The green explosion poked over the rooftops like a bizarre sunrise, illuminating dark brick.
Myra grabbed the crank handle next to her and spun it furiously, lowering the automobile’s window. Even accounting for the cranking and sputtering of the engine, there was the conspicuous absence of a boom.
“That’s him!” she said. “That’s the Green Bomber!”
“Sure looks it,” Brown said from the passenger seat.
She quickly consulted her memory of this part of the city, then drove up onto the sidewalk.
“I think there’s a phone booth not far from here,” Brown said and pointed into the gloom up ahead. “To the right.”
“No time,” Myra said as she wrenched the wheel to the left, steering the auto into a U-turn on a street only barely wide enough to allow it. “He’s slippery.”
It was a narrow thing, and she heard an uncomfortable metallic screech as the vehicle finished the shift. The right side had taken a bit of a hit, and boy would that not sit well with some people. But arresting this bastard would make anything worth it.
“So, just you and me?” Brown said.
“If all goes well,” Myra replied absent-mindedly, focused on her invisible map. “If he doesn’t have hostages we just hit him fast and hard.”
“When you say ‘hit’...” Brown said, bringing his revolver out from under his coat, “What do you mean?”
He swung the cylinder out, a habit of his she’d never quite understood, and closed it again.
“That’s up to him,” she replied, aware of the hard, heavy weight against her own chest as she gripped the wheel a bit tighter. “Whatever happens, it’s up to him.”
“What’s his body count at again?” he asked meaningfully, and scratched his large, ever-stubbly jaw.
“Mine is at zero,” she said. “Let’s try to do things the right way.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so. Now let me focus.”
The problem with Black Bend was that it seemed to have been built with no damn plan at all. There was little in the way of long, straight streets, and one’s view was usually blocked by cheap tenements. This was all a bit of a gamble, dependent on reading that map right, but this was the time for gambles.
The lot they’d passed earlier was still desolate and empty, shrouded in steam as warm air blew out into the cold night from various sources. She swerved as sharply as she dared, wishing to keep as much momentum as possible no matter how much the auto groaned.
Before them towered two gloomy tenements and the steam bank, glowing in the headlights.
“Myra...” Brown said as she pushed the gas pedal back further down, with the mild stiffness that was his version of showing alarm.
“I got this,” she said, keeping her nerves on hair-trigger alert as she ploughed the vehicle into the glowing white.
Her memory served, and it took only a mild twitch of the wheel to deliver them safely into the alley between the two buildings. The possibility of vagrants only occurred to her by the time it was too late, but thankfully there were no suspicious bumps before they emerged on the street on the other side.
The headlights cast an even bleaker picture than they’d left behind. They were fully in the Jungle now; the streets were messy, the buildings crumbling and only a few of the street lights worked. Myra followed her instincts and continued moving east, until they saw it.
It was a blocky, ugly six-storey, probably an old factory, and its only notable feature was the gaping, smoking hole in the side of the top floor. It looked easily big enough for a person to step through.
She slammed the brake pedal, not trusting the headlights to warn her of debris in time. The auto came to a stop by a corner, and just barely enough light made it from a miraculously intact street lamp to show a fire escape far off in the gloom.
Myra opened the door and practically leapt out. She could see electric lights glowing on the top floor and thought she heard voices.
What IS his body count at now?
“He’s not getting away,” she decided firmly. “Take the fire escape, I’ll go in through the front.”
“If you say so,” Brown said as he shut the passenger door.
“You have no personality.”
“If you say so.”
They split up without any further exchanges. Myra brought out her own revolver and ran, her coat flapping about as she went. There was screaming up above and the sound of splintering rock, accompanied by another green flash. Myra didn’t look up. She just leapt to press up against the wall a moment before more debris rained down on the street and sidewalk. Some absurd instinct made her hold onto the brim of her fedora as if she were braving a blast of wind.
As the deadly hail passed she continued on, faster than before. The front door was a sturdy double feature made of thick wood, which had nonetheless been smashed open. She wasn’t worried about ambushes as she entered the darkness within; the Green Bomber operated alone.
Whatever production had gone on here was long since vanished, as was seemingly every bit of furniture and machinery that was worth anything. She jogged through a dark underworld, passing by a support pillar she’d only seen a second earlier, towards the sole source of light.
A simple lamp stood low in a flight of steps, connected to a cord that lay upwards. The broken light in the ceiling explained all this, but Myra was simply happy to be able to see where she was going as she went up. The lamps were spaced widely apart and had no covering for the bulb. They were also mismatched, as one last display of sharply limited funds.
She started hearing the voices again as she started for the third floor. The echo and her own footsteps drowned out any possible coherence, but if the reports were anything to go by there would be little of that anyway.
“No! No!” was the first that she could make out as she reached the fourth floor, just before her foot went through the wooden step with a loud crack. She scraped her shin, and wedged as it was against her momentum her leg nearly broke. Still, she escaped with some loose skin beneath the pants leg and a brief certainty that anyone above would have heard her. But the frenzied male voice continued, becoming clearer with each painful step. For a certain definition of clarity.
“No!” it shouted again. “All is false! Who are you?! Are you anything or are you nothing?! Shall I cast you aside or save you?!”
She hoped Brown was in place, or near enough. She hoped everyone up there was still alive. Because by now she was passing up the final flight and it was time.
There was evidence of a recent effort to tidy up. Loose wallpaper had been torn down, replaced by tapestries and hanging blankets that had a distinctly donated look to them. The landing Myra stepped onto was thankfully also covered by a long, worn rug, softening her footsteps as she followed the sounds of the confused monologue, made eerie and booming by the hallway walls.
“I want... I need... what are you?! It is all false! Shall I save you?”
She reached a doorway, flanked by two large potted plants which prevented her from hugging the wall. The door was open and swayed in the gust through the freshly blasted holes in the exterior. Within she thought she heard softer voices, trying to reach through the nonsense, and rapidly shifting feet on creaky floorboards.
Stolen novel; please report.
Myra flicked the safety off, moved around the damn pot on her side, and stepped into the doorway.
It was a large space, taking up most of the top floor, and a couple of actually functional ceiling lights shone down on lines of cheap beds and other salvaged furniture. Two women and a man sat on one of the beds, while a woman in a blue dress stood. A bit off to the side sat a large man in a bulky coat. And standing before them like a teacher berating students was the source of the shouting.
“What will happen if I kill you?”
The Green Bomber. In defiance of his nickname he wore a dull red coat, worn and patched, topped by a hood. Not that much was visible between it and a wool scarf, save for wild eyes and hints of a beard. And in his hand was a rod of some sort, with which he gesticulated wildly to his audience.
“Police!” Myra shouted as she levelled her weapon at him.
He turned her way. She didn’t catch where the green glow came from before she leapt to the side. Once again there was no real boom. The doorway just burst with a flash of heat, a hiss and a splintering of wood. The flimsy wall between her and the room would in no way hold up against whatever the hell that was, and for a breath or two Myra simply lay prone in case of another one.
“Where is the dawn?!” the madman shouted, and Myra heard something that sounded like a staff being banged on the floor a couple of times. “Where is the bell?!”
“Please stop,” a woman’s voice pleaded, shaken but fighting to keep steady. “Stop. This is not-”
“It is false!” he shouted back. “They are false! I-”
There was a grunt, a gasp, and the sound of clumsy, stomping feet. Myra bounded up and ran through the burning-hot smoke that filled the doorway area and into the space beyond. The large man was grappling with the bomber and had him up against one of the room’s pillars. The blue-clad woman stood a few steps away, frozen with her hands on her face.
Myra raised her revolver again, but the two men were tightly intertwined, grunting and straining. The Bomber was crushed between the man’s weight and the worn wood of the pillar, but tried to strike back with his rod.
She launched herself into another run, but a green flash shot up from the wrestling match and into the ceiling. Wood and brick burst, leaving a hole an auto could have fit through. Sparks and burning hot debris rained down into the room, scattering the three women and the other man.
The blast somewhat broke up the fight by the pillar, enough for the Bomber to push the larger man away. His opponent’s weight landed awkwardly on his left leg, and a blow from the Bomber’s rod caused the leg to give way entirely and he toppled backwards.
The Bomber dove around the pillar just as Myra fired. The weapon kicked at her wrists and her ears, blowing more smoke into the room. She would have thought for sure that she’d hit him, but there was a blur of movement through the cracks in the privacy screens beyond the pillar.
She nearly fired again, but didn’t know if there were more people in the room. Terrified of another blast, she ran for the pillar, hoping it might serve as cover. It took her a moment to realise that the beam it was connected to had been blown apart, and she came to a screeching halt as it and a decent section of the roof began to slope downwards. Also, some of that hot debris had fallen into beds, and the blankets seemed to be catching.
There was the sound of breaking glass on the side of the emergency exit, and as the roof at least halted its descent Myra continued around the pillar and the obstructing screens. There were more beds and chairs, some of them stacked up. Along with more pillars and some additional furniture, the Bomber had several hiding spots to choose from. She hurried over to the nearest pillar, painfully aware of the fact that whatever he was using could probably blast right through it.
There was more breaking glass, followed by a squeak of metal and a door being flung open.
“Police!” Brown shouted into the gloomy room.
“Careful, Brown!” Myra shouted.
“You are a shadow!” the bomber shouted and there was yet another green flash. Myra flinched, but it wasn’t meant for her. There was a hiss of insane heat and a clattering of glass. She came out of cover, leading with her gun. Brown poked his head out of cover from the exterior fire escape, looking through the melted, broken mess that had been a glass door.
The Bomber was in view, and as he made some weird, wild gesture she could not justify not taking another shot. This time she definitely hit, if the flinch that passed through the man’s body was anything to judge by. Brown took a shot of his own, and the Bomber either fell or let himself drop out of view, behind yet another pillar.
“Come out with your hands up!” Myra shouted, hyperalert for whatever was to come next, ready to squeeze the trigger if she saw anything other than an open hand. What she did see was a green blast, as it blew open the wall nearest the madman. It did the stability of the roof no favours, setting off a very unnerving series of creaks and groans.
It looked like she might have to run for the door, and the bastard chose that exact moment to bolt out of hiding. She let the muzzle trail him but he was out the hole before she could fire.
“Damn it!”
Brown made it to the opening before she did, gazing straight ahead rather than down. As she looked out she saw their quarry on the neighbouring roof, one storey lower than this decrepit old factory.
“Do you think-” Brown began, but she didn’t wait to hear what followed.
Myra hurried back as far as the rows of beds allowed her, then sprinted. It hurt her leg but she grit her teeth and charged on before she could think better of this.
She jumped. For a fraction of a second her mind flooded with possibilities. A foot slipping. Her trailing coat catching on something. A miscalculation of the distance. A terrible, helpless plunge to her death.
Then she landed, her feet slamming down hard. Her leg buckled a bit and she fought for balance for the next few steps that followed. But she kept on going. The lighting, scarce down on the streets, basically amounted to a greyish darkness up on the roofs. But the layer of rubbish, dead leaves and pollution sounded rather loudly when trod upon, and she chased after the Bomber amidst a dim forest of chimneys and air conditioners.
The flash would give him away, if he turned for a fight. It would frame him against the darkness and give her the perfect shot. If she was quicker than ever before in her life.
“Stop!” she shouted, just for the sake of saying it.
Steam churned out of some source or another and for a single instant she thought she saw his silhouette pass through it. Myra couldn’t see the roof’s edge, and only memory told her that it was indeed right ahead. Somehow the second leap was more harrowing than the first, directly onto a roof of equal height and through the blinding steam. She landed worse this time, tripping and falling onto her side, rolling once in the thin, sand-like layer of pollution.
But there he was, now visible by a single dim bulb shining light down on a roof access.
“Stop!” she shouted again as she extended her arm from a prone position. She fired, aiming slightly wide and putting a hole in the door.
The Green Bomber stopped in his tracks and whipped around, twitchy like a cornered animal. She could sort-of make out his eyes in the bulb’s light, and it dawned on her that he could see her in turn.
“Your face...” he said. “Are you real?”
“I am real,” Myra said through her teeth. “As were the people you’ve killed.”
“I’ve killed no one. They are shadows. Nothing but shadows. And they must be cleansed. They must be cleansed so I can awake!”
“I will cleanse you, if you do not lie down on your stomach,” Myra told him.
He looked confused, unsure of himself, and she had no idea if he was about to comply or attempt something desperate.
“You cannot save them,” he said morosely. “You are as lost as all of us. Where is the dawn?”
A shot rang out, echoing off the roof entrance. Again Myra couldn’t quite tell if the man was hit or if he flinched dramatically upon being fired at. He did drop mostly out of her sight. She glanced back for an instant and saw Brown’s silhouette amidst the swirling steam, gun smoke mixing with it. As she turned back around the Bomber was scrambling, almost crawling, for the nearest corner of the entrance.
Brown fired again and then the madman was out of sight. Myra got up and ran clumsily after him, ready for an attack, ready to end his life this time. There was some sound she didn’t recognise, and behind her came the grunt and crash of Brown clearing the gap between buildings.
Myra rounded that first corner, then the second one and reached the back of the entrance. There was nothing there. Her mouth opened to shout for Brown that he was coming, but then she caught movement on her left.
She looked across the street. There on the other side, about ten metres away, she caught a glimpse of that dull red coat on the roof. It vanished into darkness before she could even truly register what she had seen.
Her mind tried to make sense of it, looking for a way across; some kind of bridge or a stretched line. But would he even have been able to sprint that distance in the time he’d had, and with at least one bullet in him at that?
She peeked down off the edge, seeing nothing but cracked asphalt. A bizarre sense of unreality gripped Myra as Brown joined her. But she had seen him, on the other side. Hadn’t she? He’d had nowhere to go without being seen.
“What happened?” Brown asked.
She gestured wordlessly for a moment before finding her voice.
“I think he... jumped across.”
He gave her a mildly disbelieving look, as much emotion as one ever saw on that coarse face.
“Quite a thing,” he commented, taking in the distance. “And with no running start, at that.”
“I... I saw him,” Myra said, feeling oddly confused. “That’s all I know.”
She shook her head and looked for a fire escape. There wasn’t one on their side, so she hurried to the right. There wasn’t one there either, nor on the building’s third side, or the fourth.
The Green Bomber was gone. They’d never catch up with him now. They’d had him, and then lost him.
Myra leaned on her knees and let out a sigh. Would he kill more after tonight?
“Bitter, I know,” Brown said dully. Myra did her best to appreciate the intent behind the lacklustre support.
She glanced at the house where this mess had started. Even in the highly limited light the damage was quite visible, and she thought she could glimpse small flames through the grimy windows.
Myra shook her head. The intensity of the moment was fading from her veins, as was the strength and courage that came with it. It dawned on her that she would have to leap across buildings again, without the heated madness of a chase to move her or silence her fear.
“We should... we should find a telephone,” she said.