Free Dreams in the Tower Part 2 by Andrew Vrana Page A

out, the highway was e xtremely busy. Something was very wrong about so many cars going towards the city when the riots were surely well underway by now. She wondered if all these people could be going to join in on the fighting. Reinforcements?
    But she had no time to wonder about it: a distant rumble shook the inside of the car like a brief but rattling earthquake, and the brake lights in front of her became a ruby red snake craw ling swiftly towards her. She had to slam her foot on the brake pedal to avoid crashing into the growing line of cars.
    Adelson, who hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt, smashed forward and yelled, “What the fuck?” All down the highway, people were getting out of their cars and looking towards dow ntown, where a massive column of smoke was billowing up into the starry sky.
    “I don’t know,” Sabrina said. “I—” She stopped abruptly when she felt something wet and slimy cover her face and fill up her mouth. She spit the salty, chunky stuff into her hand and saw among the red a fragment of white clinging to a gray blob. Horrified, she looked over at Adelson, now slumped against the dashboard, and what remained of his head—then she promptly turned away and vomited all over herself, the bile washing out the taste of blood and bone and brain. She hadn’t even heard the shot…
    The driver side door opened swiftly and suddenly. “We got her,” said some deep, muffled voice. She didn’t see the pair of hands that pulled her from the car and threw her face down into the pavement. Nor did she see all the other hands that held her arms and legs and body. She screamed, she struggled, she fought; but when she felt the cold steel around her wrists and ankles she knew it was over.
    By the time the hood blacked out her world the last of her strength had left her.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    17
     
    The hotel they had put Dellia Thomas in was nothing like the musty, mass-produced places Jason and Sabrina had stayed at on their long journey from Los Angeles. The Magnolia Hotel in Houston was in a dusty old building that might have been from the turn of the 20 th century or before: a little piece of history dwarfed by the dense city around it. But as Jason crossed the street from the lot where he had left Sabrina’s car, he saw through the windows that the interior was quite modern and surprisingly upscale. They obviously wanted Dellia to be comfortable; nothing else would justify putting her in a nice room in a risky and soon-to-be very dangerous part of downtown.
    He entered and hurried through the lobby. Even at nearly 3 a.m. there was a sizable group of people standing or sitting around the bar area, probably kept awake by the excitement that was now only a few blocks away. But they were too intent on TVs and tablets to notice him, even though he probably looked a little too much like he didn’t belong in this place with these people. Making it to an empty elevator, he punched the ‘5’ button and rose to meet what would almost certainly become yet a nother frantic flight away from pursuers who seemed to multiply every time he turned around.
    Out of the elevator, he found his way and fast-walked down the hall. When he got to the solemn door to room 518 he paused, looked both ways down the barren hall, and knocked hu rriedly. As if anticipating this, the door opened a crack, catching on the chain, and an unseen woman’s voice said, “Who are you?”
    “ Joans,” he said softly near the crack in the door.
    “And who are you with?”
    That was a good question, and he wasn’t sure how to answer it. So much had changed in just a few short hours. He had to tell her the truth soon anyway, so he decided not to hide anything. “I was with the AC,” he said, “but not anymore. Now I’m with the—the people trying to keep the fight alive. The ones who don’t want to sell you to Silte Corp.” Would she believe that? He didn’t have to wait long to find