Reamde

Until the high-velocity rounds began to pass down into their apartment from above, Marlon had never troubled himself to think about the possible drawbacks of having neighbors who shared his attitude about what constituted suitable real estate. He had the vague sense that the apartment above them was crowded, but that was frequently the case in buildings like this one. From time to time, as they climbed the stairs to play basketball on the roof, they would see people who seemed to be waidiren—“not from around here” types, internal foreigners—and perhaps even waiguoren—non-Chinese. If the wind was blowing the right way, they would sometimes get a whiff of chemical odors, but it was difficult to pin down their origin.

But now those chemicals were dribbling down into their apartment through bullet holes, and the dribbles were on fire.

Marlon stared in fascination at a puddle of burning acetone that was forming on a pile of magazines. Then it penetrated his awareness that the other guys, the younger ones, were looking at him wondering what to do.

“Zombies,” he announced, and turned toward the nearest window.

The windows along the front of the building had shallow balconies projecting no more than a meter from the wall; these were fully caged in iron grids as a security measure, but some of the grids had swing-out hatches. These they kept padlocked. But one of the outcomes of their zombie-attack planning sessions had been a decision that the keys to those padlocks should be hung on nails, far enough inside the grids that no burglar could reach them, but close enough to be easily found in the event of a panicky departure (a little more realistically, they were worried about being trapped inside the building in the event of fire). There were three hatches, three padlocks, and three keys. Marlon noted that one was already in use by a member of the group, so he grabbed his closest roommate by the arm and pushed him over to another and made sure he understood what to do. Then Marlon proceeded to the third, which was in the kitchen, and took the key and unlocked the padlock and swung the hatch open.

He stuck his head out the window. It seemed a long way down to the street. A van was parked down there—the gangsters’ ride? Never mind. Incredibly bad things were happening upstairs—fragments of glass and plaster were raining down right in front of him—and his apartment was on fire. Younger da G shou, boys he felt responsible for, were queuing up behind him. He debated whether he should be the last one to depart, like a captain on a sinking ship, or should lead them forth like a sergeant going into battle. He decided on the latter approach. Turning his back to the grid he leaned back, stuck his head out, reached up, got a grip on the bars, and swung out into the open. Then he got his feet on the bars beneath him and crab-walked out of the way, making room for the next guy.

EVEN DOWN IN the basement, the gun battle had been shockingly loud from the get-go; but it actually kept getting louder. Zula, relegated to infuriating uselessness by the handcuff and her inability to pick it, could only stand there and wait for something to change.

Think, Zula.

Did skinny teenaged Chinese hackers have a lot of automatic weapons lying around their apartments?

If so, were they so skilled at using them that they could actually put up that much of a battle against a crew like Sokolov’s?

Peter had gotten himself free. Seeing this, Zula turned toward him, expecting that his first move would be to cross the floor and begin work on her handcuff. She even rotated her wrist into a more convenient position for him.

He did not approach.

“I’d better see what’s going on,” he said, after a silence. A silence that had gone on for too long. He’d had too much time to think during that silence.

“Peter?” she said. Standing there with her wrist poised in what she’d hoped would be an inviting position, she felt like a girl in a prom dress, being stood up by her date.

“Just going to scope it out,” he assured her.

He had that same look about him, the same tone of voice, as the night they had driven back from B.C. He was in full dodging mode.

“Whatever is going on up there,” Zula said, “it has nothing to do with hackers. This is something bigger than that.”

“Back in a sec,” Peter said, and walked to the base of the stairs. He hesitated for a few moments, unable to meet her eye. “Whatever,” he muttered. He hunched his shoulders and began walking up the stairs.

MARLON COULD SEE four other da G shou clinging to various grids like spiders, looking for ways down. There were only three left in the apartment.