Daugher of Ash

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Yeah… They forgot. Sorry.” Another lift shot by fast enough to pull her hair to the side in the breeze. “Do I get an assigned spot?”

  “Well, guess you’re either an adrenaline junkie, nut case, or an idiot.” He leaned down close, whispering, “Normal people don’t sign up for this sorta thing.”

  She looked at a two-person armored perch atop the back end of the trailer. “I’m not normal.”

  “Didn’t think so.” He chuckled. “Go on and take any of the stations. You got the coffin at the ass end, two pods on each side, and the eagle nest at the front on top of the cab.”

  “Coffin?” She eyed the armored box “Because it looks like one?”

  “Nope. It’s at the back end of the trailer. When pirates attack, they usually have a crew come up from behind and another group pull out ahead. The rear perch is the easiest target, and it’s where they tend to fire first. Side pods are harder to hit. Seventy percent of our fatalities occur in the coffin.”

  “Oh. I thought it would give the best angle to shoot back from.”

  “It does. Depends on the driver you get. Sometimes they wait too long to arm the guns.”

  She smiled. “Can I hop up there now?”

  “You’re gonna be stuck on top of that thing for two days at least, no point rushing it.”

  “I’m set. I hit the cafeteria already.”

  The yellow paths got her close to the door, but she couldn’t see a way to get to the ladder on the back without going across the red. She waited for an opening in the train of lifts and rushed across a safe-looking gap to a metal ladder on the right side of the trailer. The top had to be at least fifteen feet off the ground. An armored hatch let her crawl into a metal-walled enclosure designed as a shooting platform. Two large rifles sat tucked in holders at the center. Thick metal cables secured them on five feet of tether, making the space look like an ancient carnival attraction.

  All of it was bare metal, no cushions or comfort. She smirked at the footprints she left in the dust, smudging them to avoid awkward questions. With time to kill, she folded her arms atop the rear-facing wall and squatted to watch the cargo loaders scurry about. The barrier would come up to her neck if she tried to assume a kneeling shooter’s position, but the awkwardness didn’t bother her.

  Sleep had almost taken her when a loud buzz sounded in the warehouse. Four Division 1 officers in shiny blue armor escorted a single-file line of men in orange jumpsuits. All had been fitted with the Roadway Corporation security vest, armor that could kill its wearer as easily as protect them.

  The prisoners stopped in the red area behind the trailer, still in single file. Kate made eye contact with the man at the head of the line. Broad-shouldered, coffee-colored skin, shoulder length black hair, and a wiseass grin. Anger, her usual reaction to fate teasing her with a treat she could not touch, faded as she read his surface thoughts.

  What’s a pretty girl like that doing here?

  One of the officers moved between them and the truck.

  “We got anyone new?” He leaned taller, looking them over before checking a datapad. “Doesn’t look like it. I’m gonna skip the long, bullshit speech since you’ve all done this before, but I’m legally required to cover the usuals. You know the drill. Driver arms the rifles, don’t shoot each other. Your life is in your hands, and so on. We’ve been told this is a schedule change, so you’ll be going out to St. Louis. An extra two days of open sky.”

  A few of them cheered, clicking handcuffs as a form of clapping.

  Motion drew Kate’s attention to a pasty-faced man in a grey Roadway Corporation polo and black pants. He had a datapad tucked under his arm and scurried along with a nervous twitch as if afraid to look at anything but the ground. He stopped by the police, casting a cursory look at the prisoners before he caught sight of her in the coffin.

  “Why’s that one out of her restraints?”

  Kate stood, leaning both hands on the railing. The look she gave him made him shrink behind the police.

  “That one’s an outside merc, Bernie.”

  “Oh.” The driver found a shred of courage in that and gave her a mixed look. “Don’t try anything unprofessional”―he waved the datapad at her―“I can see everything.”

  “No, Bernie, I didn’t pick the coffin because there’s enough room in here to fuck. I expected to get stuck with a chickenshit driver that’ll wet his pants if we get attacked and wait too long to arm the rifles. Looks like I might have good intuition.”

  Chuckling spread among the convicts, even the cops. Bernie grumbled, scurrying past the gap between the trailer and the wall in a speed-waddle for the driver’s compartment seventy feet away. He looked even shorter by the ten-foot front wheel as he climbed the handholds in the hub. The driver’s door closed with a thunk, followed by a metallic clank as it locked. At the center of each prisoner’s vest, a cluster of red lights flashed yellow. A moment later, they went green with a series of chirps that swept down the line from front to back.

  The police removed the men’s restraints and led them one by one to the platforms around the truck. Kate sat and leaned against the back corner, as far from the hatch as the space would allow. Clanking and grumbling seemed to come from everywhere. The face of the man who had smiled at her appeared in the opening. He grinned and climbed up, taking a seat and pulling the hatch closed.

  “Hey.” He extended a hand. “I’m Esteban.”

  “Kate.” She looked at his hand. “Sorry, I don’t do the touching thing.”

  “Fair enough. Is this your first time?”

  She realized her posture must have portrayed a sense of cowering in the corner, and tried to relax. “Yeah. First time.”

  ate sat with her back to the side wall, feet apart, arms draped over her knees. Esteban faced the rear, tall enough to see over the armored plate even while sitting. He pulled the closer of the two rifles out of its holder and examined it. On either side of the housing above the pistol grip, a panel glowed bright red. Raised metal along the barrel guard formed the logo of Siege Arms Corporation.

  He grunted as he pivoted it over to examine the oversized magazine that made it look more like a squad-level support weapon than an assault rifle. The number 243 floated in green hologram along the top of the weapon, in clear sight while firing.

  “Hope it’s enough ammo.” He tapped the magazine. “Can’t reload.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  Esteban laughed. “They’re afraid someone will jury rig a bomb if they can get the bullets out. You’re right. It’s stupid. Anyone volunteering for this caravan shit is on a short stint anyway. They wouldn’t be interested in making a run for it.”

  “What’s up with Bernie?”

  “Some of the drivers get big heads. I guess having eight men’s lives at the tip of his fingers makes him feel like a god. He’s not the only one. Most of the drivers are like that.”

  Kate gathered her hair to keep it out of her face from the wind. “You know he can probably hear us.”

  “Yep. He’s not going to set off my vest just for insinuating he’s an asshole. Without an immediate threat to his own life, the company would consider it murder. Plus, you’d get caught in the shrapnel blast.”

  “Charming.” She jostled back and forth as the truck hit a series of holes. “Seems like not a whole lot of incentive to volunteer for this.”

  He slid the rifle into the holder and stretched. “It’s a couple of days of fresh air. Even if they make us sleep on the truck, it beats a metal cube and artificial light. We don’t get paid, but they knock a few weeks or months off the sentence each time we do it.”

  “That’s not fair.” She gazed at the clouds. “Bet the driver gets a hotel room for the stopover.”

  “Yep. He thinks we’re less than people since we had a scuffle with the law. Animals on exploding leashes. More than twenty meters away from the truck, it goes boom. Had a guy get bounced out of his pod last run.” Esteban stared into the distance. “He rolled a c
ouple of times, screaming, then popped like roadkill.” A faint smile twisted half his lip. “He took one of the bandits with him though. Splatter on the windscreen; made him crash.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Eh, he was reckless. They told us not to stand up. Of course, the transport was going too fast. They’re not supposed to go over forty.”

  Their conversation stalled for a little over an hour. Some of the other men shouted back and forth, discussing the sexual prowess of Bernie’s imaginary sister. The utter wrongness of some of their remarks got Kate laughing. She stayed seated, not caring to watch the scenery pass by and suffer the agonizing slowness of thirty-five mph.

  “So, what’s your story?” Esteban glanced at her, at last ending the long silence between them.

  Self-consciousness at her legs-apart posture made her shift to face the rear, giving him her side rather than a full frontal. “I need to go west, and I can’t take a shuttle.”

  “Afraid of flying?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I won’t say anything if you want to keep your head down.”

  “That’s awful knightly of you, but I can handle a fight.”

  He grinned. “I get the feeling there’s more to you than you let on. Takes a special kind of crazy to refuse the armored vest.” When she said nothing, he chuckled. “Mind if I ask you an awkward question?”

  “Ask away, but don’t expect an answer if it’s too awkward.”

  “Your shadow…” He pointed at the silhouette of an obvious breast. “Doesn’t seem right.”

  She tucked her legs to her chest as his shadow finger teased her shadow nipple. “Trick of the light.”

  “Right.”

  Over another quiet half hour, the increasingly raunchy banter behind them brought her to blushing. A voice much deeper than the rest had started involving goats in the orgy with Bernie’s now-nymphomaniac fictional sister. Esteban craned his head around and yelled at them to give it a rest. Kate thought about her immediate circumstance and how things might go down if they got attacked.

  She looked at him. Esteban?

  He jumped, raising an eyebrow. “Did you just say something?”

  “No.” I’m psionic. Don’t flip on me.

  Esteban lost control and laughed himself to tears.

  She glared. What’s so funny?

  Moments later, he regained the ability to breathe. “When I was little, far too young to even think about girls, my grandma made me promise never to get involved with a psionic. She pulled me aside one day, I think I was seven, and she’s all like ‘Now Esteban, I need you to promise me when you grow up you won’t marry a psionic girl.’ Now I’m sitting here wondering what I can say so I don’t sound like an idiot to you.”

  She hid her face in her knees, waiting for the rage to subside.

  He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I didn’t mean to offend you. My grandmother was opinionated, and not in good way.”

  Kate took a long, slow breath and let it out. “You didn’t.”

  “Good.” He mimed wiping sweat from his brow. “I’m not like the rest of my family. I got nothin’ against people who’re… umm… yeah.”

  “You first,” she said. “What’d you go in for?”

  “Oh, nothing impressive. My brother and I used to own a garage. We tweaked performance on hovercars and land cars.”

  She furrowed her eyebrows. “That’s a crime?”

  “Well, some of the parts we used belonged to the police and aren’t legal for civilians to own. Had a cousin inside their motor pool stealing parts. They didn’t appreciate that. We got three years, course Jimmy got fifteen as well as fired from the force. Like I said, the guys they let do this caravan thing are low-risk.”

  “What about smiley back there with the mohawk? He doesn’t seem all there.”

  “Oh, Wilma? He likes killing people. Apparently, they believe doing this satisfies his urges and keeps him passive while he’s in custody. He’s a model prisoner, maybe the only lifer they let out of his box.”

  “I guess it’s a good thing the rifles don’t fire on the truck.”

  “Oh, he’s too careful for that. He’ll only kill the people they let him kill. Otherwise, they’ll put him in a small, dark place and take away his recreation.”

  “This is his recreation?”

  Esteban sputtered. “Yep. Okay, your turn.”

  She stared into his eyes, hating how his face reminded her of her curse. To prevent eavesdropping, she projected her voice into his mind. I’m an overclocked pyrokinetic. She held her hand out. Don’t touch me. Just reach close. As expected, he yanked his hand away when he got within an inch.

  “What the?”

  I’m like six hundred degrees or something stupid like that all the time. I can’t turn it off. He gave her a meaningful look. Yes, that means I’m not wearing anything but holograms right now.

  He looked away, whistling.

  “I wanted to tell you in case it gets rough. Don’t try to grab me if I go flying.”

  “There’s no way I’m going to let you fall on the road… especially with nothing between you and the pavement.”

  You have no choice. If you grab me, your skin will melt off and I’ll fall anyway. Don’t worry. I’ll stay down.

  The day wound into evening, and she found herself opening up about her isolation. While she avoided any mention of being a government experiment, she confessed her bitter loneliness at not being able to touch another human being. He offered a sympathetic ear, exaggerating his complaints about his ex-girlfriend to comic levels.

  “When she said she wanted to go to an off-Earth colony and have two dozen kids, I figured she was going to be high maintenance.”

  Kate laughed, then got quiet when she couldn’t remember the last time she had a genuine laugh. “You’re making it difficult. You seem like a decent guy.”

  “You can call me Steve if it helps cool you down.” He winked. “I use Esteban with the pretty ones.”

  “Hah.” She chuckled.

  The truck slowed and came to a halt on the side of the road.

  “Attention. We are stopping here for the night. Pods one and three have first watch. Two and four, second watch. Coffin and Nest, one man on third watch and one on fourth. That includes you, miss special. If you need to relieve yourselves, there’s paper with the rations. Remember you have twenty meters. If you hear a chirp, you’re getting too far away.”

  A voice near the front moaned. “Aww, we can’t use your executive bathroom with the gold toilet seat?”

  “Bernie-man would wet himself if the doors opened,” grumbled a closer voice.

  Wilma’s cardinal red hair appeared over the wall. Kate glanced up at the hulking figure; her muscles tensed at the eerie calm on the face of a man who killed as a hobby. His size made her feel as if she were a small child.

  He saluted them with a brown plastic ration. “Hello, sir and madame. Your magnificent feast is at hand. Chef Jacques has assured me that he has perfected his technique.” He opened his hands.

  Two food pouches clanked into the metal between them. Wilma cast his gaze upward as if pondering the nature of humanity. After a few seconds, he walked away. Kate watched the rim of the coffin until the sound of boots on the trailer roof ceased.

  “He’s a strange duck.” Esteban helped himself to one of the pouches.

  She melted the other pouch open with a finger as if using a laser scalpel, causing a number of smaller silver packets to spill out.

  “Dammit.”

  Esteban squeezed one into his mouth and glanced sideways at her while he chewed. “What? You get the omelet or something?”

  “It’s all in plastic pouches. I can’t touch them. I’ve eaten some awful things, but goopy molten plastic… ugh.” She glared under her eyebrows at him. “What is that smell?”

  “Tuna salad”―he glanced at his food―“I think.”

  Kate crossed her arms, careful not to touch the screen of her NetMi
ni, and tried to drill holes in the armor with her glare. He set his food aside, took the largest pouch from the second ration, and peeled it open.

  “Here, lean back and open your mouth.”

  Her face reddened.

  “Come on. You don’t have to cheep at the sky like a starving bird, but I’d smile if you did.”

  The blush intensified, but she laughed. “It’s…”

  He sniffed the packet. “I think this is tikka masala chicken, but it might be a hamburger.”

  She looked at him. “Those two aren’t even close.”

  “It’s a military ration pack. It’s all OmniSoy anyway. I don’t know what they do to it to prevent it from degenerating back into slime, but taste isn’t high on their priorities.”

  “Prevent it? It is slime.”

  “Good point. Come on, I can’t make you watch me eat.”

  After a long sigh, she tilted her head back. He squeezed a bit of food onto her tongue, cocking his eyebrow when it sizzled. She couldn’t look at him for the first few mouthfuls. After eye contact, she couldn’t stop laughing. Food dribbled off her chin as he tried to feed her despite the giggles; she caught some of it and cracked up again at the face he made.

  For a quiet moment, their gazes met.

  She looked away first, frowning at her lap.

  “You got a little on your, uhh.” He pointed at a wisp of smoke rising from her shirt.

  “Oh.” Kate flicked a nugget of charcoal from her breast, still moping. “Thanks.”

  Esteban scooted back to his side and resumed his meal. “So, which was it?”

  “What?”

  “Chicken or hamburger?”

  Her hand slid up and down her shin. “I couldn’t tell. I don’t taste much.”

  He finished his tuna and tucked the empty packet back into the main pouch. “Did I do something wrong?”

  Yeah, you’re nice. “No.”

  “I get it.” Esteban shifted his weight, looking for a comfortable position to sleep in. “I can’t imagine what it’s like not to be able to touch anyone. I’m sorry if I reminded you of that. I understand it’s no small task for a girl to keep their hands off me.” He winked.