She could not keep her eyes closed a moment longer, no matter what the risk. Already the lassitude was creeping over her, a dark fog shot with red light and tiny, bursting stars. Another moment and she would find it easier simply to give up. The gnawing ache—it was in her back, she knew, but it felt as if it went right through her body and out through her chest—was growing more distant. The pain was receding.
Calliope Skouros knew this was not a good sign.
Should have waited until Stan called back, she thought, and coughed up another bubbly spill of blood. Wish he was here. Look, Chan, I could tell him. I wore my flakkie for once. Kept the blade from going all the way through my lung and into my heart. That's why I won't be dead for at least another two or three minutes. Plenty of time.
Yeah. Plenty of time for what?
Calliope tried to roll over from her side onto her stomach. If she could crawl there might, just might, be something she could do—maybe drag herself down the steps and out the front door of the loft. Also, there would be less chance of snagging the knife on something. She knew she couldn't pull it out—the blade and the shock-absorbent gel of the flak jacket were probably the only thing keeping the wound even partially sealed. Without the knife that had almost killed her, she'd die in seconds.
It was no use. Her arms weren't strong enough to roll her onto her stomach, which meant they certainly weren't going to lift her body. All those hours in the gym and all she could do was thrash uselessly, like a fish hauled onto the deck of a boat. She might be able to pull herself a few inches but she would never make it down the stairs. She coughed and a sudden spike of agony went through her. For a long moment afterward she could only grunt and clamp her jaws against the scream that would probably open the wound fatally wide.
Something made a little sighing noise behind her. Calliope strained to lift her head, but could see nothing from her angle on the floor. Johnny Dread must be on the other side of the room—she had heard him walk across the floor and climb into what must be the strange bed in the corner and had not heard him move again. Who had made the noise?
The woman—the woman who lived with him. The one he just killed.
Calliope scrabbled herself a little to one side, pivoting slowly on the axis of her hip and sliding through a puddle of her own blood, until she could see the woman, who was also lying on her side, as though she and Calliope were a pair of very disturbing bookends. The face was deathly pale but the eyes were wide. Staring. Staring at her.
The woman who had been shot made a little mewing noise.
Yeah, me too, sister. Calliope struggled to hang onto coherence, fighting without even knowing why against the encroaching darkness in her vision, the blurriness at the edge of her thoughts. We both wanted him, even though I'm guessing your reasons were different than mine. And we both misjudged him.
The other woman's eyes opened wider. She let out another small sigh.
Like she's trying to tell me something. She's sorry? She didn't know he was home? He made her lure me in? What difference does it make?
Then she saw the corner of the woman's pad sticking out from under her chest, spattered with red as though painted by a child. She had fallen on it and her body had hidden it from Dread. The woman's eyes flicked down toward it, then up to Calliope, mutely pleading.
"I see it," Calliope tried to say, but the words came out only as bloody bubbles. It will kill me to get to it, she thought dimly. Then again, I'll die if I don't.
She tried to stretch out her arms, hoping to catch her nails in the carpet and pull herself forward, but she couldn't lift them beyond her chest without a bolt of pain that made her feel as though someone had kicked the hilt of the knife in her back. As shadows gathered before her eyes and even the fibers of the carpet seemed to slip farther and farther away until they seemed like some strange snow-covered forest seen from the window of a plane, she discovered that if she wiggled her legs she could inch forward on her side.
They never taught us this one. . . . She did her best to ignore the scalding pain that came with each movement. The carpet dragged at her like fingers. All that stuff about climbing walls, shooting at targets. They should have taught us . . . how to crawl . . . like a worm. . . .
The worm coughed. The worm coiled in shock at the agony, writhed, even cried out in a quiet bubbling gasp. When the red electrical-shock fog retreated, the worm cursed silently, bitterly, and tried to crawl forward once more.
Too bad I don't have a brain at each end. Don't worms have that? Or is that dinosaurs? Stan's nephews would know.
Since when do you care about dinosaurs, Skouros? Stan asked her.
They're interesting, she told him. They died out because they were stupid. Too big. Too slow. Didn't wear their flakkies.
But they did—they wore their flakkies, even on a weekend call on their day off. They just didn't take their partners. That was the real problem. Ask Kendrick—he loves the things.
It's all right. It doesn't matter. They're all dead a long time now, right? I'll just sit on the couch . . . get a little rest.
You tired, Skouros?
Oh, yes, Stan. I'm really tired . . . really, really . . . tired. . . .
The fog cleared a little. She could see something pale before her. The moon? It was surprisingly close. But was it the right time of day?
The ghostly white shape was the woman's face, only centimeters away. God, no. I was out there, right out. Running out of oxygen. . . .
Calliope inched forward until she could touch the pad with her fingers, feel the curved case.
Can't get it open—it's under her. . . .
She shoved weakly at the woman with her head, trying to get her to move, but although her eyes were still open, the stranger did not react. Shit, don't tell me she's dead, please, please. . . . Dead weight. Right on top of it. Calliope shoved her hand forward, watching it with a kind of crazed interest as it closed on the pad. She tugged, lost her grip on the slippery surface. She tried again, fighting the blood which now seemed not just on her hands and the floor and the pad, but all around her in a mist, even filling her ears so that the sound of her own heartbeat became as close and strange as the voice of the sea in a shell.
Slowly, she brought her other hand up. The ray of pain in her back grew brighter, fiercer, threatened to set her insides on fire. Her fingers closed. She pulled. It came free.
Calliope fumbled with the bloody cover until she found the place to touch. The pad sprang open, the screen astonishingly clean and bright.
No blood, she realized. Must be the last place like that on Earth. . . .
She could make no sense of what she saw on it, the open files, the flicker of movement in a view-window—her vision was blurring badly. She could only pray that the thing's audio pickup was switched on. She did her best to speak, coughed, wept, then tried again. Her voice, when it came out, was as quiet as the whisper of a shy child.
"Call zero . . . zero . . . zero."
Calliope let her head sag until it touched the floor, which felt as soft as a feather pillow, inviting sleep. There was a police priority code she could have added but she could not think of it. It was all in the lap of the gods now—had the thing picked up her voice? Was it set to call out on vocal commands? And even if it worked, how long until they dispatched a car to answer the call?