This choice: Try to get out the back way • Go Back...Chapter #8Between Iraq And A Hard Place by: imaj   “Agreed,” replies the imam. “We need to get to the pickup truck.”
“Not a good idea,” you tell him. “That mob is between us and the truck.”
Imam el-Bayoumi frowns. “What do you suggest?”
“Out the back door and find another car,” you explain. You picked up the skills to break into and hotwire a car a few years ago, the memories stolen from car thief in Paris.
To his credit, the imam doesn’t question your suggestion. “You lead on then,” he says, moving quickly to pick up a couple of essential belongings.
You walk briskly to the door, the imam following you. A short corridor leads to an unfurnished concrete stairwell – a fire escape. You keep a measured pace as you lead him down the stairs: Fast enough for a rapid escape, but not breaking into a run, or anything that would draw attention to yourself. In the distance you can hear angry shouts, presumably the crowd entering the hotel by the front door. At the base of the stairwell you push open the fire door and stagger out into the night air.
You find yourself in a tight alley that runs between the back of the hotel and what seems to be a row of apartment buildings. Luck is with you. There is a small van parked only a few metres away. In any other setting, its toy like proportions would seem ridiculous. Right now it is a chance to escape. You walk over to it, your attention focuses inwards as you pull out the memories you need from the constellations of imago within you.
You remember nothing of the thief, for you purged almost all of his memories the instant you picked them up. Only the skills of his trade you kept, figuring they might prove useful some day. You survey the van: It’s old, which is an advantage, but you have none of the tools you need. That’s not an insurmountable obstacle, but it means you’ll have to do things the ugly way.
You pull off your jacket and wrap it round one arm before giving the driver side window a hard wallop. It takes a couple of attempts to break the glass. Then you can lean in and open the door from the inside. There is no alarm, which is a mercy. After brushing the broken glass off the seat, you jump in and reach across to open the passenger side door. The imam rushes round and climbs in as you kick at the ignition housing. One, two, three times and then you hear a crack. You pull away at it until it snaps off, exposing the wiring underneath. It hardly takes any time at all to fiddle with the wires. The engine coaxes itself into life. You grab the stick with one hand and the steering wheel with the other. Tyres squeal as you floor the gas and the van practically leaps into motion.
You concentrate on steering the van through the tight alley, but in the wing mirror you notice a couple of members of the mob pile out of the fire escape behind you. They point and shout impotently as you drive off.
“Where to,” you ask the imam.
“Get us out of Amarah,” he replies. “As fast as you can.”
You jerk the wheel sharply to the right at the end of the alley. The wheels on the van protest loudly at the treatment, squealing as you turn into a side street. They do it again as you turn onto the main road too. You’ve picked up a few driving skills in your imago collection and you’re drawing on all of them right now.
A good sized proportion of the mob is still spread out on the road ahead of you. They can’t possibly have learned about what happened at the back of the hotel yet. You’ve been driving too fast for the people that spotted you driving off on the van to have returned to the rest of the crowd. Then again, the way you’re driving is hardly unnoticeable either. A few members of the crowd point in your direction and yell.
To your horror, they don’t scatter. A few start running towards you, screaming as they do. It takes you a few seconds to process this, being unable to quite accept it. Then the rational part of your mind kicks in: You floor the gas peddle and keep the van’s course straight. The first member of the mob bounces of the front of the van with a sickening crunch. The second falls beneath the wheels and you can feel the van bounce over him. The rest of the crowd scatter out of the way.
“What are you doing,” asks the imam, the notes of alarm in his voice clear.
“They’re trying to force us off the road,” you say, never taking your hands off the wheel, or your eyes of the road. “You saw how crazy they were. It doesn’t matter if a couple of them die if they slow us down enough to pull us out of the van.” The imam frowns thoughtfully. “You want to be tied to a post and set on fire?”
“I see,” replies the imam evenly. “We will discuss this later,” he says with finality. You risk a glance to the side, as the crowd is receding into the distance. Imam el-Bayoumi looks as if he has swallowed something sour and unpleasant, and without a doubt the source of his unhappiness is you. You did just kill, or at the very least maim, two people though. At least the imam is experienced enough not to argue it now though.
“I understand,” you reply. You’re confident your actions were justified: The mob was crazy, just like the clerk was crazy.
“Keep driving,” the imam tells you. “Are they pursuing.”
You check the mirrors. You’ve left the crowd behind, but you have to assume that they’ll be looking for cars and trucks to follow you in though. “I don’t see anyone,” you answer. “But I think…”
“Keep driving,” repeats the imam. “Full speed. Assume they are following.”
He doesn’t need to tell you that twice. You keep the gas pedal firmly rooted to the floor, heading back up the highway you arrived in just a short while ago. As you leave Amarah behind you, you can make out lights following in the distance.
“Kill the lights,” says the imam once you are a couple of miles outside of town. “Turn onto the track ahead.”
“I won’t be able to see,” you complain.
“You are a Sulva,” he replies. “Let the moon guide you.”
You aren’t sure that it works that way, but you still nod and switch off the headlights. It’s dark now, but it’s a cloudless night and the moon is shining brightly. You have to slow down as you turn onto the side road – little more than a dirt track really – but it doesn’t take long for your eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness. A little while later you watch as your pursuers continue up the highway in the distance.
“What now,” you ask Imam el-Bayoumi.
“We find somewhere to spend the night,” he replies. He points ahead. In the distance there is a tiny pin-prick of light. “We’ll try there.”
Several minutes later you find yourself pulling the van to a halt outside a small shack. The light you saw earlier, as it turns out, is a small battery lamp hung from a wooden pole. The shack itself is nothing to look at either, just a ramshackle construction of wood and corrugated steel. It can’t consist of more than a single, cramped, room. It reminds you a little of some of the places you saw in Cuthbert five years ago.
You turn off the van engine. “Think we’ll find another one of those Flame of Purity crazies,” you ask.
The imam harrumphs but says nothing. He climbs out the van. You jump out yourself and follow him round the hut as he searches for a door. A truck is parked at the side, and unlike the hut it looks modern and sleek: An American make with four wheel drive. It’s almost bigger than the shack.
You stagger back against it as the door to the hut opens. A soft glow illuminates the silhouette of a man in the doorframe, dressed in loose robes. The unmistakable shape of an assault riffle can be seen in his hands.
“Who are you,” he snarls in a mid-western accent. “And what are you doing here?”
That the man is American is a shock, no doubt, but it isn’t the most puzzling thing about this encounter. No, it’s the sense of pressure that envelopes you. The familiar sensation of Lurga at work. The crazy thing is the imam is just as shocked as you are. It isn’t him drawing on the ousiarch.
It’s the man in the hut.
You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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