“Crap.” Jack had twisted in his seat, felt a stabbing pain in the stomach, and flinched.
“You all right?” Gypsie-Ann asked, having glanced over from watching the road.
“I’m okay.”
“Wuzzat?” That was the Brick.
“Nothing. We’ll meet you down there, yeah?”
“Yep. PA is headed over. Prob’ly already made it, the way she clocks in her sprints.” A loud click, and both the munching and the line went dead.
“Meet whom, where?” the reporter quizzed.
“The Brick and your sis — d’you know Marty Goodman Drive? Apparently, there’s a crazy Cape riot underway.”
“Do tell? Thought we were going to check up on the Aerialist.”
Jack pondered that. “I know. But she wasn’t home when I called from City Hall — can I try her now on this phone?”
“Sure, I’ll charge it to my boss. Work-related, and all.”
Going through a thankfully different operator, Jack let the phone ring ten times, before hanging up.
“I’d say she’s out for an evening of champagne and cigarettes.” Jack half-snarled this remark, a sour taste in his mouth, brewed with memories of Karl Burghos at the restaurant across the road from Louise’s place and ‘Handsome’ Harry next door. There were plenty of fish to trawl, just outside her window.
“You really have it bad, don’t you?” the reporter said, bearing half a smile as she drove.
“Doesn’t matter how I feel. To Louise, I’m nothing more than a Cape.”
“Have you told her anyway?”
“I tried.”
“Obviously.”
Looking out at the shop fronts they passed, Jack sighed. “I think she’ll have to wait until this blows over. The Brick said there’re a lot of innocent people being hurt.”
“Your call, but there’s nothing like a good bout of street anarchy to help sell papers.”
Gypsie-Ann suddenly put her orange convertible in tyre-squealing reverse, and then did a U-turn — right in front of a truck that had to slam on its brakes.
#161
Having parked overly close to the corner of Newton Place and Maxwell Avenue, Gypsie-Ann Stellar shoved open the driver’s side door and was all prepared to climb out, but then stopped and instead craned her neck. “Is it going to rain?”
“Why’re you asking me?” Jack complained. “I have no idea.” He hopped gingerly from the car, pausing at the kerb next to a waist-high portable pole. It was shaped like a lollipop, with signage on the bulbous round bit at the top reading NO PARKING FROM HERE TO THERE, and someone had scratched into its paintwork that ‘Heidi Sladkin loves Frederick von Frankenstein’.
“Think I’ll bring my brolly just in case,” decided the reporter, just as Jack noticed the lollipop sign had started to wobble unassisted.
“Um…can I ask a question?”
“Not sure that’s fair — you weren’t so friendly with mine. But go on.”
“Heropa doesn’t cop earthquakes, does it?”
“No stress there.”
“Really? Ground’s shaking.”
The reporter stepped up with a man’s black umbrella over her shoulder and slowly looked about at other vibrating signage. “Oh. Yes.”
“Not my imagination?”
“Not unless you’re sharing it round.”
“There’s your reason.” From out of nowhere, Pretty Amazonia had flashed to Jack’s side and pointed to the sky. “All hell’s about to bust loose and kick in some poor sucker’s false teeth.”
“Ye gods.”
Roaring over the skyscrapers were a collection of magnificent flying machines.
Jack spotted three huge dirigibles, an overlarge biplane with ten propellers, a Botanachi DRHC Tilt Rotor, several anti-grav two-seaters, and a baker’s dozen of individual Capes with jetpacks, rocket suits, strap-on helicopter hats, or jerry-rigged hang gliders. There were two distinct waves coming from north and south, and they were headed for one another — directly overhead. More would undoubtedly be approaching on foot.
“Heroes there,” PA nodded in a northerly direction, “Rotters in the south-east. Looks like Rocket Scientist has been busy.”
“He made all those contraptions?” Jack asked, stunned.
“I guess so.”
“This doesn’t augur well.” Gypsie-Ann had been busy counting. “At least forty people — not including however many are inside those blimps.”
“Getting together for a fun-filled reunion ?” Jack optimistically suggested.
“Nah. More a second round o’ fracas an’ bloodshed.” The Brick locked up his car a few metres away and joined the others spectating on the sidewalk. “First time round, they gutted half the neighbourhood, two blocks down, an’ there were only a dozen of ’em. Now we got more’n twice that number. Nuts. Awright — clear as mud what we gotta do.”