Nylon Angel (12 page)

I waited for a laugh or a smile. This was making me uncomfortable. A joke, maybe, a lecture, a smart remark, anything . . .

Not that being likened to a bike juiced me much. But coming from Teece it was patent admiration.

‘So which one will it be then?’ I asked.

‘Any except this one.’ He placed his hand on the red bike. ‘She’s mine.’

‘But they’re all yours,’ I said, puzzled.

‘This one’s different.’

In the end I chose a dirt bike with a racing engine, white body and green and gold faring. I rode it up the line of about thirty bikes. Every punter had a helmet that recycled the air. Teece paid meticulous attention to helmet maintenance. A lung full of true waste dust was as dangerous as rolling naked in a slag heap.

Teece understood that a dead client was a bad client.

‘Ready?’ I shouted.

The engines growled in answer.

‘Remember to stay in a group. If you go it alone, you’re on your own!’

I pulled my helmet on and sniffed the ventilator. It smelt clean and good with a whiff of sun block. Teece hadn’t said goodbye but he’d given me one of his own helmets to wear. That was his way of saying ‘come back’.

To signal a start, I punched my fist twice in the air. The small pack shuddered and surged forward.

I bunched in amongst them, shivers dancing up my backbone, hair stiff like it might snap if I touched it. I wondered, briefly, whether animals felt like this when they ran in packs.

We hung together tightly for the first couple of klicks, a mini-hurricane of dust and exhilaration. Sweat drenched my black velvet. I concentrated on staying upright, away from other foot pegs and tyres, and kept my eyes on the helmet in front of me.

Before long a shadow flitted across us, and then back, making a low pass. Panic rippled through the pack. The faster riders accelerated; the slower ones fell behind into a splinter group.

For a minute I faltered between the two, alone, like a straggling bird.

As the ’copter came back for another pass, I tucked in tight behind the faring and gunned my machine. It answered with the hunger of a racing bike coming off the bend into the home straight.

The ’copter missed its opportunity and peeled away chasing another target. I risked a quick backwards glance as we regrouped. Behind us, zigzagging like hell on wheels, trailed a late starter.

Nice handling, stupid risk
, I thought, tucking down.

We hammered along the next five klicks without a worry. Just open space and speed.

With the Trans-line only two klicks away, we’d nearly made it.

Too easy,
I thought,
too damn easy
.

Teece would be watching us with his binoculars. I wondered what else he could see. I wished I had a psychic connection with him.

Nothing came back.

Then two Special Forces bats descended from nowhere and exploded a trench in front of us. I hit a hole and took the fall like a true pro.

The fall winded me but that was all. My overalls and helmet did their job, and I knew how to roll.

The bike wasn’t so lucky.

Riders lay scattered around, a tangle of noise and confusion in a soup of dust. Some of the back ones rode over the top. To my right a rider lay still, hand trapped jamming the accelerator open, his neck at right angles to his body. I didn’t wait to check for a pulse - by the angle of neck, there wouldn’t be one. I freed his hand and mounted his bike at a dead run. The bike’s wheels hit the dirt spinning. My heart sledged against my ribs. Any harder and it would bust right through.

I wasn’t the only one still upright. Maybe ten others pulled out of it. At a glance they all had the same luck as me, to be on the back of
enduro
bikes.

We scrambled out of the bunkers and automatically bunched together. The bats had gone but the ’copter was back.

The ’copter began firing in an arc behind us. Sharp sprays of dirt added to the whirlwind that dogged us. Its speaker blared a warning order, but my helmet muffled the sound. I didn’t know what they were saying.

I sure as heck didn’t care.

The Trans-line was in sight now, with the long snake-like grey of a Trans-train slithering along its tracks. A canopy of illegal above-ground electricity lines crisscrossed the lid of Fishertown beyond. The lines made it too dangerous for the ’copters to try and snare anyone in Fishertown. Once across the Trans-line I was safe.

As the line got closer, the temptation to peel away from the others and break for it alone had me by the pants. A rider in front of me gave in to the same urge and veered right. The ’copter netted him within a hundred metres and winched him up. His arm dangled through the webbing like a branch broken from a tree.

Under a klick to go and the rest of us were suddenly cured of doing it alone. We stuck together tighter than a bunch of formation fliers.

The ’copter sprayed some serious flak in front of us but I was ready for it this time. I hit the first ridge at full throttle and jumped the width of the gully. Yeeha! It was the closest damn thing I’d ever got to flying.

We lost a couple in the jump, but we were closer to the line and the ’copter was running out of space. On the other side of the Trans-line power poles and humpies wavered in the heat. Call me an optimist; I swear I could taste ocean salt in the back of my throat.

My heart lightened with hope. Then two ’copters appeared, specs of black in the north sky. In the distance a long thin line stretched between them, like a towrope, only they were flying abreast.

Alarm damped my jubilation. I circled my fist and pointed, warning the nearest rider. By the time the message had spread through the diminished pack the ’copters were bearing down, bulbous tek insects flexing their tails. Deformed wasps. Pissed-off wasps, connected by some sort of weird birthing cord.

Then the cord dropped free into the shape of a giant net. They were going to trawl us all!

With only a hundred metres to go, I swore into my helmet, wishing to the great frigging Wombat that I was still on the racing bike.

Sometimes there’s no substitute for grunt.

The ’copters veered slightly east over Fishertown and banked to come straight at us.

I realised I was holding my breath, waiting for everything to slow down so I had time to analyse detail and plot an escape.

But nothing slowed, no ideas formed in my brain, just the blur of objects on a collision course and a crazy wondering what it was like in a Viva gaol.

As the ’copters descended to drop their net, the bike pack exploded apart like fireworks. I arced slightly north, then started to weave frantically. The third ’copter chased me. I managed a spare second to feel sorry for myself.

I redlined the bike over the last distance, mesmerised by the Trans-train. If I slowed now the ’copter would net me, if I kept my current speed I was going to hit the last carriage.

Choices! Choices! None of ’em good.

But I was so close. I just couldn’t back off. Couldn’t go to gaol. Couldn’t bear the thought of Jamon’s snake smile when he heard.

Decision made.

You always like to think you’ll see things to their end; use your wits till the last possible moment. Maybe it was reflex, something out of my control, but when the crunch came - those last seconds when the grey carriage blurred into a wall of metal and the net fell to trap me - I closed my eyes.

W
hen I opened them, the world was upside down and in fast-forward. I’d made it, but without the bike. I’d missed the Trans carriage and the bike had flipped on the track.

It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been looking.

For the second time today, I hit dirt.

This time the world went black.

 

When I came to, the first thing I registered was relief. Thank the Wombat my helmet was still on. I’d trashed Teece’s bike, his helmet would just about ice it. I’d spend my life paying him off.

It also meant I hadn’t gummed any poisonous dirt.

Only then did I pay attention to the pounding that hammered the entire length of my backbone and up into the base of my skull. When I tried to move, fingers of pain radiated out and over my shoulders. When I tried to breathe, my lungs burned.

Anxious images crowded on top of each other. Paralysis. Not being able to run.
Not being able to run
.

I forced myself on to my hands and knees, refusing to accept the possibility.

Someone touched me. It sparked a fire of agony across my back. ‘Don’t,’ I whispered, ‘please don’t.’

The same someone lifted me gently, as if I weighed nothing, murmuring a muffled reassurance. Part of my brain registered the impossibility of one person carrying me. I weighed ninety kilos.

The other part of me didn’t care what happened as long as the pain stopped.

My helmet came off. Carefully. So carefully.

Then the side of my overalls pulled away followed by my black velvet. I heard it tear. I wanted to cry. My best outfit.

A cold feeling crept up my thigh and then the pain, mercifully, stopped . . .

 

Gradually my vision cleared. I was in the half dark of a Fishertown humpy. I knew that because I could smell smoked fish and see the jagged lines of stitching that held the tent together.

A voice spoke to me. ‘The painkillers won’t last long. But I know a medic in Viva. I’ll take you to her. I think you might have broken some ribs and your shoulder is dislocated.’ The voice laughed. ‘Spectacular fall, though!’

With an enormous effort I turned my head a fraction.

‘
You!
’

Dark smiled at me. His teeth were toothpaste-commercial white against the gloom. How did he manage that, I wondered, on a diet of pro-subs and cruddy foods?

He continued, like I was interested, ‘I’ve got biz in Viva. Needed to get there in a hurry. Lucky for you.’

Lucky! I had other names for it!
‘But who’s minding the babies?’ I whispered.

‘Funny!’ He tugged my clothing across my thigh.

I suddenly realised I was naked from the waist down on one side. Even the string of my G had been torn.

‘Sorry ’bout your clothes. They were badly ripped and I wanted to give you a maximum dose. Seemed the best spot.’

I reached automatically to cover myself, trying to tie a knot in my G with one hand.

‘Don’t move,’ he snapped. ‘The drugs are masking the pain. You may have broken more than your ribs. I can’t be sure.’

I sagged back weakly. ‘Great!’

‘Promise me you’ll lie still and I’ll get you to this medic.’

‘And how are we going to get there?’ I sniped miserably. ‘Medivac?’

‘Ahuh,’ was all he said, and left.

 

I lay alone in the humpy, drifting in and out of awareness. Once I opened my eyes and stared into a woman’s face. She was gaunt, leather-skinned and unhappy. Her hair was plastered around her sunburnt face in a dark, oily crop. I tried to say thank you for the use of her home, but the words wouldn’t form in my mouth.

I wondered later how I knew this dingy tent was her place. Maybe it was the sour expression she wore. Kept for uninvited guests.

For a while I dreamt.

The Angel was back, working feverishly inside me; fighting infection, healing bone and tissue, cauterising haemorrhages with the tip of its platinum sword. It seemed angry that I’d hurt myself. It needed me. ‘I’m sorry,’ I kept saying, ‘I had to do it. I had no other choice.’

My cheeks were wet with contrite tears when Dark roused me. He looked surprised, and then concerned. ‘Pain bad?’

I nodded, embarrassed. It seemed the easiest explanation. But in fact, inexplicably, the pain was less.

‘The ’copters have gone but the ground search is starting. We need to move.’

‘But I’ve got to get the bike and the helmet to Mama’s first.’

‘Mama?’

‘Fat wrestler with a strap-on automatic.’

Dark’s forehead wrinkled with distaste. ‘We met.’

‘What’s wrong, Dark?’ I rasped. ‘Didn’t your mama look like that?’

He ignored my jibe. ‘He’s collected them already. Christ Parrish, your bike was in bits! It could have been you.’

‘Least I wasn’t crazy enough to ride across by myself. That was you trailing, wasn’t it?’

He smiled this time. ‘Mama said to tell you you’d lost your insurance
and some
.’

It hurt to sigh, but I managed it. I also managed a quick prayer to the Wombat that Teece’d be collecting the
and some
- not Mama.

‘Ready then?’

‘Sure,’ I lied.

 

The woman with the gaunt face helped him carry me out on an old blanket. She was strong for her size and condition. Most Fishertown Slummers were strong from hauling nets and gaunt from their poisoned, mainly fish diet. People said they carried some sort of mutated gene that let them survive the heavy metals in their food. Whatever the truth, it didn’t prevent most of them resembling beef jerky.

This woman looked pretty damn good - for a Slummer. And she wasn’t too happy about me.

‘Why are you doing this for her Loyl-Dark?’ she hissed. ‘This your woman?’

A scorching, late afternoon sun had burnt away the drizzle. I squinted out at the curious Slummers crowding a short distance away, and waited for Dark to answer.

‘No, Kiora Bass. Just biz.’