The Outs

Chapter 3 of Signature

Signature

Chapter Three

The Outs

The cop deposited the Group in a section of Outskirts known only to vagabonds and poisonous spiders. He stood straight as an arrow in his jackboots; a grim colossus staring into tomorrow.

“Signate?”

“Here.”

The helmet didn’t budge. “I am prohibited beyond this point in a non-emergency situation. Titus Mack has initialized a sounder. Are you receiving?”

Abel watched the soft pulse of his signet. “I have him.”

“This party is hereby transferred into his custody, and from here on you are on your own. The Colony proper is fully seven miles away, but the intervening terrain poses dangers beyond police purview. You are duly advised to make directly for his mark, and not linger to satisfy your…scientific curiosity.” The polyvinyl faceplate turned to Abel. “You retain, of course, the option of protective custody until the courts re-open after the holiday.”

“And you, frothisir,” Izzy snorted, “are drooly advised to take a flying--”

The black eggshell swung hard. Izzy’s eyes dropped. After a long moment the visor moved along. Abel too looked down, his fists and jaws clenched. “Yes,” the officer breathed.

When the faceplate reached Amantu, that synthetic head moved in curiously. The professor, a man of genuine presence accustomed to gaping inferiors, automatically drew his robes tighter and returned the stare. The head kicked back. Again with the brief tweak-and-sizzle. Bringing his visor up way-close, the officer said with canned deadliness, “Happy New Year.” His spine jacked straight, his shoulders squared, and then he was the same Bakelite statue that had escorted them thus far. He aimed the scrambler between his boots and punched out a new sequence. The tongue’s tip pulsed. The application reversed, lifting the cop and chopper off the ground and backward. Not until he’d been elevated some fifty feet and was a good hundred yards away did the Group relax.

“That,” Amantu declared, “will be enough celebrating for me.” He fluffed his robes. “Although I must admit I--cannot remember feeling so vigorous.” He squinted into the stinking wind. “Exactly how far did he say?”

“He didn’t.” Abel raised his signet against the drear. “But I’ve got the feed. To hell with him. Let’s get going.”

Izzy licked his lips. “Yes, do lead on, Josh.” He swatted the dust from his vest and after a moment said shyly, “Praps somebody owes the Hammer--debt of gratitude.”

“Yeah,” Abel said wryly. “Thanks, Professor.”

“Esteemed friends, the pleasure was entirely mine.”

They were picking their way along, intuitively communicating sotto voce, when three seemingly innocent heaps abruptly rose about them, cutting them off at the fore and flanks. Those heaps were actually camouflage: broad bent-round shields of aluminum siding covered with lengths of pipe and assorted greased-over debris, all attached with strands of grimy copper wire. The thugs stepping from behind these shields wore black hooded cloaks, homemade black gloves, and shabby black boots--each amateurishly patched article dyed with soot. White thread portrayed rude skeletons: cruciform stitching representing stubby arms and spines, stitches on the gloves suggesting metacarpals and phalanges. The brigands’ faces were painted ash-white, except for great black circular blotches about the eyes, a black ring at each nostril, and painted death’s head teeth stretching from mouths to lobes. Crude staples affixed their hoods to skin at the foreheads, cheeks, and jaws. Out of those black eye-splotches the highwaymens’ orbs gleamed like the eyes of rabid raccoons. The bandits linked hands to fence them in.

Their leader was a psychotic giant wholly ignorant of decent grammar and basic hygiene. His gloves and boots were dulled by a thousand fights and forays. But his eyes were sharp as lasers.

“Happy New Year, ladies. Sorry to disappoint you, but the theater is that-away.”

Abel smiled only with his teeth. “Guys! Guys! Didn’t mean to startle you. We were just on our way to visit an old buddy for the holiday, and got a little bit on the lost side, that’s all.” He winked and pantomimed a drunken leer. “You know how it is.”

“Oh, you’re lost, all right. Now, if you’ll kindly lift your skirts we’ll get this over with.” The men submitted meekly as they were patted down and stripped of their valuables. The leader raised Abel’s signet in his huge gloved hand.

“Well now, what have we here? Why, it’s a wee pink eye! And she goes blinkety-blank, blinkety-blank, over and over. But what does she mean, and who does she summon? Tell me, girls--could this be some sort of diabolical signal? Mayhaps a secret message to your gentlemen callers, not meant for the likes of a lot of filthy old Outers?” He eyeballed each man in turn.

Abel’s bark of laughter didn’t fool anybody. “Aw, c’mon, man. It’s a simple repetitive pulse. What kind of message is that?”

The laser eyes swung back. “I recognize this pretty little pearl, Senator. She ain’t a message-maker. She’s a message-taker. She’s a locator! So now the issue becometh: just who wants to locate who?”

“Oh, take it then. Rip its guts out, smash it to bits. It’s only a trinket; there’s warehouses full of ’em. My nephew’s got a big hand in camping toys. So…we’ll just be on our way, and a Happy New Year to all!”

“Blinkety-blank,” the man repeated, considering Abel narrowly. “Blinkety-blank, trampety-tramp, and way too much yakkety-yak. Just a caution, Senator: don’t be talking in circles as well as walking in ’em. What’s your business in the Outs, is what I wants to know. Why should you three peripatetic princesses come here a-courting? Suitable suitors, unless I’m severe-mistook, are scarce-proper in these parts. You ballerinas couldn’t find amusement enough in your slick-hearted city?”

The big man’s lieutenant fingered Amantu’s silky gold robes. “Looky here, Micah! Ain’t this a lovely dress for a girl’s night out?” He curtsied for his friends, holding high his own filthy black hem.

“Why, Ezekiel! I do believes you’re jealous.” Micah smiled genially at the professor, the painted-on death’s-head grin arching at the corners. “Maybe she’d be pleased to trade skirts.”

Malachi chimed in, giggling at his own pun, “She’s a pretty black, a pretty black, a pretty black p-polliwog. N-not pretty-pretty. P-p-p-pretty black.”

“Vectors,” Amantu hissed. “You will keep your diseased hands to yourselves. Touch me even once and I will slap that silly white paint right off of your silly pink faces.”

Abel laughed even harder. “Fellas, fellas! The Hammer’s been partying plenty hard tonight. He’s not responsible for his actions.”

Micah shouldered Abel aside, his face deadly. “Diseased?” He grabbed Izzy’s collar and squeezed and squeezed until it looked like the psychoanalyst’s head would pop. “I’ll show you disease!” As crowing Malachi leapt round and round them, the big man shoved Izzy along with measured brutality while Ezekiel prodded Amantu and Abel at the rear. The Group were smacked and kicked to a large mound of stacked aluminum scraps. Micah and Ezekiel maintained their prisoners in revolving headlocks even as Malachi hauled aside a camouflaged gate over a black stairwell. The Group were beaten down rough steps, manhandled to their feet, and dragged along a brightening tunnel to a rock wall outside a torch-lit cavern. Inside, hundreds of voices called out in the strangest fashion, equally pregnant with ecstasy and pain.

“Welcome,” said Micah, “to Dan’l’s Gate.” His painted-round eyes danced with torchlight. “You are expected.” Ezekiel and Malachi peeled the Group off the wall and hauled them toward the bright mystery within. Izzy broke first. Screaming hysterically, he scrambled into the darkness with his friends on his heels.

In three enormous strides Micah was on them. The man’s strength and energy were prodigious, but the cornered Group, inspired by Amantu’s unblinking exchanges, put up a frenzied resistance, and by the time Micah’s henchmen had regained control the brunt of the giant’s fury was spent.

“When--” he snarled, puffing hard, “when the Cannonites walled in Jerrycho, what were their quarrels? Not to taste stone? Why? Are your lips too pure?” He hammered Izzy’s head against a wall.

“No sir,” Izzy croaked. “Not pure at all.”

“Don’t you spin me, Leftie! We knows you was sent by the Seizer.”

“By the what?”

“By the Seizer! By Julius.”

Abel’s face twisted up in Ezekiel’s chokehold. “For Christ’s sake, man--what in the world are you talking about?

Micah booted him viciously. “You, reprobate! And don’t you be naming him in vain. Did he die on the double-cross, or what? Answer!”

But it was Amantu who answered--with a hard left followed by a harder right. He almost had Ezekiel when Malachi went for his eyes. Suddenly both men were all over him.

Abel watched aghast as the professor hit the ground. “Oh, Mercies! What will you people do with us?”

“That depends on Mama.” Micah clubbed friends and foes alike, smashing everybody into a pile. Revitalized, he stormed back to the cavern’s opening and stood yelling with his black gloves poised like fat spiders on the rock. “They’re here, they’re here! Tell Mama they’re here! Thirty pieces of silver is all they seek; ten for me, ten for thee, ten for the crow’s c**k. Tell Mama, tell Mama! Tell Mama they’re here!”

A hundred voices blew into the antechamber as hot gas.

“Mama!”

Micah turned and pointed the finger of Death. “God’s gonna getcha, He’s gonna getcha!”

“Mercies!” Izzy screamed.

The Group managed to break their captors’ grips by squirming and stamping, and for a while there it was all a riot of grappling silhouettes. Then Micah barked, “Mal! Get Danny!”

Malachi flapped to the wall. A latch was slammed aside. There came a godawful rumble and clatter. A second later a chain barricade crashed on the floor. The Group fanned in reverse while the backlit jackals pressed in with their gloved fingers wiggling, calling back and forth, “Whoo-oo-oo!”

Micah’s hand dipped under his robe. There was a bright gleam of metal. “Snippity-snip, choppity-chop. Lop off the gonads, watch as they drop.”

“Please,” Izzy whimpered, “you’ve got the wrong guys, you guys. We don’t want any more trouble.”

“Oh, we know exactly what you girls want. Coming for that thief Barberus, are you? Well, too bad. You already gots a date with Mama.”

Micah flicked the blade twice. His partners, having feigned rushing their personal targets, abruptly whirled to jump Amantu.

Before they could take him down this time, a silvery bolt blew away a chunk of the tunnel’s ceiling.

The Group dashed into a well-used side-passage, and were rapidly consumed by darkness.

All this closeness had a nauseating core…in half a minute they were screaming and gagging as they hopped amid putrefying cadavers. They crashed into walls, fell sprawling on rotting flesh, jumped up and ran headlong into a really obscene darkness. The light of pursuing torches danced on projections like embers, accompanied by a clamor resembling angry bees, but the light and voices grew distant as the Group stumbled through a twisting maze of tributaries.

“Shook ’em!” Abel crowed.

“Please,” heaved Izzy. “No more. End this nightmare.” He took a massive breath. “Professor--ah, the Hammer! Every bit the nick-of-time hero. Mercy, son. Where’d you hide that gun?”

“In a place of interest only to proctologists. I…I believe I have killed a man.”

“There’s a draft!” Abel hissed. “One of these tunnels breaches the surface!”

The proceeding Group used a kind of vocal sonar, sounding one another before each careful stride. Abel’s selected passage wended painfully, in places narrowing to a crawlspace. Before long they were all scraped raw. The dark’s profundity completely upset the senses. At last they paused, clinging and speaking in the tightest of whispers. It was difficult to tell who was doing the talking.

“They’ve given up. Not a trace of light behind us.”

“A bleak victory. There is less illumination here by far.”

“Who was that?”

“I. Amantu. We cannot go backward. We cannot go forward. We have placed ourselves in mate.”

“Well, we can’t freeze up here.”

“I’m blind.”

“Who just spoke?”

“Me. Izzy. I can’t see a thing, you guys. If I poked my own finger in my eye I wouldn’t know who did it.”

“We are all blind. It is imperative we retain touch as our basic sense. I suggest personal handholds. We can move single-file, and so make our way--ponderously, certainly, but with a degree of security.”

“Make our way? Where?”

“Anywhere but here. Let us proceed. We must find a sign of life or retrace our steps to the light. Then we must think.”

“Same objection. Think about what? This is hopeless.”

“Not necessarily so. We have brainpower, proven throughout time the superior force.”

“Well, it’s done some job so far.”

“Who said that?”

“I did. It was me.”

“Sirs! Who was that?”

“Steady there, Professor. It’s just me, Izzy. You needn’t hold so closely; just keep a strong pace’s distance. Then we won’t be as prone to, you know, belly right up against each other and all that. No offense.”

“None taken, Doctor. And yet…at arm’s-length, please. Keep it at arm’s-length.”

“Aw, shucks. And just when we was getting all cozy-wozy.”

“Ghaa! They are among us!”

“Ooh, la-la-ladies!”

“C-c-caughtcha!”

Out of the sudden riot came a whirling silver light, clearly disintegrating a patch of wall. The next instant it was darkness all over. Again with the sightless flight, again with the battered elbows and knees.

All else being equal, fear will always outrun anger. In time the Group outdistanced their pursuers, though they were no less blind than before, and just as lost. They moved on tiptoe, whispering only after small identifying tugs, and then only with lips pressed against ears. Finally they sat in a tight circle, their foreheads touching.

“I’m telling you, it’s futile, Josh. I’m beat, man, beat.”

“Quit whining. If they find us cringing here they’ll kill us. I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”

“I concur. We are bereft of options. Perhaps…a peace offering.”

“Peace offering! That’s clinical psychosis sneaking up behind us.”

“Absolutely. Besides, peace never solved anything. Let me see that weapon.”

“A moment. Your hand. There. What do you intend?”

“How deep was that little hole they dragged us down?”

“Three, four yards. Perhaps more.”

“Right. And the floors of these caves and passages have all been roughly level. If I’m not mistaken, our progress along these tunnels, when not absolutely horizontal, has been ever upward, albeit of the gentlest degree. What I’m trying to say is--we’ve never been far from the surface! Stand back.” Abel rose, using Izzy’s forehead for support.

“You are as deranged as they! Doctor Lee, you will kill us all!”

“Get back!”

There came another bright whanging comet, and a section of the tunnel’s roof came down twenty feet away, completely blocking the passage.

“Outstanding! Not only have you eliminated our sole hope of egress, you have simultaneously announced our whereabouts to every madman in the house!”

Another pulse, and an even larger section collapsed on the first. The men backpedaled, coughing and exclaiming. Abel fired again and again. Though the concussions and flashes were staggering, he fired furiously until the magazine was spent.

“There! The sweet breath of night! Do you feel it?”

In response a posse of torch-waving lunatics came tearing up the tunnel.

The Group clambered awkwardly over the heaped rocks, losing precious advantage as they continuously squirmed to avoid unhappy intimate contacts.

More time was lost at the surface, for a decent exit now involved extensive apologies. But then a great company was spilling into the passage below, and upon their maniacal roar the Group lost all sense of decorum. They whirled and began a close sprint, elbow to elbow, heads down and rocking.

At least a dozen carriers poured out of the earth like hopped-up termites. They ran as a bloodthirsty unit, screaming bizarre slogans about smiters and martyrs.

“South,” puffed Amantu, now holding the lead. “A structure of some kind.”

In the distance squatted an isolated little observatory that, under the Outskirts’ dirty white moon, resembled nothing so much as a porcelain tortoise. The running men turned in the manner of desperate over-the-hill athletes, and put their hearts into it.

Yet only a hundred yards separated they and the mob, while the tiny observatory appeared a full quarter-mile away.

Almost weeping with the effort, the Group threw back their heads and ran for their lives.