Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town Part 67

Krishna looked scared, a little scared. Andrew teased at how that felt and realized that it didn't feel like he'd thought it would. It didn't feel good.

"Go, Krishna," he said. "Get out of this house and get out of my sight and don't ever come back again. Stay away from my brother. You will never profit by your a.s.sociation with him. He is dead. The best he can do for you is make you dead, too. Go."

And Krishna went. Slowly. Painfully. He stood and hobbled toward the front door.

Mimi watched him go, and she smiled once he was gone.

Benny said, "Kurt's shop is on fire."

They ran, the two of them, up Augusta, leaving Mimi behind, wrapped in her blanket. They could smell the smoke as soon as they crossed Kensington, and they could see the flames licking out of the dark black clouds just a moment later.

The smell was terrible, a roiling chemical reek that burned the skin and the lungs and the eyes. All those electronics, crisping and curling and blackening.

"Is he in there?" Alan said.

"Yes," Barry said. "Trapped."

"Call the fire department," Andrew said, and ran for the door, fis.h.i.+ng in his pocket for his keys. "Call 911."

He got the door open and left his keys in the lock, pulling his s.h.i.+rt up over his head. He managed a step into the building, two steps, and the heat beat him back.

He sucked up air and ran for it again.

The heat was incredible, searing. He snorted half a breath and felt the hair inside his nostrils scorch and curl and the burning was nearly intolerable. He dropped down on all fours and tried to peer under the smoke, tried to locate Kurt, but he couldn't find him.

Alan crawled to the back of the store, to Kurt's den, sure that his friend would have been back there, worn out from a night's dumpster diving. He took a false turn and found himself up against the refrigerator. The little piece of linoleum that denoted Kurt's kitchen was hot and soft under his hands, melting and scorching. He reoriented himself, spinning around slowly, and crawled again.

Tears were streaming freely down his face, and between them and the smoke, he could barely see. He drew closer to the shop's rear, nearly there, and then he was there, looking for Kurt.

He found him, leaned up against the emergency door at the back of the shop, fingers jammed into the sliver of a gap between the door's bottom and the ground. Alan tried the door's pushbar, but there was something blocking the door from the other side.

He tried slapping Kurt a couple times, but he would not be roused. His breath came in tiny puffs. Alan took his hand, then the other hand, and hoisted his head and neck and shoulders up onto his back and began to crawl for the front door, going as fast as he could in the blaze.

He got lost again, and the floor was hot enough to raise blisters. When he emerged with Kurt, he heard the sirens. He breathed hard in the night air.

As he watched, two fire trucks cleared the corner, going the wrong way down one-way Augusta, speeding toward him. He looked at Billy.

"What?"

"Is Kurt all right?"

"Sure, he's fine." He thought a moment. "The ambulance man will want to talk with him, he said. "And the TV people, soon.

"Let's get out of here," Brad said.

"All right," he said. "Now you're talking."

Though it was only three or four blocks back to Adam's place, it took the better part of half an hour, relying on the back alleys and the dark to cover his retreat, hoping that the ambulance drivers and firefighters wouldn't catch him here. Having to lug Kurt made him especially suspect, and he didn't have a single good explanation for being caught toting around an unconscious punk in the dead of night.

"Come on, Brent," Adam said. "Let's get home and put this one to bed and you and me have a nice chat."

"You don't want me to call an ambulance?"

Kurt startled at this and his head lolled back, one eye opened a crack.

"No," Alan said. "No ambulances. No cops. No firemen. Just me and him. I'll make him better," he said.

The smoke smell was terrible and pervaded everything, no matter which direction the wind blew from.

Adam was nearly home when he realized that his place and his lover and everything he cared about in the entire world were *also* on fire, which couldn't possibly be a coincidence.

The flames licked his porch and the hot air had blown out two of the windows on the second story. The flames were lapping at the outside of the building, crawling over the inside walls.

No coincidence.

Kurt coughed hard, his chest spasming against Alan's back. Alan set him down, as in a dream. As in a dream, he picked his way through the flames on his porch and reached for the doork.n.o.b. It burned his hand.

It was locked. His keys were in Kurt's door, all the way up Augusta.

"Around the back," Bentley called, headed for the fence gate. Alan vaulted the porch rail, cras.h.i.+ng though the wild gra.s.ses and ornamental scrub. "Come on," Bentley said.

His hand throbbed with the burn. The back yard was still lit up like Christmas, all the lights ablaze, s.h.i.+ning through the smoke, the ash of books swirling in it, buoyed aloft on hot currents, fragments of words chasing each other like clouds of gnats.

"Alan," Kurt croaked. Somehow, he'd followed them back into the yard. "Alan." He held out his hand, which glowed blue-white. Alan looked closer. It was his PDA, stubby wireless card poking out of it. "I'm online. Look."

Alan shook his head. "Not now." Mimi, somewhere up there was Mimi.

"Look," Kurt croaked. He coughed again and went down to his knees.

Arnos took the PDA in hand and peered at it. It was a familiar app, the traffic a.n.a.lysis app, the thing that monitored packet loss between the nodes. Lyman and Kurt had long since superimposed the logical network map over a physical map of the Market, using false-color overlays to show the degree to which the access points were well connected and firing on all cylinders.

The map was painted in green, packets flying unimpeded throughout the empty nighttime Market. And there, approaching him, moving through the alleys toward his garage, a blob of interference, a slow, bobbing something that was scattering radio waves as it made its way toward him. Even on a three-inch screen, he recognized that walk. Davey.

Not a coincidence, the fires.

"Mimi!" he called. The back window was blown out, crystal slivers of gla.s.s all around him on the back lawn. "*Mimi!*"

Billy was at his side, holding something. A knife. The knife. Serrated edge. Sharp. Cracked handle wound with knotted twine, but as he reached for it, it wasn't cracked. It was the under-the-pillow knife, the wings knife, Krishna's knife.

"You forgot this," he said, taking the PDA.

Then Davey was in the yard. He c.o.c.ked his head and eyed the knife warily.

"Where'd you get that?" he said.