"You're up late, Bonner."
"Going on a job, Dorca."
Dorca's great wide face split in a happy grin. Bonner was Dorca's best supplier. Always quality stuff and the price was high but fair. "What you going after?"
"A little of this, a little of that." Bonner smiled.
"Sure, Bonner, sure. You know my standing order..."
"Yeah." Bonner smiled. Dorca would take any amount of liquor or food that Bonner could bring in. But more than anything, Dorca wanted sugar: honey, candy, raw cane, it didn't matter. Once Bonner had found chocolate, a whole half pound, and had given it to Dorca as a gift. The big man had looked as if he was going to cry when Bonner gave it to him. He had taken the bar in his hand as if it had been gold or a holy relic. "Hershey's..." He had said that word as if it had been a prayer. There wasn't anything Dorca didn't know about the different kinds of candy that had existed before the bomb, he was a confec- tionery historian. The wrappers were all over the bar, in frames, like works of art.
Once Bonner gave him that candy bar, Dorca was his friend for life. It had been a good investment, Bonner thought, because Dorca knew everything and everyone in Chicago. Where they were going, what they were going for... But he never asked Bonner and Bonner never told him.
"What can I do for you?"
"Dorca, any idea where Seth is?"
"Headed south a couple of days ago... Bad candy country the south. It all melted years ago."
"Too bad," said Bonner.
"Besides, that fucking contraption he rides around in gets so hot if he found any candy it would melt on the way back."
"Shit," said Bonner, "I wanted to talk to him too..."
Dorca looked suspicious. "Where you going, Bonner?''
"A long way in, Dorca..."
"You usually travel alone. You wanted Seth to ride you some place in that thing..."
"Locomotive."
"Yeah... the thing. Where you going?"
Bonner whispered: "If Seth comes in, tell him I'm headed east."
"How far east?"
"All the way..."
"You fucking crazy? Bonner, not even you can go right into the Slavestates. Fool around on the edges, maybe. But Leather has that place wrapped tight... Wait a minute, that guy that came in here tonight, he's with Leather, isn't he?"
"He was," said Bonner.
"I knew he looked no good. Bonner, where you going? Boston? Philadelphia? Don't say New York..."
"Washington, the Capital."
"You've lost it, man... You're dead already. What's so fucking valuable in the Cap? What are you going after?"
"Dorca, I'm going after Leather." "Then say goodbye now, Mr. Bonner," said Dorca solemnly.
"Bye, Dorca," said Bonner with a smile. "I'll bring you back a whadyacallit, a Charleston Chew."
After Bonner left, Dorca slammed the table leg on the bar-there was already a sizable dent there, witness to many previous outbursts-bottles and patrons jumped at the sound and wondered what the hell was biting Dorca's ass tonight.
Chapter 3
Bonner left Dorca's as the pale purple light of dawn began to brighten the broken streets. He had a four- or five-block walk and he moved quickly, his stride filled with purpose. A few of the street workers scuttled into the shadows as he passed-Bonner was known to them and each of them knew that there was little point in trying to take him.
The night seemed as if it had been unnaturally long and Bonner felt as if it had been days, not hours, since he had taken Hatchet down. He rubbed the back of his neck, as if to wipe away the tension and fatigue that lodged there. He had not had much sleep, and he couldn't be sure when he would sleep again. But he knew that he had to start now, leave town immediately. Hatchet's message haunted him.
Bonner entered the old bus station on Wabash Avenue. The crumbling building, a few acres of cracked concrete and splintered glass was littered with reminders of a shattered past: Welcome to Chicago, The City That Works, proclaimed a sign. Not anymore, thought Bonner. Now the sign should read: Welcome to Chicago, the city that kills and steals, but survives...
Bonner stopped in the gloom. "Lucky!" he shouted. His voice caromed off the walls and then, almost immediately, was swallowed up in the vast space of the waiting room. Bonner climbed a rusty escalator to the second floor, the heavy tread of his boots sounding metallic and menacing in the silence. Here, there was more evidence of the dead time, that time that no one remembered. "No strollers," said a sign next to the escalator, "Children must be carried." Bonner had stopped wondering why years ago. Whatever a stroller had been, nobody remembered now and there were hardly any kids these days, not in Chicago, not anywhere. It was a dying world.
A tattered poster with a picture of the old pre-bomb buses and a family looking on in rapt admiration, was still pasted to the walls: "GO GREYHOUND AND LEAVE THE DRIVING TO US." There was a very proud looking driver wearing a peaked cap and bow tie sat behind the wheel. Bonner had seen the rusting carcasses of these buses scattered about the landscape like dinosaurs. He always wondered what kind of power they had put out.
"Lucky!" This time he got a reply.
"What? What you doing up so early, boss?" Lucky appeared from behind an old ticket counter. He carried an old Colt Peacemaker. "I heard you walking around, scared the shit out of me." Lucky was a little man, hardly reaching Bonner's shoulder. His blond hair was so light as to be almost white. His blue eyes so pale that it was hard to tell where the irises ended and the whites began. His left leg had been smashed below the knee and it stuck out askew from his body giving him an awkward, sideways gait.
"I'm headed out. The car set up?"
"Always ready, boss. Cleaned the carbs and the points. Tuned her a little. New oil too-wherever you're going you want to see if you can find me some more? Don't care what grade."
Bonner nodded. "Will do."
"You are going to need a radiator one of these fine days. But I think I know where I can lay my hands on one."
"How are the electrics?"
"Good. That battery'll hold you. Watch your brakes, they're getting crotchety in their old age."
"Seen Seth?"
"Lousy nigger. He owes me for some pipe. Walked off with a wrench too. I don't know how he keeps that old fire-eater alive... Where you going this time, boss?"
"East."
"No shit? How far?"
"What if I said all the way?"
"Then I would say good luck and watch your axle because you ain't gonna get anything to fit that chassis in the east. It's the biggest fucking nightmare, having to replace them axles one day. Or maybe a half-shaft. Where we going to get bruisers like that?"
"Lucky, you worry too much."
Lucky shrugged. "You the boss."
Bonner's car was all engine. Between the front axle and the steering wheel was a long, black hunk of metal, an eight-cylinder Lycoming marine engine. Lucky, the best mechanic going, had found it somewhere and had modified it to fit the all pipe chassis that he had designed and double welded together himself. The tires were fat old white walls that he had taken off a pimpish-looking Caddy he had found in Evanston. Only a whisper of tread remained on them. Light canvas fenders were suspended above each wheel, they didn't afford much protection, but they didn't add much weight either.
A single spotlight was posted on the prow. It could shoot out a blast of white light, lighting a corridor a hundred yards ahead as bright as midday. Lucky had bargained it away from the guy that ran the slave auctions at the old Capitol Theatre.
There was no bodywork to speak of. A single leather seat was placed over the rear axle, positioned perfectly in relation to the steering wheel to comfortably accommodate Bonner's six foot plus frame. The wheel was black and large and on its hub was an elaborate filligree design that spelled out a word: De Soto.
"Whatever the fuck that was," Lucky had said.
There were no instruments, no dashboard, just the firewall separating the driver from the engine. On the steering column the
re was a switch for the light and a button that acted as the starter. "Keep things simple," said Lucky.
A roll bar arched over the driver's seat like a halo. Attached to it, running lengthwise were an axe and a shovel. Clipped to the top of the bar, shrouded in canvas, its barrel pointed toward the ground was a 50 calibre machinegun.
"I don't want that thing there," Bonner had said. "If people start shooting, I want to draw fire away from the car, not toward it."
"It always helps to have a little hardware," Lucky had said. The gun had gotten Bonner out of more than one scrape over the years, so it stayed. A few belts of ammunition lay curled around a pair of heavy gauntlets in the well where the passenger seat would have been.
Behind the bar was a fifty-gallon fuel tank, and keeping it filled was the hardest task Lucky had to perform. For all his modification the big Lycoming sucked up gas-"like a baby at a tit," he said-and on the road, to run out of gas was to take a giant step toward death.
At the very stern of the car, swept up behind, were two wide-mouthed exhaust pipes. They very nearly deafened the driver when he hit speed, but Bonner had grown used to the roar over his shoulder and he hardly heard it now.
Lucky looked down at his creation proudly. He wiped away an imaginary smudge on the steering wheel. "Nothing else on four wheels like her, boss. You're a lucky man," he said, as if he was a best man at a wedding.
Bonner slid behind the wheel and hit the starter. The engine exploded into life, filling the cavernous bus ramp with a healthy, throaty roar. Lucky smiled happily, showing a row of uneven teeth like a broken fence. He swore he could feel the detonation of each cylinder through the soles of his feet. He waved to Bonner and shouted over the noise:
"Have yourself a good trip, boss."
Bonner smiled and slammed the machine into gear roaring off down the ramp. The engine sounded eager for the road. Lucky listened to the engine for some time, following its rumble through the streets, wincing every time he heard the brakes squeal.
"That man got no respect for machinery," he said to the empty room.
Bonner drove along Lakeshore, hardly glancing up at the bombed-out glass towers that lined the broad avenue. Dorca, who knew about such things, said that the street had once been Chi's best neighborhood, and that the tall building that dominated Chicago's skyline had once been the tallest building in the world-until the bomb came along and blew off the top twenty-five stories. The gleaming, jagged upper edge glinted in the morning sun.
Abruptly, Bonner pulled off the drive and onto the ramp that led onto the dry lake bed. Stretching off as far as the horizon was the drab brownness of the dead lake. Bonner narrowed his eyes and looked about him. As the story went, the lake had boiled away, leaving this great brown saucer. People said that if you got to the very middle of it there was still some water, but Bonner hadn't been there so he couldn't say if they were telling the truth. It must have been quite a sight once, he thought, all that water...
Now it made a great natural highway and it was a perfect approach to the city. No force of any size could come across it without being spotted.
Bonner hit the gas and the car shot. out onto the road that had been beaten into the earth by thousands of tires. A set of wheel marks branched off the main track, gracefully curving off toward the north and Canada; they vanished into the horizon. He passed that turning by and pointed the nose of his car to the east. He planned his route in his mind: across the lake to the far shore, then across the peninsula to Detroit. From there he'd get onto the bed of Lake Erie and follow that into Pennsylvania, just north of the Firelands. That was the point generally acknowledged to be the beginning of the Slavestates.
The car raced along the lakebed, throwing up a long cloud of dust behind. An hour into his drive Bonner spotted another column of dust a ways ahead of him. It was coming toward him. He stared over the heat shimmer thrown off by the engine, trying to see if he was driving toward a friend or an enemy. He tensed slightly behind the wheel. Rule of the road number one: everybody was a foe until you found out otherwise.
Another mile passed and Bonner relaxed a little. He saw now that the party headed toward him was a raider column lead by Coldchip. Coldchip wasn't that bad, for a raider anyway. Last Bonner had heard of him he had been headed for the Snowstates, but he was obviously returning from the wrong direction. Something must have gone wrong.
Coldchip and his men came face to face with Bonner on the track a few minutes later. Bonner cut his engine to an idle and remained behind the wheel. Coldchip was in the lead on the big old motorcycle-sidecar combination he always rode. The sidecar was piled high with boxes marked Campbell's Soup. Behind him were the members of the raiding party, also mounted on bikes. Bonner knew them all by name. The air was filled with the sound of throbbing engines.
"Well, hey there Bonner," shouted Coldchip.
"Morning, Chippie. Where you coming from?"
"Never fucking should have left home, man. Headed out for the Snows-got blasted. Said fuck it. Headed over to the Slaves-got blasted again. We took some slaves-they got kilt. Lost two of my men when we ran into a Stormer patrol-blasted again. Used sixty gals of gas, got six crates of soup. Man, it's getting so a man can't make a living. Shit."
"Where'd you run into Stormers?"
"Scranton. You going Slavestatin'?"
Bonner nodded.
"Hey Bonner," shouted one of the raiders. "We heard that Leather's put some numbers on your skin."
"That's right, Daniel."
"Ten thousand gold?" "That's what I hear."
"Mind if I try to collect?"
"Per Chrissake, Danny boy," shouted Coldchip, "don't be a king size jerk-ass. I already got two men dead."
"Hey, Coldchip, who are you? My mother?"
"If I was your mother I would have put your head in a bucket when you were born."
"Come on, Danny," said Bonner, "let it ride..."
"Yeah, next time, Bonner."
"Right, next time." Bonner pushed the car into gear and maneuvered around the raiders.
Coldchip watched him go a long time, the other raiders revved their engines. "Hold it," shouted Coldchip. "Danny, did you say ten thousand?"
Danny grinned. "Gold, boss."
Coldchip rubbed the stubble on his chin. "I dunno."
"Fuck it, man," shouted one of the other raiders. "We got six lousy crates of soup. Yeah, Bonner's good, sure, but there are five of us. He can't beat the odds... Not all the time, anyhow..."
Coldchip considered a moment longer. He narrowed his eyes and watched Bonner get smaller and smaller on the horizon.
"Okay, let's take him down." He turned his big machine around. "Let's go."
The raiders gunned their engines and howled as they chased after Bonner. Far ahead they saw Bonner's car drop into a depression in the lakebed. The pounding sound of the five engines did not penetrate into the brains of the raiders. They all had one thought on their minds: ten thousand gold. Each was already planning how to get rid of the other four as if Bonner was already dead.
In the basin of the depression Bonner stopped, cut his engine and listened. There they were, the sound of the raiders' bikes, getting louder. He figured he had a minute or two before the first of them came over the rise. Quickly, he stripped the canvas cover from the machinegun, clipped in a belt of ammunition and waited. The engines grew louder with every second.
Danny was the first over the rise. Bonner let loose a short rip of bullets and shot Danny out of the sky like a bird. The bullets pounded into his chest, the whole front of his dirty shirt spilling open like an obscene, bloody flower.
Three more riders flew over the rise. They had seen Danny fall but were travelling too fast to stop. They rode straight into Bonner's murderous fire. With shell casings spurting around him, as if he stood in the middle of a brass fountain, Bonner chopped the raiders down. Their bodies hit the ground with sickening thuds, the bikes crashing to the ground, spokes snapping, engines racing hot and screaming.
<
br /> Coldchip slammed on his brakes just before the rise and stopped. Hot bolts of fear pounded through him and he swore under his breath. How had he got involved with Bonner? He went his way, you went yours. He wouldn't mess with you, if you didn't bother him. Those who tried to take him died. It was that simple. Bonner always found some way to rip you apart, always coming at you. The man was marked, he had something that the rest of them couldn't find. Coldchip swore again and hoped to God that Bonner had blown Danny boy away because he was one dumb fuck who deserved it. Coldchip could feel Bonner, just over the edge, waiting. Coldchip considered turning around and running hell for leather for Chi. But Bonner would come back some day... Better get it over with. Maybe Coldchip would get a break, maybe he would win... He doubted it.
Richard Harding - Outrider 1, Premier Volume Page 2