too much force. Everything was fun or wry or exciting. Well, she was in love. Abbey could remember being in love like that. Especially in winter, when the work dried up, and men went hunting for a warm bed—and free rent—until the growing season brought field-hand jobs. But, make no mistake, come spring they’d rather stand in lines at the gates of farms and shoot the shit with the guys than stick it out with a woman.
She nestled another Barbie doll on the shelf with her prize collection, each doll outfitted for a different dream: ski trips, horseback riding, proms, safaris, beauty pageants, and astronaut adventures, and the greatest dream of all, that 39-22-37 figure. Abbey checked out her butt in the store mirror, glad that the size-ten jeans still fit, even if they were tight, for sure. Her breath clouded in front of her, endorsing her roommate’s gripe.
“Store,” she ordered, “kick it up to sixty-five.”
Harley was whimpering at the mini frig. Relenting, Renalda spread out a leftover bean taco for him on the floor.
“So. Who’s the new boyfriend?” Abbey asked, charging back to the storage room for another load.
“DeVries.”
“What kind of a name is that?” Behind the Smith-Corona typewriter, still in its hard case and bannered with a “Jerk Dick” bumper sticker, she spied the bread box.
“Help me with this, would you?” She pulled out the typewriter, handing it off to Renalda. Across the avocado-colored roller door a rooster strutted, red crest held high, and surrounded by hearts, as though he were the symbol of romance.
Abbey hauled the bread box forward and slid up the roller door, which grated and clunked into place.
Inside, a small, dark mass. Perhaps a very moldy piece of bread. Something gleamed. She reached inside and drew out a black leatherette book with a metal, locking clasp, and on the front, something written in script.
“What is it?” Renalda asked.
Abbey turned the book back and forth to catch the right angle of light to read the inscription. Finally, the words My Diary flickered to life. “Oh God,” she heard herself whisper.
Renalda reached forward and grabbed the book out of Abbey’s hand, tugging at the clasp. “Looks like a diary. Guess you got more than a bread box, huh?”
Abbey stared at the little book, forgetting to breathe. “It’s Vittoria’s, isn’t it?” But she didn’t need to ask, not really. Sometimes when the worst comes for you, your name is carved in its forehead. Abbey looked into Renalda’s eyes as though across the ocean. Too far to throw the rope.
“I never knew Vitt kept a diary,” her roommate said, scanning the cover as she spoke. “She wasn’t the type to keep a diary, do you think?”
“It’s Vittoria’s, isn’t it?” Abbey asked, her mind stuck in the groove like an old 45 rpm. record.
Renalda backed up a pace, clasping the diary behind her back. “Yeah, okay, it has her initials on the front,” she answered. “And you know what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna put it right back where it came from and close that cute little rooster door, and shove it way to the back.”
She could hear it coming. Here’s the last thing you need, just when you’re almost normal again. Whatever normal meant. Abbey thrust out her hand for the book.
“No! No frigging diary! No more long goddamn nights with you obsessing about what’s dead and gone, talking until I drop dead asleep, and I’m still hearing you talk, in my dreams!”
“I’m going to read it,” Abbey said. Didn’t need to ask herself why. It was Vitt’s, that was why.
“Ever think that people’s diaries are, like, private?”
“Hand it over, Renalda.”
Backing up another step, her roommate tossed her head, swaying her earrings and bringing on an orgy of activity in the displays. “No, forget it. I can’t do this anymore, can you hear me? I can’t stand Vitt’s dying anymore, night after night. I will go crazy.” At the pitch of their voices, Harley slunk to the doorway and parked himself on the threshold, looking like he was to blame.
Abbey conjured up a reasonable smile. It was either that or deck Renalda right here and now. “I’m over that now. Just give me the diary.” But even to herself she sounded like a vampire saying “just bare your neck.”
“You’re over it! I’m going to gag. When’s the last date you ever had? Two years. When’s the last new clothes you ever bought? Two years. When’s the last time we went looking for some guys on a Saturday night? Huh?”
Abbey nodded, yes, yes. But not hearing.
“Huh? You gonna answer?”
Something clicked. Abbey’s hands flew wide, her cascade of hair crackling. “Two years! Two years, okay? Think you’re the only one who’s counting?” She whirled around and slammed the bread box door down with a resounding clunk. The scratch of Harley’s toenails on the steps receded toward the apartment. She swung back around.
Renalda looked into her friend’s face a long while. “Let the dead rest, for God’s sake,” she said softly.
Abbey reached for the book. The front doorbell rang. As Renalda let go of the book, a moment too early, it slipped from Abbey’s fingers and fell to the floor on its clasp, breaking the lock into two pieces.
She stared at the splayed binding on the floor. “It’s a sign,” she said, “that I should read it.”
Renalda shook her head. “It’s a sin. And you shouldn’t.” She went to the door to deal with their visitor. She turned back. “It’s a sin to read someone else’s diary, you know?”
Abbey raised an eyebrow at this pitiful tactic. “It’s a sin?”
Renalda’s face crumpled under that hot, hazel gaze. “Okay. It’s bad luck, then.” She left the storeroom, scowling.
Crouching down and picking up the book, Abbey opened it at random, reading: “Zachariah knows things. I don’t know if he really hears voices from people passed over …” A small tremor shook her hands as she carefully closed the book.
When Renalda came back, she was shaking her head. “Just Outers begging.” She threw her arms wide, mobes sparkling on her wrists. “Do I look like I have money?”
“Store,” Abbey said. “Screen us Closed for the day. But plug the Barbie special.” She wandered over to the multi-lounger and sat down. The chair sighed as her weight forced stale air from its depths.
“You ever hear of Zachariah Smith?”
Renalda pursed her lips. “That guy with the fragged-out followers? Over at the old high school? Vitt wasn’t involved with him, was she?” Her eyes widened in the ensuing silence. “Vitt wasn’t involved with that freak, was she?”
Abbey picked up her tea and sipped it, allowing the cold brew to slide down her throat before it swelled into a blockade.
“Because Father O’Conner says they worship the devil.”
“Yeah, Father O’Conner sees the devil everywhere.”
Renalda opened her mouth to rebut, then reconsidered, retreating to the door. At the threshold she turned and said, “Maybe he is.”
Abbey looked up quizzically. “Is what?”
“Everywhere.” Her roommate hovered at the door, while Abbey turned the diary over in her hands.
“You gonna be okay?”
“Ask me later.” She grasped the small locket hanging around her neck, and even before she heard the front door close behind Renalda, she turned to the diary’s first entry, January 7, 2012, and began to read.
An hour later, she found herself in the souped-up, double-discount multi-lounger in the apartment, doing a Net probe on Zachariah Smith, downloading his spending patterns, 3-D Web hits, and every other public-access scrap available in the vast digital imprint that he, like everyone else, left in the communal Net.
Lying in wait for Lobo was a bust. Where was a crook when you really needed one? Abbey waited for the TraveLink system to answer her booking, which the real-time display at the LinkStop said would be here in six minutes.
Abbey had staked out Lowell Street at Penburton, Lobo’s usual hang, where she had occasionally bought a computer upgrade or game from him, at street prices, mind you, and no questions asked. But no Lobo, not today.
She looked up to see her ride coming. Out of all the linked transport options of buses, maxi-taxis, and mini-cars, here came her luck-of-the-draw, an ancient maxi-taxi, a low-riding, seen-better-days sedan, packed with five other riders, amidst whose grocery bags, pet dogs, and knapsacks she managed to shoulder her way, passing forward her SmartCard, and receiving it back through a relay of hands. As crowded as it was, in truth she didn’t mind a little company in the neighborhood she was headed to, where her sources said Lobo could be found.
Out the windows she could see the block-by-block deterioration of this end of town, including metal bars over storefronts, broken windows, and refuse sprouting from gutters and the stoops of once-tidy brownstones. In the distance, anchoring the far end of Defoe Street, she could make out the strutted dome of the old Lowell Street Train Station, once proud, and now, it was said, a palace for rats.
The taxi deposited her, the driver swore, in front of her destination, but as the vehicle squealed off down the street, she saw by the apartment building numbers that she’d have to hoof it another block or two. As she set out, a cadre of old men with paper bags followed her with squinting eyes and a round-eyed Freaker, newly lit with a hit of Xstasy, smiled his Freaker’s smile.
She quickened her pace. In this quarter of the city, soot covered the remnants of snow, causing the winter to melt fast, with the runoff spilling over the gutters, pooling the sidewalks in places, and forcing Abbey to splash through and soak the cuffs of her jeans.
As she passed an alley, a small girl jumped up in the middle of a dumpster, eating an orange rind. Even at this distance Abbey could see the girl hadn’t seen a bathtub for months. Her long blonde hair was pulled into an off-center ponytail.
Instantly capitalizing on the eye contact, the girl said, “You gotta five?” As Abbey shook her head, the waif backed up and, a moment before toppling off the far end, she cartwheeled off the dumpster into the shadows.
Abbey almost bumped into a reeking old man planted in her path. His face lit up a moment in surprise. Suddenly, it was the face of a man in his twenties; then his youth slipped off again, buried in grime. She swerved away and picked up her pace, finally spotting the etched-in-stone name of the St. Croix. One look at the pockmarked, narrow apartment building, leaning for support on the one next-door, and Abbey began to doubt she had the right address.
The afternoon was failing, and the tall apartments crowded out the remnants of daylight. This was maybe not the best time to come, maybe not the smartest move she’d ever made, coming here alone … but the longer she stood here fretting, the darker it was going to get. Besides, maybe she could just call for Lobo. Chances were, with all the broken windows, he might hear her, come out on the front stoop, and make himself an unexpected three hundred bucks.
“Lobo!” she called. And waited. Then called again. Damn, not going to be simple, now, was it? She clomped up the stairs and peered at the roster of names by the doorbell. The names were faded, torn and missing, like the current tenants, most likely. Just as she got ready to knock, the door jerked open. A boy of about eight confronted her. “Nobody’s here!” he shouted.
Her hand met the door as he tried to slam it in her face. “Lobo,” Abbey said, just as loudly, matching his tone. “I came to see Lobo.” She pushed into the foyer, where, beyond the boy’s greasy head, a tall stairway climbed into darkness. Not promising.
“Lobo’s not here,” the boy proclaimed. Something in his eyes made him seem remote, perhaps retarded.
“He’s expecting me,” Abbey lied. “I’m a friend.” Which might be stretching it But no pint-sized runaway was going to push her off this easy.
At his split-second pause, Abbey sidled by him. The noise of a slamming door several floors up proved someone was home. The boy banged the door shut and raced up the stairs ahead of her, blurting out, “It’s the Blooos, come for some scrooos!”
Doors creaked open and small faces peered out, sometimes stacked, short to tall, like totem poles. As she passed, the doors pinched shut.
“Where’s Lobo?” she asked, shotgun style, hoping to hit something. From the closest door, a lisping, sweet voice said, “Up at the top.”
She hesitated, looking at the murky stairway. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. She was carrying a lot of money. What if Lobo wasn’t home? Come to think of it, what if he was? Lobo smiling on Lowell Street with his sales pitch on automatic might be a different Lobo than the one who retreated each night to the top of the St. Croix.
But she’d come this far. She began the climb. Her sherpa jacket began to feel hot and clammy, but she kept it on, clutching her purse to her belly. On the second floor, a window at the hall’s far end provided at least a dim view. She walked to the next flight of stairs, past doors she just hoped would stay closed.
At a noise in back of her, she turned to find a group of four youngsters standing at the head of the stairs as though blocking her retreat. One of them was the ponytail girl from the dumpster. “You got five dollars?” she asked, lifting her skirt and swaying her naked hips. The smallest boy knelt in front of her, demonstrating what the five dollars would buy.
Abbey took a step toward the nasty creatures, edging them backward a notch. “You should be in school! Shame on you!” The girl lowered her skirt, looking doubtful.
“Hey Sooze,” one of the boys said, “she ain’t your mother!” At this, Sooze turned and jumped on the bannister, sliding into the shadowy depths, laughing raucously, followed by the others like monkeys on a vine. Resuming her climb, Abbey found floor after floor of hollow-eyed children, standing on the thresholds of their respective holes, most scattering as she passed.
On the fifth floor she looked up and saw that the staircase ended at a single door. Like a penthouse. Like an attic. She put her hand on the bannister and looked up at the door, black and far away. Her foot tentatively came to rest on the first step, and then withdrew. Eyes dented her back from the fifth-floor baby dens, eyes daring her to do it, to go up and knock on Lobo’s door. And she would. She wasn’t afraid of Lobo, or the wild children, or the dark. She could handle those things, she figured. But not the attic. Attics were places you put all the things you didn’t want anymore, the things you wished you never had, the dark things. Her foot stayed in its concrete boot.
“Lobo’s home,” a voice piped from one of the doorways, maybe impatient with her.
“Lobo!” Abbey yelled. It came out a high-pitched mewl. She sucked in a breath and belted out again, “Lobo!”
From nearby came a repeated “Lobo!” and then down the hall, a chant of “LoBO, LoBO, LoBO,” and this echo floated deeper and deeper into the building as though the house itself had mouths. Abbey turned to face the pandemonium. These children were pitiful and tragic, and, just now, annoying as hell, calling up the urge to pull a few ears, put someone on a chair in the corner.
From behind her she heard, “Who the fuck wants Lobo?”
Abbey swirled. Lobo had come halfway down the stairs in the confusion. He peered at her in the gloom as though she were the strange sight, and not him. He wore his skull cap, with gadgets dangling like insects around his cheeks. A torn, baggy sweat suit hung from his stick frame.
“Shit,” he said. “What you doing here?” Silence reigned in babyland. Abbey too felt tongue-tied.
“How’d you get by my guards?”
That snapped her voice back. “These children are living in filth, Lobo. And so are you.”
He grinned easily. “Well, we could move in with you, Ab. How’d that be?”
“Ab, Ab, Ab,” came the chant.
Behind Lobo, up at the top, his door was open. Beyond it lay his gray den, where Abbey could just make out motes of dust highlighted by some distant window or flame.
“Wanna come up?” Lobo asked.
“Not right now.” A trickle of sweat left the nape of her neck and traveled slowly down her spine.
“Somethin’ I can do for you, Ab?” His voice took on a prodding, sarcastic tone. He glanced down at the fifth-floor doors, perhaps posturing for his audience.
Abbey straightened. This could get out of hand. “You listen to me, Lobo,” she said. “I haven’t got time for foolishness. I came to buy something. You don’t want my business, just say so.”
“SAY so, SAY so,” the house repeated.
His hands went up, fending her off. Then a cough shook him and he dug into a pocket, finally pulling out a rag so repulsive that Abbey had to look away. He blew his nose and looked at her over the wad of cloth.
“It’s that game,” she said. “What do you call it? Nir? Sounds like fun. I’d like to try it. I brought money.” She plunged a hand into her bag and pulled forth a crumpled bunch of greens.
Lobo visibly started at the sight of the money. He lunged for her arm and yanked her partway up the stairs, pulling her close to his face. “You’re fucking stupid.” His breath might have come from a waste vent. He pivoted on the stairs and practically carried her with him down the steps to the hallway. It all happened so fast she didn’t have time to react, except she did notice he pulled her down, not up, not up to that lair of his.
He was dragging her down the hallway. “Get out of my way!” he croaked at the youngsters who began streaming out from their warrens. “Get out of my way, all of you, or I’ll cut you off!” he shouted.
“Money!” the kids shouted gleefully. “Money, money, money,” sped through the corridors.
“Fucking stupid!” he whispered hoarsely in her ear. He plunged on, elbowing his way through the crowd of children, now sprinting from doors, up the staircase, down the bannister. There were so many of them, it was a stampede, a swarm. “Money, money, money!” came the refrain from all mouths.
Abbey let him pull her along as his left elbow angled through the bodies like an icebreaker forging a channel. Looking up at her from all sides were little faces contorted with demon energy, screaming, the girls screaming in high-pitched ululations, the boys chanting, money, money, money. She slapped at the insistent hands goosing her from all sides. As they stumbled down the stairs leading to the third floor, a thunderous drumming of feet pursued from behind, threatening to surge over them and pitch them headlong, down, down. And then, for a moment, Abbey saw something glitter, could have been those feral eyes … could have been a knife. Dear God, just two more floors. Her heart lurched against her rib cage in time with an accelerating storm of Money, money, money, money.…