Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

with
sand
?” I asked.
    She shrugged, shaking her head. “I don’t know. I just remember staring down in a daze. I didn’t even scream. Being mildly high helped.”
    I started walking again. She joined me. “Am I in this story?” I asked.
    “Yeah, I was getting to you.”
    “Keep talking,” I said. “It’s just getting good.”
    She went on.
    Tony was so full of sand, she said, that his belly looked distended with it. She backed away from the bizarre sight. She wanted to comfort him, but she could not. She was so stunned and horrified by what she saw—something that could not be.
    When Tony had finally stopped squirming and lay still, she remembered the second man and stepped around the car to where I lay.
    “You were a crumpled lump on the concrete,” she told me. “Really, I can’t understand how you are walking next to me now. You were in worse shape than Tony—but you weren’t choking out sand. You had a lot of cuts and bruises and your leg was twisted at an impossible angle.”
    “What did you do?” I asked.
    “I made sure you were breathing,” she said. “After that, I thought I recognized you. I knelt beside you and realized who you were. It took me a minute or so, but I rememberedyour picture from your blog, which I’d spent some time reading when I was trying to understand Lavita’s murder.”
    “Did you call the cops?”
    Holly flicked her eyes downward, to the street. “I didn’t have to. Someone else did. There were others around, everyone had a phone. The cops showed up pretty fast. I’d say they were patrolling just a block or two away when they got the call.”
    I nodded. It was the kind of territory cops liked to cruise through. “So,” I said, glancing at her. “You took off, right?”
    Holly squirmed uncomfortably. “Well, look. I was high, trying to turn my first trick, and had just witnessed my second freaky murder of the season. Wouldn’t you be walking away fast?”
    “I guess I might.”
    “OK then. You have to understand, Draith, it wasn’t about you or Tony. The cops are edgy these days. They don’t like whatever it is that’s going on in this town. Out on these streets at two in the morning, nobody wants to meet up with the law.”
    Holly suddenly stopped walking. “This is the spot,” she said.
    I halted in surprise. I looked around. There was the lamppost. It hadn’t been sheared off, but there was a big gouge in the paint and a dent at the base. I could see white lines scratched into the concrete where the metal roof of the sliding car had scarred it.
    “You got away from the cops and walked home then?” I asked. I walked around the lamppost, but didn’t get any special memories from the location.
    “No, it was already too late for that. There was a cruiser coming up behind me, I heard the engine purring. There were more cars behind that first one too. I could hear them,but I didn’t dare glance back. Flashing blue and red lights washed all over these walls.”
    I looked at her, surprised. “More than one car, that fast?”
    “Yeah. There were no sirens, just flashers, engines, and radios that buzzed with the voices of dispatchers. They always come in packs, you know?” Holly reflected. “Lately, they like to come in overwhelming numbers, like sharks scenting blood.”
    “They questioned you?”
    “They did more than that. They took me in. The cops in this town are bastards, Quentin. I think they’ve all gone bad.”
    I nodded thoughtfully. I doubted I’d ever meet a stripper who was in love with the law. But I didn’t press her further, as I had heard enough. She had certainly kept up her part of the bargain.
    All the rest of the way to her place, I thought about Holly’s incredible story. People inexplicably smashed to pulp. Tony Montoro’s body being filled with sand. She had found Tony and me on the sidewalk and watched Tony die. I wouldn’t have believed a word of it if I hadn’t just been transported across a building and opened a safe with what appeared to be a magical pair of sunglasses.
    Eventually, Holly pointed at a sagging apartment complex from the middle of the last century. “My place is on the second floor,” she said.
    As we walked up the cement steps, I asked, “Did you leave me a flower?”
    Holly shrugged. “Yeah. I went to Memorial Hospital to find out if Tony made it after the police let me go. Hedidn’t. They said you were alive, but hadn’t had any visitors. I felt sorry for you.”
    “So…you