That got a look of interest from Mason, who canted his head in a birdlike way, fixing his dark eyes on Scalli’s brawny back. “Spent a lot of time in combat, have you? You handled that driving very well.”
“Marcus used to be hired security, Harry.” Diana looked at Scalli with a grin of very obvious interest. “Like I told you last night, he knows his way around a scrap.”
“Yes…” Mason narrowed his eyes very slightly and nodded. “I suppose he does at that. Good work on the road, there, Scalli. You do a lot of road training?”
“Part and parcel of private security duty,” Scalli said with a nod. “You can’t be a decent bodyguard if you can’t work the wheel.”
“I suppose not.” Mason inclined his head, but he didn’t look terribly convinced – though about what, Bobbi couldn’t say. She sat watching them, glancing out the vision slits from time to time, as the four of them traveled on.
They made their way unmolested to within a few blocks of the first of the settlement before the truck died. They had wound through the rotting blocks as the afternoon went on, dodging the occasional band of nasty bastards; there had been a few close calls, but they had managed to travel largely undetected. Were the truck not an electric, and therefore pretty damned quiet, maybe they would have had attracted more attention.
Or maybe not. As they traveled, Bobbi had noted how quiet things had gotten. Though they hadn’t exactly seen people on the street, there had been signs of recent activity. Even the occasional corpse had seemed relatively fresh. As they drove into Renton, however, this changed. Old haunts had apparently emptied; the corpses they glimpsed were no longer rotting but were strings of bones lying in a tangle along the street or in doorways. Here the natural order had somehow deadened. Bobbi was rather sure that it was because something stranger, more dangerous, had swept the natives away with it as it passed. It made her nervous.
Bobbi watched as the landscape alternated between stretches of crumbling industrial buildings and rain-warped neighborhoods. The cycle of putrefaction was well on its way in the corpse of the Seattle suburbs; she wondered if people would even bother to reclaim it. She saw a future where the New City would not spread outward like some ambitious cancer but instead stretch upward, ever upward, until its mighty towers scraped the stratosphere and the penthouses looked out on the stars. But then she thought about the Yathi, how the future may well belong to someone else, and she wondered into what form alien minds might bend the world.
They had made their way into a housing development a few miles from the first site when the truck cut out. The instruments and the codged-together console display sputtered and died as the car lost power, rolling to a stop in the middle of the street. Its protest was met by a horde of black cursing from Diana and a general sense of unsurprised acceptance from the rest of them. This was the Old City, after all, which seemed to have turned into a sort of carnivorous organism all on its own; it lived to consume the warm life that cowered in its ruins. Potentially lethal technical problems were only to be expected.
The old houses loomed on either side, faded, peeling temples to life before the financial crash. Most of them had fallen in on one side or another, while others – creatures of sterner stuff and better budgets – still stood resilient against age and the weather. They had gotten out of the truck, save for Diana who was busy manning the gun and guarding the front end of the street. Scalli had taken point a bit down the road, taking up the rear and playing sentry with that rifle of his. Mason had the hood open and was fiddling with the engine.
Bobbi had tried to check up with Cagliostro, but the old ghost was not responding to summons. She ended up watching Mason work as she crouched by the truck’s front bumper, while his arms were buried in the engine. “So, how you doing there, man,” she asked in her best conversational tone. “Everything going okay?”
“Looks like a stray round got in through the bottom,” he said, not looking at her. “Probably skipped off the pavement. Clipped the main feed from the wheel motors to the battery. Was only a matter of time before the system cut out, blew some fuses.”
Well, shit, Bobbi thought. “Uh, yeah,” she said, “I can see how that might be bad. That a permanent problem?” She hoped to hell it wasn’t; she didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of fucking Murderville.
Mason chuckled. “Nothing permanent, no,” he said, “unless we get some trouble. It’s going to be a bit, though. Gotta strip these wires, get them patched, run a test cycle on the battery. Replace the fuses, too. The problem isn’t the fix, though, it’s the fact we’re gonna be sitting here in the middle of the street for like a half an hour here.”
“Yeah…” Bobbi looked back where Scalli crouched behind the rusted ruin of a station wagon. Big as he was, he somehow managed to fold himself up behind his bulk – almost as if he’d managed to shrink himself somehow, retract his muscles into himself. It was a little bizarre.
From under the hood of the truck, Mason followed Bobbi’s gaze. “So how long did he serve?”
“I’m sorry?” Bobbi blinked at Mason, her green eyes tracking his face as he went back to work.
“How long did he serve?” Mason nodded into the engine compartment. “And don’t give me any bullshit about private security. If he was private anything, he was private military.”
Bobbi looked back at Scalli again. She wrinkled her nose, weighing the possibilities. “Why do you say that? He could have had military training from back when he worked with a firm.”
Mason snorted at that. “I know what career military looks like. I worked with SevinArms from ‘fifty to ‘sixty-seven, you know.”
“You don’t look nearly that old,” Bobbi said.
“Yeah, well, we all got our secrets, don’t we? That’s what I’m saying.”
This line of conversation was opening up unnerving seams in her knowledge of her friend – unnerving because Bobbi had the distinct feeling that there was some measure of truth to it. She’d never seen him in action until that night, short of some chop-socky action done on rowdy boys at the club when she was dancing. Usually the mere sight of him was enough to keep people in line. She thought of the ease with which he had shot down Freida, how he methodically hosed the white tide of ghouls. “I guess,” she heard herself saying. “I guess it’s not out of the question for me. But if he did serve, I’m sure he’s got good reason to claim otherwise.”
Another snort came from under the hood. “I find that if someone’s lying about service,” he said, “it’s because someone’s got something to hide in one way or another. Straight up ask him, see what he says.”
“Oh yeah?” Something about the way he said it irritated the shit out of her. Mr. Snarky Fucker. “So what about you?” she asked, hearing the defensiveness in her tone. The challenge. “You’re old as fuck as war vets go, so why do you look so young?”
“Yeah…well.” Mason ducked out from under the hood to look at her. “I said I had good genes, didn’t I?”
“Better than most,” Bobbi said with a grunt. “Or any.”
“KMI had some of us submit to gene surgery when we came in, part of a pilot program. Faster reflexes, better eyesight, stuff like that. Part of it was longevity, a partial telomeric rebuild.” Mason shook his head and chuckled. “I’m forty-eight, believe it or not. Lived in Federal Way, signed up with the Company after the Crash. I was in the field for the whole War, you know?”
Bobbi looked at him for a long moment. Empathy fought with irritation. “I guess that was a hard thing for you to deal with, coming back and finding the place like it was.”
“Yeah.” He looked back down at the engine and slid under the hood again. Bobbi couldn’t see his face. “When I got back it wasn’t quite as bad as it’s gotten the past ten years, but it still wasn’t great. My wife took off with the kid, my house had burned down a long time ago in one of the wildfires. Gas main blew up, something like that. It’s not like the government or the corporates cared.”
Though she couldn�
�t see his expression, Bobbi heard the bitterness in his voice. It was a bitterness she knew well – her mother had it. Tenleytown was rife with it. Even she had it, especially when she talked about those days of her youth. “I’m sorry I brought it up,” she said. “I’ll let you get back to it.”
Mason didn’t say anything. Bobbi got up and stood by the truck, feeling distinctly bitchy for pushing him, and mad at herself for letting the doubt trickle in where Scalli was concerned. Maybe Scalli was military, who knows? Maybe he was another special forces type. Maybe he was a grunt. Or maybe, she thought with a thrill of horror, maybe he was someone like Stadil— or Ankundinov, rather— who had done some horrible shit. Was it possible that some moral collapse in his youth had allowed the earworm of Yathi thought to enter his mind? It could be so for any of them, really. It certainly had been for Tom. Bobbi considered for a moment the possibility that her oldest friend could harbor one of those creatures, however asleep it might be, and goose pimples marched across her skin in legions.
No, her mind snapped back at her. No, goddamn it. That’s how they got you. That’s how this whole fucking thing worked. They crawled in and battered at your mind, and they broke your resolve just by being here— knowing about them made it even worse. Self-directed anger bloomed inside her and she found herself crossing her arms over her chest, bidding the dark thoughts to die.
Bobbi walked away from the truck toward where Scalli crouched so expertly behind the shell of the station wagon. She walked across, crouching low as she neared the back bumper of the wreck. Scalli didn’t move; he had put his visor on again, making him look like more of a cyclops than ever, and he stared out at the street and the shells of the houses as if at any time one of them might get up and strike.
“Hey,” said Bobbi, her voice low. “How’s it going?”
“Hey back,” Scalli replied. “It’s fine. I got zero on thermal and the motion tracker. Looks like things are empty here after all.”
“Yeah,” Bobbi muttered. “That’s what’s got me so twitchy.” Then, in a slightly louder voice, “So it turns out Mason is former private military.”
“Yep.” Scalli kept his eyes down the road. His rifle was cradled in his arms like a young and irritable dragon, its silenced muzzle kept ready.
“What do you mean, ‘yep’? You knew?”
Scalli shrugged at her. “Yep.”
“Well…shit.” Bobbi shook her head. She wished she had a pair of thermal goggles or some other shit right now, as useless as she felt. “How the hell did you know that?”
The slightest smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Diana told me.”
“Did you know he’d had gene work done?”
“Told me that, too.”
Bobbi threw him a suspicious look. “When the hell did she tell you all this, anyway?”
He grinned, now. “When you were sleeping last night.”
From the look on his face, she didn’t need to ask what they were doing while this conversation went on. “Oh, man,” she said with a snort. “I was wondering why she was being like that with you today. Jesus, are you kidding me?”
“She likes big guys,” Scalli said. “Nothing wrong with it. It’s not like anyone else was throwing themselves in my path.”
Bobbi opened her mouth a little and promptly closed it again. Well, he had her on that one. Couldn’t complain about him panting after her and then complain about who he decided to turn his attention on, now could she? “Right,” she said then. “Well, good on you, Scalli. She’s kinda bitchy towards me, sure, but she seems like good people.”
“Well, I’m glad you approve.” He was teasing, she heard it in his voice. “Seriously, though. Do you know how long it’s gonna be before he gets that thing fixed?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Half an hour,” she said. “I mean he said it was fixable, just we’re gonna be out in the middle of the street here in the meantime.”
“Yeah…” Scalli looked over his shoulder, past Bobbi, to where Diana manned the truck’s gun. “Don’t think it’s going to be much of a problem, though.”
Bobbi nodded. “I know what you mean,” she said. “It’s like everything’s left.”
“Or gone somewhere else,” he said. “Redeye again.”
“Yeah.”
“You talk to Cagliostro since we started?”
She considered. “No,” Bobbi said. “He isn’t…at home, I guess you could say. I don’t know where he’s gone.”
“Probably out doing his ghost act,” Scalli growled. “Well, I don’t like going into these settlements, or whatever they are now, without some forward recon – but I guess that’s what we’ve got Harry for.”
“Thirty years’ military experience,” she echoed. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, he’s no joke.” Scalli looked over his shoulder again, and Bobbi followed. Diana and Mason were chatting, apparently, though the words were indistinct. Mason was still bent over the engine.
Bobbi was quiet for a long moment. Thoughts clicked over in her head. “He says you used to serve,” she finally said. “I mean, he says you were military.”
“Mmmm.” Scalli nodded, though he didn’t look at her. “I can see why he’d think that. Military-trained, definitely. Firm I worked for was specific about that. But I didn’t serve in a PMC or state forces.”
“So who did you work for?” She’d never really asked Scalli much about his work before she’d met him, of course. It really hadn’t mattered. Now, though, with Mason’s words stuck in her head she found her curiosity unusually stoked.
“Private parties, I told you.” He rose a bit, sweeping the visor’s single eye across the ruined development. “All right, I better get back to this. Why don’t you see how those repairs are going?”
Bobbi looked at him. “I was just there.”
“Yeah, well, I gotta focus on what I’m doing.”
From the tone of his voice, Bobbi felt that she had indeed crossed a line. “All right,” she said, and she got up to walk back toward the truck. Bobbi climbed into the cab and waited a while, staring at Diana’s legs as the woman stood in the gun cupola and nattered at Mason from time to time. Finally Mason’s work bore fruit; the truck’s displays came to life, the engine started, and they were off again.
The first site had once been a Crown Grocery. The familiar squat, rectangular building with its skin of fading blue bricks was obvious to anyone who had grown up in the suburbs. Crown had gone out of business in the Crash, but before that its stores had been a mainstay of the grocery market in Washington State. Local chains just didn’t exist anymore. Now, the store was— or at least, had been— a small fortress of steel and masonry. Security shutters still sealed off the doors and windows, heavy slabs of steel pitted with bullet craters and covered with graffiti. The parking lot around it was full of sections of jersey wall that had been brought in to form barriers and makeshift tank-traps. Scalli wove the truck through this maze as they circled the far edge of the parking lot.
“Looks quiet,” called Diana from the cupola. She surveyed the place with a pair of binoculars as Scalli brought them around toward the south side. “I don’t see anything— ah. Shit.”
“Talk to me.” Mason took her place in the passenger seat; he had a beastly shotgun in his lap fed with a big box magazine.
Diana’s legs shifted a bit. “Looks like…there’s a big fucking hole in the back. Blown out, maybe rockets or charges. Jesus, what a mess.”
Bobbi peered out of her vision slit, trying to see what Diana was talking about. Sure enough, a gaping wound had been blown out of the side of the building, a hole big enough to drive a truck through. The jersey walls in the vicinity still stood, however, so it didn’t appear that anyone had. Bobbi stared on at the destruction with horrid fascination.
“Any casualties?” This from Scalli, who stopped the truck in the shelter of an outbuilding.
“I don’t see anything from here. Whatever went on in there, looks like it’s been a while.” Diana crou
ched down into the truck cab, turning toward Mason and Scalli. “What do you want to do?” she asked.
Bobbi frowned a bit. “Don’t I get a vote?”
“Last time you had a wagon full of scavs after us,” Diana said flatly. “I’m asking the professionals.”
Mason and Scalli looked at each other. There may have been an understanding share there, because Mason looked at Bobbi. “Well,” he said, “what do you want to do?”
“Hey,” Diana started, but Mason waved her off.
“We went because she knows what’s going on,” Mason said to her, shaking his head. “You want to get pissy, you can stay here and keep the gun warm, but we’re supposed to help her out. That’s what the city council decided.”
Well bless the city council, then, Bobbi thought to herself. She always remembered them to be a pack of stodgy old motherfuckers and irritable biddies, not men and women of obvious judgment and mental prowess—she really had to stop thinking like that. Instead of voicing these thoughts she gave Mason a nod. “I’d like to go,” she said. “But only if the three of you are willing.” And then she added— somewhat painfully— “Like Diana said, you three are the professionals.”
Mason and Scalli looked at each other again. Diana looked a bit shocked. “Well,” Mason said after a moment’s pause, “if it’s empty, I think we’ll be okay to go in there. It’ll be interesting to see what’s going on, I figure, and if it’s been a while there shouldn’t be too much trouble.”
“Good,” Bobbi said with a nod. Diana kept quiet, so she assumed Mason spoke for the both of them. “Well, then, I guess we’ll get our stuff together and then—“
Redeye (The Wonderland Cycle Book 2) Page 21