Descending Road - THE GAUNTLET by Dana W. Paxson

THE GAUNTLET

2414 CE

For security, Miriam‘s apartment tower had no windows in its stairwells, and now, no light of any kind – the emergency lamps had been ransacked the year before. Without power for the elevator, she would have to fumble her way down forty flights of steel steps in near-total blackness.

Miriam muttered a curse, checked and pocketed her automatic pistol, and pushed her apartment’s steel door shut behind her. She eased silently down the pitch-dark stairs, listening; sometimes the gangs hung here, waiting for traffic during outages. In the streets now she would find wounded, macerated by carbon-wire sprays into ground meat; debriding the chewed flesh from just one person would take hours, and leave permanent gaps in the body.

She thought back a year and a half: Edward, her brother, stopping in a street to pick up a wounded child, a zippergun blast tearing away half his neck. The medics had stuck him in the regen vats anyway, hoping for the best, but three days later he’d died.

When she was done with today’s load of victims, she would break shift and come back, and wait for the electric power to start up again. The stars, or someplace closer, she didn’t care, as long as she could get to where people valued life, where her work would mean something. She could finally marry Allan, and have his babies, and make a family that wouldn’t be killed while she watched. Just maybe.

A few stairwell lights glowed again, weakly, just as she reached the ground floor. Daylight gleamed in; the kick-dented door to the outside was open a crack, heavy tape slapped on its double catches to prevent the door from locking shut. Apprehensive, she felt for the automatic, hating the concession to violence it forced on her. She’d only had to use it once, when she’d fired in the air and scared off an approaching youth with a steel pipe in his hand. She still didn’t know what she’d have done if he’d kept on coming.

She put her free hand on the door and peered out through the crack. The firefight had died down. An occasional pop from far off signaled snipers, but the sound was too faint for them to be ranging where she had to go. No zipperguns.

A moan, then another, louder: wounded nearby. She pressed on the heavy door, urging it slowly open, mentally rechecking the contents of her medpack.

He was about fifty yards out from her tower, face down on the sidewalk approaching the main entrance. He picked up his head and moaned again, bubbling, peering around blindly with a face ground into a featureless mass. A coating of summer dust from the sidewalk frosted the fleshy bulges in what had been a normal face, accenting a long horizontal rip from one cheek to the other into a huge, grotesque smiling mouth.

Story List	SURPRISE ME	Author Page
USER SURVEY	PUZZLE ME	MAKE ELM MARK

HOVER Lucida Bright BARE	HOVER Lucida Bright FULL	HOVER Palatino Linotype BARE
HOVER Palatino Linotype FULL	HOVER Times New Roman BARE	HOVER Times New Roman FULL
PAD Arial BARE	PAD Arial FULL	PAD Lucida Bright BARE
PAD Lucida Bright FULL	PAD Times New Roman BARE	PAD Times New Roman FULL


	THE GAUNTLET 2414 CE For security, Miriam‘s apartment tower had no windows in its stairwells, and now, no light of any kind – the emergency lamps had been ransacked the year before. Without power for the elevator, she would have to fumble her way down forty flights of steel steps in near-total blackness. Miriam muttered a curse, checked and pocketed her automatic pistol, and pushed her apartment’s steel door shut behind her. She eased silently down the pitch-dark stairs, listening; sometimes the gangs hung here, waiting for traffic during outages. In the streets now she would find wounded, macerated by carbon-wire sprays into ground meat; debriding the chewed flesh from just one person would take hours, and leave permanent gaps in the body. She thought back a year and a half: Edward, her brother, stopping in a street to pick up a wounded child, a zippergun blast tearing away half his neck. The medics had stuck him in the regen vats anyway, hoping for the best, but three days later he’d died. When she was done with today’s load of victims, she would break shift and come back, and wait for the electric power to start up again. The stars, or someplace closer, she didn’t care, as long as she could get to where people valued life, where her work would mean something. She could finally marry Allan, and have his babies, and make a family that wouldn’t be killed while she watched. Just maybe. A few stairwell lights glowed again, weakly, just as she reached the ground floor. Daylight gleamed in; the kick-dented door to the outside was open a crack, heavy tape slapped on its double catches to prevent the door from locking shut. Apprehensive, she felt for the automatic, hating the concession to violence it forced on her. She’d only had to use it once, when she’d fired in the air and scared off an approaching youth with a steel pipe in his hand. She still didn’t know what she’d have done if he’d kept on coming. She put her free hand on the door and peered out through the crack. The firefight had died down. An occasional pop from far off signaled snipers, but the sound was too faint for them to be ranging where she had to go. No zipperguns. A moan, then another, louder: wounded nearby. She pressed on the heavy door, urging it slowly open, mentally rechecking the contents of her medpack. He was about fifty yards out from her tower, face down on the sidewalk approaching the main entrance. He picked up his head and moaned again, bubbling, peering around blindly with a face ground into a featureless mass. A coating of summer dust from the sidewalk frosted the fleshy bulges in what had been a normal face, accenting a long horizontal rip from one cheek to the other into a huge, grotesque smiling mouth.