Metrophage

THREE

"Shit," Jonny mumbled as he stepped on something soft and clinging in the doorway of the abandoned hotel. Then, "Shit" again as he recognized the accuracy of his curse. He was somewhere near Exposition Boulevard, out of breath, a few blocks from the old Lockheed rocket bunkers. Ancient booster engines and decaying nose cones displayed their brittle bones behind fences topped with razor wire.

Gingerly, Jonny scraped his soiled boot on a cracked stone step and peered from the alcove. Whoever Zamora had following him was being very cagey. Jonny still had not caught sight of the tail, but he knew the man was out there. Zamora would never let him just walk out like that.

He had exhausted himself, running for cover and for the sheer joy of running, for the momentary sense of freedom it gave him. Still, he had not been able to spot the tail and that bothered him. Even now, as he watched from the alcove, nothing on the street moved.

Except for the doorway-bums shifting restlessly with their chemical dreams.

The hot night had remained hot, was giving way to another hot day. Jonny's tunic clung to him like a second skin. He relaxed against the hotel and tried to regain his bearings. His shoulder had begun to throb within a few minutes of leaving the prison. He desperately wanted a drink, a snort, a smoke, anything that would transport him from the pain, the Colonel's obsessions and the old neighborhood in which he was hiding. Writers had been at work on the old buildings with their compressed-air canisters of sulfuric acid, burning their messages, like grim oracles, into the very bodies of the structures.

Over the years, the fronts of the abandoned hotels and shops had taken on the texture and feel of old candle wax. In the alcove, Jonny ran his fingers over crumbling letters. DUCK AND

COVER. And, ALPHA RATS ARE SCARED OF CATS.

On an impulse, Jonny pushed on the hotel door. It scraped across a warped wooden floor and stuck, revealing a bleak interior.

Jonny took a tentative step inside.

It looked to him as if a bomb had gone off in the lobby. The plaster meat and wooden bones of the place were visible where sections of the wall had caved in or been torn away. An old-fashioned wrought iron elevator lay scattered among blistered Lockheed tail fins and useless landing gear.

But, as depressing as the old hotel was to look at, it was the smell of the place that got to Jonny. The deadly stink (ammonia, old cheese, mildew) brought tears to his eyes. But he held his breath and pushed the lobby door closed. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, then, tired and leadfooted, his shoulders bumping into walls that appeared from nowhere, he started up the stairs for the roof. From there everything would be visible, and he reasoned that by leaping from rooftop to rooftop, he could lose whoever was following him.

He had not counted on the smell, though. At the first landing, Jonny's eyes were watering; by the second, he was having trouble breathing. Then, on the third floor he abruptly ran out of stairs. There was a door, labeled ROOF, but it was immovable-crusted shut with age and grime. Jonny put his boot to it, but that only brought a pitiful rain of dust from the sagging ceiling.

Outside, he thought, and up the fire escape. Jonny entered one of the guest rooms that opened off the corridor and headed for a window.

Inside, the room was large and, empty of furnishings, faintly echoed his steps. A dim rectangle of street light outlined the smashed innards of an old telephone-comsat uplink. The place must have been nice once, he thought, if they could afford to put those in the rooms.

In the middle of the floor was an upturned hubcap someone had been using to cook in.

Jonny had taken, perhaps, a dozen steps into the room before the smell got to him. It was a physical presence, twisting in his lungs like a tormented animal. His nose ran; he coughed. Holding his arm across his face, he breathed through his mouth. If the Committee had this stuff, they could wipe out the whole city, he thought.

When Jonny reached the window, he found it swollen in place from the damp ocean air. Knowing that Zamora's tail would hear it if he broke the glass, he started back into the hotel to look for a pipe or board. Something that would help him pry the window open.

A rustle of fabric from the far corner of the room. The flicker of something small and metallic.

Jonny took a step forward- and was in the air, falling, his legs knocked out from under him. He curled up as best he could and came down flat, protecting his shoulder.

"Goddamit," he yelled as shapes closed in from the gray edges of the room.

"Get his clothes," came a voice dry and thin as wind.

"Get his shoes," came another voice.

"Get him."

A stooped figure in rags lumbered up to Jonny and began grabbing at his tunic. Jonny cried out at the sudden pressure on his bleeding shoulder, lashing out with his free arm. Pain exploded in his wrist as something sharp and wet dug into it.

Jonny kicked out blindly into the dark, noting with satisfaction a groan as his boot connected. Rolling into a crouch, he propelled himself up into the stomach of the tunic puller. The figure staggered back, wheezing horrid breath.

Jonny leaned forward, letting his weight propel him toward the window. But he was knocked back as someone else jumped him.

"He's going to get out…He'll rat…"

"Little monster…"

"Watch his boots…"

At the window, he was dragged back by a swarm of dry, reptilian fingers. He screamed. Things like vises and knives, pincers and broken glass cut into his back and arms.

Christ, they're biting me, he thought.

Jonny managed to loop his leg behind the leg of one of his attackers. Then, pushing forward with all his strength, he heard a window crack and shatter. Suddenly, he and one or two others were on the fire escape. The sudden release of hands and rush of air left him light-headed, but some animal part of his brain moved his arms and legs, pushing him up and away. No one followed.

Two flights up the fire escape, Jonny stopped to look at his attackers. They huddled below, cooing and mewing over their injured. Though it was cooler outside, the heat still broiled the streets, baking the old tenements; the whole neighborhood rippled behind waves of desert heat. Yet, the mob were clothed in layer upon layer of cast-off coats, moldering lab smocks and vacuum suits. A fat man in tattered test pilot gear crawled onto the landing and gazed down at the street. His clothes hung from his arms in strips, little more than patches all crudely sewn or wired together. The mass of rags on his thick frame gave him an awkward bear-like appearance, but his eyes burned with a savage clarity.

Jonny was already backing up the stairs when the fat man caught sight of him. A scream welled up from the fat man's throat; he bared his yellow teeth. But not real teeth, Jonny knew, just plasti-steel implants, sharpened with care to needle points. In the thin unreal light of the street lamps, the fat man's teeth glowed like a trap.

Pirhanas, Jonny thought. A whole gang of them. It had been a stupid mistake, entering the old hotel. It reminded Jonny just how tired he was.

The abandoned hotels and apartments that fronted the warehouse district were useless to most gangs, lying just beyond the lights of Committee headquarters. That is why the Pirhanas, septuagenarians mostly, for there were no Pirhanas under sixty, held them. Used for target practice by the younger gangs, lied to and finally abandoned by the government, the old discards and defectives banded together to hold some piece of ground for themselves. Using the few weapons they could find, principally government issued teeth- filed and set firmly in angry, withered jaws- they were tolerated because they consumed nothing but the leavings of others. Besides, even in Los Angeles, slaughtering old people in the streets would have been frowned on.

As Jonny watched, more Pirhanas began to crawl from the hotel. The fat man started up the fire escape. He carried a sharpened pipe in his hand. Jonny started climbing, too.

He vaulted the low wall onto the roof clumsily, and sprawled on his stomach. Gravel dented his cheeks. As Jonny pushed himself up, he saw a thin, but steady stream of blood running from under his chest. The fat man was a few yards away. Jonny started running again.

Behind the fat man, more Pirhanas appeared, running like a ragged army of the dead. They waved their pipes and broken bottles wearily, more, it seemed, to remind themselves of the connection they still had to the flesh they inhabited, than to menace Jonny.

When he reached the other side of the roof, Jonny looked frantically for a way down. What he found puzzled him more.

An entire network of home-made bridges and catwalks, like some outrageous model of the neural pathways of the Pirhana's brains, criss-crossed the roofs, connecting all the buildings within a dozen blocks. Ribbed conduits, old antennae, the rusted drive shafts of decades-dead jet turbines were hammered into the surfaces of the roofs. Secured to these were lengths of rotting rope, pilfered from the docks. Flattened cans of krill, backs of discarded computer terminals and insulation tiles from L5 shuttles filled the gaps between rough planks to form walkways over the street, a hundred feet below.

The bridges did not look all that secure, but the Pirhanas were closing in. Jonny stepped onto the closest walkway and hurried across. The support ropes stretched and tightened as things cracked and shifted under his feet.

He leaped off onto the adjoining roof. The bridge strained behind him, weighed down by the gang. The fat man was still in front, holding the pipe before him. Jonny moved in circles around the roof, frantic for something to throw. He knew that if he used his gun, Zamora's man would find him and all this would have been for nothing. In the end, he decided that the situation did not cry out for subtlety. Fumbling in the folds of his tunic, he pulled out the sweat-soaked Futukoro and waved it in the face of the fat man, who pulled up short at the sight of the gun. The Pirhanas bunched up behind him, growing silent.

"That's it!" Jonny shouted. No more games. The first one who moves is meat for the others.

It was rubbish and he knew it, but it sometimes worked, as it seemed to be working now. The Pirhanas, including the fat man, remained where they were. They stared at Jonny with empty, feral eyes.

Sentiment had always been Jonny's undoing. At heart, all cops are romantic slobs and ex-cops are worse. A terrible wave of sorrow overcame his fear as he backed away from the pathetic group. They were defectives, not unlike the losers and one-percenters that he knew, that he was a part of. Jonny scanned the faces of the crowd, wondering if whatever errant gene that had sent them out here to the wilds was present in his blood. He regarded them with a certain awe.

From behind, a brick fell and shattered hollowly. Jonny turned quickly, keeping the gun on the fat man. Dozens of Pirhanas had crowded onto the other roofs, pipes and heavy connecting rods in their hands. Many grinned, showing sharp, stained teeth. Jonny was surrounded.

He shuffled to the edge of the roof, turning in slow circles, trying to cover himself in all directions. When Jonny reached the fire escape, the bridges were packed with Pirhanas. When he stepped onto the ladder, a few were moving toward him across the roof.

When he was straddling the wall, the fat man threw his pipe and screamed, charging him.

Jonny managed to duck the pipe and dropped over the edge of the wall, landing hard on the fire escape platform. He rolled onto his back and pointed his Futukoro. Too late. The Pirhanas were over him, pelting him with pipes and stones. But even under that hail of debris, Jonny could not bring himself to kill any of them. He settled for spraying three sides of the sky with bullets.

The Pirhanas fell back, unaware of Jonny's good intentions.

With his gun straight up, Jonny squeezed off a few more rounds and clattered down the steps.

When he hit the ground, he hung in the shadows, pressing himself tight against the building, waiting for the sounds of pursuit.

But there were none. Jonny breathed through his mouth, swallowing great gobs of hot, wet air.

He was in a blind alley; at the far end lay a vacant lot dotted with discarded dressing dummies and barbed wire rolls. Jonny remained against the building, feeling it solid against his back. He checked the rounds left in his gun and carefully slid down the wall toward the alley's mouth.

He did not stand a chance.

A gleeful cry echoed from above. Jonny looked up just in time to see the junk raining down on him: pipes, bottles, jet canopies and electronic components, all the technological refuse of the city. He leaped and rolled, groaning at a sharp pain in his shoulder.

The first wave of junk crashed behind him. The second wave caught him in the open with nowhere to hide. Compassion vanished.

Hunkering down behind a dressing dummy, he opened fire at the roof, his bullets chewing the head off a sexless stone cherub. Its companions made no comment and the Pirhanas, who knew better than to stand close to the edge, just laughed at him. Jonny remained low in the dirt, cursing himself for not having blown a few of them away when he had the chance.

"DO NOT MOVE. STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE," commanded a bland, amplified voice.

The Committee hovercar roared by suddenly, like an angry metal wasp- all sleek and deadly- its belly lights casting angry fingers of brilliance over the empty buildings. Shadows moved like a year of nightmares across deserted storefronts. Dust and grit billowed from the roof into the alley, filling it with smoky phantoms.

Jonny coughed, trying to clear his throat. The clamor on the roof picked up as the Pirhanas turned their anger toward the hovercar, pelting it with junk. Jonny took the opportunity to move into the street. His shadow circled him like a nervous cat, then appeared in a dozen places at once- thin and diffuse.

Crouching by a gutted lamp post, Jonny found a sewer grating and gave it a tug. By rocking it back and forth, he worked the grating loose and pulled it free. Peering down to see if the way was clear, a sudden attack of vertigo tilted the street toward the dark hole. Jonny grabbed the lamp post, fighting to keep his balance, and turned back toward the hotel.

Overhead, the hovercar was hanging in the air like a patient predator, waiting for an opening. Abruptly, a mechanical whine filled the air. Jonny squeezed his eyes shut and covered his ears as the pacifiers kicked in.

The fighting on the roof died away as, much too late, the Pirhanas realized what was happening. They stood as one, staring at the whirling pattern of lights, paralyzed and helpless.

Jonny decided that it was time to find the Croakers. He slid quietly into the sewer and pulled the grating closed.

The sewers were the lichen-slicked relics of another time, a means of concealment as old as revolution itself. The Croakers took to them soon after the shoot-on-sight orders became official policy with the Committee. The Croakers were outlaws, anarchists and physicians mainly, treating diseases that officially did not exist or could not be diagnosed without authority of the local medical boards. Their roots extended back to the early days of the century when the first doctors went underground, destroying the records of patients with AIDS and certain new strains of hepatitis, treating these patients (the new untouchable" caste) in the black clinics hastily thrown together with whatever those original rebels could carry with them.

Other doctors, mostly young ones back from the Lunar Border Wars, frustrated by the impenetrable bureaucracy and government seizures of their patient records, joined them. It took only a few years for the medical community to split into two distinct camps: those doctors who remained above ground, working with the powers that be, and those who walked away from all that, joining the other gangs of Los Angeles in constructing their own micro-society beyond the boundaries of conventional law.

Jonny had been a supplier and occasional courier to the Croakers and he liked them, despite their revolutionary proselytizing. He cringed when one of them called him "brother", but he felt a silly pride at being associated with them. That was also why he remained suspicious of them. To be otherwise would demand a response that he was not prepared to give, was still not sure of. It implied certain ties, a common heritage, and that made him nervous.

The sewers, laced within the body of the city, were the corroded veins of a sick addict, shut down from age and abuse. The only things that moved in them were alien, looking for a way out.

Jonny stood at the bottom of a ladder of steel rungs embedded in a stone wall. Knee deep in black water, the floor sucked at his legs.

The air was thick with stagnancy; corrupt, buzzing with mosquitoes. They tickled his face, covering his eyes and hands. They stung him until he swung out blindly at the curtain of pests, fighting back an overpowering sense of his own death. But death was not it, not exactly. It was more a formless sense of great anxiety, a feeling that he had done something terribly wrong and that if he could just remember what it was and fix it, everything would be all right.

Jonny knew a little about the layout of the sewers, but he did not know the location of the Croakers' secret tunnels. Since all directions were the same in the dark, he started moving straight ahead, into a faint, sticky breeze. Very soon, Jonny realized that he was no longer moving through absolute darkness.

He could see the mosquitoes. They seemed to be crawling over a flat two-dimensional background; a trick of the strange light that seemed to fill the tunnel. The lichen on the walls were glowing a weak green. When he ran his fingers over the damp stones of the wall, he left a black trail where the lichen peeled off. His fingers glowed with the little plants. Jonny walked on, his legs sluggish in the oozing mess of the floors.

But he was still moving without direction. Light-headed, he lost track of the hours in the endless branches and sub-branches of the tunnels. The water rarely moved above mid-thigh, but a few times he had to turn back from tunnels when the water reached his chest and threatened to go higher.

Along the way, Jonny scratched messages on the walls. Crude serpents, ready to strike; he wrote his name in big block letters and some obscenities concerning the relationship of Committee boys and their mothers. He drew the outline of his hands and eyes with wings.

He stumbled more as exhaustion crept into his muscles, loosening them at the joints. For a time, he walked with his eyes closed, mechanically trailing his fingers along the wall to keep his direction. Was it for hours or minutes? When Jonny opened his eyes again, he staggered back, nearly fell. "Jesus Christ," he said.

Slogans, names, and drawings were scrawled over every inch of the walls and arched ceiling of the tunnel. They screamed down at Jonny from all directions, black shimmering lightly above green. It looked like the last record of some tribe or group mind which had blasted itself, intact, onto the walls. The words seemed to hang in space around him.

LIFE WITHOUT DEAD TIMES

SOCIETY IS A CARNIVOROUS FLOWER

I AM HERE BY THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE AND

WILL NOT LEAVE UNTIL I GET MY RAINCOAT BACK

BEAUTY MUST BE CONVULSIVE OR IT WILL NOT BE AT ALL

SKID THE KID WAS HERE!

SURREALISM AU SERVICE DE LA REVOLUTION

Humpbacked shadows skittered along the pipes near the ceiling. Rats, huge and dangerous. Jonny pulled his gun and fired at them. Rats had caused him enough trouble for one night. He watched as a couple of them skittered to a wall a few meters ahead, and squeezed into a small opening near the floor. As each rat disappeared, its coat was illuminated for a second by a flash of white light.

Jonny went to the wall, knelt, and pressed his face to the crack.

A steady stream of cooler air. Running his hand around the edge of the hole, he realizedthat the wall was false, not stone at all, but some sort of cast polymeric resin. Digging in his heels, Jonny pulled at the opening. And the wall slid out a few centimeters, stuck, then opened wider, trailing scabrous fingers of adhesive. Light exploded into the sewer.

White and agonizingly bright, the light burned Jonny's eyes.

But he did not care. It was beautiful. He squinted into it, trying to locate its source, but he had to turn away, finally, when he thought he would go blind. It was several minutes before he could look into the luminous cavern without flinching. But when he did, Jonny knew he was safe.

Still, it was a strange sight in the squalor of the sewer. The transparent plastic bubble- clean, and brightly lit-glowed like a dream, filling the tunnel before him. Through a haze of condensation, Jonny could just make out the hydroponic racks that lined the walls along both sides of the tunnel. Yage vines trailed onto the floor; aloe vera, psilicybe mexicana, and other medicinals grew there in abundance. By pressing his face up to the thick plastic membrane, Jonny could see the other end of the tunnel where the plastic was tucked neatly around a weathered access hatch.

Jonny stamped his right foot down sharply, at an angle, so that the heel of his boot snapped off with a click. Balancing against the bubble wall, afraid somehow of moving too far away, he felt along the bottom of his boot until he found the hilt of the hidden knife.

Then tugging at the blade, which slid bright and clean from his hollow sole, he rammed it into the bubble. Sliding the blade down, he made a single, neat incision in the membrane wall. Then he pushed through the tight aperture, into a warm, musky chamber which pulsed with the regular beating of a pump.

He replaced the knife and snapped the heel back on his boot.

There was a smell of life and order in the tunnel that revived him.

When Jonny reached the access hatch, he gripped the big metal handle and turning it, was rewarded with a reassuring rumbling inside the walls as bolts drew back. After that, the door swung open effortlessly.

Jonny stepped into the darkened room and felt along the walls for a door. He went blind in the apex of multiple cones of light, ghostly afterimages tracking his retinas. Someone grabbed his sleeve and pulled him forward. Jonny could just discern the outlines of Futukoros and crossbows pointed at him from beyond the light. He started to say something, but the air, which had seemed so pleasant a moment before, suddenly went bad. The room tilted back and forth, wobbling, as his vertigo returned. Then he was on his face on the floor. "Here we go again," he said.

Something moved in front of Jonny's nose. A Burnett crossbow pistol lowered and a woman- small, but well muscled, the planes of her face smooth, as if carved from cool black marble- took a step toward him. The woman's name was Ice. She knelt in front of Jonny and squinted at him. In a moment, her scowl softened to an expression of embarrassed recognition. She reached out and touched his filthy face.

"Jonny? Oh, my god," she said quietly. "We heard you'd been shot."

He smiled then, too, partly with affection and partly with surprise. He kissed her cool hand. "Not to worry," he said. "The pain stopped soon after I died."

The next few hours existed only in fragments. Physical sensations. Later, Jonny remembered lying on the floor, wondering distantly if he was going to be sick. He remembered hands moving over him. Objects had taken on a fragile, crystalline quality. Things dripped into his arms through haloed tubes. Ice moved into view occasionally and tried to speak to him. But Jonny was off floating where there was no pain and no need to run. Then there was only the dark.

Jonny awoke on a futon, naked, his arms wrapped in clean bandages. He moved his hands, but only after a considerable effort of will. They slid from under cool sheets as if being manipulated from far away. He felt numb and dizzy, but somehow peaceful. He was in a little room stacked high with milky injection-molded cases and styrofoam packing modules. It did not look at all like part of a hospital.

"It's not. I'm just borrowing it," said Ice, as she slid a dark arm around Jonny's chest, pulling him closer. Jonny remembered Ice's unnerving talent for verbalizing his thoughts.

"Ice," he said, rolling to face her.

"For an ex-cop you've got big feet. You set off every alarm in the place."

Ice, Jonny, and Sumi: the three of them had formed a solid union for a time in the disintegrating city. Then suddenly, Ice had disappeared, leaving only a short, lame note. Jonny recalled the first terrible days after she had gone. He and Sumi walked on razor blades. Each was aware that neither had been to blame for Ice's disappearance, yet each secretly sensed that they were the one responsible. It was days before Jonny could bear to let Sumi out of his sight. The terror of being alone overwhelmed him. Sumi had been no different. They trailed each other from room to room like absurd puppies, only dimly aware of what they were doing.

Seeing Ice now, lying next to her, Jonny ran his hands over the contours of her body. She had changed in subtle ways. There was a new, pleasant firmness to her hips and legs. And her arms were thicker, more muscular, which Jonny was sure pleased her. Her grin still possessed the openness which contradicted her usual detached expression. His fingers traced the old post-operative scar where she had received a black market liver.

"I didn't recognize when you when you came crashing into the storeroom tonight. Then, when I heard your voice I couldn't believe it was you," she said.

Jonny's throat was dry when he tried to speak. "I didn't know that you'd be here. That you were a Croaker," he said.

Ice nodded. "I've been here a few months now." She shrugged.

"Sometimes, I'm not even sure why. Groucho recruited me. Do you know him? He's great. He plans a lot of the raids and holds the group together. I'll introduce you tomorrow. He helps keeps the ghosts away."

The ghosts had been with Ice for as long as Jonny had known her. They were an image she toyed with, but he knew that to her the ghosts of memory were real.

Ice had been working as a prostitute at the Zone Deluxe when Sumi introduced them. Before that, Ice had farmed-out her body to the Boys of Tangier gang, allowing herself to be infected with specific viruses. The gang would then purchase her infected blood, which they used to produce various immunotoxins. These they sold on the street or to the smuggler lords.

While infected with a mutant strain of hepatitis, Ice's liver gave out. The Boys of Tangier gave her a new one, but when they demanded payment, Ice revealed that she was broke. The Boys sold her to the owners of the Zone Deluxe, a pair of identical albino twins who called themselves the Tundra Brothers.

Jonny called in some favors with a smuggler who specialized in stolen corporate data and bought out the Brothers' interest in Ice with the access codes for the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It was sweet deal all the way around. Jonny knew the Tundra Brothers were not particularly smart.

Using the codes, the Brothers made themselves rich in a week.

They descended into a kind of madness then, like a tape player stuck on fast forward, spiraling on a terminal party high, manipulating stock prices. By the end of the second week, the Brother's bank accounts rivaled the big corporate fortunes of the oldest families of Tokyo. It took another week for the Yakuza to find them. After that, the Tundra Brothers and the Zone Deluxe were relegated to that specialized branch of urban mythology embracing everything from the merely foolish to the truly insane. But Ice was out by then.

"Why did you go?" asked Jonny.

"I don't know," Ice answered quickly, as if she had anticipated the question. She closed her eyes. "I really don't."

"Too many ghosts," said Jonny.

Ice lay down on the futon and rested her head on Jonny's chest.

She opened her eyes, but would not look at him.

"I'm better here," she said. "I know who I am. There's a structure to reality." She tugged at her short, curly hair. "Things tend to stay in focus."

"Yeah, I understand," Jonny said.

He looked around the room, gnawing the inside of his cheek nervously. Among the packing material, clothes and books had been tossed at random. Ice and Jonny had been the slobs in their menage-a-trois. Sumi was the only one who cared for a clean house. He was glad to see that, at least, that had not changed.

"We could all use a little structure," he said.

He looked back at Ice and watched her rubbing her eyes sleepily. It was at times like this when Jonny was reminded of just how small she was. Of how much strength it took for her just to push back the void each day. "I'll leave, if you want. I can sleep in the ward," he said.

"No," said Ice, looking troubled. "Please stay. How's Sumi?"

"I don't know. That's part of why I'm here. I have to get out of Los Angeles. Zamora's after me. We have to get Sumi before he finds the house in Silver Lake."

"We will," Ice said, "but not now. Tomorrow, when Groucho gets back."

Jonny nodded wearily and lay his head down on the pillow. Ice leaned over and kissed him. Opening her lips, she invited his tongue into the warmth of her mouth. His hands roamed her body, found the tail of her shirt, and slid up to cup her small breasts. They moved together for some time until, suddenly exhausted, Jonny's head began to spin. But they kept their arms around each other, as if one of them might be swept away at any moment.

"You shouldn't have run off like that," Jonny said.

"I know," Ice whispered. "Now go to sleep."

He turned to her, groggily.

"We have to get Sumi."

"We will, don't worry."

Jonny rolled onto his side. He felt her arm encircle him.

"Too many ghosts," he said.

He felt her nod.

"Too many goddam ghosts."