"I am. You are. You know that."
She glanced at the kid, who was squinting at Ludovic in an edgy way. "You feel like your head's gonna blow up? I feel fine. Pretty fucking tired at the moment and not in any fucking mood for anybody's fucking bullshit because I lost a major portion of my goddamn fucking life today, but all that aside, I feel just stone-fucking-home swell. So why don't you jam a ham in it and hang till somebody squeals for it?"
Angrily she turned away from him and folded her arms, clamping her hands on her shoulders to make them stop shaking. Ludovic tried to turn her around. She twisted away, but his hands kept at her, like fucking birds that thought she was a feeder. And Jesus, but wasn't that just like it all, though, old Feeder Gina, feeding them this and feeding them that, feeding them videos and feeding them more videos and feeding them the fucking paint off the walls of her mind and then shaving off a layer of wall and feeding them that, feeding Ludovic and feeding the Beater and feeding Mark, always feeding Mark, even after he was dead, she was feeding Mark, and the feeding would just go on until she had to cut off pieces of herself.
Ludovic was trying to pull her close, and she could feel that fucking need again. The fucking need to feed. But there was something else with it, too, and she could feel that well enough, just as she'd felt it that night, a need to give as much as a need to take, but she didn't want to have to deal with that now or with anything else, and besides, what the fuck did he think he had to give her, anyway.
She gave him a hard shove, and suddenly she was caught in a flowing rapid of moving bodies. There was a brief flash of Ludovic's startled face before she was carried away.
Carried away. Now there was something she knew all about. She fought for her footing as people bumped and jostled her from every direction. No worse than a hot night in one of those clubs, with the bangers working it out on some tiny dance floor, uh-huh; listen close, you could practically hear the music, something hard and nasty even if it was synth. A little traveling music, please, we got forty-seven miles to go here, and it's barbed wire all the fucking way.
Her hand landed on a shoulder, and the guy who turned around to look at her was pale with panic. He tried to pull away, his lips moving unheard in the roar.
Say again, doll, I didn't hear you that time.
He tore her hand from his shoulder and dived away. Sorry, wrong number. A pounding came from somewhere off to her left, and she struggled toward it. A kid banging his fists on the hood of some showy old stretch limo. Christ, who would abandon a limo here, now?
She made the sidewalk, stumbled half a block with the flow, and then dodged between two buildings and down a narrow alleyway. She wanted to stop, think, breathe, but the nasty bridge was running from the top all the way down, hammering every step of the way, and she had to keep moving. Looking for Mark. Even when you're not looking for Mark, you're looking for Mark. And finding him.
Out of the alley, onto another street, where someone brushed by her hard, turning her around to face an enormous sign. BRENDA SAYS: MADNESS RULES. Good thinking, Brenda. People were bumping against her, beating against her. She turned away and plunged toward the street. The crowd here was a little thinner, easier to get through, and her unnecessary effort sent her into the side of an abandoned rental.
"Are you crazy or just toxed?" somebody yelled.
Ask again, doll, you didn't hear what I seen.
A distraught face loomed close to hers as she leaned against the rental, trying to catch her breath. If it had been him, it wasn't now, and she couldn't save him even for a little while. She pushed away from the rental and made her way through the milling crowd. Overhead the smoke was getting thicker along with the burning smell. She blinked up at the sky; the shapes were writhing, swimming, but not pulsing. Not pulsing. Fucking Ludovic was fucking wrong, or maybe he was fucking infected but not her-
Looking for Mark, that's yours, isn't it.
But she wasn't looking for Mark, not now. Then she heard a familiar voice call her name, and she was gone again, that nasty bridge chasing her through the maze/obstacle course of buildings and people and vehicles, vehicles, vehicles, shit, where were the piers, the fucking sand, that all came next, so where the fuck was it?
Oh, doll, wouldn't you like to know?
She passed another limo, this one with three-four people sitting on the roof like a bunch of refugees on a capsized boat, frightened faces watching another large portion of L.A. swarm and flow around them. Fucker of a way to spend the afternoon, ain't it, folks? She passed a cop perched on the hood of a large, four-seater rental, looking resigned. That was it, then, civilization was officially collapsed if the cops had stopped ticketing abandoned cars and roosted on them instead.
The day was darkening around her, the smoke lower and the smell stronger. Faces swept past her, parting around her going the other way. She kept fighting her way through them. They'd all come out from under the piers, but where the fuck could they all have been going? But that wasn't him, and that wasn't him, and that wasn't him-
Hands caught her from behind and tried to drag her back. She strained to pull away. Don't hold me back now, ain't been anywhere near forty-seven miles, and all that barbed wire-
Two arms wrapped around her, lifted and carried her struggling through the crowd into the shelter of a doorway. The Beater was in front of her, then, trying to say something to her. She kicked out at him. The arms let go, and she collapsed on the pavement. Ludovic pulled her up again.
"What the fuck did you think you were doing?" he yelled into her face, shaking her a little.
Doll, why do you keep on askin me that? You must be seeing something I didn't say.
"She was looking for Mark," the Beater said.
"Fuck you!" She turned to swing on him, and Ludovic caught her again.
"We're still going the wrong way," the kid said insistently, apropos of nothing. Maybe that was his function in life, Gina thought, a one-man Greek chorus that gave directions.
"It's all right," Ludovic said. "We'll hide out in that cellar." He looked at Gina. "Your friends. Loophead,"
"Bad idea. They've got sockets," she said.
He shook his head. "I've seen their equipment. They're not on-line, they should be okay."
He practically dragged her the whole way to Fairfax Avenue with the Beater and the kid pushing her along, and Flavia Something was there to let them in. She gave Gina a hard whack with the sticks, but she let them in.
– -
The Beater gave her an abbreviated account of Valjean on the terrace. Gina was curled up on a mattress in a far corner, passed out, asleep, in shock, or perhaps wide awake for all Gabe knew. He felt as if he'd passed the point where he could fold up, that he would keep going until something forcibly struck him down.
"No Visual Mark," Flavia said when The Beater had finished. She looked over at Gina and then back at him expectantly, running a hand over her sticks.
The Beater shook his head. "No. No Visual Mark."
Like hell, Gabe thought.
"Where is everybody?"
"Caught out in the shit. Don't let's talk about it." She drifted over to a pudgy chair and dropped down on the cushion, watching Keely examine the interface equipment. There wasn't much to the stand-alone units, Gabe saw. They had maybe half the bulk of the console back in his pit-the fake console, he reminded himself-not quite square, nothing showing except the connections and a small panel above them, exterior controls for connect and disconnect.