by Steve Rzasa
“Saints above.” His voice was a rumble of thunder. “Here Cath thought the home comp was mixing up its data. But it really is Roman Jasko standing outside my sanctuary.”
“Good to see you too, Andrew.” Rome hugged the man. He would have been less crushed by the grasp of a bear, but it was such a familiar embrace that Rome could be twenty years younger. Burdens evaporated.
“You brought company.”
“Andrew, this is Aldo Burns, my info tech. Aldo, Pastor Andrew Gold.”
Andrew clasped Aldo’s palm with both hands, smothering it. “Blessings, friend.”
“Uh, yeah. Likewise.” Aldo jerked a thumb. “I’m gonna go, maybe check on the car, see if it’s… there.”
“Stay put,” Rome glared at him.
Andrew laughed. “Boy looks like he’s got to recite catechism, Rome.”
“Can you blame him? You’re probably the first pastor he’s ever seen.”
“True, true.” Andrew gestured for them to come in. “Please.”
Rome and Aldo followed him through the darkened sanctuary. There was a wooden cross inset on the wall. Aldo whistled.
“Don’t fret. You can’t see it from the street, as per the ordinances.” Andrew opened the door ahead of them.
Beyond was a decent sized apartment. The corridor had two rooms to the left, an office, and a vacant bedroom. To the right was a large living space with furniture arranged around a stone-topped table. Tattered books jutted between the legs. Past that was a kitchen, and adjacent the kitchen was another set of doors. One revealed a bathroom, and the other a bedroom, both dim with orange lights set into the floor.
“Rome!” The woman stood in the bedroom entrance, dressed in a kimono-type nightgown, shimmering green with brilliant flowers all over it. She rushed him, and hugged him near as tightly as Andrew had. She was a head shorter than he and Aldo, with curly brown hair streaked with white. Blue eyes filled with tears. “It’s been so long!”
“I told Cath she didn’t have to get up.” Andrew dropped his frame into a blue chair with metal legs. It creaked under his weight.
“Nonsense. If you boys are in trouble I’m not snoozing away the night. Sit down and rest. Go on. I’m making tea.” She pushed them both in the direction of a long couch with matching upholstery, then headed to the kitchen. “We’ve got enough water left on the day’s ration.”
Rome wondered what they’d think if he told them about the constant deluges in Ohio or the fog in Seattle.
“So, was Rome on target?” Andrew asked.
“Not kidding,” Aldo said. “You are the first.”
“Disappointed?”
“Kinda.” Aldo plucked at his beard—or rather, made the motion at air since his beard was gone. His cheeks reddened. “The way they talk about the churches in school, you’d think you guys were all either gun-toting militants or chanting monks.”
“Hmm. Well, close in some cases, I’d reckon. But not all. If I were to—hypothetically speaking—own a gun, I certainly wouldn’t tote it. But let’s talk about you fellas.” Andrew raised an eyebrow, each one as bushy as a dog’s tail. “If you’re here, it’s bad.”
“Seen the Net?”
“Certainly. I’m no Luddite. Most of my congregation gets my sermons that way, and when we can’t meet—” Andrew shrugged. “It isn’t the same as the body of Christ gathering in one place, but in spirit, it’s close enough. I should hand it to you, Rome—when you get in trouble you don’t do it by half-measures. I should comment on the FTZ tip site.”
Rome leaned back onto the sagging couch. The antique didn’t even adjust to his contours. It just sat there like a sullen pet. He ran his hand along the arm of the sofa. Yeah, the bare patch was still there. “Sure would help you with your taxes.”
Aldo crossed his arms and scowled at them both.
“Take heart, beardless child,” Andrew rumbled. “I’m not turning either of you in. I’d no sooner turn my back on one of my former congregants than I’d delete my Scriptures.”
“Right.”
“Seriously, Aldo,” Rome said. “I was joking.”
“You know what’s not a joke? The bounty on us!” Aldo waved his implant between them. The holographic numbers blurred into a green smear. “Same as what we were gonna get paid for bringing in the thieves! Except we don’t get it, or even half if we’d have to share with shit-brain Thad!”
Andrew winced.
“There won’t be any of that talk in my home.” Cath approached with two cups of tea. Steam swirled off the tops, carrying a hint of plum. She handed one to Andrew, and one to Rome. “You keep that dirty mouth running and you’ll be waiting in the car, and I don’t care what the FTZ does.”
Rome shook his head.
Cath kissed Andrew on the cheek and patted Rome’s arm. “I’ve got to be up for my shift at the med center early. Goodnight all.”
“’Night, darling.” Andrew watched her leave. Then he regarded Aldo with the curiosity of a man inspecting a strange insect. “You must like danger.”
“Drive with him, don’t I?” Aldo slumped into the couch. “So, what, I don’t get tea?”
Rome sipped it. Piping hot, the best. “Aldo’s got a point, Andrew. FTZ hasn’t found us yet but I’m running short on banknotes. I wouldn’t fault anyone for thinking they could make some bucks off our capture.”
“Won’t argue that. But some things are of far greater value than money. The soul, after all.” Andrew winked. “Since you mentioned money, though…”
He handed his tea to Aldo. “Do not drink it, boy.”
Aldo held it, staring.
Andrew crossed the room and lifted a photo set of himself, Cath, and several children, all of whom appeared to be in their twenties. Behind the photo was a wall safe. He pressed his face near to a tiny strip of black and white plastic to the right. Gold light played across his eyes.
The safe opened with a barely audible hiss.
“Ah. Thank God.” Rome joined him.
“Don’t make light, Rome.”
“I’m not. Meant both words.” Rome reached inside the safe. He removed a pair of bags—both black, and both longer than his arm. “You kept them.”
“I did. They’re your property, and I promised you they’d be ready when you needed them most.”
“Good thing.” Rome set both bags on the floor in front of Aldo.
“Christmas presents?” Aldo held Andrew’s tea. The cup trembled.
“Next best option.” Rome unzipped the first bag. It was packed full of stacks of banknotes, dozens of them. There were also twenty packages of coins, gold and silver, stamped with the insignias of several different mints. Rome nestled one container in the palm of his hand. It held six silver coins.
“Holy—” Aldo cut off the rest. Andrew glared at him. “That’s, um, a lot of money.”
“Eighty thousand. I’ve been stashing it for years. Every bounty we got, I’d take a percentage, cash it out, and send it to Andrew,” Rome smiled. “Kind of a pain, too.”
“What, did I ever complain about having to drive to seven different post office boxes in Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado?”
“Until now? No. So thanks.”
Andrew chuckled. He retrieved his tea and took a long sip. “Well, it was my pleasure. The second bag, I made sure to open and clean the contents every so often. Nothing like proper maintenance to ensure proper performance.”
Rome unzipped the bag. He drew three J-60s. Stuffed in the far end of the bag were 21 magazines.
“Amen to that,” Aldo muttered.
~
Rome finally convinced Aldo to get some sleep, but only after he moved the Halcyon around the back of the business buildings. By the time he came back in, Aldo was curled up on the couch. He snored a few times. To Rome it sounded like a belching dog.
“Boy could resurrect the dead,” Andrew muttered.
He and Rome sat in the darkened sanctuary where Aldo’s snores were more faint. “Yeah, well, he’s ha
d a rough couple of days.”
“Where’d you find him? FTZ assign him to you?”
Rome nodded. “Four years ago. He was a rookie—never even been with someone driving a car before. Hell—sorry, heck, I don’t think he’d even seen anyone do it. But he’s skilled with the comps. About as good as having a second one aboard.”
“What’s with the beard? He looks like he just shaved. Badly.”
“Made him ditch it. I’ve got some dye—he’ll have to go brown for a while.”
“Makes sense. He’s as bright as Santa Claus on top. And I see you’re carrying scruff on the chin, too.”
“Anything easy we can do to throw off facial rec.”
“Makes sense.” Andrew took another long sip. His eyes didn’t leave Rome.
“Okay, what’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a good man, Andrew. The best. But you won’t lie to me. And you just repeated yourself, which means something’s bothering you that you won’t say.” Rome gestured toward himself. “Download it for me.”
Andrew set the mug aside on a vacant chair. He leaned forward, elbows perched on his knees with his hands clasped. “The Lord’s clear enough about worry. We’re not supposed to, even when it pertains to the future. Got enough trouble for the present.”
“Won’t argue that,” Rome murmured.
“That said, I’m worried about you, Rome.”
“Me too.”
“Now, be serious. I know you boys are on the run. What kind of plan do you have?”
“Can’t tell you the details, Andrew. The less you know, the less you have to answer for if anyone finds out we were here.” Rome frowned. “But, bare bones: we’re changing our looks, Aldo will forge us some new electronic credentials, and then we’ll stay hidden.”
“I don’t suppose your family realizes this.”
Kelsey. Vivian. Jake. The concert was on Friday. It was very early Wednesday. There was still time, if they drove as non-stop as possible…
What, was he kidding?
“I haven’t been in touch. Being on the run puts a crimp in Daddy sending a signal.”
“The people who’ve done this to you. You’re going to stop them. Correct?”
Rome shifted in his chair. He suddenly felt tired and knew the past 24 hours caught up with him as the adrenaline wore off. He wanted nothing more than to sleep. “There isn’t much I can do. It doesn’t feel right.”
“Feel right? Feelings have nothing to do with it, Rome. It’s either right or wrong. Day or night. Can you look at what’s happened to you, to the innocents who’ve been hurt, and tell me otherwise?” Andrew retrieved his mug. His wedding ring pinged against ceramic. “I can’t make you do what needs to be done. Not even God will force you. But there is a drive in you toward the light—I’ve known it since the first time you crept in our back door. Deny all you want, but the truth… the right, will pursue you with far greater diligence than any drone and driver.”
“I just want to hang it up.” Rome’s admission was a surprise, as if he heard himself voice-cloned by an AI. “To go see my kids, put all this in park, and walk away.”
“You can’t.”
“Why not? I’m entitled to the rest. I’ve paid my penance.”
“Not arguing that. But what will you tell your kids when you’ve given it all away? That their father no longer cares about pursuing what’s good, right, and salutary? You can rest when those who do wrong and hurt others are brought to justice.” Andrew reached over and slapped his leg. “I’m going to bed. You’ll need your sleep, too.” He left, the darkness was interrupted by a brief splash of light from the apartment door behind them.
Rome leaned in the chair, ignoring the half-full cup of stone cold tea. He wished it was a lot stronger.
~
Six a.m.
The sun turned the sky from black to pale blue, then rose streaked with fiery orange. It colored the tiny bathroom the same shade. Rome’s face was cast in bronze.
He stood in front of the mirror. He already had decent stubble of black and silver growing. Give it a day or so, and he’d be halfway to a beard.
Rome ran a hand through his hair again. Wouldn’t be him, as Aldo inferred. Did that make such a difference? Changing his looks didn’t mean changing him, the person. Did it?
Did he even want to be Rome Jasko?
He flicked on the electric razor. It hummed, his fingers vibrating to its motor. Rome cut through the hair on the right side of his head, strip after strip. Coal black clumps fell to the white tile. His scalp was shockingly pale. The buzz of the blades intensified with each pass.
Rome glared at himself in the mirror. Hide? That wasn’t him. Neither was the pity party.
The facts of the case—and the fiasco it had become—filled his head. The gang of thieves had a leader, someone with access to a Condor lifter and military tech that included stealth suits and a disappearing truck. Bacevich Arsenal in Michigan might have lost one of those, but it was being hushed up. Someone was after more than just a simple scapegoat for the whole mess. They’d targeted Rome for his background, for his status as a Driver, and all the liability and publicity that went with it.
Rome didn’t care who he was up against or what they wanted. As far as he was concerned, the person behind everything was a killer—certainly the deaths of the two FTZ security guards were on his or her hands, along with the pain suffered by the victims of the robberies. Whoever it was, they took Rome’s life away… and Aldo’s, too.
Right or wrong. Black and white. They had the coordinates for the location used by the thief leader to remote control the android decoy.
Rome didn’t feel sorry for himself. He brushed off his self-pity’s attempt to gain a second audience.
The only man he felt sorry for was whoever had crossed him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THEY GOT PAST THE CHICAGO Restricted Coast without having to hit any sensored checkpoints. Rome spotted a stream of small freighters coming out of the South Gate, stamped with Red Cross icons. More relief supplies, no doubt. The sporadic traffic entering the CRC consisted primarily of military transports.
“Think they’ll ever get it put back together?” Aldo’s face was lurid red with the local travel warnings.
“It’s been eight years. I’m not optimistic.”
It wasn’t long after entering Indiana that Rome saw the familiar car in the rear view.
“That isn’t Thad… it can’t be!” Aldo stared at the image, gazing through his holographic displays.
“It sure can. Run the comparison.” The car was black instead of Thad’s trademark blue and gold, but Rome was sure of it.
No emergency lights, yet. No alerts to local traffic. So, Thad hadn’t taken manual control. Nobody watched the road, period. Not when the comp took care of the safety notices. It made Rome feel like a stranger in a room full of friends. Like now, when he saw everything suffused in the golden light of the sun as it dipped low on the horizon. He bet he’d be the only person on the road to remember it.
“I’ll overlay.” An image of the Panther appeared in Aldo’s display. It drifted onto a second car of near identical features. “That’s—huh. It is him. Same chassis, same contours, different color and registration.”
“No surprise there. We did the same thing.”
“But how’d he find us?”
“Could’ve tracked us since Sunnyside. Could have picked up a facial recognition hit when we passed Cheyenne, or when any number of drones flew by.”
“Yeah, okay, but we still look like all the other Halcyons out there, and without the same registration. How’s he going to—”
Red and blue lights erupted behind them. A light pulsed on the dash.
Aldo scowled. “Bet that call’s for you.”
Rome killed the signal. “Nearest exit?”
“South Bend. You want to take it?”
“Point us that way.” Rome eyed the map and looked again at Thad’s spe
ed. “We’ll make it.”
Road construction lined the highway for twenty miles. They were finally approached the end of it. Hulking assembler robots hefted girders, while other, squat robots extruded paving. Crews of ten to thirty people—mostly men, ranging in age from their late teens to their fifties, though Rome saw a woman for every eight workers—dug out culverts, laser-lined railings, bolted down ramp fittings, and generally scurried around the robots as if they were the masters and the humans mere attendants.
“Infrastructure Rebuild Corps sure is busy here,” Aldo said. “You’d think there wouldn’t be anything left to fix after running non-stop for thirty years.”
“There’s always old bridges buckling or roads falling apart,” Rome groused. “And there’s the jobs—last count was 4 million employed. Pales compared to the five times the number working for IRC across the country in the 2020s.”
“Oh, no doubt. Things were a wreck back then. But now we’ve got more bots. Seems like fewer people is the word of the day.”
“My dad did that work—still consults from his engineering firm. Grandfather was on one of the first crews as a designer and supervisor.”
“What, you didn’t feel the urge to play with concrete and carbon fiber all day?”
“Too slow.”
They took the ramp with a dozen other cars and Famtracs, streaming single file down the ribbon of road cutting across a green slope. It dumped them into a two-lane road where incoming cars merged seamlessly with the other traffic.
Thad’s car slowed far behind them, stuck behind a line of ten more vehicles.
“Okay, do a comparability scan.”
“Comparable to what—” Aldo grinned. “Ah. Gotcha. No problem.”
“I figured that.”
“One scan of silver Halcyons, coming up.”
Within thirty seconds, Aldo’s scan results pegged eight Halcyons with similar color schemes, all built in the past five years. He transferred the results to the dash and the windshield, where the car’s sensors ghosted red outlines over the nearest vehicles.