Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [97]
“See,” Niki prompted, “Those are the wings.”
Spyder got up and started off down the street without them.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“Home,” Spyder called back. “I have to go home now.”
“Well, wait,” and by then Keith and Daria had noticed, although Mort and Theo were still busy pummeling each other.
“Where’s she goin’?” Keith asked, and Daria shook her head, asked, “Where’s Spyder going, Niki?”
“Just come on, guys,” and Niki was already running to catch up, what passed for running in the snow halfway to her knees. The street rose steeply here, last hill before the mountain, and she was out of breath after only three or four lumbering steps.
“Wait!” she called after Spyder. “I can’t walk that fast,” her voice so loud and small in the cold air and no sign that Spyder had even heard, trudging ahead as if there were no one left on earth but her.
At the top of the hill, Niki stopped, lungs aching, teeth aching from the cold, legs filled with lactic acid knives, sweatsoaked underneath her clothes and Keith’s. And Spyder still ten or twenty yards ahead, the others still twenty or thirty behind. She looked north, back toward downtown, the frozen city paralyzed, cocooned after the storm. Not a car on the roads, hardly anyone else on the sidewalks. The shouts of other people blocks away and everything too white under the low and racing clouds. The wind up here was worse, tore at her clothes, stung her face and made her ears hurt.
Hands on her knees and bent double like she was puking, Niki waited on Daria and the rest.
Two blocks west, they caught up with Spyder, finally, but only because she’d paused to knock snow off the soles of her Docs, slamming one foot and then the other against a telephone pole.
“You’re gonna have a heart attack,” Niki wheezed, “or a stroke or something if you don’t slow down,” coming up behind Spyder, startling her again although she’d made noise on purpose so she wouldn’t. There were little snotcicles dangling from each of Spyder’s nostrils, her face like a boiled crab from the wind and exertion, and the cut on her forehead had opened again, fresh blood trickling into her eye.
“This is not a fucking forced march,” Daria said; Mort was actually holding Theo up now.
Spyder only looked at them uncomprehendingly, blank disregard, went back to kicking the telephone pole, black rubber against creosote pine.
“Man,” Keith gasped, leaned against convenient chain link, steel division between sidewalk and a smothered church parking lot. “Man, why are we chasin’ this crazy bitch, anyway?” Another pause, another gasp, and “That’s what I’d like someone to tell me.”
“I can make it fine from here,” Spyder said, examining the bottom of one boot. The hardpacked snow she’d kicked off lay all around her feet, molded like weird albino waffles.
Niki ignored her. “Because she could have a concussion for all we know. We at least need to see she gets home all right.”
“Christ,” Mort panted. “She’s in better shape than I am. Look, she’s not even outta breath! Christ.”
“How do you know if you’re freezing to death?” Theo whimpered from his side.
“We can at least get some coffee,” Daria said, “Just one fucking cup of coffee,” and Niki asked, “Where?” then noticed a diner across the street, a Steak and Egg Kitchen squeezed in between an apartment building and a Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut was dark, but inside the Steak and Egg, the lights were on.
“Yeah,” Theo wheezed. “Please? I can’t feel my tongue.”
Niki looked at Spyder, unfathomable urgency burning as cold as frostbite in her eyes, unearthly eyes, and Spyder turned away from her, gazed past and through trees and street signs and houses, at the frosted mountain, half-hidden now in the heavy clouds.
“This ain’t up for debate,” Daria said. “If you want me along, you’ll wait until after I get some coffee and catch my fucking breath.”
“Spyder?” And Niki risked one hand on the back of Spyder’s jacket, leather wet with melted snow, leathery skin as impenetrable as the girl wrapped inside.
“Yeah,” she said and looked back at Niki, and her eyes