“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Keif said. “There’s a spreading throwup along the wall!”
A long line of black graffiti slithered along the base of the walclass="underline" spidery black shapes, boiling up in waves, a scribbled animation of a swift river running just beneath the edge, only surging up when the dark channel below could no longer contain it.
I started backing up. I saw at once why Keif called it a spreading throwup-simple, fast to ink, and self-replicating-but it wasn’t just mold-powered graffiti. Maybe that factored into it, but there was no way that long, narrow rivulet of hate could generate that much power from that little surface area. This had to be a magical receiver: somewhere, folded up in that nasty scribble, something like Cinnamon’s pattern of golden rectangles was receiving power.
“Everyone stay away from the walls,” I said. The graffiti was backing up at each of the doors, bunching up in a squiggle with oddly precise curves and angles before spilling up and around the doorframe or curving around the sill. “We need to move back, take cover-”
“Oh my God,” Ranger screamed. “What the hell is that?”
I looked up, and saw Zipperface stepping out at the other end of the canyon. Even from this distance I couldn’t see how I’d ever mistaken him for human: head too wide, arms too thick, legs too short. He was a walking caricature of a man, grinning and evil.
We faced each other briefly; then he raised his glowing, misproportioned arms and graffiti exploded up the walls. Long thin lines leapt up, curving arcs slid through them, the graffiti wove into itself, creating a grid, then a moire pattern-then filigreed flames.
Zipperface stood there at the center of a spiderweb of graffiti-then he ripped open those metal teeth and belched out a spray of flame which rippled out through the spiderweb, caught along the walls and began screaming towards us, turning the alley into a canyon of fire.
“We’re totally exposed here,” I said, backpedaling towards the door. “Everyone, back inside, let’s go out the back way-”
“Don’t!” Ranger said, tackling me just as I got to the door. We rolled aside just as the flames screeched around us and coiled around the door in a tongue of flame. She grabbed me around the waist and lifted with surprising strength, half pushing, half dragging me away from the entrance and around my car. “There is no back way out!”
“But all the squatters… ” I said, horrified, as the flames roiled around the door, licking out at my car, trying to reach around it to get us. “They’re trapped, we have to get them out.”
“This used to be an arms warehouse,” Ranger cried. “The walls are a foot thick. There’s no way out but the front. Going back in is suicide-oh, Christ, my dog’s in there too-”
“Jesus,” I said. I looked around, ran to A6’s window planter, picked up a pot and hurled it through it through the plate glass window. “Fire! Fire! Everyone out! EVERYONE OUT!”
Ranger grabbed my hand and pulled, jerking me back from the window as fire leapt from the door to the window frame. A window to our left smashed open, a metal towel rack complete with toiletries flying out and scattering on the ground. A naked man, damp with shower water and hair still filled with suds, leapt through and tripped, bright arterial blood spraying out from his leg where the glass cut it. Keif was screaming, holding his hands to his face, a horrible flickering light beaming through his fingers and the seams of his clothes while Drive whapped him with his motorcycle jacket, trying to put it out. The door to A6 opened, and there were screams inside as the fire leapt inside the unit. And then the fire wrapped around my car.
My Prius exploded in a yellow ball of flame, a loud clap hammering my ears an instant after the hot wash of heat stung my face. A yellow fireball roiled up into black smoke, there was the vicious sparkle of evil magic, then the battery caught, fire and magic, blasting the hatch out, slamming into the opposite wall in a blue-white bolt of magic that was half fire, half lightning.
We were knocked back off our feet as broken glass fell from shattered windows up and down the alley. After a dazed moment, Ranger hauled me to my feet and yelled something.
“What?” I said, barely able to hear her over the ringing, the flames, the screams. Then it sank in. “My car! He blew up my car! I should never have called it the blue bomb.”
“Forget it! Get out of here,” Ranger said. “He’s after you! He’ll kill you if you stay. He’ll kill us if you stay! Go now, while the confusion lasts!”
“But the people inside-”
“ I’ll save them,” Ranger said, “if I have to drag them all out myself! You get out of here-go on! Before he catches sight of you again!”
I stared past her into the confusion. Between the smoke, the flames, and the people spilling out into the alley, I couldn’t see Zipperface; ergo, he couldn’t see me. I took one glance into Ranger’s eyes, then turned and ran. In shame, in fear, in hope that I would get away. I ran.
Not just from Zipperface, though; because Ranger was right-and Counselor Lee was right, and even Detective Bonn was right. The worse things got, the more that people would start looking for an easy answer to stop it-and the day I had been freed, in both places the police would know that where I went, the fires restarted.
You didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to put two and two together.
The first person the police would look for would be me.
No Safe Haven
I stumbled back to Lee Street and the nearest gas station I could find and called for a cab, then ducked inside the restroom to wash up. God. Whoever was behind Zipperface-he’d killed my car. He’d killed my car and my friends-and he’d almost killed me. Twice now.
My hands were shaking as I splashed water on my face. As the water trickled down, I heard police sirens and fire trucks, and stayed put. Only after someone knocked impatiently on the bathroom door did I nervously slip out and skulk among the cola cases until my ride came.
As the West End receded and the driver rode quietly on, I started to think I was paranoid: of course the police were called to the scene. After the cab dropped me off at the hotel, however, I went with my gut, quickly grabbing toiletries, my riding gear and helmet, then hopped on my Vespa and took off, just before a police car swooped up to the hotel, sirens blazing.
I figured using my credit card would be a dead giveaway, so I drove up far north up I-85. I felt that magical tingle again as I passed the Perimeter, but I kept going, all the way to the Mall of Georgia, and withdrew as much as the parking lot ATM would let me.
While it was spitting out money I called Dad. He didn’t answer, probably zonked out on the recliner, so I left a brief message. Then, the moment the receipt was in my hand, I hopped back on my bike and headed back south. With any luck, they’d think I was fleeing to South Carolina-when instead I was going to ground in the city, my city, Atlanta.
I rode the first few miles on the highway to get some distance-always a danger even when the police weren’t specifically looking for me, as the Georgia Highway Patrol sometimes pulled me over just to try to figure out whether the Vespa was a motorcycle or a moped. But by the time I reached Gwinnett Place Mall I knew the area well enough to take the surface streets, slipping off onto mini-mall infested Pleasant Hill before finally escaping to the wide pine-lined lots, wooden fences and aging split-levels that dotted sleepy Old Norcross Road.
I was still OTP-outside the Perimeter-but the suburbs were well trafficked enough that I didn’t worry about trolls. Soon, I found a Waffle House where Old Norcross crossed Buford Highway, swallowed my pride, and settled at the counter to take stock.
No one noticed me. Wearing old jeans, a brown bomber jacket, riding gloves and a bandana, I didn’t look much like myself. In fact, with the bandana covering both my deathhawk and the tattoos on my temples, I looked normal. It was an odd, good feeling. I found myself enjoying not being stared at, swigging sweet tea, and having a damn good waffle.