The Guts of a Beggar

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"Will you keep your yarmulka on, Rabbi?"

Nell slammed another clip into her Schneider Corpus Christi. The tang of gun-smoke was harsh against the back of her throat. The bureau she had hurriedly thrown against the double doors to the office would at best slow the assailants. They were 'Morphs; she was sure of that now. She crouched, wincing as her left leg reminded her that it had taken a bullet in the furious fray downstairs. It was in good company, she thought.

The Ha Aheret David had not yet recovered from the awful astonishment of Ruth Weissmann's suicide when the black-cowled figures had attacked the fortified house by night. The earlier discovery of several nerve gas munitions around London was occupying the police. Nell was alone in the office with the Hammer horror extras outside closing in. The Rabbi, cowering in the corner reciting Hebrew hocus-pocus, was more of a liability than a help.

"Sh'ma Yisroel, Adonai elohaynu..."

"Shut your norf, Rabbi."

"...Adonai ehod..."

Nell tuned out the ramblings of the grief-stricken, terrified man and focused, down the muzzle of her pistol, at the door. There was a predictable crash as the door wrenched at its hinges. Nell breathed deeply and waited for the next impact. It was slow in coming.

Hi-X, she thought, as the room shook violently. The doors hung on their hinges; the bureau was in splinters. Three figures appeared in the smoke-filled portal, already drawing their own beads on the Ronin with their submachine-guns, probably DSE 10mil AP6es, Nell thought.

The first one she dropped before he could snap a shot off, the muzzle smoke blossoming in slow-motion silver and a crimson flowering mist where the man's head had been, the crack and the kick echoing around Nell's battered bio-enhanced body.

Then she was adjusting her aim to crack off two more shots at the others, diving left as they hosed her with fire.

Her wounded leg betrayed her, and even as she watched the point-and-click crumpling of the bastards shooting at her (no sound anymore, she thought, why don't I hear the guns?) she knew that they were not missing either. She sprawled on her back in a rapidly spreading pool of blood. They had fired low; her legs and lower abdomen were in ribbons. It did not seem as though her enhanced skeleton had shattered, although there would be some more superficial fractures.

She was tired. She thought she might sleep. But someone was stepping into the room, over the three bodies in the doorway. Four more spooky black-robes. 'Hallowe'en, ain't 'til mañana.'

The lead figure lowered his hood. He held Weissmann's gaze like a python. Even though his face was painted with ash and chalk in the primitive likeness of a skull, his hair slicked back with clotted blood, Nell immediately registered the resemblance. The nose was more defined, the figure taller, leaner, but it was the old man she had killed but in his youth.

Petrified by the phantom figure's stare, Weissmann croaked,

"Where's my son?"

Nell was having trouble following these proceedings. She was forcing herself to remain conscious. Obviously, none of these loons were paying her any attention. That made her dangerous if she could keep it together long enough to seize the moment.

The young 'old man' replied,

"At supper."

The voice was calm and mocking, as though enjoying some enigmatic private joke.

"At supper! Where?" implored the Rabbi, half-sobbing with desperation.

The other man clapped his hand against his forearm and barked an exuberant laugh.

"Not where he eats, but where he is eaten."

Right, thought Nell, the figure's gun pointed at the ceiling whilst he enjoyed his clever little witticism. She swung her arm up to fire at the man. Even as she did this she saw his arm drop lazily, his AP6 spit out a fusillade of tungsten-tipped ten millimetre rounds.

The scene was all wrong. There was no gun down which she was looking at a falling figure. No loud report of her high-calibre pistol. She took stock of the vista in front of her, dissolving into blurred milkiness. Her right arm stopped at the elbow. The hand that held the pistol lay, as the pistol had done, on the floor to her right.

The robed warrior had not even looked at her.

Stay with it Nell, she told herself.

He had not even looked.

"You have your mother's eyes," Weissmann had whispered.

"You killed my mother," came the oh-so-cool reply.

"She deserved to die, the adulterous shiksa."

Silence. Nell closed her eyes for a moment. She was tired and everything was blurred. She just wanted to clear her vision but she found that they would not open again.

"And your father!" Weissmann screamed.

"You deceive yourself, teacher. You did not kill my father out of vengeance. You killed him because you feared him. He would have been more merciful than I shall be. It was a mistake."

There was silence again. Even the voices were indistinct to Nell now. She was so sleepy. Yoshio, I need you.

"What are you going to do to me?"

"Bring him."

Silence. Yoshio, where are you? I miss you.

Silence.

Yoshio!

Geoff Hinkley, 29/10/00

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