SNOW CRASH

292

One of the Fed creeps is nice enough to open the office door for her. He comes into the room with his gun already drawn, backed up by half a dozen other guys who’ve flocked here from the office pool, and she just lets them have it with the Liquid Knuckles. Whoosh, it’s like bug spray. The sound of bodies hitting the floor is like a bass drum roll. She finds that her skateboard has no problem rolling across their prone bodies, and then she’s out into the office pool. These guys are converging from all sides, there’s an incredible number of them, she just keeps holding that button down, pointed straight ahead, digging at the floor with her foot, building up speed. The Liquid Knuckles acts like a chemical flying wedge, she’s skating out of there on a carpet of bodies. Some of the Feds are agile enough to dart in from behind and try to get her that way, but she’s ready with the bundy stunner, which turns their nervous systems into coils of hot barbed wire for a few minutes but isn’t supposed to have any other effects.

She’s made it about three-quarters of the way across the office when the Liquid Knuckles runs out. But it still works fora second or two because people are afraid of it, keep diving out of the way even though there’s nothing coming out. Then a couple of them figure it out, make the mistake of trying to grab her by the wrists. She gets one of them with the bundy stunner and the other with the electric manacle. Then boom through the door and she’s out into the stairwell, leaving four dozen casualties in her wake. Serves them right, they didn’t even try to arrest her in a gentlemanly way.

To a man on foot, stairs are a hindrance. But to the smartwheels, they just look like a forty-five-degree angle ramp. It’s a little choppy, especially when she’s down to about the second floor and is going way too fast, but it’s definitely doable.

A lucky thing: One of the first-floor cops is just opening the stairwell door, no doubt alerted by the symphony of alarm bells and buzzers that has begun to merge into a solid wall of hysterical sound. She blows by the guy; he puts one arm out in an attempt to stop her, sort of belts her across the waist in the prOCeSS, throws her balance off, but this is a very forgiving skateboard, it’s smart enough to slow down for her a little bit when her center of