Chapter 17

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height

                  

Nick tread softly on the dead leaves in his soft leather boots, not daring to make a sound. A hundred feet distant from him, through the trees, the deer looked around nervously between sips of water from the slowly flowing stream. He'd been tracking this buck for an hour, carefully staying downwind to avoid giving away his presence. Now he'd finally lined up a kill shot.

He held the curved yew bow horizontally in front of him with his left hand as he reached into his quiver and pulled out a long arrow with his right hand. Almost unconsciously, he checked the feathers to make sure they were even and the notch to make sure it was sound. Then he slid the arrow onto the string and raised the bow in front of him. It took all of his strength to pull the cord back to full draw.

He looked down the length of the shaft at the buck, which was silently drinking from the stream. He found his quarry's heart, and then corrected his aim upwards for the headwind and the distance.

The buck had first sensed Nick's threatening presence fifteen minutes ago. But for some reason it had been indecisive. Instead of fleeing immediately, it had looked around for a while and then continued its business. And so the buck would die and Nick would earn his dinner.

Now the buck's ears perked up and it raised its head to look right at Nick. It bunched the muscles of its body as if it were about to bound away.

Too late.

He loosed the arrow. It sailed straight and fast towards the deer.

Laura appeared in front of Nick, and the arrow vanished as it passed right between her eyes.

The forest was gone, as were the deer and the bow. Nick was floating in endless black nothingness; the default state of the ether.

He frowned in annoyance. "What the he-"

"Nick, haven't you seen the mob? Why are you still in Manhattan?"

Nick looked at her with incomprehension. "What are you talking about? I was hunting in the Argonne."

"No, I'm talking about your physical body! You need to get out of Manhattan!" She waved her hand and the world turned into fire and chaos. Nick realized he was seeing live holovision footage of a rioting crowd.

Along the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Just outside his home.

Laura continued, "Haven't you been keeping an eye on the news? This has been getting worse and worse all day!"

"I've been busy," said Nick weakly. He had been unnerved by his argument with Sarah. She was normally laid back, even a little detached. That was part of what he liked about her. But on the way to the park, she had seemed unusually volatile. She had gotten angry fast, and then suddenly shifted gears and appealed to let her help him. Now he had a bad feeling he'd trusted her too much.

After he had gone home, he had made a cursory appearance at Abril's Christmas orgy, just enough to show he was part of the Aeon team. Then he had cut himself off from everyone and spent the night immersed in solitary fantasy worlds he created with his MindWave. He'd received several messages from Laura and from his family, yet ignored them all.

Even as he spoke, his MindWave was summarizing the last twenty-four hours of riots by piecing together several news reports into a simple and coherent narrative in his brain.

The already tenuous situation had deteriorated substantially in the last fifteen minutes. Roads to the South, North, and West of his apartment were in flames. Rioters, angry at spiraling energy prices and inspired by the defiance a pastor in Texas had shown towards the Aeons, had given up their peaceful protest in Central Park and were now taking out their fury on the wealthiest neighborhoods in Manhattan. They were looting buildings and attacking residents.

There was speculation that the Governor would declare a state of emergency and send National Guard units into the city to quell the riots. Until that happened, it was up to the New York City Police Department. Manhattan's police were stretched thin and could only hope to contain the chaos until reinforcements arrived. And those reinforcements would be slowed by the lack of working police vehicles and the fact that rioters had barricaded many of Manhattan's narrow streets. It would be hours before more officers could arrive.

The worst violence was now unfolding along Central Park West, where Nick's luxury penthouse apartment was located. The police in the area had fallen back in the face of the mob, and now just held a thin defensive line around the 86th Street Central Park transverse. The East side of the transverse, where his parents' residence was located, was still under police control.

"Get to the transverse!" commanded Laura. "It's the safest way out."

"I will." He looked at her, fearfully. Adrenaline was filling his real body as he realized the gravity of the situation. "I'll have to disconnect. I'll have to get out of the ether. Wait for me."

As he prepared to exit the ether, he saw a wave of rioters charging at the thin defensive police line from the North. Some of the police dropped their truncheons and retreated.

Nick brought himself back to his physical body in his apartment and reached behind himself to disconnect his MindWave from the ether. Just as he did so, Laura's frightened face appeared before him and said, in an urgent whisper, "Run!" He disconnected and the image of her face froze on his retinas and slowly faded away, ghostlike, her widened eyes taking the longest to dissolve.

He sat up slowly and stiffly. His body had been sitting almost motionless since his fight with Sarah. His MindWave, connected to the ether with a forty foot cable, had auto piloted his body around his apartment, performing the basic functions of his body for him: eating, drinking, bathing, using the toilet. But otherwise he had been still.

He hauled himself to a standing position. His legs felt soft and unstable. There was a dull ache in his back. He lurched towards the exit of his apartment but realized he was naked. He called for his maid, and received no answer. She must have already fled.

From the streets below his penthouse, he heard shouting. The riot was getting closer.

He remembered it was winter and the weather would be frigid.

Before he could flee, he needed to get dressed. Where did the maid keep his clothes?

He staggered across the room as fast as his stiff legs would allow towards his walk-in closet. In a panic he tore priceless tailored silk suits from the wall, threw golden cufflinks and tie clips to the ground. He frantically uncovered socks and underwear. A pair of dirty jeans. An old sweater and a jacket that didn't fit him anymore. His wallet.

As he struggled into his clothes the sounds of the riot grew louder.

He frantically ran across his apartment towards his private elevator, jamming the button repeatedly with his thumb. The bell rang and the doors immediately slid open.

He stepped inside and ordered, "Lower lobby." Then he got a bad feeling in his gut - or was it in his MindWave? "Upper lobby," he corrected.  As the doors slid shut, he leaned against the wall of the elevator and caught his breath.

He stepped out of the elevator as soon as the doors opened at the upper lobby. From outside the building, he heard sounds of breaking glass and running feet. There was yelling in the distance. He noticed a faint scent of smoke in the air.

He heard the doors of the elevator slide shut behind him as it continued its journey down to the lower lobby.

The upper lobby was a semi-circular arcade that looked down into the lower lobby. He leaned over the railing to peer down on the floor below. The doorman was gone and there were some open, half-filled suitcases lying abandoned on the hand woven afghan rug. But it looked safe.

Just before he began descending the wide marble stairs, a brick crashed through the glass front door, shattering it noisily.

Three muscular, unshaven men armed with baseball bats ran into the lobby behind the brick. One of the bats was splattered with what looked like blood.

Nick instinctively ducked down behind the carved railing before he was seen. He jammed a fist into his mouth to mute the sound of his heavy breathing.

"This place looks like a palace!" he heard one of the men exult. "More loot."

Just then his private elevator pinged and the doors slid open into the lower lobby.

"Must be our ride," answered another one of the men. Nick heard them stride into the elevator. Before the brass doors slid shut he heard a voice say, "This is the penthouse elevator! We're rich!"

Nick was terrified to move, yet he knew he had to get out of the apartment building, and into the park, while the escape route was still open.

Slowly, shakingly, he crept down the stairs to the main lobby and up to the shattered doorway.

A disorganized mob was running past him, men and women armed with sticks, knives, pieces of rock. Some even carried lit torches to ward away the rapidly encroaching shadows of evening. Their faces were twisted by the mindless fury they sought to take out on men like him.

Nick waited until the crowd had passed before tentatively stepping towards the exit. As he did so, a lone youth barged through the doorway and stood in the lobby an arm's length from Nick.

Nick froze, not sure what to say or do. He locked eyes with the youth, who looked about Nick's age but was a lot shorter and had dark features that spoke of mixed ancestry. Nick thought he would look identical to this youth if his parents had not genetically engineered him.

The youth's eyes passed from Nick's face to the cooling vents in the back of his skull. "You're one of them!" he snarled. Then he turned back towards the doorway. "Hey over here! I found one of the Cybarians!"

Nick lunged forward and pulled the youth back into the building before he could alert more rioters that one of the hated Aeons was inside.

The youth bent down briefly and then came back up again, slashing at Nick's face with something that glinted in his hand. Nick ducked just in time to absorb the blow with his forehead instead of his eyes. He felt and heard the knife's blade cut through the thin flesh of his forehead and scrape along his skull.

He staggered backwards. Already, blood was streaming into his eyes and blinding him. His first impulse was to turn and run, but something else took over. He leapt forward towards where he knew the youth was still standing, blindly catching his arm before he could slash again. Then he bulled the youth to the floor with his shoulder.

Nick still couldn't see. While he controlled the youth's knife with his left hand, he tried to clear his vision with his right forearm. Unfortunately, the jacket he was wearing was waterproof and the fabric just worked the blood deeper into Nick's eyes.

Beneath him, the youth was struggling wildly to free himself. He kneed Nick from behind, tried to claw at his face with his free hand, and twisted wildly to roll away. But Nick held the youth in place by using his superior weight and strength.

Suddenly, the youth pulled Nick's left arm inwards towards his face and bit it hard. Nick gasped in pain and let go of the youth's knife hand.

The youth's hand was now free to stab him again. From the movements he felt beneath him, Nick sensed that the youth was going for a wild round-house slash at his face. He fell forward inside the range of the attack. But his new posture left his back and kidneys exposed, a vulnerability the youth would surely take advantage of in a moment.

In desperation, Nick felt around the floor with his fingers and found one of the chunks of glass from the shattered front door. He seized it in his fist and jammed it hard into the youth's neck, over and over again, using all of his weight to drive it deeper and deeper. The youth tried to scream, but just produced a high-pitched bubbly noise.

Nick kept stabbing until the youth stopped struggling.

Nick staggered to his feet and pulled his jacket off and his sweater over his head. He bent over and gagged until his nausea faded, and then he used the sweater's clean dry fabric to thoroughly rub the blood out of his eyes.

With his vision clear, he was careful not to look at the body that was lying at his feet. He checked the lobby and the street outside and found both deserted. That was lucky; anyone nearby would have seen and heard his struggle with the youth.

He tied the sweater around his head as a bandage while he considered his next step. He knew he had to escape from the lobby. Yet he was the target of the riot. If he was seen while he made his way to the park, he would no doubt be surrounded and beaten to death.

Then he saw his reflection in a shard of shattered glass. He hadn't shaved in days and he was shirtless, wearing ill-fitting old pants. Blood from his wound was already soaking through the fabric wrapped around his head. He looked like a member of the mob.

Except for the back of his head, with its gleaming cooling fans and connection jacks. With shaking hands, he felt behind his neck, and turned his head from side to side. Yes! With a few adjustments, the sweater wrapped around his head completely obscured the MindWave.

He remembered, finally, that one of the functions of his MindWave was to allow him to release hormones into his bloodstream at will. Before the MindWave overheated from having its exhaust ports blocked by the sweater, he used it to modulate the flow of adrenaline in his blood and release a flood of endorphins.

Instead of the hot panic of a moment ago, he felt a cool readiness spread through his body and mind. The burning pain in his forehead faded to a dull ache. He picked up the brick that lay in the middle of the lobby floor and ran out into the madness outside, screaming like a member of the mob.

In a minute Nick had run to a point one block south of the police perimeter around the transverse, where he'd just watched news footage of the thin blue line of officers clashing with a disorganized mass of rioters. The police line had held, the battle had subsided, and now the two sides stared each other down across a wide no-man's land. The rioters were being reinforced by a steady stream of new arrivals. The police stared nervously out from their gas masks, searching over their shoulders for evidence of the reinforcements promised from the other boroughs.

He wanted to get into the park now, without having to cross through the battle lines. But the walls along this section of the park fronted the exclusive club where he had taken Sarah to picnic. Because security was so important to club members, the walls had been heightened and topped with razor wire to prevent anyone from climbing. He saw that the 85th street entrance to the club was blocked by a massive bonfire. Nick had no choice but to press north to 86th street and go through the transverse entrance.

The air was acrid with smoke from the heaps of burning tires. Smashed-up cars lay overturned throughout the street. Obscene graffiti was scrawled across the facades of the exclusive buildings that lined the avenue. Groups of rioters were everywhere, some looting storefronts while others headed to join the crowds at the transverse.

He saw a burly man crying as he carried a limp and bloodied child away from the scene. He noticed two police officers kneeling over a third who was convulsing. There were other bodies lying still in the street, some in police blue and some in the mixed colors of civilian wear.  There was a ten foot tall wooden crucifix leaning against the stone wall of the park, splintered and badly burned. Two men wearing rubber gloves and breathing masks shouldered a heavy barrel into the 85th Street entrance of the large apartment block that occupied Central Park West between 85th and 86th Streets.

The rioters were chanting together, five hundred ragged voices, pronounced in nearly as many accents. "Give it back, give it back!"

Nick knew he had to get to the transverse. Parroting the rioters' slogan, he pushed his way through the jostling crowd towards where the police line met the stone wall of the park. As soon as he reached the front edge of the rioter's ranks, he broke into a run, heading into the empty space between the surging ranks of rioters and the ragged police line, waving his arms. "Help, help me!"

Nick sensed the rioters behind him pausing and watching in confusion, their chant melting into a cacophony.

The police in front of him tightened their ranks and raised their truncheons. "Halt right there!" cried an officer through his gas mask, "Before I crack your skull!"

"No, no! I'm... I live here!" Nick cried desperately. He realized he was still holding the brick, and he dropped it to the ground. But it twisted in his hand as he released it, ending up with more forward momentum than he intended. It skidded across the pavement towards the feet of the officer he was running towards.

"Not for long," said the officer, winding up to strike Nick in the head.

Nick flinched away and held his left hand up defensively, and used his right hand to unwind the shirt around his head, revealing both his wound and his shining MindWave exhaust ports. "I'm not a rioter. I want to evacuate!" he implored desperately, tears forming in his eyes.

The officer glanced over his shoulder and then back to Nick. "You caused this, you damn Cybarian."

"Reap what you sow, metal mind!" barked another policeman.

Nick looked behind him and saw several rioters approaching carefully. They clearly wanted to attack him yet were cautious about approaching the police barricade. Nick couldn't go forward through the police line, and he couldn't go back towards the rioters. If he tried to climb the stone wall of the park to his right, his back would be exposed for several seconds. His best bet was to turn left, and run down the police line searching for an officer that would let him through. If not, he could try seeking refuge in the subway entrance on the street corner.

Nick jogged along the line of police, begging and pleading to be let through. None of them would budge, and many hurled epithets at him or jabbed at him with their truncheons.

The whole way, Nick was shadowed by six rioters holding baseball bats, who stayed about ten feet further away from the police line than he was. "Don't worry officers. We got no argument with you. We just want to teach this Cybarian a lesson," one of them called.

Finally, Nick reached the corner where the subway entrance was and saw the stairway was sealed off with a heavy metal gate. There was no way he could pass through it.

He needed to find a way through the police line. He held up his hands, palms outwards, and walked towards the officers that anchored the battle line against the corner of the apartment block. "Please, please, let me through," he appealed to a woman cop who appeared to be in her late thirties. Maybe she was a mother. Maybe she would take pity on him.

She pulled her right shoulder back, revealing a path through the line to Nick. He stepped forward desperately, only to be slammed in the stomach by her nightstick as she brought her shoulder back forward with all her weight.

Stunned, Nick staggered several steps back towards the six rioters who had been following him. He looked up pleadingly at the cop.

"These rioters are my brothers and sisters," she said, indicating the crowd behind Nick with her nightstick. There were murmurs of agreement from the police

You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net