Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [21]
The front wheel was still spinning, a black plastic badge shaped like a bird’s head rotating on the spokes. Bobby Prescott hesitated, not wanting to touch the bicycle. He was thinking about McCray’s drugstore and what had happened there. He made himself touch the bicycle. He bent close, using the knife on the bike’s mudguard, ruining the fine German edge on the blade. It was a shame, but Bobby Prescott needed a weapon with a decent reach.
The main pack of bicycle kids would be coming past the Seven Eleven by now. Bobby Prescott stayed calm and used the long thin knife to free the bicycle chain. He swept its oily length back and forth in the air a few times, judging the weight of it.
The rest of them were in sight now. The bicycle kids or whatever the gangs called themselves these days. Gameboys. Witchkids. Crows. Bobby Prescott had lost track.
He watched them as they came through the school gate. Two of them side by side, then three more in single file. Crows, that’s what this gang called themselves. The wheel on the fallen bicycle was clicking to a halt now and the bright red eye on the crow’s‐head badge steadied and glinted up at Bobby Prescott.
A final straggler coasted into the library parking lot, the spotlights making the shadow of his bicycle huge and skeletal on the ground. A memory tried to force itself into Bobby Prescott’s mind, the same memory that had made him flinch when he touched the bicycle. He looked up and saw the illuminated sign on McCray’s drugstore glowing on the other side of the road. Bobby Prescott concentrated and forced himself to look away, back at the bicycle kids. It would be different this time.
He took a deep breath and prepared himself for what was coming.
The straggler made it a total of seven of the kids, if you counted the one lying bleeding by the steps. They ranged from about twelve to fifteen in age.
It took five of them to bring Bobby Prescott down.
He never really got to use the bicycle chain properly. It dropped from his hand as the youngest kid stomped his fist. The sixth one was waking now, shaking his head and moaning and throwing up as he came back to consciousness. The seventh one, the straggler, had picked up the German knife and was coming forward, getting closer, face tense and frowning with excitement. Bobby Prescott was thinking calmly and quickly, going through the options. The edge of that knife was dulled now but that wouldn’t buy him any time. The kid wouldn’t need the edge of it.
He was close now, looking down at Bobby Prescott. The kid was wearing a bicycle helmet that had been modified to look like a gaming helmet, with VR decals on it. That was all part of the stuff Bobby Prescott would never understand about these kids. The VR games and the bicycles and the way they hated anything that was a machine or used power. Unless of course it was one of the computers that they needed for their games.
The knife was coming close now, getting big as it neared his face. Bobby Prescott noted that the blade looked clean and for some absurd reason he was relieved. He concentrated on the brightly coloured gaming stickers as the knife’s tip pressed against his throat. He didn’t look at the eyes of the kid, he wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction. Bobby Prescott let himself go limp. He was going to die and he knew it. He