John Varley - Steel Beach

The fire was concentrated at first on a window high in the stack of apartment crates surrounding the square. Part of the wall vanished in plastic splinters, then a red line thrust into the wreckage and something bloomed orange flame. I saw more gun barrels sticking out of more windows, saw another soldier go down with the lower part of his leg blown off, saw him turn as he fell and start firing at another window.

In seconds it seemed I was the only person there who didn't have a weapon. I saw a Heinleiner crouched behind the gallows, snapping off shots with a handgun. His null-suit was turned on, coating him in silver. I saw him hit by a half a clip from an automatic rifle. He froze. I don't mean he stood still; he froze , like a chromium statue, toppled with bullets still whanging off of him, rolled over on his back, still in the same attitude. Then his null-suit switched off and he tried to get up, but was hit by three more bullets. His skin had turned lobster-red.

I didn't understand that, and I didn't have time to think about it. People were still running for cover, so I did, too, past overturned tables and chairs and the dead body of a King City policeman, into Aunt Hazel's shop. I scurried around and crouched behind the counter, intending to stay there until someone came to explain what the hell was going on.

But the itch is buried deep, and makes you do stupid things when you least expect it. If you've never been a reporter, you wouldn't understand. I raised my head and looked over the counter.

I can replay the tape from my holocam and say exactly what happened, in what order, who did what to whom, but you don't live it that way. You retain some very vivid impressions, in no particular order, with gaps between when you don't have any idea what happened. I saw people running. I saw people cut almost in half by lasers, ripped by bullets. I heard screams and shouts and explosions, and I smelled gunpowder and burning plastic. I suppose every battlefield has looked and sounded and smelled pretty much the same.

I couldn't see Libby, didn't know if he was dead or alive. He wasn't where he had fallen. I did see more cops and soldiers arriving from some of the feeder tunnels.

Something crashed through the windows in front, something large, and tumbled over the ice cream freezers there, turning one of them over. I crouched down, and when I looked up again there was the policewoman, Winston still attached to her arm, which was in danger of coming off.

It was a scene from hell. Crazed by pain, the woman was swinging her arm wildly, trying to get the dog to let go. Winston was having none of it. Bleeding from many cuts, he ignored everything but his inexorable grip. He'd been bred to grab a bull by the nose and never let go; a K.C. policewoman wasn't about to get free.

But now she was scrabbling for her holster, forgotten in her fear and panic. She got her gun out and aimed it toward the dog. Her first shot went wild, killing nothing but an ice cream freezer. The second shot hit Winston in the left hind leg, where it was thickest, and still the beast didn't let go. If anything, he fought all the harder.

Her last shot hit him in the belly. He went limp-everything but his jaw. Even in death he wasn't going to let go.

She took aim at his head, and then slumped over, passed out at last. It was probably for the best, because I think she would have blown her own arm off, the way she had the gun pointed.

Later, I felt sorry for her. At the time I was simply too confused to feel much of anything but fear. I mourned Winston later, too. He'd been trying to protect me, though I recall thinking at the time that he'd over-reacted. She'd only been trying to handcuff me, hadn't she?

And what about the soldiers? It had looked to me as if the Heinleiners had fired the first shot. All sane reasoning would lead me to think that, if that first soldier hadn't been hit, this could all have ended peacefully at the jailhouse with a lot of lawyers arguing, charges brought, countersuits filed. I'd have been out on bail within a few hours.

Which was still what I'd have liked to have done, and would have, but any fool could see things had gone too far for that. If I stepped out waving a white flag I was pretty sure I'd be killed, apologies sent to the next of kin. So Hildy, I told myself, your first priority is to get out of here without getting shot. Let the lawyers sort it out later, when the bullets aren't flying.

With that end in mind, I started crawling toward the door. My intent was to stick my head out, low, and see what stood between me and the nearest exit. Which turned out to be a black boot planted solidly in the doorway, almost under my nose by the time I got there. I looked up the black-clad leg and into the menacing face of a soldier. He was pointing a weapon at me, some great bulky thing I thought might be a machine gun, whose muzzle looked wide enough to spit baseballs.

"I'm unarmed," I said.

"That's the way I like 'em," he said, and flipped up his visor with his thumb. There was something in his eyes I didn't like. I mean, beyond everything else I didn't like about the situation. Just a little touch of madness, I think.

He was a big man with a broad face entirely innocent of any evidence of thought. But now a thought did flicker behind those eyes, and his brow wrinkled.

"What's your name?"

"H… Helga Smith."

"Nah," he said, and dug into a pocket for a datapad, which he scanned with a thumb control until my lovely phiz smiled back at us. He returned the smile, but I didn't, because his smile was the worst news I'd had so far in a day filled with bad news. "You're Hildy Johnson," he said, "and you're on the death list so it don't matter what happens here, see?" And he started working on his belt, one-handed, the other hand keeping the gun pointed at my forehead.

I found myself getting detached from events. Maybe it was a reflex action, something to distance oneself from an abomination about to happen. Or maybe it was just too many things that couldn't be happening. This can't be happening . I'd silently shrieked it one too many times and now a mental numbness was setting in. I ought to be thinking of something to do. I ought to be talking to him, asking questions. Anything. Instead, I just sat there, squatting on my heels, and felt as if I'd like to go to sleep.

But my senses were heightened. They must have been, because with all the shooting going on outside (how could he do this in the middle of a war?), and over the scream of a dying compressor motor in the overturned freezer I was able to hear a voice from the grave. A growl .

The soldier didn't hear it, or maybe he was too busy. He had his pants down around his heels and he knelt in front of me and that's when I saw Winston, dragging his hind leg, bleeding from his gut, eyes filled with murder.

The man lowered himself over me.

I wanted Winston to bite him… well, you know where I wanted Winston to bite him. I got second best. The bulldog fastened on the soft flesh of the soldier's inner thigh. The man's leg jerked in pain, and he was flying over me. I grabbed the strap of his rifle as he went by.

He had strength and mass on his side, but there was the little matter of Winston. The dog had cut an artery. The soldier tried to wrestle his rifle away from me with one hand and pry Winston loose with the other and ended up doing both things badly. Blood was spraying everywhere. I was screaming. Not the big full scream you hear at the movies, and not a scream of rage, but a high-pitched scary thing I was powerless to stop.

Then I got one hand on the barrel of the rifle, and one hand on the stock, and fumbled for the trigger as he realized what was happening and gave up his struggle with Winston, concentrating on me. He got his hand over the barrel. Sadly for him, it was over the end of the barrel, and when I squeezed the trigger his hand wasn't there anymore. It wasn't anywhere anymore, but the air was full of a red mist.