Resistance by John Birmingham Read Free Book Online Page B

them flow out into the world all at once, and let the world flow back in on him at the same time.
    He took the time to count the number of agents. There were thirteen of them in the room, including Trinder, and more outside. Men and women. They weren’t blank-faced automatons. One little cutie, some Asian chick, was rockin’ a face tattoo. Trinder was caught mid-snarl, jabbing one pudgy finger at Armando who had his elbow buried deep in the face of the suit standing next to him, attempting to restrain him. Maybe Armando had had just about enough of being treated like a pussy, thought Dave. Because it looked like he was one of those gay guys who spent a lot of time doing karate or krav maga or something. He’d struck clean and hard, breaking the agent’s nose and splitting his upper lip where it had been crushed against his teeth. Dave paused for a moment to appreciate the glistening arc of blood droplets and spittle blooming from the point of impact.
    Nice work, Armando.
    It was as though everybody in the room – everybody in the whole world, he presumed – was caught, suspended in a thick, invisible gel through which he alone could pass without hindrance. He smiled appreciatively at the muscles standing out on Georgia’s legs as she launched herself toward her cameraman, whose face was a pale mask punctured by the rictus of his mouth as he cried out in pain. Turned out Foxy Knoxy was quite the hellcat out of bed as well as in it. He couldn’t help giving her a playful squeeze on the rump as he moved past to disarm an agent who was pointing a pistol at Armando.
    An older, redundant instinct almost tricked him into slapping the weapon out of the hand of the unmoving agent but he caught himself at the last second. If he chopped this guy’s arm, he’d probably sever it at the point of impact, and not cleanly. And for sure the damned gun would have gone off anyway as the agent’s fingers spasmed with the trauma.
    Instead, Dave took a few seconds of his own time, long enough for him to detect the slightest incremental changes in everybody’s positions, to place one hand over the top of the pistol, forcing the muzzle to point down at a large leather couch in one corner, and away from all of the people he had effectively paused mid-heartbeat. Only when he was sure an accidental discharge wouldn’t blow a dirty great hole in anybody, including any of Trinder’s people, did he give the agent a quick, light tap on the bicep. He had to wait a little while for the signals to travel slowly through the man’s nervous system, into his brain and back down into the muscle, giving Dave another chance to take in the scene around him. He frowned at the deep, low frequency hum which he assumed to be the radically throttled down sounds of chaos. And he grinned at the ferocious, almost animalistic set of Igor’s features compared to the goofy, disarming smile with which Chief Allen was responding to a couple of agents who were attempting to get them to back away from the door. He tried to make sense of the entourage – his entourage, he reminded himself – who were still trying to get to him in spite of this added complication. Some of them were waving papers at him. One had a fistful of hundred dollar bills.
    Then he felt the agent’s gun hand relax slowly, but appreciably. Just enough for him to twist the weapon out of the man’s grip without breaking his fingers. He turned and walked back toward Trinder. He had to stop and take a few moments of his own accelerated time to locate the gun’s safety and click it on, or what he hoped was on, before decelerating in front of the boss hog and slamming the solid lump of metal down on a small, nearby table like a judge’s gavel. The report was almost as loud as a gunshot, and split the wooden tabletop with a terrible, secondary crack. But it had the desired effect as Dave yelled out, ‘Enough!’
    He had the weird, discontinuous experience of seeing everybody speed up and then