DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2)

by Andrew Seiple

  “Shit! She got past us!”

  What?

  “Musta taken the elevator down!”

  “Right.” Hidden voice agreed. “Vince, Carl, take the stairs down a floor. I’ll keep watch up here. Call when you’re in position.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  They rushed past me, turning past the elevator to the stairwell. I could have gunned them down easily, but I refrained.

  There was someone else in the equation.

  I’d thought the ‘she’ they were talking about was me, but what if that wasn’t so? What if I’d stumbled into something quite unrelated to my current drama?

  My luck had always been bad, why should tonight be any different? I had half a mind to wait until these goons were done with their work, then depart.

  The shotgun thundered again, throwing echoes around the garage, and I sighed. No, waiting wasn’t an option. Someone would notice that sooner or later. The police would be here quickly, or worse, a hero would investigate. I’d be questioned, scrutinized, and my briefcase full of illegal devices might draw some attention.

  Besides, they’d shot at me. That was annoying at the best of times.

  I reached under the car, slid the briefcase out again, pulling out the taser this time. If they didn’t mean to kill me, then I’d stick to nonlethal as long as I could.

  Safety on, pistol in my pocket, back to the universal remote. I scrolled up the tab again, found the switch that would turn on the car alarm—

  “Yeah.”

  What? I went still, listened. The scanner in the briefcase flickered an OUTGOING CALL DETECTED message to my HUD.

  “Yeah, no. Ain’t got her yet. We only got ten guys and a big garage to cover. Bitch brought a shotty to the meet, too.”

  He was talking on a fucking cell phone. Seriously?

  I considered the remote, and pocketed it. These were not professionals. These were idiots. There was no point in overthinking this.

  I stood and walked up the ramp, silent in my stocking feet. With my nightvision I saw him far before he could possibly see me, turned slightly away with his phone to his ear, leaning against a pylon. I slid up within forty feet, went still, and listened.

  “Yes sir. We’re on this. Bitch is wounded, just gotta finish the job quick.”

  He snapped the phone shut, and at the same time I tazed him, aiming for the lower back. He dropped with a squeak, and I gave him a few more squeezes of current until he stopped thrashing. He’d live, with a hell of a headache when he woke up.

  Then I picked up the phone. I flipped it open... still working, good. I’d aimed low so I wouldn’t short the thing out when I zapped him. It was a bit scuffed, but still functional.

  I ignored the first number on his history, and started running down the rest of them, dialing for a couple of rings then hanging up.

  Phones started ringing, above and below, and distant curses reached my ears. I snickered, and set the thing to auto-dial every thirty seconds.

  This is why you use a tacnet, and not cell phones. Sweet, unsecured cell phones. I’d just revealed their positions, and thrown a spanner in their communications at the same time.

  Five above, as best my audio sensors could tell, and three below. He’d said ten? Two unaccounted for then, either with phones shut off, silenced, or broken.

  I left the phone where it was, jogged back to retrieve my briefcase, and went hunting.

  I’d gone up against professional techno-terrorists. I’d gone up against gangers trained by a special ops soldier gone bad. I’d gone up against heroes, villains, and brain-dead vampire-things. These were dumbasses with guns, who couldn’t murder a single target with a ten-to-one advantage.

  There was no contest, now that I knew what I was up against.

  I had night vision, they had flashlights. The only working powered devices in the place were the elevators and the signs outside. They had too few men to cover the garage, and as I went I took out two of the three below, working my way down floor by floor, tazing and leaving them unconscious. It wasn’t quite fish in a barrel, more like frogs in a wading pool. On the second one, I noticed that I’d stopped hearing phones from above. They’d finally wised up and discarded them, or turned them off. Didn’t hear the third one either. He was either on the floor below me, or the ground floor below that.

  And as I picked past the fallen fool on the floor, angling toward the ramp down, I heard a muffled ‘click-clack’ behind me.

  A shotgun being racked.

  I dove behind a van, as it boomed, and I felt insects sting my back as the buckshot went by, grazing and tearing my blouse and skin. Then I was up against the van, cursing myself for getting complacent. For my overconfidence, and the price I’d nearly paid for it.

  Click-clack.

  Wait.

  Hadn’t the men said something about the one they were hunting bringing a ‘shotty’ to the meet?

  Movement by the edge of the van, and I threw myself across the hood, scrabbling without heed of dignity as the shotgun roared again. Missed this time, though my back itched and ached, and I couldn’t stop to check the wounds. My blouse was sticking to my back, so I was probably bleeding, but how much I couldn’t tell.

  I hit the ground on the other side, taking the concrete with my shoulder and rolling, losing my briefcase in the process.

  Not good. Very not good. Worse, the noise would draw the hunters. I had nothing to lose by talking now, seeing if we could find common cause.

  “YOU’RE MAKING A MISTAKE,” I boomed, my voice roaring and echoing through the garage.

  “Dire? You? You’re the one? Why the fuck are you doing this?”

  The voice was female and familiar, though it took me a second to place it. Bunny! One of the Midtown Militia, she’d helped me fight the Black Bloods, back during our conflict.

  “BUNNY? IS THAT YOU?”

  Clicking noises were my only answer. She was reloading the shotgun.

  “BELIEVE IT OR NOT, DIRE’S PRESENCE IS A COINCIDENCE. BUT SHE’S WILLING TO MAKE COMMON CAUSE AGAINST THE DUMBASSES.”

  Hard breathing. I crouched down, looked under the van. A pair of boots on the other side, standing in a small dark splotch. As I watched, it spread. Blood, had to be.

  “YOU’RE HIT.”

  “But I’m not down.” Heavy breathing, and a pregnant pause. “Tell them to stand down, or I take you with me.” She sounded mad. Couldn’t blame her.

  “THEY’RE NOT HERS.”

  BLAM!

  Only the fact that I was crouched saved me, as she fired through the thin-walled van to get at me. She’d switched to slugs, fired where she thought I was standing.

  “Tell them!” She shrieked. I saw her boots stagger a second, before she started walking around—

  —and perhaps thirty feet behind her, coming up the ramp from the ground floor, I saw a man in a suit leveling a silenced pistol.

  “BEHIND YOU!” I called, as I rolled under the van, pulled my pistol from my pocket, and shot. It was a bad angle and I missed, missed again as he ran for cover.

  Bunny didn’t miss.

  Two barrels shouted in lead and fury, and he was lifted off his feet, thrown back against a car’s windshield as it splintered and exploded, as he slid to the ground, chest dark and gory.

  “Shit,” Bunny said.

  “YOU BELIEVE HER NOW? THEY’RE AFTER DIRE TOO.” Half-truth there. Couldn’t hurt.

  She considered, breath a little more ragged than before. Above her labored gasps, I heard the sound of shoes running on the levels above.

  “Okay. Got a plan?”

  “MOSTLY.” I slid out, slowly, and retrieved my briefcase. When I turned around, I was staring into two sawn-off barrels.

  “HEY NOW.” With exaggerated motions, I slid my pistol back into my pocket, and Bunny lowered the shotgun.

  “YOU’VE GOT GOOD NIGHT VISION...” I studied her. The right side of her hoodie was soaked through with blood. “...AND A SERIOUS WOUND. YOU NEED A DOCTOR.”<
br />
  “No!” She leaned against the van. “Just... can you hotwire a car or something?”

  I snorted, and the mask amplified and distorted the flat, razzing sound. “PLEASE. THAT’S SO NINETIES.”

  I pulled out the universal remote, waved it around various vehicles until I found a Cadillac that was wireless-enabled, and turned the thing on. It purred to life, and I waved her over to it as I hit the UNLOCK DOORS and START IGNITION options.

  A faint popping of guns, and flash from the level above as the goons peppered the Caddy with bullets. In response I pointed the universal remote up to the gunmen’s level, and started triggering every remote car alarm I could find. Blaring and shrieking, the cacophony threw them for a second, gave us the chance to slide into the car. I pulled out of the parking spot, sent it screeching down the ramp, and into the ground floor.

  “The gates—”

  “DON’T MAKE HER LAUGH.” I pointed the universal remote at the barriers as we approached, hit OPEN. The bar slid up and we bumped out onto the street, scraping the chassis of the long car against the grade of the street.

  Two blocks later, at a stoplight I stripped the mask from my face, tossed it into the backseat with my briefcase. I shot Bunny a look, but she was slumped in her seat, shotgun between her knees, clutching her side.

  “Adrenaline’s running out, huh?” I’d been there before.

  “Yeah,” she whispered. “I’m bleeding on the upholstery. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” I grinned. “It isn’t Dire’s car.”

  She coughed, and there were dark specks on her hand, as the red glow from the light shifted to green.

  “You need a doctor,” I said.

  “No!” She coughed a little more. “No doctors. I’m dead if... hospital...”

  I shifted the caddy back into gear, headed left, and over to stop in front of the Nothing’s Personal.

  Of course he didn’t come out. He didn’t recognize the car!

  I rolled down the window, gestured at the restaurant. Finally, the doors open, and Martin walked out, looking puzzled.

  “That’s uh, that’s not the Fjord.”

  “Nope. Get in.”

  “Aight.” He started around, and I shook my head.

  “Nope. Backseat.”

  “What?” He bent over, looked past me, into the car. It was dark enough, but he must have made out enough details because his eyes got wide under the glasses. “Shit. Shit shit shit. What the fuck you do?”

  “Not her doing. In! In!”

  He folded himself into the backseat, and barely had the door shut before I pulled out, and slid into traffic. Though every part of me wanted to go go go, I forced myself to drive slowly. Unlike Bunny, my adrenaline hadn’t crashed yet.

  The pulsing itch in my back told me it would hurt like a fucker when I did crash.

  “Okay. So who’s the dead guy riding shotgun?”

  “Not dead, not a guy. You’re right on the shotgun.”

  “S’a fucking hogleg,” Bunny slurred.

  “The fuck... wait.” Martin leaned forward. “You’re that Militia chick? What the fuck?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “She’s hurt,” I said for her. “We need to get her back to the lair before she dies. You know first aid, right?”

  “Fuck!”

  “That wasn’t a yes or a no.”

  “I... shit. Holy fucking shit. Wait. There is a baby seat in this caddy! Why the fuck is there a baby seat in this caddy!”

  “Oh. Hm. Is there a baby in it?”

  “No!”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “Why is there a baby seat in this caddy?”

  “Well, Dire stole it from a family she supposes, come on Martin, focus here!”

  “We are in a fucking stolen car with a bleeding ganger from the worst bunch out there, and you want me to fucking focus?” Martin was practically bouncing in his seat.

  “Yes.” What was his problem?

  Martin buried his face in his hands. “I just asked you to bring the car around. That’s all. Shit woman, from now on I ain’t askin’ you to pick up carryout. You’d come back in a monster truck with dead heroes in the back of it.”

  I sighed. “Look. We get to the lair, you patch up Bunny if she’s still alive. Then you patch up Dire—”

  “What the fuck!”

  “—and we call it a night. Fair?”

  “This shit is not even remotely fair. One job. Bring the car back. Didn’t happen. What kind of shit went down, woman?”

  I brought the car to a screeching halt, right there on the on-ramp to the highway. Martin scrabbled for balance, lurched forward, and I grabbed his shoulder, looked him in the eyes from a distance of inches.

  A chorus of horns started up behind me. I ignored them as I smiled, wide and feral.

  “Martin,” I whispered.

  His eyes went wide. “Uh.”

  “She’s had a rough night.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Explanations at the lair. ’kay?”

  “Yuh-huh.”

  I grinned. “Thanks.” I let go of his shoulder, and hit the accelerator, heading up the ramp and out, joining the flow of traffic with only a slight hitch.

  Martin was quiet the whole ride back, as was Bunny. Also, when I felt the last of the adrenaline fade and the fatigue hit, the pain wasn’t half as bad as I feared. It was pretty much a win-win situation all the way around.

  Even better, Bunny was still breathing when we pulled up to the warehouse gate. I hopped out, undid the locks, and gritted my teeth as the fabric of the blouse flecked and ripped away scabs. Yeah, this was getting old.

  I opened up the front doors, after shutting down several defenses, then climbed back into the car and drove it directly inside.

  “Bunny, can you walk?”

  I glanced over at her. She was out. “That’s a no then,” I muttered.

  “Lemme go get changed before I haul her out,” Martin said. “Don’t want blood all over these good clothes.”

  I reached over, felt her pulse. It took me three tries, and it was hard to tell if it was good or bad. It was still there, though, so that was something. “Hurry,” I told Martin.

  He did, coming back in his prison clothes and hoisting her as gently as he could. Under the lights, her bald head gleamed with perspiration, and the dark stains of blood soaked all up and down her jacket and pants, from where she’d twisted in the seat.

  “Motherfucker,” was Martin’s assessment of the situation. “Uh. This ain’t good.”

  “The words ‘no’ and ‘shit’ seem to go together for Dire’s response,” I said, heading to a control panel and bringing a couple of track-mounted arms whirring over above the car.

  “She needs a hospital.”

  “She said no,” I replied. “Do you know first aid?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good, that’s more than Dire does. Take her up and do what you can. If she dies it’s not on us.”

  “You don’t know first aid? Supergenius like you?”

  “No time to explain. You do that, Dire will take care of the car’s tracker before it gets reported stolen.”

  “Oh shit, right. On it.” He adjusted his grip around the thin woman, and moved as gently as he could up the stairs.

  Something I’d learned when I’d been on the run, and scavenging components where I could get them, was that most remote-enabled cars came with a VIN tracker. On a regular basis they’d send their signature through the same broadcast channels they drew power from. Their broadcasting patterns varied by the type of car and whether or not the owner cared to adjust it. The more expensive ones checked in every ten minutes. A caddy? Hard to say.

  Also, regardless of how often they sent the signal, it didn’t matter much if there wasn’t anyone around to listen to it. Again, for all but the most expensive cars, most owners didn’t care enough to pay the fees to have it constantly monitored. But once this one was reported stolen, the police precin
cts would start monitoring the frequencies for its VIN broadcast. Once found, they could pinpoint the location with a little searching.

  It was a decent anti-theft device, mainly due to the fact that most VIN trackers were either camouflaged pretty well as other internal components, or so embedded into the infrastructure that it’d break the car irrevocably to remove them.

  But I was good with engineering. And it didn’t take long to locate, remove, and disable the tracker. After which, I commanded the arms to start breaking down the car into parts. It was too distinctive to risk using again, and I could put the raw materials to good use. I checked my still-active scanner, just to make sure, and it reported no activity from the car’s tracker, now or within the last half-hour that I’d been driving it. We were clear.

  Before the stripping got too far, I retrieved my belongings, paused, and retrieved Bunny’s shotgun as well. It turned out to be a sawed-off twelve-gauge, more of a scattergun really. I figured she’d want it back if she lived, so I brought it with me as I paced up the stairs, and opened the door to the living area.

  I found to my annoyance that Martin had hauled her to my main bedroom area, and put her on the best cot. But I bit back my criticism, as I saw him work, hands stained with blood as he pulled bandages out of the first-aid kit, a laptop open next to him showing a gridsite of medical procedures.

  “Hey,” I said, once he looked like he’d reached a stopping point. “How is she?”

  “Bad. Lost a lot of blood, I think. She’s pretty pale. Hey, this is the badass one, right? The Militia chick who stuck around to train our guys?”

  “And the one who helped Dire take out Stig. Well, sort of.”

  I’d done most of the heavy lifting when we’d gone to kill the Black Blood lieutenant. He’d brought an APC to a power-armor fight. But Bunny and her squad had softened his forces up beforehand, and I owed her for that.

  She’d also joined in on the final assault against the Black Bloods. She was the only one of her gang who had, when the chips were down. I owed her for that.

  Martin nodded. “Okay. Sorry for spazzing out earlier. Yeah, she was cool.”

  “Think she’ll survive?”

  He shrugged. “Gonna try to soak a rag, get it in her mouth so she gets water. Same for broth in a few hours. You’ve got soup or something right?”