The blood filled me with worry about them, but the fact that they and the van were gone was a good sign.
I hurried around the pile of rubble and stopped in my tracks.
Visible through the dusty air was Dymphna’s body, splayed out, tangled in the bent and bloody plant racks. Blood pooled on the floor below her. The irrigation tubes were now thoroughly mixed with it, bright red against the green plants.
For a moment, I was overcome with sorrow and anger. I didn’t want to just leave her there, but I knew I didn’t have a choice—and I didn’t have time, either. There was no sign of Stan, or the creeper.
“Rex?” I called out, my voice unsteady. Then I took a deep breath, and called out more forcefully, “Dara?”
I heard the low thrum of a heavy drone fast approaching, and I ducked back behind the rubble as a police drone entered the building through the missing windows. Its rotors stirred up more dust, thickening the air with it. A powerful spotlight came on, and I ducked farther back when I saw that its canons were out.
The drone spun in a slow circle, pausing several times as it took in the scene, then it zipped back out the window.
I needed to get out of there before the police showed up for real.
I took one last look at Dymphna, then I turned and ran back down the stairs. At the bottom, I paused long enough to count the drones circling the building—there were three now. I waited until none were in sight. Then I started running.
The vertical farm had the river on one side and was surrounded on the other three by blocks of flood-plain housing, up on stilts. But it was separated from all of that by a wide buffer of open space. I felt small and exposed and vulnerable as I ran across it, between the bridge looming in the sky ahead of me and the police drones angrily buzzing circles around the farm behind me. I ran full out. Imagining those drones coming after me with their big guns helped me go a little faster.
I eased up half a step when I reached the first block of stilt houses, and another half a step after I had zigged and zagged a few blocks into the tightly packed maze of streets. A few people peered out their windows at me, looking scared and suspicious, but the streets and sidewalks were deserted.
By the time I reached the bridge, I was running for distance and no longer for speed. I climbed the ancient steps up to the pedestrian walkway, overlooking the roadway, which was a blur of speeding cars below.
There was a decent breeze up there, and I fell into what I hoped seemed like a casual jog. I ran with my head down, not even looking up as other joggers and walkers passed me going the other way.
When I got to the middle of the bridge, I stopped to catch my breath and to look back at the vertical farm. I spotted it immediately, a glass enclosed building with a greenish tinge from the plants behind the glass. Dust still drifted out of the gaping hole where the windows were missing, mixing with the black smoke rising from the wreckage of the drone and Jerry’s truck. I counted ten drones buzzing around the building: some were frenetic police drones with flashing lights, and the others, I suspected, were media drones hovering to capture 3D holo-footage. There were also full-sized crew copters, both in the air and on the ground. In the distance, a few gray smudges drifted up into the sky, smoke from brush fires most likely. A few more rose up on the Philadelphia side of the river, beyond the city. There seemed to be a lot more copter traffic than usual, including a swarm over by the Convention Center and buzzing around Wells Tower.
Off to my left, the clouds parted over South Philadelphia, letting down a shaft a bright sunlight that swept across the row homes, lighting up the brick walls and silver roofs. The sunbeam slipped across a smaller glass tower and caught an angle, flaring bright for a moment before moving along, then disappearing altogether, as the clouds closed up.
My breathing slowed, then sped up again, as the adrenaline ebbing from my body was replaced by a rise of emotion. My eyes streamed with tears. I had barely known Dymphna, but she was family. I had wanted to open my heart to her, to connect, to make up for lost time, on some level maybe even to recapture a piece of my father. Maybe to apologize for being so demanding when I didn’t have the full picture. Maybe to give her a chance to apologize to Mom and Trudy for how she had hurt the family, or at least to explain.
And now she was dead, and my father, in ways, had died a little bit all over again.
I forced myself to get it together, afraid that standing on the middle of a bridge, bawling my eyes out, someone might try to come help me. With a sigh, I wiped the tears from my eyes, and the sweat that quickly replaced them. Then I put my head down and started running again.
FORTY
I needed to find Rex. If he was okay, he’d probably go to either his apartment or the coffee shop, both in Silver Garden. From there he’d call my house. I thought about finding a phone to try to contact him, but I was desperate to find him, and I didn’t want to run any farther out of my way to locate a phone.
At the end of the bridge, there was a cluster of police vehicles, lights flashing, more than the usual one or two that were always there. I ran past them without glancing over, and as I exited the walkway, I felt a moment of relief. The whole time I’d been up on the bridge, I’d been worried in the back of my mind that the drones or the cops or Wells’s hench-assholes might still find me. Now I was pretty sure they wouldn’t. At least, not immediately.
That relief was fleeting as I picked up a distressing vibe on the street.
I ran up Vine Street to Ridge Avenue, one of the old diagonals that cut across the city all the way out past the ice cream place. This portion of the road was densely built up with apartment hives, tiny affordable housing units, mostly for people working service jobs in the towers or tourist spots.
One of the hives was surrounded by caution tape and police cars and other official vehicles with flashing lights on their tops. As I jogged past, I saw that some of them were from the Pennsylvania Department of Public Health.
My skin prickled as I wondered what that was about. I could feel trouble gathering in the air. It reminded me of the feeling on the street when the Genetic Heritage Act was passed in the fall, right before the riots.
A trio of police cars zipped past me, accompanying an ambulance. A few blocks up, I passed another hive, another scene eerily similar to the last one.
The hives in this neighborhood were virtually identical, built at the same time by the same developer based on the same design. This block had the same caution tape, the same circle of vehicles and flashing lights. But as I ran past this one, the front door opened and a small knot of figures in biohazard-type suits emerged carrying a stretcher holding a body bag.
A feeling of intense dread stopped me in my tracks, and I stood there for a brief moment, watching. Then I took off at a sprint.
Rex’s apartment was closer than the coffee shop, so that’s where I headed first. The nearer I got, the more frantically I ran.
He had given me a key to his apartment, and my hands shook as I fumbled with the lock on the front door. When I finally got it open, I charged up the steps—two at a time—to the third floor. I fumbled with the keys once again, but before I could unlock his apartment door, it swung open, and there he was.
“Jimi!” he said, and I saw in his eyes the same deep, intense relief that I felt. “Thank God you’re okay,” he said as I put my arms around him, and he wrapped me up in his.