See this previous post for a communication to any who would join me in writing.  For a thought on David Lynch, see this article.  And see this article to read the story from the beginning.  Meanwhile…

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Without Blasfemia, it was easier to fit everyone into the sedan.  Zochino and Christina rode in the front, Xihuani and Jorge in the back.  They were quiet as hell.  Nobody could hear anything above the siren anyway, but perhaps they hoped to minimize distractions – to sense danger coming.  Or maybe the shock of losing a member of the squad had them all feeling more vulnerable than before.

Searchlights washed over them again and again – automated things with no sensible arc to their movements.  And who even knew how to search for assassins, among all the people who had leapt into motion when the chaos began?  The colors of the world, the shadows of the little angels like bats in the night, the roaring siren fading in and out – it was the vibes of a fireworks show, sliding over the windshield.

Had they really lost a member of the squad?  Blasfemia had always been something apart from the rest.  They were college students; she was a radicalized farm girl, making news for iconoclast terrorism.  They sought her out, in their revolutionary zeal, and collectively talked each other into killing the pope.  Now that they were done with the human weapon, their shared bloodlust was bottoming out, replaced with bone-chilling dread.

The tires of the sedan were designed to minimize damage to the plaza bricks, thousands of independently firing and retracting rubber-tipped spines ringed each wheel.  Unfortunately, the engine was also designed to minimize damage, maxing out at fifteen kilometers per hour.  It was a slow ride to the astropuerto.

The leader of a passing phalanx of soldiers flagged them down.  Zochino stopped the car.  “Be cool.”  He rolled down the window.

“You need help, officer?”  Zochino spoke almost the language of Dio 6, vaticanes, with almost no accent at all.

The soldier raised his visor.  Despite being in charge of ten men, he looked like a boy of seventeen.  Had they called up the trainee classes?  “We need to scan your ID, father.  I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, I can barely hear you over the siren.  You need what?”

“ID!  To scan your ID!”

Zochino nodded, playing the part with a perfection that can sometimes come at the point of a sword.  “Of course.”  He handed the ID of an early victim over to the soldier.  The man scanned it with his mobile, a complex stream of codes and lights reflecting in the shiny surfaces of his helmet.

“Now the others, Father Teodoro, if I may.”  He hadn’t noticed the flag that the real Teodoro Saenzi was missing – a less colorful and obvious flag than the one indicating death.

“I’m sorry.  The noise!”  Zochino gestured vaguely at the sky.

Unknowable radio babble caught the guard’s attention and he waved them by.  After all, looking for six people, not five.  The passengers started breathing again.

They had smuggled themselves to Dio 6 on an astronave shipping grain, and used carefully researched back paths and side halls to creep out of the astropuerto unnoticed.  Their return plans hadn’t accounted for one significant unknown – the capitol’s reaction to a major alarm.  They didn’t know those security protocols at all, and had to hope the return route was still open.

Christina spoke, when the soldiers were small enough in the rear view.  “Sorry I doubted you Chino.  Even if we get caught, no way I could do better.  I wonder if we…”

“Should go back for Blasfemia?  Definitely not.”

“Not that.  I wonder if we did her wrong, by bringing her here.  Maybe she lost it, but maybe she never had it.”

“Crazy?,” Zochino asked.

“Cognitive disability,” said Jorge.  “Has she ever really understood what we were talking about, or did we just fool ourselves into thinking she did?  Maybe we fooled ourselves about a lot of things.”

Christina said, “Crazy.  I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about Jorge.  Anyway, she only sees what she wants from one minute to the next, like a fucking shark.  If we didn’t bust her out, maybe she could’ve had a long life in the looney bin.”

“Don’t care,” said Xihuani.  “I’m sorry, but I can’t.  Let’s just go, please!”

Zochino felt the accelerator under his foot, already flat to the floor.  Useless.  “We could run as fast as this thing drives, but then we’d get there all fucked up and out of breath.  Just a little longer.”  He looked at the vehicles and crowds in the streets, and projected the best way to get past it all – to the extent it was possible.  They’d find out soon enough.  He was frustrated at how much faster he could think than the sedan could drive.

The slow ride, the noise, the lights, the elaborately decorated everything – it struck Xihuani as resembling a theme park for kiddies.  What happens when the theme park is overrun by ogres, and kiddies are on the menu?  The ride crept up the tracks and down again, past the biergarten and the petting zoo, and at last…

Zochino parked the car on a crowded thoroughfare, where many people had no choice but to park, and negotiate with soldiers for a way through.  Only he had no intention of negotiating with anyone.  They joined the crowd, while staying left long enough to disappear behind a tall hedge, then jump a rail.  For all they had been through, no one was injured, and they found it easy to clamber down the curved side of the canal.  They were very exposed then – anybody who happened to look could see them – but it wasn’t so easy from that chaotic street.

They made it to the bridge, which could conceal them as they entered a culvert that ran under the astropuerto.  Free from watching eyes for another good stretch of time, it was a big relief.  Jorge ran out of breath and asked the others to wait up.  As they stood around him, looking on sympathetically, he wondered aloud, “Would it be safer if we just lived down here for a few weeks, and smuggled ourselves out at that point?  I really don’t want to do this next part.”

Zochino shook his head.  “There’s no way to know what the best time will be, but staying on this planet can be nothing but bad.”

“Mmhm.”

Xihuani paced, seemingly immune to sore feet.  “You’re right, you’re right.”  She flexed her hands over and over.  “No safe time, no safe place.  Nowhere in the world.”  The electric lights of the plaza world were receding in the distance, replaced with nothing but the light of their mobiles.  Glints on skin.  The alarm still nearly as loud as at street level, but very different, echoing through the tunnel.

She was giving Jorge a case of nerves, which over-ruled his need for rest.  They moved on.

The culvert opened under a utility courtyard between two equipment silos, with not a soul in sight.  They checked the door they’d used to access the spot from the inside, and the lock was still foiled from their earlier efforts.  From the courtyard, the sound of the alarm was weaker, but something else about it felt off.  They were quick to get indoors, but Jorge paused there, last through the door, and looked at the sky.  Was it his imagination, or were larger forms falling from it now?  Larger angels?

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