SNOW CRASH
“I’m a Crip. We don’t forget nothing,” T-Bone says. “Is that you?”
“No,” Him says. “I’m not there yet.”
A very brief burst of gunfire, rapidly cut off. Suddenly, no one is talking. Him cuts his way into the next row and almost steps on T-Bone’s hand, which has been amputated at the wrist. Its finger is stifi tangled in the trigger guard of a MAC-li.
The remainder of T.Bone is two rows away. Him stops and watches through the vines.
Raven is one of the largest men Hiro has seen outside of a professional sporting event. T.Bone is backing away from him down the row. Raven, moving with long confident strides, catches up with T-Bone and swings one hand up into T.Bone’s body; Hiro doesn’t have to see the knife to know it is there.
It looks as though T.Bone is going to get out of this with nothing worse than a sewn-on hand and some rehab work, because you can’t stab a person to death that way, not if he is wearing armor.
T.Bone screams.
He is bouncing up and down on Raven’s hand. The knife has gone all the way through the bulletproof fabric and now Raven is trying to gut T-Bone the same way he did Lagos. But his knife-whatever the hell it ia-won’t cut through the fabric that way. It is sharp enough to penetrate-which should be impossible-but not sharp enough to slash.
Raven pulls it out, drops to one knee, and swings his knife hand around in a long ellipse between T-Bone’s thighs. Then he jumps over T.Bone’s collapsing body and runs.
Hiro gets the sense that T-Bone is a dead man, so he follows Raven. His intention is not to hunt the man down, but rather to maintain a very clear picture of where he is.
He has to cut through a number of rows. He rapidly loses Raven. He considers running as fast as-he can in the opposite direction.
Then he hears the deep, lung.stretching rumble of a motorcycle engine. Hiro runs for the nearest street exit, just hoping to catch a glimpse.
He does, though it is a quick one, not a hell of a lot better than the graphic in the cop car. Raven turns to look at Hiro, just as he
147