Free Blank by Lippe Simone Page B

lighting had burned itself out but Honor could see the only thing she needed to see — the outline of the inevitable receiving door which all professional kitchens use primarily for smoke breaks. She could only guess what lay beyond the door. It sounded like unsuitably skilled workers dismantling a greenhouse but was likely yet more running street battles. But very soon there’d be mindlessly wild and dangerously sober cavemen invading the hotel and in any event Honor had a target and a plan and a BMX bike from the hotel’s lost and found.
     
    Honor and her bike burst from the door not so much prepared for anything but unconcerned what anything might be and so when she found herself jetting off a six-foot concrete loading bay as though off the side of a cliff she maintained control of the bike and hit the ground with the wobbly confidence of a natural cyclist on a pint of bourbon. She quickly recovered her balance and peddled with the strength and speed so often consequential of being instantly pursued by a high-density mob of mindless neanderthals with a paleolithic sense of the romantic.
     
    Just as she’d recognized the zoo and the interior of a Ferrari with no memory of ever having seen either, Honor knew exactly where she was going and what she was going to do when and if she got there. She was going to the police station, and she was going to get a gun.
     
    As keenly as Honor was recollecting the path back to the LAPD headquarters she’d passed on her way onto Broadway, the actual measure in distance was proving elusive. Partially because she was quite drunk but mostly because she was backtracking on a bicycle a route previously charted from the luxury of a Harley Davidson. She could see the revolutionarily ugly glass triangle jutting from its cinder block housing like a gargantuan broken widget and knew that she must be approaching police headquarters from the rear, which was roughly the plan, but it seemed to get no closer.
     
    Of appreciably greater concern was the growing density of the street-fighting which Honor was having more and more difficulty dodging as her lungs and legs began to submit to the stress and heat. So long as she was able to keep to a pace just a notch above a breathless sprint then even those who noticed her and gave chase soon abandoned the pursuit but the factions were sweeping the streets in shoals now.
     
    Suburban dads were the main occupying force, holding store fronts and upper floors and exploring the military applications of fire and throwing heavy things out of windows. A crack team of road workers was maneuvering against the small but select collection of women being archived by the staff of a condominium showroom. A regiment of confederate soldiers — almost certainly movie extras — were entrenching their positions in a pitched battle with a leathery corp of farm workers for control of a truckload of tomatoes.
     
    As she soldiered on Honor noticed the high ratio of policemen among the rioters and reflected on the brutality they’d brought down on the heads of the Hare Krishna. She realized that her plan of riding a bicycle into the city’s highest concentration of policemen was exactly the sort of strategy conceived by people who’d just pounded a pint of Bourbon.
     
    She estimated, probably optimistically, that she could keep her diminished pace for another mile and began to look for shelter. The closest option that didn’t require riding up stairs or through a fountain was an open underground parking garage and she steered toward the ramp and disappeared into the darkness.
     
    She bore deep into the back of the garage. No one followed and as near as could be determined in the darkness she was alone. And there were cars everywhere, she needed only choose one. She cast a discerning eye for something that had the firepower she’d need to get through the immobile traffic and found herself harboring sentimental thoughts of the bulldozer she’d abandoned at the zoo.