Mane-of-Night And The Wayward Child - Chapter 6

Yesterday...

"...of course, if this was a normal shopping trip, you'd have to cut the security tags off. Ya don't wanna just cut 'em off with scissors - a hot knife is best, especially with those ink-bomb tags..."

Candice nodded meekly every now and then as she received her education in thievery, part of her excited by what they were about to do, part of her ashamed that she was even considering breaking the law. The excited part was in control at present, anticipating a great, wild adventure in the empty streets of Las Vegas, but with every step along those streets, creeping through the shadows, she could feel the law-abiding part of herself trying to bring her to her senses, like a small bird fluttering against the bars of its cage.

"We're not alone out here, are we?", she asked Mariella. "Other people're doing just what we're doing..."

"Sure", replied the girl from Miami, "but they'll be out for cars, jewellery, cash - and they'll be more willing to take risks, on the main streets, near the centre of town. We stay on the edges, take only what we can wear, or carry. If someone comes by - cars, police, people passing through, get down, hide, stay quiet. If things get really nasty, drop what you got and run..."

"It could get that bad?", murmured Candice.

"If we're careless", said Mariella. "If we're not focussed - you wanna back out, you can head back. Not everyone got the guts to try something like this."

"N-no", Candice replied, nervously. "Like you said, all this stuff, it's abandoned. Just going to waste..."

"That's the spirit", said her partner in crime, grasping the girl's shoulder. "Okay, we're gettin' close to shops now - are we clear for launch, or what?"

In her head, Candice flipped a coin... "Yeah - we're clear."

One last time, the two girls checked through the equipment they had brought with them - small torches, manicure sets that could serve as tool kits, pillowcases; all pilfered by Mariella since her return from the hospital, and the absolute minimum they felt they could carry. Mariella tried to relieve some of the tension Candice clearly felt by cracking a joke about the emergency equipment she'd found - "What, they expectin' the hotel to sink, or somethin'?" - and her companion gave a brief, muted chuckle. The ploy had worked, just enough to motivate Candice into action as the time came to begin.

"Let's roll", said Mariella. "The others might already know we're gone, and we don' want them gettin' inta trouble 'cause of us."

Candice hadn't thought of that, and for a moment, she considered heading back to try and talk the other residents of the Olympus Springs out of putting themselves in jeopardy - but the hotel was four blocks away, and the shops only one. It seemed like such a waste to come all this way, braving the uncertain night, only to turn back at the last moment. She and Mariella were certain to get in trouble themselves, and there was no sense in going through all that just to come home empty-handed...

It was late, and Bert had finally completed the decoding, a task that had been arduous, and only partly enlightening, but his curiosity - a formidable force - would not let him rest. As expected, he had only his side of the story, the messages he had sent to "victim1@eyeonthepigsty.com", a man in New York called Lee Croxley, and apart from the most recent, all the responses had been deleted, but computers were notorious for holding onto information the user had long thought erased. Maybe there was someone in the hotel who knew enough about computers to locate and retrieve the lost emails...

His thoughts in a jumble, the man with half a face went for a walk around the lower levels of the hotel, where all the "dirty hands" work of running a place like the Olympus Springs would have been done. Most of the facilities were either left unused or had not been properly fitted, but for now, they were silent, unoccupied; just the kind of calming surroundings Bert needed to help get his mind in some kind of order. Gradually, his thoughts untangled themselves, and the names of two technically-minded residents of the hotel sprang to mind almost immediately - and so did a rather audacious alternative to that approach: he could, quite simply, just ask the fellow Croxley to send the messages again.

It was far too late to go and wake up the computer experts, and Bert didn't know if he could wait until morning to learn all he could about the relationship with Lee Croxley into which he appeared to have sleepwalked. He could, at the very least, send a coded message requesting that Croxley resend the last message, then pretend that he'd suffered a serious computer problem that required him to request the other messages as well...

Turning round, and heading back to the office, Bert passed a fire escape door that had appeared quite normal when he first passed it, but on the way back, he only just noticed that the emergency exit had been wedged open, so slightly that it could so easily have been missed. Someone was flouting the hotel rule of "no-one outside after dark", and Bert had a good idea who had decided that that was a rule that existed solely to be broken, her name leaving his mouth as a sigh.

"Mariella..."

Bert went straight up to Mariella's room on the ninth floor, at the quietest corner of the hotel - he had chosen that very secluded spot to help the girl with her recovery. He knocked on the door, as gently as he could, just in case he was wrong - how he hoped he was wrong...

There was a response, but not from Mariella's room. Further down the corridor, a door opened, and an elderly Chinese man poked his head out into the passage, frowning. "Hey, what you do so late... oh, it you, Bert. There trouble?"

"Sorry Mr Chen", said Bert. "I certainly hope not - have you seen Mariella, the new girl?"

"Hmm", grumbled the old man. "No, not since dinner, when that nice girl Candice came to her room. She stay - sleepover, maybe. They spend lot time together. Shame - that Mariella girl, she no good. Seem like her before. Never end good..."

"I hope not", sighed Bert. but he couldn't fight the feeling that maybe My Chen was right - and to make matters worse, Mariella could be dragging a good, decent girl like Candice down with her.

That was more than Bert could stand. He was not going to let it happen. All the "zombies", all the Air Force personnel in existence couldn't stop him.

The night didn't start particularly well for Mariella and Candice, as there were few shops to their liking in the first street they came to, and the one store that caught their eye was a proverbial "wash-out", having been flooded out by a plumbing failure they did not waste time on investigating. Down a side-street, however, Mariella found the perfect ice-breaker - an abandoned shop stocking costumes for the city's substantial population of exotic dancers.

"You have got to be kidding!", whispered Candice as the girls "let themselves in".

"Hey, you're a vegetarian, ain'tcha?", replied Mariella. "They got plenty a'boots here that you can guarantee don't come from no animal!"

"True", conceded Candice, "but I've never worn high heels before!"

Mariella sighed, and unseen in the dark, shook her head. Candice seemed determined to make the whole "shopping trip" as difficult as possible - but then the same had been true the first time Mariella herself had gone shoplifting with Anna Vardes, and Anna's older sister. With experience, things would be a whole lot easier...

...but then again, Mariella didn't feel it was right to drag Candice into the depths of criminality. A one-off "raid" was one thing; a career of theft another entirely - Mariella was a lost cause, while Candice had a proper life ahead of her, a chance of a decent job, a family of her own. Maybe Candice would end up doing something that would change lives for the better, make the world a better place, and for a moment, Mariella even entertained the wild notion that if Candice could stray over the line, then maybe a gang-girl could step the other way, start anew on a fresh page, in a new town.

"...but then again", declared Candice, as though she had overheard Mariella's thoughts, "I won't know if I can until I try!", and she tipped a pair of black stretch vinyl thigh-high boots with spiked heels out of their box and into her pillowcase "shopping bag", and with that gleeful gesture, she shattered Mariella's illusions. Mariella was reminded of a spider falling into the bath - it was so easy to fall in, and perhaps an insurmountable task to escape.

"Was gonna suggest platforms", Mariella mumbled, but Candice was too caught up in the moment to hear. I just gotta watch out for her, keep her from making stupid mistakes, Mariella told herself. Let's get home in one piece and we'll never do this again. Candice shouldn't ruin her life like this...

Mariella's good intentions came just a little too late, for Candice was already immersing herself in what was a cartoon parody of criminality. "Hey, what about this?", the girl called out, almost too loudly for Mariella's liking, thrusting a faux leather catsuit into her companion's hands. "We can be fashion ninjas!"

Mariella had to laugh. She hadn't had much reason to laugh since waking up at the bus station, and she was going to make the most of it. "Hey, knock yourself out", she told Candice, and watched with considerable amusement as her companion shed her Olympus Springs t-shirt and jogging pants, and made a struggle of squirming into the skin-tight garment.

"Here - try these", suggested Mariella, handing Candice a pair of black, knee-high "go-go" boots, with almost sensible cheerleader-style heels. "You leave here in that, wearing those freakin' slippers, and I will have to kill you!"

Candice emerged into Mariella's torchlight the very image of a high-kicking Sixties super-spy. "Emma Peel meets Foxy Brown", remarked Mariella. "Not bad at all!"

"I was gonna say 'Catwoman'", replied Candice, "but that movie just sucked!"

Spirits buoyed up, the girls moved on, following the side-street into the next main avenue, where the pickings looked far better. They "struck gold" in one designer shoe store, as Candice discovered a pair of boots that sent Mariella hunting for a pair just the same for herself - thigh-length, black fake snake-skin, but styled like cowboy boots at the tops and heels; far more suitable for their current activities than Mariella's own designer heels. They didn't quite go with the rest of her outfit - the short dress, the jacket - and Mariella hadn't had any trouble wearing high heels so far, but she erred on the side of caution, and exchanged style for practicality.

Just as the girls were leaving the shoe shop, they caught sight of flashing lights down the road, and approaching fast, and they ducked down, in the shadowy shelter of an abandoned car. Siren shrieking, the police cruiser flew past, the occupants showing not the slightest concern for all the abandoned property, vehicles or merchandise, lining their path, and Mariella took careful note of which way the police car turned, wanting to stay as far away from the forces of law and order as possible. Having any law enforcement personnel in the area made the Miami girl very nervous...

"Any more cops, and we head back", she told Candice. "Next place better be a gold mine...!"

Mariella was immediately reminded of the shop she had visited after the trip to the hospital, in that it had something of everything, and Candice went looking for something stylish, whilst Mariella headed for the coats. A long dark brown leather coat with a collar of rusty red fake fur had caught her eye on the way in, and she absolutely had to have it, particularly if this was to be the last time.

Finding the coat in her size, Mariella threw it on over her jacket, and went, pillowcase of loot in hand, to find a mirror that was sheltered enough to risk shining a torch nearby - if she was lucky, she'd perhaps witness Candice realising the folly of her "fashion ninja" outfit as the cat-suit got in the way of her trying stuff on...

Mariella quickly found just what she was looking for, but before she could bring her torch up to illuminate herself, light came from over her shoulder, almost dazzling her - green light...

"Candy? That you?", muttered Mariella. "Damn it girl, don't wave that torch around like that..."

Candice responded, from not far away. "I'm not", she called back, sounding almost insulted by the suggestion she was at fault. "I'm doing just like you told me - Mariella! Behind you...!"

Mariella spun round - and all she could see was that green light, pouring from the empty eye-sockets of what she first thought was a shop dummy. She had never seen one before, but she knew what it was; one of the "zombies".

"Look, we don't mean any harm", she spluttered, trying to back away, but finding a rack of dresses blocking her path. "We... we'll put everything back..."

"Identify." It was a horrible sound, that one word. It was like every person Mariella had ever wronged was speaking at the same time, simultaneously and soullessly demanding justice for her crimes.

"M...Mariella da Silva", she whimpered. She had to play along, to give Candice a chance to get away - and Mariella hoped the girl was getting the message...

"Organism-unit da Silva: Mariella-Antonia is recorded by planetary authorities as deceased", droned the inhuman entity. "Commencing in-depth scan..."

The light in the zombie's "eyes" grew in intensity, the two beams flattening into a single plane, like a giant bar-code scanner, but the "scanner" did not get far, starting from the top of her head, before something started to go wrong. When the plane of rippling green light came down to the level of Mariella's eyes, the light started to flicker, flame-like flashes of amber and yellow seeming to flow back along it, back into those eyeless voids in the face of the "zombie".

"E-error", squawked the creature, its voice distorting. "I-incompatible programming detected. Data b-buffers corrupted... copyright infringement detected. Cou-countermeasures in e-effect...!"

Mariella scrambled away, nearly knocking Candice on her backside, as the hollow entity started to swell, light that was increasingly orange pouring from its eye-holes. In a matter of seconds, the creature had distorted beyond any semblance of human form, bloated into an almost-sphere - and from its mouth came a single voice. A woman, angry, and terrible, and not entirely human: "This is The Lady Talona, Mistress of Yafornis - you have attempted to steal our intellectual property. Now you pay the price..."

The "zombie" exploded. It happened without sound, without force, as the entity's hollow form simply burst, the only sound coming when the explosion showered anything and everything within range in rapidly evaporating orange-streaked green slime. Candice yelped in alarm, and squealed in disgust as she tried to frantically wipe the luminous fluid off her face and body, but for Mariella, there was an entirely different experience - her own private hell.

Something was wrong with Mariella's eyes. From the moment that green beam shone in them, the girl from Miami had been seeing blurry orange shapes, ovals floating just in front of her right eye - and only her right eye. Now, after the destruction of the zombie-entity, those shapes had sharpened into several clearly-defined amber ovals, themselves arranged in an oval that seemed to stretch into the distance - like some kind of crazy space-ship control panel...

Mariella closed her right eye, and to her horror she found that the inside of her eyelid was lit up amber, the strange symbols still visible, slowly rotating around their own centre-points, and orbiting the centre-point of the greater oval - they were inside her eye.

The girl picked herself up, and ran; knocking over rails of clothes, shop mannequins, then slamming into a car at the road side before racing off down the street, with Candice's cries of panic receding behind her. The instinctive urge to flee was impossible to resist, just as impossible as escape, for no matter how far she ran, how fast, those bizarre shapes were always with her, haunting her every step...

Non-local technology detected, matching previously registered pattern. Pattern registered by bio-probe in contact with Organism-unit under investigation, identifier da Silva: Mariella-Antonia. Bio-probe destroyed by data-weapon payload delivered by Organism-unit da Silva: Mariella-Antonia; conclusion: Organism-unit da Silva: Mariella-Antonia is no longer a living entity. Unit da Silva: Mariella-Antonia is an artificial entity. Instruction to all contingents: locate and detain Artificial-unit da Silva: Mariella-Antonia - imperative. All other priorities suspended. Tactical upgrade available to all units, all contingents.

Bert staggered to a stop, and slumped against a street corner. He had felt such a sensation before, several times - a powerful urge to go to a particular place - but it had never been this strong, this insistent. It felt almost as though to defy it would be to defy breathing, defy living.

"N-no", he told himself. "Mariella and Candice need me - I can't..."

Sucking in deep, rasping breaths despite his half a nose, and half a mouth, Bert fought the feeling, tried to drive it down deep, and to a sufficient extent, he succeeded, the sensation diminishing to not much more than a vague nagging in the back of his mind. As long as it stayed there, he could achieve what he had ventured out into the night to do...

Heading further into town, Bert started to find his worst fears coming true. He turned into one of the main streets, sure that Mariella and Candice would be heading that way, to where the best shopping could be found, and saw, to his dismay, that two military vehicles, a Humvee and an armoured personnel carrier, painted in desert camouflage, were parked across the street, blocking the road, and several Air Force men were stationed in cover, ready for a fight.

Bert backed away, retreating back out of sight into the dark. The Air Force men hadn't seen him, but that didn't mean they hadn't seen Mariella and Candice; seen and arrested or, it chilled him to think, seen and shot. The only way to know was to wait for the girls to come "home", or approach the military men, and try and extract some information from them, whilst not getting himself arrested in the process...

In the distance, some way behind him, Bert heard sobbing. He turned, and in the faltering half-light of streetlights that had not seen any maintenance in weeks, he saw what had to be one of the missing girls, and by the sound of things, he couldn't imagine it was Mariella. It had to be...

"...Candice?"

"Bert...?", whimpered the girl, then she hurled herself into the arms of the man with the ruined face, dropping two pillowcases full of clothes and boots at his feet.

He wanted to comfort her, not caring for a second what had brought her to tears, but there was something he had to ask. "Candice, where's Mariella...?"

In between sobs, Candice tried to explain what she'd experienced, all that she'd seen. "One... one of those zombies... it found us... it looked at Mariella, shone that green light on her... then... then it exploded, and she ran off. Bert, I... I don't know where she is... or what's wrong..."

"Don't... don't you worry", Bert told her, holding the girl close. They were hollow words, however, for Bert didn't have the slightest idea what he could possibly do. The city - and maybe the whole world - was going crazy, and right in the heart of it all was a lost, frightened girl, with a gaping hole in her past; a girl who, according to the official record, had been dead for months. He had seen and studied the case file, examined the photographs in the Miami medical examiner's report - including a very distinctive tattoo on the body's arm. A dove in flight, with a bloody heart bursting out of its chest.

Mariella hadn't lost her precious tattoo - it seemed to Bert that, somehow, she had left it behind... but that was one of a number of worries he was forced to set aside for a far greater concern. Candice was right here, distraught but otherwise quite safe, and outwardly intact, and there was no certainty that that would remain the case if she stayed out on the street, with the military and the "zombies" prowling around...

"Look after yourself, Mariella", he murmured, then he and Candice turned, and set off for the Hotel, and safety.

...to be continued...

Posted at 00:04 on 28.10.2009


~ o O o ~


Previously...
Mane-of-Night And The Wayward Child - Chapter 11 - 08.11.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Wayward Child - Chapter 10 - 06.11.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Wayward Child - Chapter 9 - 04.11.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Wayward Child - Chapter 8 - 02.11.2009
Mane-of-Night And The Wayward Child - Chapter 7 - 30.10.2009