“Officer down,” he croaked and keeled over backwards.
Harmony stood off to the side, the barrel of the zap gun smoking. I raised my beer in salute to her.
“I wish I had a woman like her,” Mother said.
“Me too,” I said.
Marshal Dimmock came over and looked down at the fallen patrolman. He poked the robot with the toe of his boot.
“Did you do this?” he asked me.
I looked up at him and raised my hands. “Not me,” I said. “No gun.”
The Marshal seemed satisfied by that. He turned his attention to Mother.
“Your boys are fighting for the wrong side,” the Marshal said. “Mister Crawford won’t like that.”
“We’ve done all I agreed to do,” Mother said. “If Crawford wants anything else he’ll have to come up with more cash.”
Marshal Dimmock looked like he wanted to argue this point but with his sidekick reduced to little more use than a doorstop he wasn’t in the strongest of positions. “Don’t matter anyhow,” he said. “The job’s done.”
I looked up at the Marshal and frowned.
“You’re on Crawford’s payroll too?” I asked.
“Clem Crawford is making a generous contribution towards my retirement fund,” the Marshal said.
“A dirty cop,” Mother said.
“Says the two-bit criminal.” Marshal Dimmock sneered at him.
“At least I don’t pretend to be something I’m not,” Mother said. He leaned back against the wall and pushed himself to his feet. He smiled when the Marshal took a step back. They stared at each other, chins jutting out and chests puffed up.
The Marshal blinked first. “We’re done here,” he said.
“Are we not under arrest?” I asked.
“No need,” the Marshal said. I didn’t like the way he was smiling. “You’ve already lost.”
I put down the empty bottle and got painfully to my feet. I was disappointed when the Marshal didn’t step back.
“Lost how?” I asked.
From his expression, I guessed that Marshal Dimmock wasn’t supposed to tell me. But his desire to gloat won out.
“All this is just a distraction,” he said, gesturing towards the final throes of the street brawl. “The Dragon Riders were just supposed to slow you down and keep you out of the way while Crawford’s boys took that truck of yours.”
I wanted to believe that he was bluffing but I knew he wasn’t.
“Floyd...?” I said.
“Your robot is heading into an ambush while you stand there with your thumb up your ass,” Marshal Dimmock said.
“No, no, no,” I said. I looked around, trying to spot Harmony.
“I’m supposed to pick up you and the red-head,” the Marshal said. “But it hardly seems worth the effort. It’s over.”
I turned towards Mother. “I’ve got to go.”
“Anything we can do?” he asked.
“Just keep the cops occupied,” I said.
“We can do that.”
I moved away from them.
“You’re too late!” Marshal Dimmock called after me.
Ignoring him, I grabbed Harmony’s arm – and ducked to avoid the punch she threw at me.
“It’s me.”
“Sorry,” she said.
“Have you seen Skeet?” I asked.
“He went to the john,” she said.
“About an hour ago,” I said. “No one’s bladder is that big.”
I wanted to run inside and look for Skeet. I had to settle for a slow painful shuffle. There was no sign of Skeeter. I checked every stall in the restroom. Candy was waiting for me when I came out.
“Your friend left through the back way,” she said.
I moved towards the fire exit door.
“He got into a truck with two men,” Candy said.
I stopped and turned. “Pick-up truck?” I asked.
Candy nodded. Crawford’s men had him. My shoulders slumped and I walked back through to the dining area. It looked like a tornado had swept through it.
“I’m sorry about this,” I said.
Candy shrugged. “Happens every other week,” she said. “We have a repair crew on speed-dial.”
I dug into my jeans pocket and pulled out some crumpled bills. I held the little bundle out towards her.
“That’s too much,” she said.
“Put the extra in the tips jar,” I said. “Thanks for the beer.”
Candy gave me a shy smile that made me wish I could stay and chat with her some more.
“Drive careful,” she called after me as I headed back out to the car park.
Harmony was waiting for me by the Trekker.
“No sign of Skeet,” I told her. “I think Crawford’s men have him.”
“Then let’s go after them,” she said.
I shook my head. “Marshal Dimmock told me that Floyd’s heading for an ambush.”
Harmony’s face clouded. “If we lose the truck, all of this has been for nothing,” she said.
“And Floyd might get hurt,” I said.
“Yeah, that too,” she said. “Come on. I’ll drive – you look like squit.”
I didn’t argue. I felt like squit.
Chapter Forty-Six
“My lip hurts,” I said.
“I’m not surprised. It looks like raw steak,” Harmony said.
“I need you to kiss it better.”
“Not going to happen.”
Harmony kept her eyes on the road. We were travelling down the highway at over a hundred miles an hour. The ‘fasten seatbelts’ sign had come on and we’d been asked to stow our tables in the upright position. I looked around, trying to locate the emergency exit.
“Sit still,” Harmony said.
“My tummy aches.”
“If you’re going to puke, lean out of the window.”
“Have you ever thought of being a nurse?” I asked sarcastically.
“I told you before, I’m not into dressing up.”
I closed my eyes and conjured up images of her in a nurses outfit.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said.
I think the smile gave me away. I opened my eyes and pulled open the glove box. There was a little first-aid box in there with some heavy-duty pain-killers tucked in the bottom of it.
“You’re only supposed to take two of those things,” Harmony said.
“Two is for ordinary pain,” I said. “I have extraordinary pain.”
“Are they any good for a pain in the ass?” she asked.
“Shove one up and see,” I said. I offered her the packet but she didn’t take it. She was probably one of those macho types who think they’re too tough for medication.
With Harmony driving, we covered ground quickly. I leaned back and closed my eyes, the steady hum of the tyres on the road was soothing and that feeling of calm helped ease my aches and pains. My eyelids flicked open when the road noise changed suddenly but it was nothing important – I could see walls of red sandstone on either side of us where the highway had been cut through a steep hill.
I’d lost my earbud sometime during the fight with Mother so I called up the communication menu on the Trekker’s dashboard screen.
“Floyd, are you there?”
The only thing that came out of the speakers was a hiss of static.
“Stainless Steel Duck, have you got your ears on?”
More static.
I thought about sending Gnat and Mozzie on ahead of us, but Harmony had her foot right down and we’d probably just overtake them.
Rather than spin this part out, I’ll cut to the chase. There was no chase. We were too late. By the time we got there, the show was over and everyone had packed up and gone home. Almost everyone. ‘There’ was an open patch of ground that was hidden around a bend in the highway. An ideal spot for an ambush.
Our rig had been driven off the road and was nose down in a ditch. There was no sign of the trailer.
“There’s a body over there,” Harmony said, pointing.
This wasn’t entirely unexpected. Floyd would have been completely outgunned but he would still have put up a fight. All I could see were the soles of a pair of feet sticking up out of the rough grass that bordered churned up dirt.
I approached cautiously. The body was lying in a patch of shade under a tree. It sat up suddenly. It didn’t have a head and one of its arms was missing.
“Floyd?” I said.
“Have you seen my head?” Floyd asked. His voice sounded odd coming from the little speaker in his chest.
“And I thought you looked bad,” Harmony said, standing beside me.
“See if you can find his head,” I said.
Harmony moved off and began looking.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You can’t guess?” Floyd asked. “I got shot.”
Harmony was kicking around in the long grass, sweeping her foot from side to side. I saw her bend and pick something up. The remains of Floyd’s arm. She waved the hand at me.
“No sign of the head,” she called.
I spotted it just as she was saying this.
“Above you,” I said.
She looked up. Floyd’s head was in the branches of the tree. Harmony climbed the tree to retrieve it. She moved with easy grace, like a cat. She tossed the head down to me and I caught it. It was badly charred from a hit by an explosive slug. One eye socket was empty and the eye in the other was badly cracked.
“Do you have it? How does it look?” Floyd asked.
“You won’t be winning any beauty contests,” I said.
Harmony jumped down from the tree. “That makes two of you,” she said. “What do we do now?”
“We fix Floyd and we go to rescue Skeet,” I said.
“What about the trailer and the whiskey?” Harmony asked.
“That’s not a top priority,” I said. I stared at her, expecting her to argue, but she didn’t. Her shoulders slumped.
“Crawford has won, hasn’t he?” she said.
“Not yet. But he’s damned close,” I said. “Help me get Floyd in the back of the Trekker.”
We sat him in the flatbed at the back. At least he wouldn’t be doing that creepy thing where he turned his head around the wrong way. But him sitting there with no head at all was actually even worse.
“Do you think we can get the truck out of the ditch?” I asked. It was sitting at a pretty steep angle. There was mud churned up under the wheels as if someone had tried to get it out and then given up. Crawford’s men probably figured it wasn’t worth the effort and just hitched the trailer to another tractor.
“We could try the winch,” Harmony said.
“We could?”
“On the front of the Trekker,” she said.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. I’d forgotten it was there. I’d only ever used it once before – when I pulled the wire out and hung laundry on it.
We wrapped the wire around the horseshoe-shaped thingummy on the back of the tractor. The thing the trailer gets attached to. Harmony told me it was called the fifth wheel, but she might have been joshing me. Whatever it was, we looped the wire around it and secured it with the hook on the end of the wire. Harmony climbed up into the cab.
The truck looked very big and very heavy. The wire from the winch looked thin and fragile. But not as fragile as me. I climbed into the Trekker, thinking I’d be safer there. Luckily you could operate the winch from the inside. I wasn’t worried about the truck or Harmony’s driving as much as I was afraid the wire might snap under the strain. If it did, it could whip around and cut a man in half. And nobody wants to be half the man he was.
Harmony leaned out of the cab window. “Take up the slack!” she shouted.
I started the winch and drew in the wire. It lifted up off the ground and hung between the two vehicles. In theory, the winch was just going to give the truck a bit of assistance until its wheels got a proper grip and could haul itself out of there. In practice, who knew what was about the happen?
Harmony applied the power slowly but the wheels started spinning almost immediately. Thick clods of damp earth sprayed up into the air. The truck looked like a dog digging for a bone. She eased off.
I wasn’t even sure that we needed the truck anymore. But it seemed wrong to just abandon it at the side of the road. We owed our lives to that truck and the least we could do was get it back on the road. I don’t think Harmony was motivated by the same feelings. She still thought we could get the trailer back and meet the deadline.
The truck’s wheels turned again, so slowly this time that you could hardly seem them rotating. I increased the tension on the wire. Inch by painful inch the truck moved backwards up the slope. I saw the front right side wheel of the truck lift off the ground. I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing. It dropped again suddenly and the truck lurched forwards. The Trekker was jerked towards it by the wire. The wheels were braked and locked but it was still dragged forward.
“What are you doing?!” Harmony yelled.
“Squitting myself,” I muttered. “You’re supposed to be going backwards!” I shouted.
We tried it again. And again the truck’s front wheel lifted. There was a weird poing! sound that seemed to shoot from the truck along the wire and vibrate the Trekker. But the winch kept turning and the truck kept coming back.
Finally, the truck tipped back onto all of its wheels. The wire went slack and Harmony had to jam on the brakes to stop the truck shooting backwards into me. My arms and legs felt like they were as tense as the wire had been and I had to shake myself to loosen them.
Harmony jumped down from the cab. She had a big grin on her face. She shook her arms out too.
“Where do we go?” Harmony asked. She was leaning in through the open window.
I flicked on the dashboard screen and started a search.
“We need somewhere off-grid,” I said. “Somewhere that has the tools and parts to fix Floyd. And ideally, someone to do the fixing.” I scrolled through the list on the screen and tapped on one that looked promising. “This might do.” I swiped the co-ordinates across to the navigation system.
Harmony looked across at our chosen destination. “Of course that’s where we’d end up,” she said. “Do you want to drive the truck?”
“Nah, I think you’ve got the hang of it now,” I said.
She punched me on the shoulder before she trotted back to the truck. I had to wait for feeling to return to my fingers before we could set off.
“This here’s the Tree Feller for Robin Hood, are you out there my friend?” A message coming in over the comm-link from another trucker.
“You’ve got Robin Hood, go ahead,” I answered.
“Marshal Porkpie and Robo-Cop are heading your way – do you want me to slow them down some?” Tree Feller asked.
“I’d be much obliged,” I said.
“Consider it done. Tree Feller out.”
“An old flame?” Harmony asked. Was there a hint of jealousy in her question? I like to think so.
“Never heard of him,” I said. “We just seem to be making lots of new friends on this trip.”
“See if Bobby-Ray is still tapping into the Marshal’s dash-cam,” Harmony said. “Let’s see what they’re up to.”
The trucks that come out of the logging camps are some of the biggest things on the road. Giant tractors that would dwarf ours, hauling two trailers piled high with massive logs. Tree Feller, as his on-air name suggested, drove one of these. And it was blocking the road.
The r
oad was narrow at that point and had been cut in a sort of groove in a steep hill. There were two lanes, one in each direction, but the truck was blocking both of them. There was no way to get around it. The Marshal and his one-armed sidekick were standing there talking to a big handsome man dressed like a lumberjack.
“You know how it is,” Tree Feller was saying. “The foreman always wants to pile on just one more log. If the tyres ain’t burst he reckons it can take more. But he don’t have to drive this thing up a hill on an unpaved road, does he?”
“Is it stuck?” the Marshal asked.
“Nope, just too heavy to get up there.”
“Then how are you going to move it?”
“Got to unhitch this trailer at the back and then pull the first trailer up over the hill and park it. There’s a truck stop just on the other side. Then I bring the tractor back and haul this trailer over.”
“And just how long is that going to take?” the Marshal asked.
“Only an hour, once I get these trailers separated,” Tree Feller said.
“Is there anything we can do to help?”
“You can keep watch and make sure nobody steals my logs.” Tree Feller began walking away.
“Where are you going?”
“I told you. There’s a truck stop on the other side of the hill. I’m going to walk over there and get me some food.”
“And just what are we supposed to do in the meantime?” the Marshal asked.
“Direct traffic maybe,” Tree Feller suggested.
“You are preventing me from carrying out my lawful duties.”
“That so?” Tree Feller said, coming back towards the policeman. “Do you know how many times I’ve been pulled over by people in that uniform? I reckon you owe me a couple of hours at least. You want me to bring you back coffee and donuts?”
Tree Feller walked away, leaving Marshal Dimmock speechless. His silence only lasted until the trucker had disappeared from view.
“That young man is deliberately seeking to vex me,” the Marshal said. “If he could have been bothered to put just a little effort into it, he could have moved this thing out of my way.”
Road Rage Page 29