Cloud Castles (12 page)

I braked again, so hard he almost fell off. A ragged line of dark shapes was drawn up across the road, facing away from us; plastic riot shields glinted red. Some of them swung around sharply as they heard the car, but the policeman jumped down and hailed them. There was a swift muttered to-and-fro under raised visors, a crackling radio conversation, then he turned back to me. ‘You’d best head back down the hill. There’s trouble up here.’

‘That’s where I came from. Petrol bombs.’

He swore again. ‘Better leave the car, then. Go down by the theatre there, cut through the buildings, down the steps –
shit!’
A pop, a flash and the line broke, with men slapping at themselves as patches of flame blossomed on their coveralls, and one man, unforgettably, scrabbling under his visor and screaming. Somebody shouted through a loudhailer, and the whole line seemed to take one deep breath and surge forward, shouting, into the main street. Petrol bombs whizzed through the air; shouts and shrieks carried. My policeman scooped up a fallen shield and a metal bar from a shattered bus shelter, and loped after them. Sweating, I began to turn the car; but the road was narrower here, and I was reversing for the last time when I was suddenly surrounded by yelling, capering figures. As quickly as that I felt the car lift under me, tip sideways; sticks and stones and bare hands battered at my head as I fell sideways.

It was my suitcases that saved me, toppling out with a thump; the crowd on that side jumped back and I was able to roll out before the car crashed onto its side. Somebody aimed a boot at me, I grabbed it and twisted and he fell over, and in the smoky confusion the others started kicking him; I scrambled back in time to see somebody strike a match and flick it away. They must have poured petrol first; the car caught with a roar, and its sudden flare exposed their faces as they jumped back, gloating, manic masks of men and women, square, ugly, heavy. Momentarily forgotten, I grabbed the nearest by the shoulder and punched him right on his flattened nose. He reeled back against the burning car, shrieked horribly and ran off with his clothes alight, trailing sparks; the others ran after him, shouting, leaving me alone with the car. There was nothing I could do to put it out; large parts of a Morgan’s frame are ash wood, and the tank was almost full. I’d barely made the nearest side turning when it went off with a tremendous roar, sending
me staggering into the dark.

This wasn’t an area I knew very well, and to my shocked mind, in the smoke and stark furnace light, with all the streetlamps and window lights out, it could have been the circles of Hell. Demons roamed it, little knots of them all over the place, doing what they liked with nobody to stop them. The power was off, telephones dead; the few times any kind of emergency vehicle appeared they came flocking up out of nowhere and barraged it with stones and petrol bombs. Slinking from doorway to doorway, staying in the shadows cast by the flickering fires, I began to realize what had happened. This part of town was cut off; the rioters controlled it now. That wouldn’t last, of course, but while it did they could do an incredible amount of harm. And they seemed determined to, singing, shouting, smashing windows and looting – or so it looked.

But when one lot broke the window of a furniture store, I saw them tear out the tables and chairs and cabinets on display and smash them all over the pavement; they didn’t take anything. Nor, more surprisingly, did another lot from the electronics store down the road: TVs, games computers, expensive hi-fi all went spilling across to the gutter. Not one of them so much as put a games cartridge or a Walkman in their pocket, let alone slipped off home with a TV or other expensive prize. They acted drunk, but they weren’t; they had crowbars, bolt cutters, garden machetes and heavy knives, and they went through that window, security grille and all, with methodical speed. Suddenly, in the midst of it all, they dropped everything, and went racing off down the street as if they’d been summoned. I moved after them, but more slowly, careful to stay out of sight. I jumped like a startled rabbit when I darted into one doorway, and something squirmed at my feet. I grabbed, hard, and somebody hit me, not too efficiently. We stumbled into the light, and I found myself looking at a young type in crumpled denims, covered with political buttons and the remains of a painted slogan. He was shaking violently, but still trying to punch me; somebody was hitting my legs, feebly. I held him off and looked down. Another figure, sprawled in the doorway – a mess. The young man had the remains of a rich nosebleed
and a scraped forehead.

‘I won’t do anything if you don’t!’ I said quickly, and he sagged. ‘Who’s this?’

It was a young woman, though I only saw that because her clothes were in rags; her scalp was split, her face a mask of matted hair and blood. I didn’t like the sound of her breathing.

‘You were on this demonstration?’

‘It was nothing to do with us!’ he wailed, and then caught a grip on himself. ‘Okay, one or two wild men joined in the stramash at first, but it was the others, they had knives – and then the cops, and we ran – then we met up with this lot who were breaking up a café and we tried to tell them – and that’s what they did to her and they kept on doing it and I couldn’t
stop
them …’

‘Nobody could,’ I said, knowing it wasn’t guilt getting to him, just a helplessness he’d never experienced before. ‘That’s the way the world is, sometimes. At least she’s still alive. Maybe we can keep her that way.’ Her skull felt intact, and her spine, but her leg was oddly crooked – dislocated hip, I guessed. I was about to try reseating it when I felt the grate of bone; her pelvis was probably fractured. I looked around. Rape, robbery, arson – there might be people behind these windows, many of them, but they sure as hell weren’t going to be answering their doors.

‘I had to run away,’ he trailed on, ‘they held me and they were going to – and then when they were gone I came back and … and …’

I picked up the girl – a hell of a dangerous thing to do, but he’d moved her already and neither of us had any choice. She stirred feebly, moaning. ‘You did the right thing. The only thing. You couldn’t fight this lot on your own. I’ve run too, at times, with less excuse. Come on.’

Across the street and down, scanning the doors till I found one with multiple bell pushes – more likely there’d be someone there. The boy jabbed them at random, but of course there was no answer. I kicked the lock, hard; so did he, and at the third kick something cracked and the door flew in. We piled into the stone flagged hall, only to stop short. There were people on the stairs, a knot of them, and in the beam of a flashlight
a double gun barrel gleamed.

‘You stop right there, mister! Or I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off—’

‘Oh, shut up!’ I barked. ‘We’ve got a girl here, hurt bad. She needs somewhere safe—’

That broke the ice a bit. People grumbled, argued, kvetched as they always do; but soon enough she was stowed away upstairs, with one woman who was a nurse looking after her as best she could. The shotgun wielder and I set about fixing the door.

‘There must be people like you all over the neighbourhood,’ I told him. ‘Just lurking behind their doors while there’s robbery, rape and murder all around them.’

‘Well, what else’d we do?’ he demanded, a burly truck-driver type of about my age. ‘Just wait till the cops get in, eh?’

‘That could take hours. They probably don’t even know all this is going on yet – they’re not psychic, are they? And there’s no way to tell them, with no phones, no power.’

He considered. ‘There’s Sean down the street. His van’s got a CB radio. Don’t think he’ll be answering his door either.’

‘How’s your kicking foot, then?’ demanded the young protester type, clattering down the stairs behind us with a couple of others in his wake. They were carrying sticks, and one had a fearsome-looking fire axe.

‘How is she?’

‘Okay, I think. For now. But if you hadn’t got us in—’

‘Aye, well, I get the point,’ grunted the trucker type. ‘We’ll fix this door solid again, then head down there. Let’s hope Sean’s not too quick on the trigger, either.’

But shouting through the letterbox got us in this time. Sean turned out to be a fearsome creature, a bearded builder shaped like the original brick outhouse; his CB was a horrible thing, full of dangling wires and covered in cement dust and paint, but it worked. He nudged me, when we got a response. ‘You tell ’em, you’ve got the posh accent.’

We’d reached a cab company on the other side of town, but they had a direct hook-up to the police. The cops had already got the general idea, and thanked us for the more detailed report; they were bussing in reinforcements, and hoped to have the streets under control in another hour or two. That was all they could tell us.

‘An hour or two!’ echoed the shotgun artist.

‘Lot can happen in that time,’ said Sean grimly.

‘Too much already, by the look of it,’ I said. ‘If we could only – you don’t have any more friends around here we
can call up?’

‘Or kick down their doors?’ Teeth flashed in his beard. ‘Aye, we might, we might. You’re thinking—’

‘I’m thinking nothing. We might slow the bastards down a bit, though.’

‘Permanently!’ spat one of the young men, swinging his stick, as we made our way quietly out of the garage.

‘Not so fast,’ I told him, looking warily round the street. ‘Just chasing them off will be better, breaking up their little gangs. Doesn’t get us into trouble same as them. No pitched battles, if we can avoid it, either. That’s how they’ve been tying up the police – and they might make hay with us. There’s something about this pack – I don’t know what it is, but they seem organized, almost. As if they’d been trained …’

‘That’s right!’ hissed the protester type. ‘Infiltrators planted on us, weren’t they? To discredit us—’

‘Ach, come on!’ grunted Billy the shotgun artist. ‘I suppose they’re all from the CIA with wee headset radios? They’re just a bunch of squarehead yobbos! You get the same thing down the Costa del Sol onna bad night! Just want their heads bashed in!’

‘And yet they do seem to have some sort of control or organization.’ I told them what I’d seen. ‘And they are acting more like provocateurs than rioters. But I don’t think it’s the CIA – or the KGB, for that matter, or the Inner Tranquillity Bureau—’

‘What the hell?’

‘The Chinese secret service, to you. Something a lot more evil than any of them, maybe. I agree about the heads, though. They’ve got to be stopped.’

‘All right by me,’ rumbled Sean. ‘We’ll pick up some more lads, and then you just tip us the word. You’re the boss, jimmy.’

And so, to my surprise, I was. We picked up people as we went along, not snarling vigilantes but ordinary people, surprised and helpless in a situation most of them had never dreamed of, but ready to act when someone took the initiative. That seemed to be me. I hadn’t pushed for it, it just came out that way. Maybe it helped that I was the only one with combat experience, even of a pretty weird kind, and had picked up the knack of command. At any rate, they did what I said without overmuch questioning; and when we came upon the first riot gang, about ten minutes in, we were just about ready. By then there were twenty-four of us, armed with a motley collection of weapons from
brickbats to garden forks, plus two shotguns I insisted were kept for real emergency. And one leathery middle-aged woman came out struggling with what could be our most formidable asset, a pair of hysterical Rottweilers on what looked like a very weak chain. The rioters, tearing apart a local clinic with the usual instruments, were about the same number, and I noticed something I hadn’t before; they had a leader, too, a square-built thug who rallied them around him with quick gestures of his machete as they came pouring out through gaping windows and canted doors. I knew that was the thing to prevent – a co-ordinated fight. We had to break them up, scatter them without getting scattered ourselves. I could only hope our lot remembered everything I’d been throwing at them. I swung up a hand; shouted,
‘Charge!’
– well, what else was there? – and led the way with a wild rebel yell.

It was only half-way there that I remembered one cardinal precept of command, namely don’t forget to look after your own arse. I’d been so busy organizing everyone else that I’d clean forgotten to arm myself, and here I was running barehanded at that machete-wielding thug. Too late to stop now; I could see him grin nastily through his curly beard. There was something familiar about him, but I hadn’t time to think what. I clenched my fist because it was the best I could do, sweating like hell, wishing this was the Spiral. The machete flicked back, I thrust out my hand in a desperate counter—

A blur, a rush of air, a glitter. A blow against my palm, stinging, not sharp, not cutting, a dull heavy impact of hard sharkskin and a sudden well-balanced weight. Almost by instinct I followed through. A blade spun away, glinting in the fierce light, severed from its haft. The machete – and its wielder was reeling back, screaming, with his arm slashed from shoulder to elbow by the sword I held. Two of his own, with the same square, crushed faces, grabbed him and hauled him back. I turned on the nearest thug, shattered a six-foot fencepost in his hands, then swung the sabre at a crow-bar merchant with a cut that lopped his hand off at the wrist. He bolted, screaming and scattering blood. That sent the others running in all directions. It had some of my own looking a little pale, too. Big Sean
kicked the hand, still flexing, into the gutter, and raised a hairy eyebrow. ‘Where the hell’d you come up with that pigsticker, then? Have it down your pants? Thought you were walking a wee bit stiff.’

‘No, that was a woman,’ I answered absently, staring around me, and hardly noticed his guffaw.

‘Bloody interesting life you lead—’

‘
Quiet!
Something dangerous is happening – even more dangerous, I mean!’ The sword, my sword from above the mantel – things like that don’t happen in the Core. Which meant that a threshold had been crossed, somehow – and those strange rioters had appeared. ‘Anyone know what this area used to be before they built all these houses and everything? And the shopping centre back there?’