Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

“Seriously. What am I going to do?”

“Lucy. I…” He sat down again, on the toilet seat next to her so that he wouldn’t have to look at her. “I’m not here to rescue you. Miyamoto is not here to rescue you either—he has to come with me for reasons that are too complicated to go into now. I have to find my wife and warn her that the nice MEA intelligence officer we met yesterday is a CIA agent and therefore responsible for murdering one of the few friends I had and nearly killing me. Twice. We’ll be going through Outzone-controlled streets pretty much all the way, and the odds are currently a hundred thousand to one.” He took a deep breath. “Whatever mess you’re in, I can’t get you out of it.”

She dropped the knife she held, and sobbed. Just the once. She walked with unsteady gait to the door and opened it. She stepped through, closed it quietly behind her, and left Petrovitch feeling like utter govno.

The Outies on his map were grouping at the north end of the bridge over the railway line. He guessed that they’d cross in a couple of minutes, and he’d then officially be in enemy territory. It was almost time to move out.

Lucy’s knife was point-down in the curling cork tiles on the floor. Petrovitch plucked it out and turned it in his hand. Its lack of guard made it a weapon of last resort, but that was pretty much where he was. He wrapped it and the other he’d picked out of the knife block into the tea towel, and slid them into a coat pocket.

Then he went back downstairs to the kitchen, where Miyamoto was sipping water from a glass.

“We cannot take her with us,” he said.

“I’ve explained that to her,” said Petrovitch. He picked up the carton of warming orange juice and flipped the lid open. “Considering we’re leaving her to certain death, or worse, I think she took it very well.”

“You will never complete your mission with her. It is… unfortunate.”

Petrovitch necked down half the juice. “Yeah.”

“She is very young,” noted Miyamoto.

“With no useful skills or knowledge. Her legs: did you see her legs?”

“Like two thin sticks.”

“And her knees were like yebani knots on cotton.” Petrovitch started opening cupboards, looking through them, closing the doors again as he moved around the kitchen. “She couldn’t keep up.”

“No. I cannot imagine she has run for anything other than a bus in her whole short life.” Miyamoto rose from his chair and refilled his glass.

The electricity died. The display on the microwave winked out, the fridge motor stopped purring, even the wall clock shuddered and was still. Domestic alarms screeched into life, every house, over the whole area, including the one they were in.

The noise was deafening, as it was designed to be—just the right frequency to drill into the skull.

Miyamoto put down his glass and stalked into the hallway. After a few moments, the cacophony inside the house was abruptly terminated. Outside, the noise carried on, but it was now bearable.

As he came back into the kitchen, he sheathed his sword. “They have cut the power.”

“Taken out the substation, I guess.” Petrovitch had found some empty drinks bottles: he was now trying to match lids to necks. “They’re right outside.”

“What are they doing?”

Petrovitch squinted at his glasses. “Just looking around, I hope. No, there’s a car coming.”

He left the bottles and went back upstairs. Lucy’s bedroom had her name on it in colored plastic letters. He eased into her room and crouched down by the window. She was lying on her bed, face down in the pink pillow, perfectly still until she heard the door shoosh close.

She looked up with red-rimmed eyes, and Petrovitch pressed his finger to his lips. He peered over the window ledge, through the translucent net, to the street below.

The car—red, low, fast, with tinted glass and shiny alloy wheels—accelerated toward the Outies in the road. To start with, it looked like they didn’t understand what was happening. They didn’t step back, and even though there was a line of cars parked either side of the road, they didn’t try to stand behind one of them, or any of the lamp posts. Neither did they aim any of their few guns, ranging from a couple of ancient revolvers through several shotguns to one modern assault rifle.

The red car’s engine roared. The front wing clipped one of the stationary vehicles, and it swerved violently across the white line, flicking the wing mirror of another into the sky.

The Outie in the very middle of the road was carrying a steel pole as tall as he was. He raised it in his dusty hand and held it like a javelin, and waited. The other Outies pulled away, unhurried, strolling in their soft, animal-skin-shod feet.

The car was almost on him, and he was perfectly still.

Then he jumped as if he had springs in his heels. He made no effort to throw the tube, but it fell, still perfectly horizontal, into the path of the oncoming windscreen.

It went through. The windscreen crazed across its whole width, and the pole kept on coming out the back window, where it came to rest, half-in, half-out. With a screech of tires and two successive bangs, the car ended up sideways, wedged between the parked cars. Smoke whispered from the crushed bonnet, and a fine white powder was blowing from the shattered interior. Wailing car alarms now added to the noise.

The Outie man landed on the tarmac, crouching, reaching for the knife at his belt. He straightened up, holding his arm high, and the rest of them surrounded the crashed car.

The driver’s door popped open. A figure fell out into the road, at the man’s feet. White dust swirled away, and a deflating airbag shriveled at the dashboard. The man reached down, took the driver by the throat and hauled him up.

It looked like a man, though there was so much blood on his face it was difficult to tell if he was young or old. Not that it mattered much, because in the next second, the Outie had stabbed him—a hard punch to the left side of the neck that made the tip of the blade come out the right. He held the blade still while his victim jerked and clawed, briefly.

Then he dragged it out, almost severing the head and leaving the tattered mess where it fell.

The other Outies made no attempt to intervene, join in, talk to each other—anything. They watched, passively, as the man squatted on his haunches to inspect the inside of the car.

He inclined his head, and with his free hand, beckoned.

The passenger door flew open, and a girl with a tight blonde ponytail burst out. She stumbled after the first few frantic steps, and sprawled onto the road. The Outie threw himself across the crumpled metal of the bonnet, rolled and landed square in the girl’s back just as she tried to rise.

Lucy was standing behind Petrovitch, staring down at her quiet suburban street, where nothing much of anything ever happened.

Petrovitch marched her back to the bed and sat her down, out of eyeshot. He could hear screaming over the alarms, and he wished he couldn’t. He scratched at his chin, then flicked his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose.

When he opened his eyes, he was looking at her feet.

“Do you own a pair of trainers?”

She was wearing black shoes with a wedge heel. Must have been a good school: black shoes, black tights, black skirt, white shirt, blazer with a crest on the pocket. A tie, for pity’s sake.

“Y-yes.” She pointed at her wardrobe. She cringed as a long, drawn-out cry from outside ended in a low, rasping moan.

“Put them on,” said Petrovitch.

Her blurred outline nodded. She took the two steps across the room, and retrieved the whitest pair of trainers he’d ever seen.