Chapter 43.

 

Jared

 

 

"He insisted," said Chazaerte to Maud, who was not looking all that pleased. "There are people looking after Gina," he continued, turning toward Jared. "Sofi called the Bahtan house and at least three of them came over, and there were two D'ubians when we got there; the rest of the group has arrived by now. Also your other neighbors – Clyde and Mimi, is it? And the man across the street; they were coming in as I left. They must have felt something," he said to Maud.

"Yes, well, we could expect that," she said. "Are they phoning Phyllis and Terry? It would be convenient to have an address."

"Yes, Cara was doing that," he said.

"And now," said Issio, working his claws gently, "we get Willis and Lillian." The tip of his tail moved in a controlled twitch; there was a small white gleam of fangs in his mouth. Issio was ready.

"The woman was in a pink bathrobe," said Chazaerte, as one recounting grievances. "Fluffy slippers. And she had a beam pistol."

"Mimi?" Jared asked Issio, who nodded.

"Clyde had his barbecue fork," Issio said. "Al carried the baseball bat Willis used to use."

"So the home guard is on alert," Jared told Maud, who looked amused. "Okay," he said to his augmented troops. "Gina put Willis in that shed; we'll go across the yard and get him. If anyone from the house sees us –"

"We will deal with him," said Issio in a tone of one anticipating a great treat.

There was nothing to be seen in the yard; there was a good deal of banging and thumping coming from inside the house, and now and then a scream or a yell, but Jared could see nothing in the windows, which were darkened. And even if the windows were cleared, it sounded as if the people inside were too busy to pay attention to anyone in their back yard.

Jared led the way out of the crop rows; Issio came immediately behind him, Maud and Chazaerte following Issio side by side.

They made it halfway across the yard before the back door was flung wide open, hitting the wall hard enough to dislodge flakes of paint on the siding. A woman with long red hair, wearing nothing but a black satin garter and carrying a pair of shiny black high heels, sprinted through the door and across the yard. She did not look as if she were having a good day. She plunged into the crop rows as three men erupted from the door in pursuit, whooping and howling in the pleasure of the hunt. The one in the lead was a wiry older man, attired only in running shoes not unlike those worn by Chazaerte. The two behind him were younger, heavier, burdened with a bottle apiece, one in a soiled white shirt that covered at least most of his torso, one in green-striped boxer shorts.

Issio made a great bound and seized the one in the white shirt, who turned with a yip; Issio swatted him off into the stalks, at least four meters away, where he landed with a crash and lay still. Jared grabbed Green Shorts and ducked the waving bottle and punched him hard in the ample stomach; he folded with a "Whoof!" and Jared swung his fist at the man's head as he went down, bruising his knuckles. Green Shorts hit the ground with no further comments, and stayed down. With two of the men out of the way, Jared sprinted toward the wiry lead runner as Issio leaped, and they landed on him at almost the same moment, knocking him to the ground, where Issio brought his fist down on the wiry man's grey head. He lay still; Jared and Issio got up and nodded at each other with satisfaction.

The red-headed woman had halted a few rows away; she peered at them uncertainly through the stalks, holding a high heel like a weapon in each hand. Ava, thought Jared, and resisted an urge to kick the wiry man a few times. "Is one of these cars yours?" he asked her, and after a moment the woman nodded, looking back and forth between him and Issio. "Get into it and get out of here," he said. "Don't wait to get dressed."

"My friends," she said. "They're still in there."

Three of them, Gina had said. "Okay, we'll send them out," said Jared. "But get in your car now. Lock it."

He turned back for the house with Issio, switching his tail, beside him; he heard a rustle in the crop rows as the woman worked her way toward the cars. It could not be comfortable walking naked through the bristling stalks and the drying leaves, he thought.

The back door was still open, and there was a lot of noise inside, but no one was in sight. The shed door was open too, and he could see Maud's light-colored clothes and Chazaerte's red outfit flashing around in the shadows. Ducking his head to get through the low door, he blinked to adjust his eyes, and spotted what could have been a pile of rags in the furthest corner; Maud was already there, bending over to investigate. Chazaerte was stooping, peering, and looking flustered.

"He's breathing," Maud reported, and then, "Dear heavens. I don't know how we are going to move him."

Issio took hold of the red hooded jacket and yanked Chazaerte over to the door of the shed. "Watch," he said. "If someone comes, you will tell us. This much you can do." He came up beside Jared and Maud and looked the situation over.

Maud had got Willis turned from his side to his back; he was not, mercifully, conscious, which was their best hope of getting him moved quietly, Jared thought. He had a black eye and bruises too numerous to count on his face and arms, and his right arm was at an angle Jared didn't much like; so was his left leg. There was blood on what was left of his shirt, and on his pants, and there was blood around his mouth; Jared thought there was at least one tooth broken.

Issio looked around and spotted something at the side of the shed and investigated; it was a tarp, filthy and old but still intact. "We roll him in this; you and this man will carry him," he said to Maud, "and take him back in this way." She raised an eyebrow. "I do not think it practical to call an ambulance from Alliance General," he pointed out.

"Quite true," she said, "and we had better hurry."

Issio spread out the tarp and Jared, wincing, got Willis at the shoulders and Issio embraced the knees and they lifted; Willis moaned and jerked convulsively but mercifully he didn't wake. They got him onto the tarp and wrapped it around him, and Issio went to the door and pulled Chazaerte back to Willis. "You two," he said, pointing a claw at Maud and another at Chazaerte. "Clena is there, also Wundra, also Ollie; they will care for him. You will see him into their hands; you will return. Jared and I will search for Lillian, also those women."

"Not a good idea, not just the two of you," said Maud. "The enemy is in there."

"Only another It," said Jared. "We know all about dealing with Its. Take Willis home and come back for us and for Lillian." He grabbed Issio's arm and they ducked out the door fast, avoiding all further argument.

The back door let them into a mudroom, which was at the moment living up to its name; people had been in and out all night, from the look, tracking mud from the fields and scattering anonymous garments and breaking bottles; the late Eugene must have had a formidable liquor cabinet, or his friends had brought lavish supplies with them. The kitchen came next, not an orderly room, chairs thrown around, cabinets hanging open, even the food keeper spilling its contents out onto the floor, and the door was open to the rest of the house, where all the banging and crashing was taking place, and the yells and the laughing and the hectoring tones of a man's voice rising above it all, exhorting, sneering; get the little whore, you gonna let her off with that, gimme that bottle, whatsamatter, you some kinda fag you don't want any?

The Fathervoice, aka the late Eugene McIntosh, Jared thought, and felt a strong urge to walk into the house and locate the source of that voice and stomp it into oblivion.

But as he walked past the overturned table he saw something over by the sink, another pile of bloody rags, a very large pile, and he recognized the green print on top of the pile; he detoured to put a hand on the green dress and found something large and warm underneath.

His hand came away sticky with blood.

"Lillian," he said, sickened, and turned her over carefully; Issio put out a hand to catch her head, which drooped limply as Jared moved her.

She didn't look in much better shape than Willis; she had both eyes blackened and a clump of hair pulled out over her left ear; her ample arms were black and blue from shoulder to fingers and swelling ominously. He thought she had several fingers broken, but he wasn't about to try to feel them and find out for sure. She, too, was unconscious, breathing heavily just short of a snore.

He got up and looked around the wreck of a kitchen; he saw a couple of filthy dishtowels on the floor, but nothing like the tarp they had used for Willis. There might be something in one of the drawers – he was thinking of a tablecloth, if this house possessed so civilized a thing – but before he could investigate, there was a shrill shriek just beyond the door to the rest of the house and Issio sprang up and launched himself at the source of the noise; Jared scrambled after him.

The next room was actually a hallway leading to the boisterous party at the front of the house; most of the yelling and crashing came from there. A door to the right, open slightly, revealed a formal dining room in which broken dishes and smashed and scattered food covered walls and table. To the left was another door, half torn from its hinges, a downstairs bathroom with bloody towels sopping up a pool of water from the sink or, from the smell, the stopped-up toilet. One of the two missing women was lying in this doorway, wearing a salad bowl, still half full, on her head. She did not look in much better shape than Lillian.

The third woman was struggling with a pair of men on the floor near the dining room door; one of them had her left ankle and the other had both of her arms and between them they had her trapped, but they seemed to have a difference of opinion as to which direction to go now. Issio landed on the man holding her ankle and ripped him away, flinging him against the wall by the bathroom; Jared got his arm around the neck of the other man and yanked, and the man dropped her arms and grabbed at Jared instead and Jared tightened his arm and swung him headfirst against the wall by the dining room door. His hands dropped from Jared's arm and he became quiet.

Letting him fall, Jared pulled the woman off the floor by the dining room door and shoved her toward the kitchen; Issio picked up the woman in the bathroom doorway, letting the salad bowl roll off toward the side of the hall spilling greens and sliced gratu roots and tomato bits as it went, and carried her after Jared. Thinking of the Fathervoice and the Mothervoice and the Progenitorvoice, Jared closed the kitchen door behind them, wedged a chair under the doorknob, checked Lillian one more time – she was still breathing – and led the way to the back yard. The man in the green shorts in the crop rows was sitting up, moaning and rubbing his head, and the others were out of sight. The redheaded woman was sitting in one of the cars; as soon as she saw them coming out of the house she opened the door and scrambled out and helped Issio get the woman with lettuce in her hair into the back seat; the other woman climbed without a word into the passenger side of the front seat.

"Are you from an Agency?" Jared asked the redhead, and she nodded, shutting the back car door on her friend with the lettuce. "Report to them, report it all," he told her. "Tell them to contact the other Agencies. These people should be blacklisted." He could think of several other things that should be done to them too, but most of them were not legal on Haivran and probably not on Linden's World either.

"I plan on it," said the redhead. "Thanks. Both of you. I thought we were dead."

She got into the car and took off straight up. The man in the green shorts found his feet and wavered up into a standing position and took a step toward them; Issio, in a leisurely fashion, walked over to him and knocked him down again, and he stayed there.