Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [117]
“Shit!” said Madoc, immediately moving to hit a combination of keys on the console of Lenny Garon’s display screen.
The camera mounted in the outside of the door dutifully showed them two men standing in the corridor, waiting for an answer to their signal. Damon couldn’t put a name to either one of them, but one of them was unusually tall—and he was sporting an ugly and very obvious bruise.
Damon echoed Madoc’s expletive.
“Who are they?” Madoc asked, having picked up the note of recognition in Damon’s tone.
“Probably cops,” Damon said. “The big one followed me from my building. I thought I’d put him out of it—I hit him hard enough to stop any ordinary man tailing me. Must be tougher or smarter than I thought.”
The man with the bruise was already growing impatient. “Mr. Tamlin?” he said. “It’s all right, Mr. Tamlin—we’re not the police. We just want—”
Mr. Tamlin? Damon echoed silently, wondering why on earth they were addressing themselves to Madoc rather than to him. Before he had time to focus on the seemingly obvious inference, however, the tall man’s attempted explanation was brutally cut short. Something hurtled into him from beyond the limits of the picture frame and sent him cannoning into his companion.
“Oh, shit!” said Madoc, with even more feeling than before—but he was already diving for the door to wrestle it open.
Damon, for once, was much slower to react. He was still trying to piece together the logic of what was happening.
Lenny Garon had obviously not gone far when Madoc had suggested that he take a walk. Indeed, he had evidently taken it upon himself to stand guard somewhere along the corridor. As soon as he had seen the two strangers press his door buzzer, he had decided that Damon and Madoc were in dire need of his protection—and he had thrown himself at the two visitors with little or no regard for his own safety. If they were telling the truth about not being the police, Lenny might be in very grave danger indeed; he didn’t have the kind of IT which could pull him through a real fight.
Madoc had the door open by now, and he hardly paused to take stock of the situation before throwing himself at the tall man’s companion, who was already struggling to his feet.
The man with the bruise had knocked Lenny aside, but wasn’t going after him. Instead, he was backing up toward the far wall of the corridor, holding his arms out as if he were trying to calm everything down. He had opened his mouth, probably to shout “Wait!” but he choked on the syllable as he looked into the open doorway and caught sight of Damon. The shock in his eyes seemed honest enough. He really had come looking for Madoc Tamlin, not knowing that Damon would be here too.
Damon still hesitated, but Lenny Garon didn’t. Lenny had already committed himself and he was sky-high on his own adrenalin. The boy went after the tall man like a ferret after a rat, and his adversary had no alternative but to turn his placatory gesture into a stern defense.
Cop or not, the man with the bruise was certainly no innocent in the art of self-defense, and he had already been knocked down too often to tolerate being put down again. He blocked Lenny’s lunging blows and hit the boy, then grabbed him and smashed him into the wall as hard as he could—hard enough to break bones.
That made Damon’s mind up. He went after the tall man for a second time, determined to amplify the bruises he had already inflicted. As he charged through the doorway he didn’t even look to see what had become of Madoc and the second man; he trusted Madoc’s streetfighting instincts implicitly.
Again the man with the bruise tried to avoid the fight. He backed up the corridor as rapidly as he could, and this time he actually managed to shout: “Wait! You don’t—”
Damon didn’t wait for the “understand”—he kicked out at the knee he’d already weakened in the alley. The tall man yelped in agony and dropped to one knee, but he was still trying to scramble away, still trying to put a halt to the whole fight.
Damon figured that there’d be plenty of time for