Dr Pretorius gestured to an angry Olena, who handed him an expensive-looking briefcase. Ray figured that while most of the onlooking refugees probably couldn’t follow the conversation in English, they had no problems understanding the gist of it. Pretorius extracted an impressively thick document from the briefcase and handed it to Jones.
She glanced at it. ‘What’s this?’
‘A brief requesting political asylum for all my clients,’ Pretorius said. ‘The government in Kazakhstan has collapsed. The warlords are fighting over the scraps of their country, but they all agree on one thing. They fear, wrongly and unjustly, that somehow the plague that struck Talas was brought on by the wild card virus and that the madness that destroyed the city was somehow spread by the jokers living there. Nonsense, of course, but that’s not stopping them from waging genocide against all wild carders. These people couldn’t stay in Talas and be killed. They can’t go back. They’re claiming asylum.’
‘You know that this must be adjudicated at higher levels of government—’
‘I ask for an expedited hearing. In the meantime, we need food, water, medical—’
‘I’m sure they do.’ Jones started back up the ladder, taking Pretorius’s brief with her.
The joker lawyer looked at Ray. ‘That was pleasant.’
‘Yeah,’ Ray said. He was starting to have a very bad feeling about this mission. It wasn’t as cut-and-dried as it had first seemed. He hadn’t signed up to bully helpless jokers, women and children among them.
The young woman standing with Olena looked at Angel and spoke in accented but clear English. ‘I am called Tulpar. I was in Talas, too. I saw you fighting monsters. They called you the Angel of the Alleyways, the Madonna of the Blade—’
The Angel looked down. ‘I lost it.’
A look of sympathy crossed the girl’s face. ‘I see that your pain is great. But you helped us once. The people, the children, are starving—’
The Angel turned her face, stood silent for a moment, then followed Jones up the ladder.
Moon whined and went after her, taking the ladder carefully. Ray looked at Pretorius, who was watching with pursed lips, and then at the Kazakh girl. ‘She’s been hurt deeper than you know by what happened in Talas.’
‘I could see it on her face,’ she said.
Ray nodded and hurried after them. Jones had crossed the deck and was going down to the waiting Port Police launch. The Angel, again holding Moon with the agent’s front paws over her shoulder, was following.
Ray, feeling helpless, watched her. It had been a very difficult time, with the Angel growing more withdrawn and despondent despite the counseling she’d had. Ray had thought that maybe getting her out into the field might start her back on the road to who she’d once been, but, if anything, it seemed she was getting worse. He didn’t know where to turn himself, or what to do, and that helplessness was churning deep inside and turning to an anger that he couldn’t focus on any one person or thing. It was just grinding at him.
He started down after the Angel as sudden shouting from the riverbank caught his attention. A group of the anti-refugee protesters from the Liberty Party had surged against the flimsy barrier separating them from the pro-refugee JADL contingent and were breaking through the thin blue line that was all that kept the two groups apart.
‘Crap,’ Ray said.
He glanced down. The Angel, too, had paused on her way down and was watching the drama unfold on the riverbank.
‘Hurry up,’ Ray called. ‘We’ve got to stop this before someone gets hurt!’
The Angel nodded and dropped the remaining dozen feet or so to the launch’s deck, landed lightly, and set Moon down. Ray swarmed down the ladder like a monkey in a major hurry and in a moment was at the Angel’s side.
‘Cast off,’ he shouted. ‘Head for the landing across the river!’
‘I give the orders here, Ray,’ Jones said coldly. ‘Just what are your intentions?’
‘My intentions,’ he said in a dangerously level voice, ‘are to keep people from getting hurt.’ He locked eyes with the officer in charge of the launch.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said crisply.
Jones sighed. ‘Very well. Though I don’t know what you can do.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ the Angel said.
The launch cast away from the Schröder and swept out in an arc, taking them to the northern bank, as everyone onboard watched what was happening on shore with concern.
The small JADL contingent was holding their ground as the anti-refugee protesters broke through the police barrier. Ray and the others on the launch could hear their angry shouts as they ran, screaming and waving their signs. The one in the lead was a heavyset man whose sign read Go Home Genetic Waist! The ones following him shoved aside the few cops who were bobbing helplessly in the mob’s wake like corks in an unleashed torrent.
‘Oh crap,’ Ray repeated.
And as the protesters approached the JADL demonstrators – slowly, because their signs weighed them down and most weren’t in the best shape and it was a very hot and humid day – the zombies began to appear.
They didn’t pop up out of thin air, but instead hauled themselves out of the river, climbing the steps at the landing toward which the launch was heading, like corpses rising from a watery grave. And make no mistake, they all were dead as shit. Not one was complete. Some were missing only fingers or an ear or an eye, others were less whole. Their sodden clothes oozed stinking seawater, which nicely complemented their body odors – a combination of rotting flesh and astringent embalming chemicals. The protesters outnumbered them ten to one, but Ray figured that the zombies were probably more intent on their purpose.
‘Goddammit!’ Ray swore aloud. He felt a sudden twinge of despair when the Angel didn’t respond to his blasphemy. She never did, anymore. ‘Goddammit!’ he repeated.
‘Sweet Jesus,’ Jones said.
‘You’ve never seen a zombie attack before?’ the Angel asked, conversationally.
‘Swing it around parallel to the shore,’ Ray shouted as the launch neared the riverbank. He climbed out on the bow.
‘What is he doing now?’ Jones wondered.
‘He’s going to make someone pay,’ the Angel said softly, but she didn’t say for what.
Moon whined by her side.
‘Go ahead and help him, if you want.’ Moon put a paw on her knee, beseechingly. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ the Angel said in a faraway voice. ‘They’re only zombies.’
By now the protesters were all quite aware of the creatures shambling toward them. The mob’s first reaction was to stumble to an uncertain halt, stand, and stare. Ray wanted to scream aloud to Hoodoo Mama – only she could be orchestrating this – but that would sound silly. ‘Josephine’ was too formal, and ‘Joey’ – he’d never called her that. The anger continued to build in him – the months and months of watching the Angel grow ever more inward, ever more detached, ever more untouchable and desolate – and he found his voice in a wordless cry of his own rage and despair.
He leaped as the launch swung around as he’d directed, setting a new unofficial world record for the standing long jump, and hit halfway up the stairway going up the riverbank. He stuck his landing and was moving a moment after his feet touched ground.
Moon followed him. She leaped from the bow, her fur flowing in the air as she dove into the water and came up swimming, reaching the foot of the staircase as Ray clambered up to the top.
By now, the shambling newcomers had inserted themselves between the two groups of demonstrators, a half score undead facing the larger contingent of the