Lilly wondered if he knew what she was about to do. She waited to see if he would say something or give her any kind of look letting her know it wasn’t a good idea, but his smile grew even bigger as he disappeared into the crowd.
The crowd at pit number three stopped cheering. Then there was the familiar silence that accompanied a loss in the pits. This let her know that there wasn’t much time before Bean would notice she was gone.
Lilly checked to make sure Bean wasn’t watching, then headed for the side exit door.
“Gus won, Gus won!”
She heard Bean yelling to everyone within sight. Even the patrons that lost their bets tolerated her genuine happiness for someone else winning. She did have Bean figured all wrong, but she couldn’t stay with her.
Bean smiled the biggest smile she could as she turned to where Lilly had been, but Lilly wasn’t there. She scanned the pits and saw the Bookie looking her way. His look said everything she needed to know. Lilly was gone.
“Oh my,” Bean said in a small, quiet, completely uncharacteristic whisper.
Twenty-one
A small square-shaped transport jostled along a broken road in the middle of the night. The headlights barely shed enough light for the driver to see the road just in front of him.
A crooked and long-faded stop sign appeared and let the man know he was close. He let the transport crawl to a stop. The headlights, no longer illuminating the shattered road, now pointed into a giant black hole. Bodies in all stages of decomposition were piled at the bottom.
He got out and walked around the back of the transport, opened the back door, and pulled a body wrapped tightly in plastic to the ground. He gripped the leg and with some difficulty dragged the body over broken road and brick to the edge of the abyss, took a deep breath, and rolled the body into the darkness.
The sounds of the body rolling and coming to a sudden stop eerily echoed all around him. The man turned to get back into the transport but froze as a moaning sound crept out of the dark. He stood motionless, listening for anything else, but there was nothing. With a shaky hand, he grabbed a flashlight from a compartment in the door, walked back to the edge of the abyss, and listened.
Nothing.
He hesitated for a moment, but, gathering courage, turned the flashlight on and slowly aimed it down the slope of the crater. The man stood out in the pile of bodies. Mostly because of the plastic he was wrapped in, but also because the other bodies had settled into one another. The man’s mind was simply playing tricks on him. He focused the beam on the upper half of the body where one arm had come free from the plastic. He waited for the man to start coughing, screaming, something, but there was no movement, nothing. Only a dragon tattoo.
Twenty-two
Lilly stopped running as she reached the end of the dimly lit alley and looked behind her. Through every gap in the metal walls of the gambling pits an array of blue and yellow colors ebbed and flowed like an arc-grenade frozen in mid-ignition. Behind the pits, reaching into the sky, was the outline of Nucrea’s city center that illuminated the night with a bright blue glow.
She knew she didn’t have much time before Bean realized she was gone, but luckily, Nun’s place wasn’t very far. She turned to run, and charged right into a tall man that smelled like vinegar and old grease.
“Easy there,” the man said, followed by an eerily friendly laugh.
“Whuch ya’ runnin’ from Miss?”
Lilly felt the grip on her arm tighten. She twisted and wrenched herself free. She tried to move around him, but he quickly stepped in front of her. She backed up just as a younger, but equally disheveled man stepped out of the shadows.
She looked around to see if there was a third.
Only two of them.
“Aw, don’t go. We just want to talk.”
The other man that had come out of the shadows started to move behind her.
“Not a good idea,” Lilly replied with a confidence that caught the rancid man off guard.
He tilted his head, closed one eye, and looked her up and down.
“I think it’s a great idea,” added a rusted voice from the man trying to flank her.
Lilly moved to where she needed to be and stopped backing up. She needed to prove herself to everyone, and she wasn’t going to let two drunken bastards get in her way.
“There ya go. We just want to talk. What’s your name?”
Distraction.
“Not really in the mood for talking, but I have an idea,” she said in an innocently patronizing tone.
The rancid man laughed.
“Me, too,” he said.
Lilly held up her hand as he tried to move closer.
“Hold on a sec, big guy.”
He looked quizzically at his partner as she took out a walnut Skynut drone, and tossed it into the air.
“That’s cute,” mocked the younger man.
The rancid man straightened his posture as his face turned as sour as his stench.
“A pigeon cam isn’t going to help you,” he said as Lilly finished synchronizing the feed from the drone with her Pigeon.
Confidence.
“Let’s do this,” she said as she opened her arms as if she was going to give them both a hug.
The rancid man lunged at her, but Lilly was ready for him. She avoided his grab, swung under and up, elbowed him in the ear, and then kicked the back of his leg, forcing him down hard on one knee.
“You little bitch,” the younger man said.
Lilly looked up at the drone and smiled as the older man got back to his feet. She could have gotten away easily now, but she felt alive and wanted more.
Diversion.
The two men came at her from different angles. She made it look like she was focused on the older man, but as soon as they went in to grab her she dodged his attempt and with a combination of moves took the younger one to the ground hard. His face hit against the crumbled cement, breaking a front tooth and splitting his skin in several places.
The older man hit her in the back of the head, sending her rolling. She used her momentum to get her footing and countered with a sharp punch to his throat. The younger man got up, blood flowing from multiple cuts in his face, and pulled out a long knife from inside his coat. Even though she was turned towards the older man, Lilly heard the slide of metal on fabric.
The young man, knife drawn and furious, lunged at her. She hit his wrist and folded it hard against him, just like she had practiced with Ripp a million times. She grabbed the knife as it came loose, stabbed him once in the neck and again in the back part of the shoulder, then moved past him to engage the older man.
She dropped low, and drove the knife deep in the thick part of his upper leg. He hit her hard in the back, making her stumble and yell out in pain. She got her footing and turned to assess the threat. The old man winced as he put his weight on his leg. The younger man was lying unconscious in his blood.
One left.
“I’m gonna kill you now,” the man said quietly with complete conviction.
Finish.
He looked at his dying son, then, holding nothing back, rushed toward Lilly. She let him get close, and, in one instant, shoved the knife as far as she could up underneath his chin.
He did exactly what Ripp said these kind of people would do, he lost focus and let uncontrolled rage take over.
They both stumbled backward as the knife broke through the soft part under his chin and on through the bone protecting the top of his mouth.
He fell on top of her, but instead of fighting he stared, confused. She pushed him away and got to her feet, expecting a fight.