Divided in Death (In Death #18)(89)

She choked out a warning for Sparrow to hang on, and through the haze of smoke saw the world revolve. They hit, and the impact snapped her safety harness. She tumbled, stomach pitching, head ringing, and thudded hard on the safety bags that deployed with an explosive snap. The last thing she remembered was the taste of her own blood in her mouth.

***

She wasn't out long, the stink of the smoke, the quality of the screams told her she hadn't lost consciousness more than a minute or two. That, and the fact that the pain hadn't had time to fully process in her brain. Her vehicle-what was left of it-was on its top, like a turtle laying on its shell.

She spat out blood and shifted enough to reach Sparrow, to check for a pulse in his throat. She found a weak one, though her hand came away slick with blood that was still running down his face.

She heard the sirens now, and the rush of feet, the shouted orders that said cops. Dimly she thought, If you are going to take a sudden, unexpected air trip while still in road mode, it is good to do so within a block of Cop Central.

"I'm on the job," she called out and began to try to wriggle her way back, out of the smashed driver door and window. "Dallas, Lieutenant. There's a civilian pinned in here-bleeding bad."

"Take it easy, Lieutenant. MTs are on the way. You probably don't want to move until-"

"Get me the hell out of here." She tried to dig into the roadbed with the toes of her boots, searching for traction. She made it two inches before hands gripped her legs, her hips, and eased her out of the wreckage.

"How bad you hurt?"

She managed to focus on the face, recognized Detective Baxter. "I can still see you, so I'm in considerable pain. But I think I'm just banged up. Passenger's bad."

"They're getting to him."

She winced as Baxter ran his hands over her, checking for breaks. "You better not be using this to cop a feel."

"Just one of those little bonuses life hands you. Got some lacerations, probably going to have contusions all over that nifty bod of yours."

"Shoulder burns."

"You gonna punch me if I take a look?"

"Not this time."

She rolled her head back, closed her eyes as he unbuttoned her ruined shirt. "Friction burns from the harness, looks like," he told her.

"I want to stand up."

"Just take it easy until the medicals look at you."

"Give me a damn hand up, Baxter. I want to see the damage."

He helped her up, and when her vision didn't waver, she figured she'd gotten off lucky.

The same couldn't be said of Sparrow. The passenger side had taken the brunt when it rammed a maxibus on one of its revolutions. Trueheart was working with another uniform to sheer away the metal trapping Sparrow inside.

"He's pinned between the door and the dash," Trueheart called out. "Looks like his leg's broken, maybe his arm, too. But he's breathing."

She stepped back as the MTs hustled up. One wriggled into the driver's side where she'd wriggled out. The calls turned to medical jargon and orders. She heard talk about spinal and neck injuries, and cursed.

Then she looked at the car.

"Holy Jesus Christ."

The front end was all but disintegrated. Metal was blackened, melted, fused to metal. Window glass had gone to powder and continued to smoke.

"It looks like..."

"Like it was hit with a short-range missile," Baxter finished. "You'd be toast if it'd broadsided you instead of skimming the front end. I was heading in to Central, and saw this flash, this streak. Big boom, and a vehicle, yours, flew right over mine. Flew up, came down, flipped three times then spun around like a top. Smashed a couple of civilian vehicles, laid waste to a glide-cart, skipped the curb, skipped back, then plowed into a maxi like a torpedo."

"Civilian casualties?"

"I don't know."

She could see some of the injured, and hear weeping, some screaming. Soy dogs, soft drink tubes, candy sticks were scattered over the street and sidewalk like some nasty buffet.

"Harness held, until the last minute." She wiped absently at a trickle of blood on her temple. "It held, or God knows... Reinforcements in the roof kept us from being crushed like a couple of recycled milk cartons. Major damage on the passenger side from the crash. He got the worst of it."

Baxter watched the MTs fix the unconscious man to a back-and-neck board. "Friend of yours?"

"No."

"You piss somebody off enough to fire missiles at you or did he?"

"Good question."

"You need to have the MTs look you over."

"Probably." The pain was seeping through now, making mincemeat of the adrenaline and shock. "I hate that. Really do. And you know what else? The guys in requisitions are going to slap me around for this. They're going to slap me around, then give me some piece of shit transpo to punish me."

She hobbled over to the curb, sat among the confusion and noise. Then sneered in warning at the MT who headed, with his kit, in her direction. "You even think about using a pressure syringe on me," Eve told her, "and I'm taking you down."

"You want the pain, you keep the pain." The MT shrugged and opened his kit. "But let's have a look."