Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [206]
Or maybe he had just been chipped all along.
He flew down the slope to site 21, found it empty, the neglected fire still flickering. Off with his jacket, off with his shirt. The frigid air hit him and he growled. He took the hand axe out of the jacket and put it into his pants pocket.
He ran up into the mass of trees west of the site, stopped and rubbed his hands over his neck, gently and then roughly; felt nothing. He ran his hands through his hair again, leaning forward and down, pulling at his locks and shaking his head like a wet dog. Tearing at his scalp. Best he could do. Now he had to move again, just in case; he circled around the site and ducked behind one of the big flood windrows, crouched and got a view of the picnic table, between two branches.
He heard them before he saw them, all three men crashing down Ross into the site. They stopped when they saw his jacket and shirt, turned quickly and looked around them, surveying their surroundings like a team that had done it before. Frank felt the tousled hair rise on the back of his neck. His teeth were clenched.
The blond man’s hair caught a gleam of firelight. He picked up the jacket, hefted it. Then the shirt. Now came the test. Was there still a tick on Frank? The three men turned in circles, looking outward, and as they did the blond man checked his wrist. Frank stayed frozen in place, waiting for a sign. The blond man’s chest rose and fell, rose and fell. He was winded. Frank tried to imagine his thoughts, then fell squeamishly away. He didn’t want to know what went on in a mind like that. Plots, counterplots, chipping people—spying on his own wife—out here in Rock Creek Park in the middle of the night, chasing people down. It was an ugly thing to contemplate.
Frank felt the frozen air as if he were clothed in an invisible shirt made of his own heat. Outside that it was obviously cold, but inside his shell he seemed okay, at least for now. When he moved he pushed through the shell, out into the chill.
Up on Ross came the sound of people walking, then Zeno’s nicotine voice. Frank shifted down, pulled his phone from his pocket and punched the “repeat call” function.
“Hey Blood, wassup?”
“Zeno they’re back at your picnic table,” Frank whispered. “They’ve got guns.”
“Oh ho.”
“Don’t go down there.”
“Don’t you worry. Do you need help?”
“No.”
“We’ll deploy anyway. Ha—too bad you can’t call the jaguar out on these guys, eh?”
“Yeah,” Frank said, and thought to add that he was going to be the jaguar tonight; but Zeno wasn’t listening. Frank could hear over the phone that he was telling the bros the situation. In the open air their noise had abruptly died away.
Then: “Hey fuck that!” Andy exclaimed, carrying both over the phone and through the air.
On the phone Frank heard Zeno say, “Fucking a, Blood, here comes the cavalry—”
Then the forest filled with howls, the crash of people through the forest—and from down near the creek, BANG BANG BANG!
The men at the picnic tables had dropped out of sight. But their conference was brief; after about five seconds they burst to their feet and ran away, south on Ross. Shrieks and howls in the darkness behind them.
Frank took off after them. High howling marked where the bros were in their pursuit on Ross, and thunks and crashes made it clear rocks were being thrown.
Frank darted from tree to windrow to tree, keeping above and abreast of the running men. When they came down the slope to Glover, two of them turned left, while the blond man turned right. Frank followed him, worrying briefly that the two others would come back and jump on the tail of any pursuit. Hopefully Zeno and the bros had already laid off. Nothing to be done about that now. He needed to concentrate on following the blond man.
Stalking prey at night, in the forest. How big the world got when you could taste blood. The frigid air cut through the radiance of his body heat, it