Tricky-treaters didn't come knocking on my pillow-fort last night. That's fine by me. I slept well.
I rise with the sun and the dew and the aches of a cold night on a mattress of clothes and towels.
I flip open my comm, and there's a half-doz clippings my agent's found in the night. Five are about the bugouts; I ignore those. One is about the kite.
It crashed around Highway 7 and the 400 in Vaughan, bouncing and skidding. Traffic was light, and though there were a few fender-benders, nothing serious went down. The city dispatched a couple-three guys to go out with solvent and melt the thing, but by the time they arrived, an errant breeze had lofted it again, and it flew another seventy kay, until it crossed the antidebris field at Jean Paul Aristide International in Barrie.
I'm hungry. I'm cold. My teeth are beshitted with scum. Linus comes tripping Noel Coward out of his front door and I feel like kicking his ass. He sees me staring at him.
"Did you have a good night, Maxes?"
"Spiff, strictly nift. Eat shit and die."
He tsks and shakes his head and gets on his bicycle. He works down at Yonge and Bloor, in the big Process HQ. His dad was my dad's lieutenant, and since they both went to the confab on the mothaship (along with all the other grownups on my Chestnut Ave), he's sort of in charge. Shit-eating prick. He lisps a little when he talks, and he's soft and pudgy, not like Dad, who could orate like a Roman tyrant and had a washboard for a gut.
I hope he gets hit by a semi.
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