“How’s it doing?” Alina asked.
Beany scurried forward and pressed an old-fashioned stethoscope to the creature’s side, listened.
“Heartbeat’s strong,” he confirmed.
“What’s the plan now?” I asked.
“Don’t get in the way,” Alina said. “Your part’s done.”
“I hope you have a really strong net,” I called after her as she went towards the fallen beast.
“If I get a clean shot, can I take it?” Harmony whispered. I don’t think she meant at El Bastardo. My scowl was answer enough and she shrugged. “I just thought I’d ask.”
“Let’s just stand back and watch,” I said.
“Get the harness in there,” Alina said. “And prepare the tranquiliser – we don’t have long.”
Isak stripped off the insulation suit and moved in to help with the harness. He looked odd wearing just combat boots and long johns.
“Sexy,” Harmony said.
“Says the woman wearing blood and snot,” I said.
“What are they going to do with that thing?”
“Haul it out of here and sell it, I guess.”
“But how?” she asked.
The answer to that drifted in above us, its arrival dispelling the mist. A freight-lifter. Instead of the usual container slung underneath, it had some sort of pod connected up to what must be some sort of life-support system. They would seal the croc inside the pod to preserve it for transport out of the Badlands.
The pod was lowered to the ground and detached from the lifter. The aircraft then lowered a winch cable that could be attached to the harness that had been placed around each of the creature’s legs. At a signal from Isak, the lifter rose slowly upwards, reeling in the cable and lifting the big beastie.
“He’s waking up!” Mayuki shouted.
The croc was beginning to twitch its tail. Its movements were being transmitted up the cable and affected the lifter. The pilot struggled to keep it steady.
“Get the needle in there!” Alina ordered.
She wasn’t referring to a little hypodermic. The tranquiliser was in two clear tanks that Beany wore like a diver’s air bottles. Tubes ran from them to something that looked like a harpoon gun.
“Skewer that scracker!” Isak shouted.
Beany dodged in under the creature and jabbed the harpoon up into its paler underbelly. There was a hiss as the knock-out drops were drained from the tanks and squirted up into the creature.
El Bastardo thrashed his tail a couple of times and then his body went limp. The lifter took him up and then lowered him into the open pod. Isak and Beany sealed him in. The lifter came down, settling over the pod like a bird settling down on its egg. A muted clang said the bolts were in place to hold the pod secure for transport.
I could see the pilot clearly through the canopy of the freight-lifter. Sonny. It was impossible to read his expression under the skull tattoo – that was part of its function. I waved and gave him a thumbs up. He hesitated then waved back.
I like to think that he was opposed to the plan to use us as bait and that was why he hadn’t been around to say goodbye before. That may be naïve, but you can’t always think the worst of people.
We didn’t get an apology from the mutants as such. But they did help us with the Trekker. We changed the shredded tyre while it was on its roof and then managed to turn it over. Isak fixed the problem with the electrics and ran a cable from the lifter to recharge the batteries. In a little under two hours we were up and running. My car had a few more battle scars and was missing a side window and its roof lights, but it had survived its encounter with El Bastardo pretty well.
Alina was staring at the pod that held the creature.
“Does this give you some kind of closure?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe,” she said. “Ask me again in a couple of weeks.”
“What’s going to happen to it?” I asked. “Is someone building a giant petting zoo?”
She smiled weakly and shook her head.
“Keeping creatures like that in captivity never works out well,” I said.
“I’ve seen those movies too,” Alina said. “It’ll take us half a day to deliver that thing. We can come back and Sonny can lift your truck out of here – take you to wherever you want to be.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But no. That would be against the rules. We have to drive that thing across the finish line.”
Alina looked back at the pod and nodded. “We each have to complete our own quest.”
“But you could help with mine by telling me the quickest way out of this place,” I said.
“I’ll get Sonny to send you the route,” she said. “Good luck, Quin.”
“You too.”
We’d driven into the Badlands expecting to encounter mutants and monsters. We hadn’t been disappointed. But the mutants hadn’t been at all what I expected them to be. I should have remembered what I learned from my comic books – sometimes the mutants are the good guys. More or less.
Chapter Forty-Three
It was like passing through a curtain. The greenish fog was suddenly behind us and we found ourselves blinking in bright sunlight. Without even thinking about it we all breathed deeply to draw the clean air into our lungs. All except Floyd, who didn’t have any.
The narrow dirt road we were on snaked downwards on a gentle gradient and we could see where it joined the blacktop a mile or so ahead. A few cars were passing on the highway but it was just ordinary late morning traffic.
The navigation system had blinked into life almost as soon as we came out of the fog. I glanced at the screen and then forced the system to do a recalculation to make sure the numbers I was seeing were correct. Apparently they were.
I called a halt so that we could all get out and stretch and enjoy the warmth on our faces. Even Floyd climbed down from the cab and flexed his joints.
“Good news,” I said, “we’re ahead of schedule. Almost a whole day.”
“And we’re not dead,” Harmony said, “that’s always a plus.”
She was right, driving into the Badlands had been an insane idea and we had escaped death by only the narrowest of margins. But the gamble had paid off and I felt entitled to feel at least a little smug about it. At least until things went pear-shaped again.
“I want to take a shower before we go any further,” I said.
“Me first,” Harmony said. She’d stripped off her blood and snot covered clothes earlier and wiped herself down with hand wipes, but she still smelled kind of funky, so I let her have the first shower. She promised not to use all of the hot water, but I still expected to be shivering in there when it was my turn. Again I found myself regretting that the cubicle couldn’t accommodate two people.
“I can’t remember ever being this sober,” Skeet said. He was wearing the dark glasses again but this time it was because of the sun.
“How’s it feel?” I asked him.
“I could get used to it,” Skeet said. “When do we eat?”
The fact that he was hungry was surely a good sign. I poked my head inside and glanced at the map on the Trekker’s dash screen.
“There’s a roadhouse about twenty minutes away,” I said. I doubted it was a good idea to take Skeet into a place that had a bar, but finding an eatery without one would be almost impossible. Hopefully they served one of the good alcohol-free beers.
“Why don’t I take Skeet to the diner in the Trekker,” Harmony said after she came out of the shower. “We can order the food and it’ll be on the table by the time you catch up with us.”
“Okay,” I said. I felt a twinge of jealousy that she wanted to take him instead of me.
“What do you want to eat?” she asked.
“I don’t care as long as it doesn’t come out of a silver pouch,” I said. I’d had enough travel rations to last me a lifetime.
“We should try and avoid drawing attention to ourselves,” Floyd warned. “It won’t be long before Crawford’s men
learn we’re out of the Badlands.”
“No dancing on tables,” I said to Harmony. She rolled her eyes.
“If they have crocodile steaks, do you want to try them?” She grinned and climbed into the Trekker.
“No!”
I watched her and Skeet head down towards the highway. Then I went into the truck for a cold shower.
The truck rolled down the slope and our tyres rumbled as we crossed onto the asphalt. We were back on course and with any luck our pursuers were a hundred miles or more behind us.
As it turned out, we managed to stay off everyone’s radar for a grand total of eighty-nine minutes. That’s how long it took Bobby-Ray to spot us after we came out of the Badlands. He called me for an update on our progress. I wasn’t surprised that he’d managed to track down my unlisted communication ID. It wouldn’t have been difficult to spot my blip as we came out of the Badlands – there’s not much traffic comes out of there.
“Good to see you made it past the mutants and monsters,” Bobby-Ray said. “How was it in the Badlands?”
“Misty and muddy,” I said. I was reluctant to talk to him, even off-air, but by this point the damage had already been done.
“Do you have video?” he asked. “We’ll pay for an exclusive.”
“You’ll have to talk to Floyd,” I said. “I’m not sure how much of it he captured.”
“But there were monsters and mutants, right?”
“Oh, yes. It was a wild ride!”
“Excellent!”
“Did we miss anything while we were away?” I asked.
“Those two cops are still after you,” Bobby-Ray said.
“Marshal Dimmock and the Highway Patrolman?”
“The very same. I do not know what you did to them, but they are not giving up. While you were taking the shortcut, they took the long way round. And on the motorcycle, they covered the distance at warp speed.”
Dammit, I thought. They must have ridden non-stop, swapping batteries as they went.
“The good news is that the bike died on them a few hours ago,” Bobby-Ray said. “The bad news is that they’ve commandeered a car. And they’re only fifty miles or so behind you.”
Double-dammit! We’d driven out of the Badlands to find the same squit we’d had on the other side.
“It’s like Groundhog Day,” I muttered.
“The dynamic duo are driving an ancient Diamondback station wagon,” Bobby-Ray said. “It’s pea-green and looks like it was hand-painted using a brush and very thin paint. I’m going to try and hack into the car’s dash-camera – I’ll send you the feed when I get it.”
“Thanks, Bobby-Ray. I’m glad you’re on our side,” I said.
“I never said that,” he said, happily. “I seek to maintain journalistic impartiality at all times.”
“Mayor Bacon doesn’t think so,” I said.
“That’s because he’s an asshole. Stay safe.” His image faded from the screen and was replaced by a map that showed the station wagon’s position. It was less than an hour away from our current position.
“Squit!” I said. I called Harmony and Skeet to warn them. “Keep an eye out for the station wagon.”
“Ten-four,” Harmony said. Now she was doing it as well.
“Station wagon coming up behind us fast,” Floyd said.
“You call that fast?” I asked.
“Faster than a man pushing a bike,” he said. He had a point.
“Put through the feed from the truck’s rear camera,” I said. The images appeared on our screen.
“Nice car,” I said. “I think my great-granddaddy had one of those. Send Bobby-Ray the video from our rear camera, he’ll love this.”
We owed him because he was sending us the images from the station wagon’s dash-camera. And they came with a live-feed of the audio from inside the car.
“I’m going to pull up close behind them,” Marshal Dimmock was saying. “You’re going to climb out onto the front of the car and then jump across onto the back of that truck.”
“Is that a joke?” the Highway Patrolman asked.
“Do I look like I’m joshing?”
The Highway Patrolman sighed. “Flip-flops will impede my ability to jump.”
“Then take them off, you dipstick.”
“Hold onto them for me,” the Highway Patrolman said.
The Marshal must have taken the flip-flops and stared at them like he was holding a turd. I saw his window open and he threw them out. Then he lowered the window on the Highway Patrolman’s side.
“Get out there and stop that blasted truck!”
The Highway Patrolman looked at the Marshal, perhaps hoping for a last-minute reprieve. He was out of luck. He turned away and started climbing out of the open window.
“There’s a guy surfing on the hood of the old station wagon!” Skeet said. He and Harmony were also seeing the pictures from our camera.
“This is great!” Bobby-Ray said. He’d been negotiating with Floyd for access to the crocosaur footage.
“Only a robot would be stupid enough to try that,” Skeet said. “No offense Floyd.”
Skeet had spotted immediately that the Highway Patrolman was a robot. Am I the only one that can’t tell?
“Only a human would be stupid enough to order a robot to do that,” Floyd said.
“I think I’ve offended him,” Skeet said.
“He’s easily offended,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“He’s going to jump!” Harmony said. She didn’t mean Floyd.
I’m sure we all leaned forward to watch the pictures from the truck’s rear camera.
“Do you think he’ll make it?” Harmony asked.
The Highway Patrolman was standing barefoot on the hood of the station wagon, the brightly coloured shirt billowing out behind him, his arms outstretched like a surfer trying to stay upright on his board. Marshal Dimmock was peering through the windshield, trying to see around his new hood ornament to line up the car and bring it close to the back of the truck.
The station wagon edged closer. The Highway Patrolman tensed, ready to jump.
“It’s too far!” Harmony said.
He jumped anyway. And smacked into the back of the truck. He clung on. His face was smushed up against the camera lens giving us a close-up view of his torn cheek and the metal underneath.
“He did it!” Harmony said.
I’m not sure why she was pleased about this. It was a little odd that we’d all been willing our pursuer to succeed – but human empathy works like that sometimes.
“Should I try and shake him off?” Floyd asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Unless you want him up here in the cab with us.”
The Highway Patrolman was back to being the enemy. Or at the very least, the opposition. As he began to climb up the back of the container, we could see that the station wagon had dropped back to watch what happened next.
Floyd whirled the steering wheel and the trailer kicked out behind us, carrying the Highway patrolman with it. He lost his grip with one hand but managed to cling on with the other. Floyd let the trailer fall back into line and then threw it out the other way. The Highway Patrolman slid down the back of the container but still clung on.
“We need to get him off there,” Floyd said.
“I’m not climbing out there,” I said.
“Do you want me to drop back and see if I can knock him off,” Harmony said. I knew she’d be reaching for her gun as she said it.
“I’ll take care of it, you go and deal with the food order,” I said.
“Let me try again,” Floyd said. “Hold tight.”
He locked the truck’s brakes suddenly, allowing the trailer to swing out. A jack-knife is one of the most dangerous things that can happen to a truck. If Floyd didn’t control this properly, he could end up flipping the truck over. The back end of the trailer was coming around, getting closer to the cab.
“I’ll shoot him off when he gets level with m
e, shall I?” I said.
“It won’t come to that,” Floyd said. “I hope.”
He wrestled with the steering wheel and his feet danced on the pedals that controlled the braking of the tractor and the trailer.
“Trailer’s twisting!” I warned.
“When this thing snaps level, you might feel a bit of a jolt,” Floyd said. “If it snaps level.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“You’ll feel a different sort of jolt.”
Steering into the skid, he gently pressed the truck’s ‘go’ pedal to try and pull the trailer back into line. Even with my limited experience behind the wheel, I knew he was doing this a lot harder than he was supposed to.
There was so much dust that it was impossible to see what was going on behind us. The noise from the truck’s suspension and the trailer coupling was deafening. But the trailer gradually swung back to where it was meant to be. There was a kick as it swung too far the other way but Floyd corrected this and brought it straight again.
I peered at the dash screen. “He’s still there.”
“Really? He must have glued himself on back there,” Floyd said.
“Looks like he’s going to try and come around on this side,” I said. I looked in the side mirror and could see the Highway Patrolman coming around the back corner of the trailer. “Keep this thing steady,” I said.
“What are you going to do?” Floyd asked.
“I’m going out to say ‘hello’.”
Floyd turned toward me, probably thinking I was crazy. Then he saw that I’d drawn my gun. “Say hello from me too,” he said.
I pushed open the cab door and leaned out. I’d done this once before and promised myself I’d never do it again. Wind whistled in my ears and dust flew into my eyes and mouth.
The Highway Patrolman was hanging on with one hand and swinging around to try and get a grip on the side of the container. I wanted to persuade him to let go. I flipped the gun into ‘burst’ mode – it was wasteful of ammunition, firing all six slugs at once, but it offered me the best chance of dislodging him. The odds of my hitting him were slim to zero, but if one or more of the explosive rounds impacted close to him, it would be enough to knock him loose. I hoped. I aimed and squeezed the trigger.
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