There were lights now, and large rooms, and I turned off the pointless headlight and went through several of the rooms until I came to a half-open door with a man on his knees, his forehead pressed to the wall.
He had fallen there. He was a large man. There was blood all down his shirt and all over the floor in a fresh wet pool. He had never known what had hit him.
There was another hallway. I went down quickly, and when I came to the end of it, there was a door slightly cracked, and there was light coming out of it. I eased over and touched the door gently, moved it aside.
Looking in, I saw Vanilla Ride squatted on her haunches, the silenced automatic in her gloved hand. Across from her, lying on the floor, her head against a couch, a hand held to her blood-gurgling throat, was Clinton. Her eyes darted toward me. She coughed and blood squirted from between her fingers. There was a little automatic lying on the floor not far from her free hand. Her fingers curled toward it, like a dying spider, but nothing more. A Doberman lay on the floor nearby. Dead, of course.
Vanilla turned her head and looked at me. She said, “You can finish her if you want. If you think it’ll make you feel better.”
I shook my head.
I felt empty standing there watching that woman die. Right then, it didn’t matter to me what she had done. Had I come upon her first, I would have shot her myself, no doubt, but now, looking at the life ease out of her, I just felt confused.
Clinton glanced at Vanilla. She tried to say something. It sounded like “why.”
“Why not?” Vanilla said. Her gun hand flicked up and the silenced weapon made a tubercular noise. Clinton’s body jerked a little. A red spot appeared on her forehead, and whatever muscles were holding her head against the couch released and she rolled over on her face. The blood pooled beneath her. A pool of urine soaked out of her and its smell was rich with ammonia.
Vanilla stood. She looked at me. I can’t describe what I was seeing there, but in that moment she looked much older and stranger and dangerous, a visitor from someplace far beyond Mars.
She said, “Done, and done.”