Alien Eyes (34 page)

The families had escaped from the other two. This one had ignited early.

David headed down the hallway, shining his light in the master bedroom.

The fire had burned hot and heavy here, lit from below by a burning ember from the supper club next door. David's light caught the charred remains of the bed, where one of the women had been found, her body covering two children, all blackened beyond recognition, fused to a mattress that was nothing more than ashes and springs.

David moved back down the hallway to the baby's room, where another female, Caucasian, adult, had been found outside the door.

Very little damage here. Soot smeared the sheet in the battered old crib where a fire fighter had found the baby. David had seen her tiny nightgowned body laid on a sheet on the pavement next to the charred remains of her mother, her aunt, and her two siblings. She had died of smoke inhalation; there had not been a mark on her. The fireman who had carried her out had crouched at her tiny feet, his eyes red with smoke and tears.

One child and one adult unaccounted for.

David heard shouts, a scream, a muted voice on a bullhorn. He went to the window, careful of broken glass.

The scene below was going from very bad to worse. People pressed against men and women in riot gear, moving in a mass toward the carnage of the supper club.

“Where's Harry?” A woman's voice, hysterical. “I got to know if he's okay. Harry? Where's Harry?”

A man's voice cut her off. “I don't believe there was no fucking bomb.”

Anguish and rage were palpable in the heat of the night.

A bottle flew, caught a woman on the lip. Her face blossomed in blood. Someone screamed and the press of bodies surged forward. David heard a crash, saw an ambulance go over in a splatter of broken glass and crumpled metal. The riot was born.

He headed down the hallway at a dead run, thundering toward the stairs.

When the third step broke beneath his feet, his momentum pitched him headfirst. His ankle twisted and he grabbed the bannister. It held, just for a moment, then the staircase collapsed, and the bannister tore away from the wall. David's stomach lurched as he swung sideways.

“
Shit
,” he said, and fell.

It was a quick drop, eight feet and two eternal seconds, and then he was on his back, trying to breathe, the wind knocked out of his lungs.

He lay still in the close, sweltering darkness, the smell of smoke like a hand on his chest. He wondered where his light had landed. He sat up, tried to catch his breath. His chest ached and he rubbed the scar where he'd taken a bullet in the lung, a good six months ago.

Everywhere he turned he felt or sensed a conglomeration of shapes, things, pressing close all around. It was hot here, incredibly hot, and he wondered if there were live embers close by.

He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting the old sick claustrophobia.

And then miraculously, he heard voices. He checked the urge to call out—if there were locals wandering in, he wasn't sure he wanted to be found. A homicide detective would make a prime target.

“The human is a law officer, Yo Free. He would hear the trouble and join in.”

“Shut up, will you? I heard something.” A woman's voice, sounding exasperated. “Now look at that, will you? Some shithead's disconnected the alarm. These guys go charging around a fire scene with their thumbs up their ass, don't think twice about messing up the scene, and no idea how dangerous it is. First the fire fighters, tramping through with their big boots and gel grenades, then all of a sudden now we got these prima donnas from
homicide
who … See that, Wart? I see a light. Hello?”

David wondered if he wanted this irritable woman to find him. “
Down here
!” he shouted. Silence. “Hello?
Hey
!”

“I hear you, baby, hang on.”

The shaft of light was a welcome thing, coming through the well of blackness above him. The light hit him in the face, and he covered his eyes with a soot- and sweat-grimed hand.

“Sorry, baby. You Silver?”

David coughed. “Yeah, I'm Silver.”

“You hurt?”

“No, but I'm not real comfortable.”

“I hear you, baby. Have some patience, I'm a get you. If you don't mind, I'm coming down there an easier way.” The woman's voice dropped an octave. “Get his flash and shine it down there, Wart. Keep him talking. He doesn't sound too good.”

The light came back.

“Hello, the Detective Silver of homicide. I am Arson Investigator Detective Warden.”

David squinted, eyes aching. “An Elaki?” Stupid question; people didn't talk like that.

“Yes, Elaki am me.” The tone seemed stiff, though it was hard to tell with Elaki. “You work with Elaki too, I know this. Homicide Detective String? He does the magic tricks?”

David grimaced. “He tries.”

He listened to the woman's footsteps, marking her progress. She was close. Something crashed, just a few feet away, then he heard a creak, and saw a stream of light to one side.

“Silver? You in here?”

“Wherever here is.” He squinted, aware of her shape, vague and dark, behind the halo of brightness.

“You're in a closet, baby, under the stairwell.”

A closet. It made sense. He kept moving, felt himself in open space, felt air circulation, felt the claustrophobia easing away. He could not see the woman in the darkness, but he felt her near him.

“So you're Silver from homicide, huh?” She played the light up and down his chest.

“Yeah. And you?”

She shone the flashlight on her face. “Detective Yolanda Free Clements, Arson Squad. You the turkey disconnected the alarm up there?”

She gave him a half smile, hand on one hip. She was black, high cheekbones, big brown eyes, lush lips. Her face was interesting. Her hair was long, fanning out in the plaited wedge that was all the rage.

She flashed the light at his feet, then let it sweep sideways and behind him. David heard her intake of breath.

He looked over his shoulder. “What is it, Clements?”

“You want to come out of there first?”

And then he saw it, the two of them huddled close, a hand's breath from the spot where he'd fallen.

The missing woman and child.

TWO

The light flicked across a blackened tennis shoe, a small one, child's size. David studied the huddled bodies, twined and fused in death. Had they waited under the staircase for rescue, listening for sirens that came way too late?

Outside, voices rose and fell, and David heard a boom that resonated like the beat of a drum.

“You hear that?” Clements said.

David nodded. “Hologram troops. Must be bad out there.”

Clements led him back through the burned-out house. The Elaki was waiting by the splintered remains of the front door. He was tall even for an Elaki, eight feet to the usual seven, and so thin David wondered how he stayed erect. Like all Elaki, he was fine-boned and flippy, covered in scales, and balanced on a bottom fringe that rippled like the belly of a snake.

His colors were muted, as if he'd been bleached in the sun. The tender inner area was pale ivory-pink, the outer a soft pearl-grey. His eye prongs were very pronounced, and he skittered sideways when he noticed David staring.

Elaki had arrived on Earth with attitudes reminiscent of the British colonials who had invaded India in the far distant past. They loved to meddle in politics, health care, and anything else that caught their fancy. These days, it seemed almost every aspect of human enterprise had an Elaki element—taint, was how some people put it. The Elaki strength was in social sciences; they were able to cure an array of human mental illness that had overwhelmed psychologists for years.

They were fascinated and bewildered by the human psyche. They made excellent cops, and formidable criminals. They were also racist, arrogant, and prickly. People were fast becoming second-class citizens on their own planet.

Warden waved a fin. “Hologram troop, hear this? My other officers in need of the assist.”

Clements shook her head. “Wart, baby, they'll tear you apart.”

“I will be like flea on hamster—”

Hamster? David thought.

“I will hide in hologram. I can be of the help.”

Clements looked at David. “Your Elaki this stubborn?”

“Worse.”

It was hot out—still in the eighties, here after dark, the humidity one hundred percent. David didn't feel the heat, he didn't feel anything, but sweat drenched his clothes, and Clements's face glistened.

The scene was lit well enough to pass for high noon, though the light had a bluish cast. Emergency lights from ambulances and police cars flicked across the holograms, making the troops—except the real ones—go green with every pulse. The holographic troops flickered around the edges, the stuff of nightmares for the living-breathing cops interspersed inside. The real cops wore riot gear and carried stun clubs—weapons that sent a cone of voltage capable of knocking ten people off their feet with one sweep.

The worst was over. The troops, backed up where it counted by real officers, had cut through the crowd, separating them into smaller and smaller bunches. People had been herded down the street and away from the scene, and the riot cops had them on the run, wearing them down.

Bodies lay side by side away from the road. Even blackened, the human corpses had bulk and form. The Elaki remains were like deflated balloons, long and shriveled and black. David saw two fire fighters carrying a dead Elaki out of the supper club, saw the body break apart in the middle, streaming black-streaked yellow juice.

Supper club was a misnomer for what had once been someone's cherished brownstone, years ago when the neighborhood had been good. Up until tonight, it was a place where Elaki and humans could come together in vice and mingled bad habits. It was a dark, Elaki-style maze of rooms with loud music, cheap drinks, varietal smokes. Upstairs cubbies were available for anything from gambling to group sex. The club was frequented by just enough of the fringe criminal element to attract young, fun-loving humans and Elaki, the poor and the slumming wealthy, and anyone else who imagined they were up for a walk on the wild side. The club gave them a little taste of down and dirty ambience, and the bad guys liked dropping in to be admired.

The smell of smoke and burnt flesh was heavy in the night air. David looked up, saw press choppers, though he could not hear them over the boom of the holographic generator. He wondered if anyone had tried to reassure the residents, organize them into helping units. It would have gone differently on the other side of town.

A woman in a tight white dress sat sideways on the tracks in the middle of the road. Her dress was soot-stained; one of the fragile shoulder straps had broken loose and peeled away from burned and blistered flesh. Tears ran down her cheeks, and she opened and closed her fist.

Her temple was bleeding thickly. David knelt beside her, unfolded his handkerchief, and pressed it to the side of her head.

Her fist opened and closed, opened and closed. “I had his hand.”

“It's all right,” David told her, his voice a soft, reassuring murmur.

She clutched his arm, fingernails breaking the flesh. “I climbed out the window, he was right behind me,
right
behind me. I tried not to let go. I pulled him so hard. I knew if I let go he would die.”

“Can you stand up?”

She opened her palm and David saw that she held a class ring. It looked very new. David saw from her eyes that she was sliding into shock. He put an arm beneath her shoulders.

“Let's get you up and out of here.”

She didn't react, except for the convulsive opening and closing of her fist. David heard an engine, looked over his shoulder, saw a police wagon headed their way.

He bent down and picked her up. She was small, for which David was grateful. Her leg was red where the track had left an impression in the skin. She smelled like smoke, sweat, and lilacs. She wrapped her arms around his sweaty neck, and hid her face in his shoulder. His shirt grew wet with her blood and his sweat.

He went to the closest medic wagon. The overturned ambulance still lay on its side. A woman in a Red Cross jumpsuit had crawled through the smashed windshield and was rooting around for supplies.

A black man with a Red Cross patch on his shirtsleeve gave David a look of annoyance. “Triage, man. If she's yours, you'd do better to take her to a hospital yourself.”

David frowned at him. “I'm a police officer. I found her in the middle of the road. She's shocky, you got a blanket?”

“You mind getting it? Right there in the truck. Then set her over there, I'll get to her when I can.”

David found a stack of slivery thermal blankets, disposable. They felt like old-fashioned gum wrappers. He set the woman in the dirt beside the ambulance, wrapped her in the blanket, squeezed her hand. She opened and closed her fist.

David walked away.

A man in a fireman's hard hat and a business suit shouted for more light. The fire was licked, but the fire fighters were still hauling people out of the supper club. David looked at the growing stack of bodies. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

“If you're through gawking there, they need us to go upstairs and pull crispy critters out.”

David turned, saw the sweaty, soot-stained face of his partner, Mel Burnett.

“I see you survived the riots,” David said.

“Hell, yes, it's you had me worried, what took you so long? Had to send a cute little mouth from arson in after you, and she was none too pleased.”

“Arson Detective Yolanda Free Clements?”

“Her Elaki calls her Yo Free.” Mel sniffed. “Smells like a fish fry, with the Elaki in there.”

David glanced at the Elaki bystanders and winced. As usual, their backs were turned on the carnage, out of consideration for the privacy of the victims. David followed Mel around the side of the building. His shirt stuck to his back, soaked in sweat. The streets ran with water and garbage.