But it was too late for that, too. They weren’t all in the trap car; one of them had been hidden somewhere else nearby, on foot, and he got to my door before I could lock it and yanked it open and lunged in at me. I fought him, but he was big, bull-strong: I had an impression of youth, of mindless exhilaration at what he was doing. He got one hand on the collar of my suit jacket, the other bunched in my hair, and hauled me out of the car.
The other two were there by then, big and young like the first one—faceless shapes in the darkness, without humanity of any kind, a trio of androids programmed for violence while the one who had activated them stood off somewhere, maybe watching, maybe not, depending on his stomach for this kind of thing. I fought all three of them in a kind of frenzy and for a few seconds I held my own, I did some damage: kicked one of them somewhere in the body, heard him grunt, hit another one in the face and felt his spittle spray my cheek. But I had no real chance against them, none at all. One of them kicked my legs out from under me and once they got me down on the ground I was finished.
I kept trying to fight, trying to get my legs under me again—until one of them hit me or kicked me in the head, full-force, behind the right ear. Then everything went a little crazy. I heard somebody yelling … and it was me because there was blood in my mouth and throat and my voice got caught in it, mired in it, and I felt as if I were strangling. All three of them were using their feet on me now and out of the pain and the craziness a thought swirled up: Cover your head, cover your groin, don’t let them hurt you down there. I managed to roll onto my side, to curl up with one arm over my head, one hand covering my privates. And they kept kicking me, and after awhile I stopped feeling anything and just lay there curled like a fetus with the blood raging in my ears, gagging, fighting desperately not to cry or whimper, I will not cry or whimper, I will not give them the satisfaction of that. Then they weren’t kicking me anymore and one of them was shouting something; but I couldn’t understand him and when he realized that he got down beside me, rolled me onto my back, yelled his message in my ear. Even then the words were filtered through the blood-roar, so that only some of them got through to me.
“Lay off,” he seemed to be saying. “No more investigate. Understand ? No more, drop the Purcell, next time kill you, understand?”
I passed out.
I must have passed out because the next thing I was aware of was pain, savage and pulsing in my left side, my head, my left hand. But nobody was hurting me anymore, or looming over me or shouting at me, and I sensed they were gone. I was still lying on my back, choking a little on my own blood. I turned my head, coughed my throat clear.
Quiet now, no more roaring in my ears, just the far-off warning blast from a locomotive. Hear that lonesome whistle blow, ask not for whom it blows it blows for thee, oh God they did a job on me, they beat me good, what if I wet my pants? I was suddenly terrified that I had lost control of my bladder. I felt down there—and I was dry. That calmed me, made me more lucid. I tried to open my eyes; the right one was stuck shut and when I put my hand up to it it felt swollen, sticky. Through the other eye I could see the clouds moving overhead, then a little of the crescent moon, then only the restless clouds again. The locomotive’s air horn sounded another time. Couplings clattered distantly; there was the steel-on-steel rattle of a train moving through the night.
I rolled over onto my side. The pain was so bad I almost bit through my lower lip. But I couldn’t just lie there, it was cold, I was aware of the cold all at once and I started to shake. Freeze to death out here. I tried to get up; the pain drove me back down again. I looked around for my car and it was there, over near the loading dock, driver’s door shut; the headlights were dark, they’d shut them off before they left because lights might attract attention. It seemed a long way off, halfway across the world. Phone, the mobile phone … what if they’d disabled it? Can’t drive in this condition. Can’t even walk.
I started crawling toward the car. It was slow work; I blacked out once, or maybe it was twice, and all the way the pain was like something eating at me, something tearing at me with claws and a muzzle that was smeared with my blood.
Pay for this, Dessault. Make you pay for this.
And I kept crawling, and finally I reached the door and pulled myself up a little at a time until I could take hold of the handle and depress the latch and pull it open. I crawled up onto the seat in stages, using the door handle and then the steering wheel. Lay there gasping, hurting.
The phone, pick it up.
Picked it up. Listened.
Working, it still worked.