13 Horses and Guns

Li Yang ran into one of the messenger teams sent out by Carlton Brock. It happened as he was returning to his room with a new haul of loot taken from a nearby, vandalized pawnshop.

The team he encountered consisted of cops on horseback. There were two of them, riding side by side. He'd heard the clip-clop of the horses' hooves before he'd seen them. At first, he couldn't identify that sound; he was sure he'd heard it before, though.

So he got a little too curious for his own good, and when he got to the street corner he had a peek. The horses were trotting side by side, one cop keeping a lookout on each side. The cop closer to Li Yang spotted him instantly, and his cop brain immediately identified a suspect.

"Hey! You!" he shouted. His right hand dropped from the horse's reins and onto his hip holster.

Li Yang could have found himself in a lot of trouble very fast. He was carrying so much stuff he had difficulty walking. What was worse, the loot included a small revolver he'd found in the remains of a smashed desk in the pawnshop.

He knew full well that cops really disliked people carrying guns without a gun permit. Carrying unregistered guns was even worse. A lot of the stuff he'd taken from the pawn shop still had tags attached. He was truly in deep shit.

He was about to drop everything and start running when Fate intervened. That old bitch called Fate had been kicking his ass regularly for the past few years, but starting with the morning of his birthday it had been nothing but pats on the back and even a couple of light kisses.

The cop's shout had been misinterpreted by his horse. It broke into a canter, looking at Li Yang with a big, wet, crazy eye as it went past. The cop lost his balance in the saddle - he hadn't had much practice riding horses - he tried to grab the reins and missed and hit the horse's neck. It broke into a gallop.

"What the fuck?" shouted the second cop. He didn't even look at Li Yang. He galloped off after his partner, swearing loudly. A big brown leather satchel was bouncing on his back.

Li Yang took extra care the rest of the way home. It wasn't easy. He had to walk an extra two blocks to stay clear of a bunch of people busy ransacking a liquor store. A young, rough-looking couple nearby appeared to be fucking, the woman atop a newspaper vending box. Its metal base clanked rhythmically on the pavement.

He breathed a big sigh of relief when he'd finally locked the door to his room behind him. He was still alone in the apartment, as far as he could tell. But you could never tell with that old bitch called Fate. She changed her mind at a whim. He didn't want Harper or Charlene Lee or maybe even cops walking into his room just as he was examining his new gun.

His new gun was an old gun, a small snub-nosed revolver. Its bluish finish was badly scratched, but amazingly it was loaded. However, there were only three cartridges in the five-shot drum. Li Yang took careful note of the letters and numbers stamped on the back of the cartridge cases, and resolved to steal a box of the right cartridges at the earliest opportunity.

His second most important piece of loot that day was an ancient Primus stove. He pressed the pump with his thumb a couple of times when he'd found it, and a faint smell of paraffin rose from the burner. He just hoped it would work on lighter fluid; it was the only fuel he had.

There still wasn't any power in the city, and when he went to wash his face and hands in the kitchen he found the water flow was limited to a limp trickle. He spent a worried half an hour filling every suitable container he could find with water. By the time he was done it hardly ran at all, even with the tap twisted fully open.

He had been very busy over the part twenty four hours, too busy to even contemplate reading the text on the glowing scroll. He did have a quick look, found it complicated, and postponed it till later.

He'd also tried to turn on his newly acquired stereo. There was a crack, a pop, a fizz, and that was it. It was dead. He didn't throw it out; he'd plug it in, and try again once power was back on.

What he wanted to do next was eat. He returned to his room carrying a half-full bottle of cooking oil and a beat-up frying pan from the communal kitchen. The frozen steaks had melted, but they still looked good. In fact, they looked great to Li Yang. He was going to eat a couple.

The stove ran well enough on lighter fluid, and soon the meat was cooking. The room seemed a little warmer too. Lin Yang helped himself to a Coke from a stolen six-pack, than squatted down in front of the stove, prodding the meat with a fork. He took a swig of beer, then another. He started smiling.

Suddenly, shots crackled in the street outside Li Yang's apartment.

He was up in a flash. He glanced at the gun lying on the bed, and decided against it. It wasn't wise to show himself carrying a gun when there was shooting being done. Come to think of it, it wasn't wise to show himself at all.

But his curiosity got the better of him, and he sidled up to the window.

Nothing was moving on the street. The immobile cars lined the sidewalks. A small bird - a sparrow? - swooped down onto the road, picked up something, flew away.

The sun was shining with a force he'd never seen before. He could actually feel it: a warm hand on his face. The sun, the only thing that really mattered. There was no life without a sun. Without a sun, all life died.

There was a sharp crack of a shot and the window pane inches away from Li Yang's face exploded into pieces. A couple of shards hit his face, one just below his left eye.

Before he pulled his head back from the window he saw the shooter: a dark figure on the roof of the brownstone block across the street. He was crouching and his outstretched hands were clasped around something that could only be a gun.

He raised it up and pointed it at the sky and fired three more shots. CRACK-CRACK-CRACK. Then he threw his head back as if he was laughing.

He was having a good time. He was standing on a rooftop with a gun and taking potshots at people and there was fuck all anyone could do about it. Life was good.

Li Yang moved away from the window and crouched and pulled the burning stove into the corner of the room. He squatted down there, out of sight of the window, and pulled the glass shards out of his face. There were a couple of more shots outside when he was turning the steak over in the pan. They weren't aimed in his direction, he could tell by the sound.

He looked at the gun he'd stolen from the pawnshop and decided he'd have to get himself something better than that. With plenty of cartridges, so that he could get in some shooting practice.

Maybe it also wasn't a bad idea to have another look at that scroll. Maybe the metal cones with the shining blue dot were warheads of some kind.

That glowing cube, the cones, the glowing scroll - all that represented a lot of time and effort on someone's part. It all must have cost a lot of money, too. No one would do something like that just to fuck around. It had to be something important.

I'll eat first, thought Li Yang. Then it's time to do some serious reading.

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