Medusa's Web (20 page)

AS SHE BRAKED TO
a stop behind the crosswalk just short of the 101 Freeway overpass, the buildings around Ariel all at once seemed too low, or at least too widely spaced—in the crystal winter sunlight the gray strip mall with its furtive pizza parlor to her right, and the red and blue Mobil gas station to her left, were isolated structures on a stepped plain of asphalt, and the taller buildings farther away, behind the power lines hanging slack between their poles, looked abandoned; the windshields of the cars around her were blank reflections of the sky. She looked down and clicked the turn signal left and then right and then off, just to break the stasis of the moment; and then she leaned forward and glanced through the tinted top edge of the windshield at the sky, momentarily fearful that she had made herself conspicuous in this cluster of otherwise lifeless-seeming vehicles.

A flicker on the far side of the intersection caught her eye, and she focused on it and then hastily looked away—for the angle of two streetlight poles, one behind the other, with a traffic-signal pole angling out from the closer one, had seemed for an instant to stand out sharply from the gray concrete background, lacking only a few more lines to make a spider pattern specific to her position and per
spective. She took hold of her silver gyroscope pendant and stared at it instead, watching the traffic light out of the corner of her eye.

The light turned green at last, and she gunned the car through the intersection with narrowed eyes. For a moment she was in shadow under the freeway bridge, resolutely not glancing at the jagged graffiti patterns that crazed the plywood barriers on either side, and then she was out in the sunlight again, swerving left with the road as it swept past old apartment buildings, and when she saw a gate open on her right, she steered through it onto a narrow dirt-paved yard and braked to a halt.

Why the new gun? she thought. Why the strips of gum-wrapper foil?

She slid her iPad out from under the seat and pushed the power button, and after a few taps on the on-screen keyboard, she was connected to the deep-web server and had entered the dark spiderbit web address. The poster for Bergman's
Through a Glass Darkly
appeared, looking a bit grainier than it had yesterday, and she recalled that a character in that 1961 movie claimed to have seen God as a huge spider that tried to rape her before fading into a wall. An effective incentive to find the current location of the spiderbit store! Ariel tapped in her password and zip code and touched the sign-on icon.

The map that appeared was formatted differently from the one she had seen yesterday—and it was black and white now—but the pulsing dot was clearly visible. It was east of where it had been yesterday—on Sixth Street now, apparently right by the L.A. River, just short of the Sixth Street bridge. Drive over the bridge and you were on Whittier Boulevard—it was only a few blocks southeast of the new Catholic cathedral and the government buildings of downtown L.A., but it was definitely on the wrong side of Alameda.

She pulled her phone out of her blouse pocket and checked the time. It's only a few minutes past two, she told herself, and you've got a gun of your own—and you do need something more now than warpy glasses.

She reversed her car in the dirt lot and got back onto Franklin, then turned north on Cahuenga—the buildings still seemed too low and spread out in the cheerless sunlight—and steered onto the southbound 101 Freeway.

When she saw the huge brown box of the cathedral on her right, and on her left the Arts High School building that looked like a giant chrome robot aiming a ray-gun at the cathedral across the freeway, she slanted into the right lane and got off at Alameda.

She drove south, away from the angular new hotels into a region of sparse trees and For Lease signs and long windowless warehouses and parking lots with concertina wire along the tops of the chain-link fences. At Sixth Street she turned left, and after a few uninspiring blocks, she saw rising pavement and the stone railings of the bridge on both sides of the street ahead of her, so she turned left and then right onto a narrow street or alley that ran parallel to Sixth Street, in the bridge's shadow. The mutter of her car's exhaust echoed back at her from featureless cinder-block walls close at her left, and to her right the dark arches under the bridge were blocked by webs of chain link.

The new location of the spiderbit store should be very close by.

Several old cars were parked along the narrow pavement, all facing her, and she wondered if this was a one-way street; and sure enough, a pair of dusty pickup trucks swung onto the street ahead and were rocking toward her, side by side.

She braked and reached for the gearshift—and then was rocked sharply back in her seat as a car behind her crunched into her rear bumper.

She swore and clicked the gearshift into park.

Opening her driver's-side door, Ariel stepped out onto the bridge-shadowed pavement, and she had her phone in her hand as she hurried back to take a picture of the damage. It was an old tan Dodge Dart that had hit her, and its driver had opened his own door and was climbing out.

“I hope you're insured!” she called angrily. A motor oil–scented breeze was funneling down the narrow street from the west, and she peered in the shade of the bridge to see the man.

He straightened up, and she saw that he was wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a sport coat over a red T-shirt.

Ariel's hand darted into her purse, but just then her arms were gripped strongly from behind, and even as she inhaled, a rough-skinned palm was slapped over her mouth.

Her hand was on her .32 semiautomatic, and she tugged at the trigger—the slug blew a hole in the leather of her purse and knocked the pavement before hissing away into the sky in ricochet, but the gunshot was just a muffled thump.

She pulled the trigger again, but nothing happened; the slide had apparently been blocked by the purse lining and hadn't cycled a fresh round into the chamber.

Light-headed and breathless, she drove a heel back toward where she thought a shin would be, but the kick missed and she lost her balance. The hands gripping her arms were all that was holding her up. She tried to bite the palm on her face, but could only scrape it with her teeth.

The little man in glasses rapped a knuckle very hard against the point of her elbow; the blow numbed her forearm, and when he yanked her purse away, the gun went with it. With his other hand he held up a sheet of cardboard in front of her face, but she glimpsed the radiating lines inked on it and clenched her eyes shut.

“I've got five or six hundred dollars in that purse,” she panted, “and the car's almost new. Take them and I'll walk out of here.”

Her arms were yanked behind her, and she fell to her knees on the asphalt and winced as her wrists were pressed together.

Then there was a loud mechanical roar and a thump, and the man in glasses was propelled forward—his belly slammed into her head, and both of them fell sideways onto the street. Lifting her head from the pavement to peer dazedly over the man's legs, she saw the head
light and front tire of a motorcycle topple to the pavement, and Scott Madden was rolling to his feet a yard away.

“Gun in the purse!” she choked.

Boots scuffed on asphalt behind her, but Scott had snatched up the purse and hopped backward as he reached into it, and a moment later he had the gun in his hand. He dropped the purse and pulled the slide back and let it snap forward, chambering a round.

THE TWO MEN WHO
had got out of the pickup trucks flailed to a halt. They were in blue jeans and T-shirts and looked to be in their thirties, both wearing glasses but apparently pretty fit; Scott couldn't imagine how he and Ariel were going to get out of this.

She had scrambled to her feet, looking uninjured, though her skirt was ripped. When she had stepped quickly around the man rolling on the street, Scott handed her the gun. She gripped it with her left hand and took a step back and kept the muzzle steady, pointed toward her assailants.

Scott crouched and took hold of the handlebar grips and straightened, heaving the motorcycle upright. The clutch lever now slanted up, but he was able to squeeze it as he straddled the seat, tapped the gearshift pedal down with his left foot, and drove his right heel down on the kick-starter.

The engine roared, and he exhaled, dizzy with relief.

“Keep it pointed at 'em and shoot if they move,” he called to Ariel. “Aim at the middle of their stomachs—and get on the back here.”

Ariel bent to pick up her purse, then slid her right leg between Scott and the sissy bar, and a moment later her feet were on the passenger footpegs and her left arm was extended over Scott's shoulder.

“I'm gonna pass 'em on the left,” Scott said, and she shifted her arm over his head to his right shoulder.

Scott let the clutch out a bit, edging the bike slowly forward, then
let it pop out as he twisted the throttle, and the front tire was in the air for a second as the bike leaped forward and accelerated past the trucks.

The left-side mirror had broken off, but in the other one Scott could see the two men scrambling into the pickup trucks, and immediately one of the trucks reversed and spun around in a cloud of dust.

Scott wound the throttle rapidly back and forth as he shifted gears, his eyes narrowed to slits as the strengthening headwind battered his face and the arches of the bridge flashed past taller and taller to his right. He snatched a glance at the mirror and saw one of the trucks now close behind.

His eyes were already stinging and watering from the ride to Sixth Street on the freeway. I can't get into a chase on streets, he thought desperately, on this old bike, with no goggles and a hundred-something pounds of passenger!

The street ended at a crosswise fence ahead of him, but he saw a narrow open gate in the fence and slanted through it, and then he was out of the bridge shadow onto packed, oil-stained dirt, and all that lay ahead were rows and rows of railroad tracks, stretching from left to right as far as Scott could see.

He glanced back. Both trucks had stopped outside the fence, and the driver of one of them was now out of the cab and through the gate and sprinting toward the motorcycle. Scott leaned to the left and gunned the bike north, parallel to the tracks; the man on foot turned and began running back toward his truck, while the other vehicle paced Scott on the far side of the fence. Behind it, the tan Dodge that had hit Ariel's car swung into view, catching up fast.

Scott braked to a skidding halt. He clicked the gearshift into neutral and brushed sweaty hair back from his forehead. Dust swirled away to his right, across the tracks and out over the broad concrete channel at the bottom of which, unseen from where they were, flowed the L.A. River.

“Who
are
they?” Scott asked. The three vehicles were paused
now outside the fence, and a white SUV was driving slowly past them. Scott was bleakly sure it was a Chevy Blazer.

“Wheelbugs,” said Ariel. “One of them tried to show me a spider.”

Scott's first thought was a profound wish that he had ridden away from Caveat and all its concerns yesterday evening; he brushed it aside and said, “You got sunglasses? Normal ones?”

“Yes. You want them?”

“For goggles.”

She dug in her purse and pulled out a pair. “Turn around,” she said.

Scott hiked himself sideways on the seat to face her, and she unfolded the glasses and slid them over his eyes, hooking them behind his ears and pushing the nosepiece into place.

He gave her a brittle smile and turned back around on the seat. “Three of 'em,” he said, “four, probably. They can stay with us whichever way we go and fade back into the streets if cops show up.”

He felt Ariel shiver against his back. “I don't think they want to shoot at us,” she said.

“Not entirely good news.”

One of the pickup trucks moved ahead, picking up speed.

“There
will
be a gate they can get through,” said Ariel.

“Without a doubt.” He looked the other way, at the tracks, and saw that they were all clear at the moment. “Get off the bike.”

Ariel swung off the seat, hopping on the dirt to catch her balance. She gave him a blank look. “Why?”

Scott pushed the motorcycle backward with his heels and pointed the front wheel at the nearest pair of rails. “I can get over the tracks easier without you on the back. Walk alongside—I won't be moving fast.”

He shoved forward now with his toes until the front wheel was pressed against the polished steel rail, and then he tapped the gearshift pedal down into first gear and let out the clutch lever.

The motor roared and the bike reared up, and then the back
wheel was on the rail and the front wheel had rolled over the farther rail and thumped into the gravel on the other side; the front shocks clanked shut and Scott managed not to pitch forward over the handlebars, and then his spine shook as the rear wheel crunched down.

He grabbed the clutch and let the motor wind down. “That's one,” he said dizzily. “How many more to the river fence?”

Ariel had stepped over the rails and now shaded her eyes to look east. “Seven or eight.” She looked over his shoulder. “One guy's reversing back toward that gate we came through. I guess he figures he can catch up to us here on foot.”

“Hah. Loser.” Scott released the clutch again and went jolting and bouncing over the next pair of rails, and then immediately the pair after that; the bike didn't fall or throw him off, but he had to catch his balance by slamming his foot to the gravel, and pain lanced up through his knee to his hip.

He was sweating and shaking, and his head throbbed with every rapid pulse as he squinted ahead at the remaining tracks.

Ariel had walked alongside his stressful progress and now stood a couple of yards away, looking past him toward the street. “You look sick,” she said. “Did you do a spider last night?”