Theories of Flight

19

Her name was Lucy. Finding that out took a good five minutes of coaxing. It took another five to get her out of the tub and still she wouldn’t put the knife down.

“We’re not going to hurt you, just don’t do anything that’ll attract the Outies, who,” and Petrovitch consulted his map, “are at the end of the street.”

He sat on the floor by the door, having shooed Miyamoto and his big sword out. The girl cowered in the space between the toilet and the sink.

“What if I scream?” she said.

“Then I imagine me and the Last Samurai will run for it, and you’ll get picked up by the Outies. Now, I have no idea what they do with Inzoners when they catch them, but that mere fact—that no one has yet reported what happens—makes me think it won’t be a Good Thing. How old are you?”

“F-fourteen.”

“Yeah. I don’t know how vivid your imagination is, but you probably wouldn’t want to be in my head right now.”

She shivered uncontrollably, and Petrovitch was as certain as he could be that she wouldn’t make a sound over a squeak. “How come you’re still here? Everyone else has gone south, and you should have been with them.”

“M-my parents. They called me. Told me to stay here. Said they’d come and get me.” Her fingers tightened around the knife hilt, forcing her knuckles white against the black of her uniform. “They’re not, are they? Coming to get me, I mean.”

“No. No, they’re not.” Petrovitch straightened his legs out, forcing his toes to point up. “I don’t know what they were thinking: they should have told you to run. You should have run anyway.”

“But they said.”

“They got it wrong.”

“You got here, didn’t you?” Her chin lifted for the first time.

Petrovitch pushed his glasses against the bridge of his nose. “I’m not your mom or dad. I have a gun, a bodyguard, and a very good idea where every single Outie is. Unless your mom is Special Forces or your dad owns a helicopter, I’m the only friendly face you’re going to see in a while.”

“What am I going to do?” she said.

“I don’t know,” said Petrovitch. “You ran out of options about the time we turned up.”

He started to get up, and even that little movement had her one leg in the bath again. He was stiff, especially his calves. He stretched them, one at a time, and shook each foot.

“Seriously. What am I going to do?”

“Lucy. I…” He sat down again, on the toilet seat next to her so that he wouldn’t have to look at her. “I’m not here to rescue you. Miyamoto is not here to rescue you either—he has to come with me for reasons that are too complicated to go into now. I have to find my wife and warn her that the nice MEA intelligence officer we met yesterday is a CIA agent and therefore responsible for murdering one of the few friends I had and nearly killing me. Twice. We’ll be going through Outzone-controlled streets pretty much all the way, and the odds are currently a hundred thousand to one.” He took a deep breath. “Whatever mess you’re in, I can’t get you out of it.”

She dropped the knife she held, and sobbed. Just the once. She walked with unsteady gait to the door and opened it. She stepped through, closed it quietly behind her, and left Petrovitch feeling like utter govno.

The Outies on his map were grouping at the north end of the bridge over the railway line. He guessed that they’d cross in a couple of minutes, and he’d then officially be in enemy territory. It was almost time to move out.

Lucy’s knife was point-down in the curling cork tiles on the floor. Petrovitch plucked it out and turned it in his hand. Its lack of guard made it a weapon of last resort, but that was pretty much where he was. He wrapped it and the other he’d picked out of the knife block into the tea towel, and slid them into a coat pocket.

Then he went back downstairs to the kitchen, where Miyamoto was sipping water from a glass.

“We cannot take her with us,” he said.

“I’ve explained that to her,” said Petrovitch. He picked up the carton of warming orange juice and flipped the lid open. “Considering we’re leaving her to certain death, or worse, I think she took it very well.”

“You will never complete your mission with her. It is… unfortunate.”

Petrovitch necked down half the juice. “Yeah.”

“She is very young,” noted Miyamoto.

“With no useful skills or knowledge. Her legs: did you see her legs?”

“Like two thin sticks.”

“And her knees were like yebani knots on cotton.” Petrovitch started opening cupboards, looking through them, closing the doors again as he moved around the kitchen. “She couldn’t keep up.”

“No. I cannot imagine she has run for anything other than a bus in her whole short life.” Miyamoto rose from his chair and refilled his glass.

The electricity died. The display on the microwave winked out, the fridge motor stopped purring, even the wall clock shuddered and was still. Domestic alarms screeched into life, every house, over the whole area, including the one they were in.

The noise was deafening, as it was designed to be—just the right frequency to drill into the skull.

Miyamoto put down his glass and stalked into the hallway. After a few moments, the cacophony inside the house was abruptly terminated. Outside, the noise carried on, but it was now bearable.

As he came back into the kitchen, he sheathed his sword. “They have cut the power.”

“Taken out the substation, I guess.” Petrovitch had found some empty drinks bottles: he was now trying to match lids to necks. “They’re right outside.”

“What are they doing?”

Petrovitch squinted at his glasses. “Just looking around, I hope. No, there’s a car coming.”

He left the bottles and went back upstairs. Lucy’s bedroom had her name on it in colored plastic letters. He eased into her room and crouched down by the window. She was lying on her bed, face down in the pink pillow, perfectly still until she heard the door shoosh close.

She looked up with red-rimmed eyes, and Petrovitch pressed his finger to his lips. He peered over the window ledge, through the translucent net, to the street below.

The car—red, low, fast, with tinted glass and shiny alloy wheels—accelerated toward the Outies in the road. To start with, it looked like they didn’t understand what was happening. They didn’t step back, and even though there was a line of cars parked either side of the road, they didn’t try to stand behind one of them, or any of the lamp posts. Neither did they aim any of their few guns, ranging from a couple of ancient revolvers through several shotguns to one modern assault rifle.

The red car’s engine roared. The front wing clipped one of the stationary vehicles, and it swerved violently across the white line, flicking the wing mirror of another into the sky.

The Outie in the very middle of the road was carrying a steel pole as tall as he was. He raised it in his dusty hand and held it like a javelin, and waited. The other Outies pulled away, unhurried, strolling in their soft, animal-skin-shod feet.

The car was almost on him, and he was perfectly still.

Then he jumped as if he had springs in his heels. He made no effort to throw the tube, but it fell, still perfectly horizontal, into the path of the oncoming windscreen.

It went through. The windscreen crazed across its whole width, and the pole kept on coming out the back window, where it came to rest, half-in, half-out. With a screech of tires and two successive bangs, the car ended up sideways, wedged between the parked cars. Smoke whispered from the crushed bonnet, and a fine white powder was blowing from the shattered interior. Wailing car alarms now added to the noise.

The Outie man landed on the tarmac, crouching, reaching for the knife at his belt. He straightened up, holding his arm high, and the rest of them surrounded the crashed car.

The driver’s door popped open. A figure fell out into the road, at the man’s feet. White dust swirled away, and a deflating airbag shriveled at the dashboard. The man reached down, took the driver by the throat and hauled him up.

It looked like a man, though there was so much blood on his face it was difficult to tell if he was young or old. Not that it mattered much, because in the next second, the Outie had stabbed him—a hard punch to the left side of the neck that made the tip of the blade come out the right. He held the blade still while his victim jerked and clawed, briefly.

Then he dragged it out, almost severing the head and leaving the tattered mess where it fell.

The other Outies made no attempt to intervene, join in, talk to each other—anything. They watched, passively, as the man squatted on his haunches to inspect the inside of the car.

He inclined his head, and with his free hand, beckoned.

The passenger door flew open, and a girl with a tight blonde ponytail burst out. She stumbled after the first few frantic steps, and sprawled onto the road. The Outie threw himself across the crumpled metal of the bonnet, rolled and landed square in the girl’s back just as she tried to rise.

Lucy was standing behind Petrovitch, staring down at her quiet suburban street, where nothing much of anything ever happened.

Petrovitch marched her back to the bed and sat her down, out of eyeshot. He could hear screaming over the alarms, and he wished he couldn’t. He scratched at his chin, then flicked his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose.

When he opened his eyes, he was looking at her feet.

“Do you own a pair of trainers?”

She was wearing black shoes with a wedge heel. Must have been a good school: black shoes, black tights, black skirt, white shirt, blazer with a crest on the pocket. A tie, for pity’s sake.

“Y-yes.” She pointed at her wardrobe. She cringed as a long, drawn-out cry from outside ended in a low, rasping moan.

“Put them on,” said Petrovitch.

Her blurred outline nodded. She took the two steps across the room, and retrieved the whitest pair of trainers he’d ever seen.

“Chyort.” He pushed his glasses back onto his face. The red dots that represented the group outside were drifting back toward the bridge, and he checked out of the window to make sure. He could see their backs as they wandered up the road.

Lucy already had her trainers on, and was standing by the door. She opened her mouth to say something, and Petrovitch pre-empted her.

“Do not,” he said, “now or ever, thank me. Okay?”

“But…”

“Just don’t.” He pushed past her and descended to the kitchen. He filled three small bottles with water, threw one to Miyamoto, and one to Lucy. She managed to catch it.

Miyamoto stared at the girl, and then at Petrovitch. He narrowed his eyes.

“You said.”

“Past’ zabej! We have five minutes at most to make it to the next line north.” He reached into his coat pocket for Lucy’s knife. He held it out to her, handle first. She hesitated, and Petrovitch growled. “You know what to do with it? Yes?”

“Yes.” She took it from him, and wondered where to put it. She ended up holding the waistband of her pleated skirt out, and sliding the flat of the blade against her hip.

“We have to go. Front door.”

They moved down the hall. Petrovitch turned the latch and opened the door. The sound of bleeping and blaring and ringing crowded in. He took a deep breath and started to run.

The Outies had gone right. They went left, away from the crash scene and the spreading pools of blood, hunched over so that the tops of their heads were no higher than the tops of the cars.

They crossed the road, quickly, skittering like blown leaves, then turned up a side street. Petrovitch straightened up, glanced behind. Lucy was next, her stupidly obvious footwear flashing like the warning signals of a startled deer. Miyamoto was almost on her heels, close enough to put his hand in the small of her back and push her along if he’d wanted to.

The road swung around toward the station. The nearest Outies were at the top of Willesden Green, coming down the hill toward them. Less than a kilometer away. Hardly any distance at all.

Using the map as a guide, they darted into a private car park that bounded the railway cutting. A high fence of concrete panels blocked their path. Petrovitch crouched down by the wall and cupped his hands between his knees.

Again, Lucy froze, not knowing what to do. Miyamoto jogged past her and, without breaking step, placed his foot in Petrovitch’s hands.

He was boosted to the top of the wall, and as deftly as any gymnast threw one leg over so that he straddled it.

“Run,” said Petrovitch, “jump.” Miyamoto lowered his hand for her.

She took two steps back, then sprinted. She seemed to have her eyes mostly closed, but managed to leap at the right moment.

Miyamoto caught her forearm and, with a face screwed up with effort, pulled her the rest of the way. She wobbled briefly, then dropped down the other side.

Petrovitch took a run-up himself, and planted his feet against the rough concrete, hanging from Miyamoto’s wrist. They looked at each other, briefly, and Petrovitch found that he was completely unable to read his expression.

“Sorry,” said Petrovitch. “We had to bring her.”

“You had to bring her, you mean.”

“Yeah, that’s precisely what I mean.”

Petrovitch put one elbow over the top of the wall, and let go of Miyamoto to get the other across. He hauled himself painfully up, then measured the drop on the other side. Lucy was looking up at him from the rough grasses of the embankment, swigging from her bottle. She was already dirty and disheveled, her tights torn through at the knees.

He rolled his body, and hung by his fingertips. Then he fell, picked himself up, and batted his coat with his hands.

Lucy asked him. “What do I call you?”

“Whatever you want. Sam, I suppose.”

Miyamoto released himself from his perch and landed softly beside them. “Which way?”

Petrovitch pointed northeast, and Miyamoto set off to join the rails without another word.

“He doesn’t want me here, does he?”

“It doesn’t matter what he thinks.” Petrovitch checked all his belongings. The rat was still safely in one pocket, the gun and knife in another, the bottle in a third. “All that matters now is that you stay with me.”