Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [137]
As the xPress started to slow I peered down below, without much hope in my heart. Sure enough, a guy with blue flashing lights in his head stood waiting for me. I don’t know how the fuck Yhandim got down faster than the xPress, but there he was. Maybe there are paths even I didn’t know. His head tilted up slowly and our eyes met, and in his was a hatred even I couldn’t match. Ghuaji looked up seconds later, and I saw a couple of others standing around them.
I reached out and slammied the “open” button as we hit the floor above. The xPress groaned at the deceleration, but halted and opened its doors. I shooed the youngsters out and then shot out the controls, hoping it would take the guys a moment to work out why the elevator wasn’t coming down. I drove the trike out, crouched down over the handlebars and steered it unsteadily along the balcony. The sound of gunfire within seconds told me my plan hadn’t worked; shells bit discouragingly large chunks out of the ceiling just above my head.
I stood on the pedal and went careering along the corridor as fast as I could until I found a stairway. Turned straight into it, and went bouncing down the stairs. By then I was beginning to fancy a cigarette, but I judged this probably wasn’t the time. I lit one anyway, figuring [might as well—it wasn’t as if life expectancy was a concern.
I bumped down turns in the staircase until I started getting dizzy, and then sped out onto 65. I just drove straight through the door, which was painful and foolish, but no one was on the other side. I hurtled along the main drag toward the next down elevator, cursing the lab-rat layout of the old MegaMall. Two hundred yards from the xPress I saw a police platform hovering fast out of a side street toward me. I didn’t know whether they were after me because of who I was or just pure traffic offenses, but it didn’t make much difference. With one hand still steering the trike I shot at the platform’s generator. More by luck than skill I hit it. The platform coughed and slewed into the pavement like a badly folded paper plane, spilling the cops onto the ground.
I dumped the trike outside the xPress, figuring that while it was fast, it also made me somewhat conspicuous. Then I stood thrumming and banging the walls, trying to catch my breath. I stopped the xPress two floors before I had to and made it across to another which got me as far as 24; as I tore out of the doors I heard shouts from up the street behind me but I didn’t look to see who it was.
I ducked into the store where I bought my Rapt, shouting to the proprietor as I entered. He nodded with weary recognition and stepped aside to let me through into the back of his store, where a hidden stairway no one knows about dropped me another floor and into a project level where nobody sane lived anymore. I was hoping that Yhandim would assume I was just heading straight down to the bottom, buying me some time.
23 is pitch-black darkness, filled with nothing but burnt-out warehouses that long ago used to be the Mall’s staff quarters. Nobody lives there except the psychos and losers who’ve been cattle-prodded out of all the other floors. I ran straight across the heart of it, past fires burning on street corners. It’s truly rather frightening, to be honest, and I was very happy when I saw the light of the next xPress shaft ahead. I just hoped there was going to be one along soon. I didn’t want to hang around here long.
“Fucking stop right there!” shouted a voice, and I had a cardiac but kept on running. Then a shot whined past my leg and I realized running wasn’t going to cut it. I stopped and whirled round.
Two guys, both around sixty. One’s face was pierced and studded until it looked like a pincushion. The other’s had been in a bad fire.
“Look, what’s the problem?