19: HIDE AND SEEK
It was a deadly game of hide-and-seek. Arlington Avenue lay to the north. John Street was a narrow, one-way alley that ended a hundred feet to the south of the bakery. It collided with two other streets to make one of Pittsburgh’s weird five-way intersections. If the oni obeyed traffic laws, they would have to come from the north. Given the sound of their engines and the nature of their search, though, they would most likely be coming from the south.
The floodlight on the loading dock was shining as testament that the building had power in the middle of a citywide blackout. She didn’t want to waste time tracking down the light switch. Olivia pointed up at the bulb. “Dagger, break that glass.”
Dagger reached up with her knife and smacked the floodlight with its hilt. Glass rained down onto the dock.
“I believe the oni will come from that direction.” Olivia pointed toward the five-way intersection as she let her eyes adjust to the rainy darkness. “Tell everyone—quietly—to hide behind cover. Do not fire your weapons unless fired upon. Use blades to defend yourself if a stray oni stumbles upon us. Be quiet. Stealth is vital for success. Also be prepared to board the wagon as we might be fleeing.”
“We’re not going to fight them?” Dagger asked in a disappointed tone.
“Our priority is to keep our communication device safe,” Olivia said. “It is the human’s distant voices.”
“Ah! I understand.” The female hurried off to repeat Olivia orders via sign language and pointing. There was a duplex beside the bakery’s employee parking lot. Its front doors opened directly onto the sidewalk, leaving no space for anything that could be called a front yard. The backyard, though, was a large grass lot with a detached garage. The royal marines spread along the side wall and spilled into the backyard.
The sound of the oncoming trucks grew louder. As Olivia feared, the oni were approaching from the south. The overhead power lines started to silver, reflecting the headlights of the oni’s vehicles. As she watched, the truck appeared on Amanda Street, rumbling up to the five-way intersection. The lead truck stopped at the stop sign, flooding the road with light. The other two trucks pulled up behind it, making the first vehicle gleam brightly in the falling rain. John Street joined the intersection at an odd dog-leg angle—their headlights didn’t reach the bakery. Straight would take the oni on up Amanda and safely past them.
“Keep going,” she whispered to the enemy convoy. “Move on.”
She wanted to look back at the bakery’s door to see what was taking Duff and the others so long. She couldn’t pry her eyes away from the unmoving convoy. Her heart was hammering in her chest.
She’d been worried when she plowed through the shipyard’s gate but not overly so. She was just a distraction while Tommy found and freed the kidnapped prostitutes. She had been fairly sure that the humans would be confused and slow to react. Things had gone as she expected until the oni arrived. The oni hadn’t hesitated—they opened fire as soon as they arrived.
It meant that the oni on the trucks would attack the moment that her people were spotted. The trucks could easily hold three times their number.
The Lord will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you.
“God in heaven,” Olivia whispered, “please, let them go straight and pass us by. Protect all of those with me from this harm.”
The trucks sat in place, headlights bright in the rainy darkness. Her fear spiked as oni started to pour out of the vehicles. Dozens of the tall, fierce-looking males. All carrying rifles.
“Oh, dear God.” Olivia tore her eyes away to look back again at the back door to the bakery. Duff and the others had finally appeared, carrying equipment wrapped in plastic. She realized the loading dock ramp had a steep drop between it and the employee parking lot beside it. A chain-link fence kept people from falling but it also kept Duff from getting to his pickup without going out into the street. If the oni were like the elves, they would be able to see someone moving in the darkness.
“No, no!” Olivia spread her arms, blocking their way. “The oni are here. Don’t go out into the street.”
Zippo hopped over the fence near the foot of the ramp and used his height to reach up for the equipment. “Pass it here.”
Alita cautiously peered down the street and whispered out a horrified, “Cào nǐ zǔzōng shíbā dài!”
Someone had gotten out of the passenger side of the lead yellow box truck. Olivia couldn’t tell if they were oni or elf or human. They were shorter and slimmer than the beefy male oni warriors. They were dressed in unisex one-piece hooded camo coveralls. The curves of their hips, as they stood in front of the headlights, suggested a human female. The woman held out some kind of small electronic device about the size of five smart phones stacked on top of each other. Olivia guessed it was a tracking device as she waved it toward each direction of the five-way intersection.
The female shouted something that made Alita grunt.
“Did you understand that?” Olivia whispered.
“She said that she lost the signal,” Alita whispered. She paused, listening, as the female continued to speak in what Olivia guessed to be oni. “She’s going to ‘use the old-fashioned method.’”
“What is that?” Olivia whispered.
Alita shook her head. “I don’t know what that means.”
Duff, Widget, and Zippo came scurrying over, having secured Duff’s radio equipment in his pickup.
“What shitty bad timing!” Duff whispered fiercely. “I just got word from the tengu out in the forest with Windwolf. The elves walked into a huge ambush and need extraction. Someone needs to get a train out to them.”
Olivia stomach churned queasily at the news. If Alita was right about the spell rendering the domana helpless, then an ambush would be deadly.
“We’ll work on that once we get away safely,” Olivia vowed. “Are you ready to go?”
“We’re loaded and ready,” Duff whispered. “What’s the plan for getting out of here?”
Hunting dogs usually went after the rabbit that bolted, missing the one that stayed still and quiet in thick cover. With as empty as the Mount Oliver area was, the oni were going to go after the first thing that moved. “Duff, put your truck into neutral and coast into the backyard beside the parking lot. Be careful not to flash your brake lights. I’ll go first. Let them chase me. I’ll draw them away from you.”
Duff frowned but nodded. He didn’t like the idea but wasn’t going to argue with her. “I need to get someplace with power to set back up.”
Like she would know of such a place! In that moment, she remembered that Duff was only two years older than her. Everyone, even the marines, were technically children.
“Go to the William Penn,” Alita whispered. “Mokoto should have the power back on by now. We’ll meet you there.”
“We?” Olivia whispered. She had thought that Alita and Zippo would go with Duff, since it was safer.
“You don’t know your way around,” Alita whispered. “I’m your native guide.”
Olivia couldn’t argue with that, not with the lives of the royal marines depending on her.
“Get ready to move,” Olivia said as Dagger joined her to confirm all the marines were on the truck.
The woman down the street had taken a red ribbon out of her pocket. She threw back her hood, revealing pure white hair, cut boy short. There was something familiar about her face, as if Olivia had seen her somewhere before.
“I thought she was dead,” Alita whispered in shock.
“Who is she?” Olivia whispered.
“I think that’s Chloe Polanski—but Tinker killed her!” Alita said.
“Chloe Polaski danced rings around me until I figured out what she was doing,” Tinker domi had said. “She could see the future.”
“Oh, this is bad,” Olivia whispered. “Move! Move! Move!”
The feral kittens scrambled into the truck.
The female tied the red ribbon over her eyes as a blindfold. As Olivia climbed up into the driver’s seat, she could see the female languidly moving her hands as if she was doing a hula.
The woman paused and cried out in English, “Oh, damn it all, those mice again! Shit! Shit! Shit!”
Olivia wasn’t sure what it meant, but it confirmed her guess that the female was a human.
The woman started to hula again, muttering angrily.
Olivia sat, tense and ready, her fingers on the key and her feet poised on the clutch and brake pedals.
The female finished her dance and pointed up John Street, straight at Olivia. She barked a command and the warriors around her clambered back into the three yellow box trucks.
Please God. Please God. Please God. Olivia turned the key, whispering a prayer that she would get the complicated dance of clutch and gas right.
The big truck lurched forward like an ungainly beast. She wrestled with the steering wheel to make the tight turn. Zippo reached over and helped her wretch it hard to the right. They jumped the curb and took out part of a wooden fence beyond it.
She could hear the female shouting in oni but she couldn’t take her attention off driving.
“Straight!” Olivia cried so that Zippo would do the turning as she needed one hand to shift. She danced across the clutch and gas to shift into second. The big truck roared as she pushed it up to speed with the gas pedal to the floor between gear shifts. As they hit third at the top of the hill, she risked glancing behind her. The oni warriors had reloaded into their vehicles and all three trucks seemed to be charging after her.
“Alita, watch where they go!” Olivia ordered as she refocused on driving. “Make sure they all follow. Right turn!”
Her choice of turning east onto Arlington was dictated by the knowledge that the oni trucks were newer and smaller and thus probably faster. They would be sure to catch her on the steep winding uphill climb to the west. Better to go downhill, back to the areas that the feral kitten knew better.
“They’re all coming after us!” Alita shouted. “Oh, shit! Polanski has a hoverbike!”
Four targets, Olivia thought grimly.
There was a thunder of guns immediately behind her. The marines had opened fire on their pursuers. They must have decided that her earlier instructions about not shooting were no longer valid.
“Woo-hoo!” Alita shouted. “They took out the driver of the lead truck!”
The lead truck careened out of control, veering off to smash into an abandoned apartment building.
Three targets, but she was about to take the snaking South Eighteenth Street at full speed. It was a bobsled run downhill but it was less likely that the remaining oni could cut her off. “Brace yourselves!”
She cut through a gas station’s parking lot to make the sharp turn onto South Eighteenth Street without slowing down. The marines must have heard her and took it as an order as the shooting stopped.
If she thought coming up hill on South Eighteenth Street had been frightening in the dark and rain, it was terrifying downhill at high speed in the big, ungainly truck. The first bend was a swing to the left. She fought the steering wheel to make the turn. Her headlights swept across high stone columns marking the entrance into a cemetery. Half of the stone gate was missing, as if someone hadn’t made the turn.
The next turn came seconds later at a near forty-five-degree angle to the right with a warning sign suggesting that she should slow to fifteen miles per hour to make it safely. She dropped down through the gears so she could power through it. The left side was a twenty-foot-tall retaining wall painted with a mural. Zippo reached over and helped her turn the steering wheel. She whimpered as they mounted the curb, took out a reflective caution sign, and came within inches of glancing off the wall. The painted faces of a nun and bishop stared at her with concern.
She shifted back to sixth gear and kept to the middle of the road as it snaked back and forth down the hill. She glanced in her side mirrors. The trucks were strung out behind her as two sets of headlights.
“Where’s the hoverbike?” Olivia focused back on the upcoming bend. Did hoverbikes have headlights?
“I don’t know,” Alita said. “The bitch took off on it.”
Had the woman gone after Duff?
No, probably not. With three trucks to command, the woman could have split her forces more evenly. If she was after Duff, she would have taken at least one truck with her. The woman might be able to see the future but she had been as easy to distract as a bird dog. She’d spotted the fleeing rabbit and given chase, sure that it was what she was after. Her focus now probably was on how she could stop Olivia. She would have seen that Olivia would choose to run downhill. Did the female know where this chase would lead?
Olivia had no clue. She was merely running blind. Was that wise? Should she know where she was trying to get to? Not the hotel where Tommy’s family lived—she couldn’t risk leading the oni back to it.
Maybe not choosing a destination would be the best way to outmaneuver a woman who could see where they planned to go. She’d focus on scraping off the two remaining box trucks. How could she stop them? Olivia was sure hers was the more durable vehicle as it was built for actual combat duty. She couldn’t play demolition derby with the enemy, though, without serious risk to her passengers.
The oni apparently didn’t share her concern. The lead truck surged forward, jockeying to close on her on the left.
Yellow hazard signs warned of another sharp, forty-five-degree curve to the right ahead. To the left, a narrow sidewalk was all that separated the street from houses and apartment buildings. On the right, there was only darkness beyond the sidewalk as if the land dropped off to a cliff. The dark and the rain kept her from seeing how big the drop was. Considering the steepness of the hill, it could be anywhere from a ten-foot drop to a fifty-foot one. At one time there was railing to protect pedestrians but it was gone. Going off the road on either side was deadly even without the added danger that the oni represented.
Olivia whimpered as she downshifted to power through the turn; she needed to worry about staying on the road over what the oni were doing. It slowed her speed, allowing the lead oni to close the gap until it was almost even with her.
“He’s coming! He’s coming!” Alita warned as Olivia started to crank the steering wheel hard to the right around the next steep curve.
In her sideview mirror, Olivia saw the lead truck swerve toward her, attempting to ram her back end.
“Help me!” she cried to Zippo as she stomped on the gas pedal. They had to dodge right to evade the oni.
“I don’t actually know how to drive,” Zippo said as he pulled hard on the wheel.
Too hard.
They veered off the road.
Everyone yelped in fear as the truck mounted the sidewalk.
“Back! Back!” Olivia cried as they crossed the sidewalk. “Good Lord, save us!”
A miracle happened—there was a parking lot beyond the sidewalk. Their headlights swept over the small store painted all black as she and Zippo wheeled to the left. The building had “350” written in big numbers.
The oni had swerved with them, still trying to ram as they went off the road. It skidded on the wet pavement and smashed through a wooden fence at the far edge of the parking lot. It disappeared into the darkness beyond with a loud crash.
“I think they’re out of the running,” Alita said staring back.
“Still one left,” Olivia said.
“Two,” Alita said. “There’s the hoverbike—someplace.”
Assuming that the woman was even giving chase. There was a possibility that her sudden outcry about mice meant that she realized that she was needed elsewhere.
The road was steep and straight ahead. The houses lining the street stopped. Trees pressed in close on the little-used road, branches forming a tight, dark tunnel. The remaining oni truck followed close on her tail, weaving back and forth, trying to find a way to pull even with her. It forced her to weave, trying to keep it blocked.
Her headlights picked out arrows indicating that the road curved to the left ahead. SLIPPERY WHEN WET signs joined the warning arrows pointing left. The road curved and curved until she was sure that they were going to do a full 180-degree turn.
The remaining oni truck suddenly sped up and rammed her from behind. She struggled to keep on the wet slippery curving road while speeding up, out of the oni’s reach.
“Fine,” she whispered. “Demolition derby it is.”
“What?” Alita shouted.
“Brace yourselves!” Olivia gave everyone a few seconds to prepare.
The oni surged forward, trying to ram her again. She jerked to the left to hug the inside curve and slammed on her brakes. Immediately she needed to downshift to keep from stalling as the truck slid forward on the wet pavement.
The oni had been speeding up to ram her again. It missed her by inches. It took off her side mirror as it passed. She stomped on the gas and wretched the wheel to the right, aiming for a solid glancing blow to its butt. With the big engine and cavernous box back, the pivot of the oni truck would be in the front. At high speed on the sharp turn, the nudge was enough. The driver-side back wheels lifted from the road and the whole truck started to tip.
Olivia was too busy fighting to keep control of her vehicle to watch the resulting crash. The glancing blow ricocheted her hard to the left. It careened her into a narrow side street.
“Oh, he’s down!” Alita proclaimed, hanging out the passenger window to watch the crash. “Where are we going?”
“I have no idea,” Olivia admitted.
“I told you this place is a maze once you get off South Eighteenth Street,” Alita said. “There’s a lot of dead ends.”
The one-way street was straight, narrow, and level as if built on a shelf in the hillside. There were empty lots here and there, giving view to the river valley below. As lightning lit up the night, they caught glimpses of South Side still far below them. There seemed to be a ravine or something between the street that they were on and the river bottom.
Olivia drove a long way, three or four blocks at least, without seeing a way off the narrow lane. The first side street was even more narrow. Olivia drove past it, fearing that it might lead to a dead end. A few hundred feet after it, the road branched into a steep uphill climb and the slalom run downhill.
“Downhill. I think,” Alita said as Olivia slowed down to give herself time to consider the choices.
A hundred feet or more and the road branched again. To the right was a bridge over the ravine while to the left-hand branch was an extremely narrow and weedy road heading uphill.
Olivia chose to go downhill again, over the bridge. A few minutes later they reached the flat city-grid of South Side—someplace.
“This is South Twelfth Street!” Alita said at one corner. “I know where we are. Where should we go?”
Duff had said that the elves in the forest needed a train. Until he got his radio set back up, he couldn’t coordinate with the Resistance. If Olivia had failed to distract the oni from Duff and his equipment, then maybe no one would ever know that the domana needed help.
“We’re going to Penn Station,” Olivia said.