“Looks like it’s been tamped down for an hour or so,” he said quietly as he joined her in cover. Fifi stowed the mirror and recovered her short, fighting trident.
“Y’all wanna deep six this?” she asked.
“Hell no,” said Pete. “Little campfire that size? Looks like a three or four man outfit. Probably freebooters. Maybe scavengers, not real salvagers. Jules?”
Julianne frowned as she swept up and down the street with the high-powered slingshot. Nothing. No movement, no sign of occupation beyond the cold campfire.
“Well, we know they’re not here looking for what we’re after,” she said. “Although I’m sure they’d be more than happy to relieve us of those watches.”
“Well that’s not gonna happen,” hissed Fifi. “But they’re welcome to get themselves killed trying.”
“I vote we press on,” said Pete.
He was not the sort of captain who just ordered people to do stupidly dangerous things. He rather expected them to agree with him that there was a balance to be struck between the stupid and dangerous choice, and the profits to be had from occasionally paying them less regard than they might otherwise deserve.
“Fuckin’ scavengers,” spat Fifi, again. “Ass-feedin’ cocksuckers don’t bother me none. I’m for going on, getting our salvage, and if we find these assholes I say we kill ’em on principle. They ain’t got no warrant to be working this city. Ain’t right they’re even here.”
“Jules?”
Julianne let the strain off the slingshot, taking it back to a half pull.
“Another block? Right?”
“Yep,” Pete confirmed.
She shrugged. “Well, it’s the reason we came. Can’t rightly show ourselves in Darwin without it.”
“Nope.”
“I suppose we best kick on.”
“And we should totally kill the scavengers too,” said Fifi.
“Totally,” agreed Pete, but in a tone that betrayed his lack of enthusiasm for the idea.
* * *
Fifi led off again. She’d been careful before, of course. The King of Darwin did not issue Royal Warrants of Salvage to any old asshole. The King of Darwin was a righteous dude who paid his bills and suffered no fools. Especially not the sort of fools who went into unlicensed scavenging, picking over the loot and plunder of the dead cities that rightfully, legally, belonged to righteous dudes like the King of Darwin and his official retainers or agents or Royal fucking appointees or whatever you called them.
Which was what she and Jules and Pete were, goddamn it, because they had a Royal Warrant and she would bet beans to bullshit chips that the worthless, scavenging cocksuckers who’d built that campfire back there did not. That meant they were not just stealing from the King of Darwin. They were stealing from her.
And nobody stole from Fifi Lamont. Nobody took anything from her she didn’t feel one hundred percent like giving up.
So as careful as she’d been when leading them to the watchmaker’s place, she was doubly vigilant now. Not because she was frightened of running into these worthless thieves, but because she was frightened she might miss the chance of running into them if she didn’t pay attention. Pete and Jules, she understood, were a little more laid-back on this topic, a little more inclined to live and let live. They would be just as happy to avoid any encounter with the scavengers, to execute their Commission, and get the hell back to the boat. She respected that. But she had to be true to herself and if there was one truth you could say of Fifi Brianna Lamont, it was that she had never met a scavenger she had not taken the time to put down like a diseased dog.
Well, almost.
There was one. The one Pete had rescued her from. But that made it important she never let a chance slip by to settle up with every other scavenger asshole she happened across. So she crept through the wreckage and over the bones of Sydney, her sharpened steels before her, her senses alive and raw. She stepped ever more carefully, placing each foot where it would make the least noise. She breathed through her nose, sniffing them out, detecting the faint smell of burned flesh as they passed the open alley, almost certainly the remains of some rodent or possum they’d cooked up over the fire for breakfast or even supper last night.
She suppressed a smile at the thought of them being so stupid, gathered around a campfire, staring at the flames, ruining their night vision, probably passing a bottle, roaring and shouting at one another in the dark. If these clowns hadn’t brought the Biter clans down on them, then the Biters probably weren’t within miles of the CBD. It made sense. They tended to be nomadic, the tribes orbiting around one another in a slow dance that might take years to cover the whole city. That left Fifi free to deal with as many lowlifes as she could get to with her blades before Jules and Pete dragged her back to the Diamantina. She was cool with that.
But first they had the Warrant to execute.
She led them past the rear of some once grand hotel, around a small snarl of fire-blackened cars, and across the street to the address Pete had made her repeat to him a dozen times before they’d stepped off the boat. She could find it on a street map at a glance, and had known exactly the path she would take to lead them here before they’d even set foot on dry land.
“Nicely done,” said Julianne behind her. “Will you be okay, sweetheart? You know, with the scavengers and all?”
“Obi-Wan has taught me well, Jules. I am the path of least resistance girl now. Sure, if I see them, I will kill every motherfucking one of them. But if I don’t, that’s cool too.”
She smiled as innocently as she could with all of the old rage welling up inside her.
“Okay,” said Julianne uncertainly. “Just so we don’t get distracted by all the killing and oaths of blood vengeance and everything. Again. We still have paying work to do here.”
She nodded toward another old building, this one of 1940s or fifties vintage. The facade and the ground floor were in much worse shape than the old Art Deco high-rise where Double-A had his crib. Probably because there was a cluster of sandwich shops and coffeehouses in this part of the street, and they had all been attacked by starving hordes a couple of days after the Blackout.
“Let’s stick to doing the simple things well,” said Pete as he joined them after yet another backtracking exercise.
Since discovering the scavengers’ campfire he had increased the frequency and length of his efforts to uncover any tail they may have picked up.
“Any sign?” Jules asked.
“Just the campfire,” said Pete. “You cool, Fifi?”
“Fuck! Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“Because,” said Pete, “the last time we ran across scavengers, you rode a horse right at them screaming and firing crossbows and throwing ninja stars into their faces.”
“So?”
“Fifi,” said Jules. “You don’t know how to ride a horse.”
“And the time before that . . .” Pete started, but she cut him off.
“Omifuckinggod just back the fuck off would you. I ain’t like that no more. I done chilled out and cured myself of all that anger. And I’ve only got two ninja throwing stars with me this time.”
She held them up. “And no horse.”
Jules looked like she wanted to go on with the argument but Pete put a hand on her arm.
“Come on. We’re here now. We can get the papers and be back on the boat before lunch. Be out the Heads and making sail for Darwin before cocktail hour. Let’s focus. The King’s Commission. Escape the city. Cocktails.”
That seemed to mollify Julianne, and Fifi let go of her temper.
“OK. I’m chill. Let’s get ’er done.”
But as they stepped into the darkened vestibule she threw a look back onto the street. Just in case they were being followed by scavengers. Because if they were, those motherfuckers were totally getting a fa
ce full of ninja star.
* * *
Jules folded the brace of her slingshot away, and stowed the weapon in its holster. Her twin blades came out of their scabbards with a whisper as Fifi and Pete picked a path through piles of upturned furniture, long shards of broken window glass, and three shopping trolleys that had been loaded up with crap and then abandoned in the middle of the building’s entryway. The dark space smelled of rot and old piss. One of the coffee shops had burned at some point, but the fire hadn’t spread. She had no idea why. Perhaps there’d been a storm. The piles of debris and abandoned pillage made their passage difficult, but spoke of a building that had not been touched by human hands in many years, possibly not since the city died.
“Look,” said Fifi, gesturing at a small, scattered pile of bones and rags in one corner of the fire-scorched café. They looked human, but only just. Animals had gnawed at them and carried off most of the protein. Jules recognized a hip bone and maybe half a femur.
“I can see why the King of bloody Darwin was disinclined to pop down and run his own errands,” she said.
“But he’s paying us handsomely to run them for him,” Pete pointed out as he put his shoulder to a piano that had somehow made its way onto the stairs at the back of the entry hall. It was blocking access to the upper floors, but threatening to topple down on anybody foolish enough to try to move it.
“Gimme a hand, Fifi,” he grunted.
The American was the stronger of the two women and put her own broad shoulders to the job while Julianne kept watch over them and the street outside. Her skin crawled at the jangling racket they set up, grunting and heaving the thing aside, but as before, they attracted no attention, not even when the enormous weight did suddenly shift and drop with a loud crash and the sudden discordant music of untuned strings. Jules was instantly thrown back to her teenage years, watching shitty horror movies that were all about the sudden noises and flashes of movement.
She breathed deeply and waited for the hordes of enemies to break upon them.
Nothing happened.
First Pete, then Fifi slipped past the obstruction, while she waited a little while as a hedge against any stalkers who might have been drawn by the noise.
Nothing.
She wanted to relax and believe this was going to be a milk run, but the absence of any trouble so far just made her more anxious. When she was sure they were indeed alone and unsought by scavengers or Biters or ne’er-do-wells of any kind, she followed her crewmates up the steps. They were headed for the sixth floor this time and she calculated it would take them at least another ten minutes before they were done if they moved as cautiously as they had back at the watchmaker’s. She tarried behind Fifi and Pete, watching their rear, pausing on each landing, waiting a full minute, moving slowly to the next floor and . . .
“Got it.”
“What?” She almost jumped out of her skin.
“We’re good,” said Pete, tucking a sheaf of documents into Fifi’s backpack. “Easy as a drunken nun. Lets go.”
“Bugger me,” said Jules, struggling to still her rapidly beating heart. “You sure you got the right one?”
“Checked it against the Warrant. Come on. This place is giving me the creeps.”
“There was dead people upstairs,” said Fifi. “Heaps of them.”
“How? When?” asked Jules, suppressing the note of panic in her voice.
“Don’t sweat it,” Pete said. “Looked like a suicide pact back in the day. Whole bunch of them got together in some meeting hall one floor up and necked enough pills to do the job.”
“Nasty,” said Fifi. “Little kids and everything.”
“Ugh, I hate these places,” said Jules. “Let’s just go.”
They hurried through the detritus, pausing for a moment to surveil the street and, finding it clear, plunged back out into the surprising chill of a morning that had turned gray and overcast in front of a southerly change. That would mean tacking down the harbor against a prevailing wind, but still, they were on the home run now. Only needing to retrace their steps, return to the boat, haul anchor, and haul arse. All for fortune and glory.
Everything turned to shit one minute later.
Fifi took point, as always. Pete brought up the rear. Jules had swapped kukri blades for her slingshot again. They moved a little faster now they had secured the salvage. They shouldn’t have. Each of them knew enough to take the business of getting out without being seen or heard as seriously as they had taken sneaking into the city. But it was hard. It was always hard when you felt yourself this close to getting away with it. This close to stepping back on the boat, and laying on sail for the open waves. Out there, they knew they could outrun pretty much anybody. The heart always beat a little faster when you knew you were getting clean away. Your breath came a little shallow, and your steps quickened. You . . .
“That’ll be far enough, Pete. The redneck and the fuckin’ Thloane Ranger can hold up there too.”
The voice was rough and loud and vaguely familiar, and as soon as she heard it Julianne didn’t think or pause or hunt around for the source. She dived for cover, and while she was diving she swept the crossroads of the intersection they had been moving through, looking for any sign of movement.
She saw it as she flew horizontally through the air. Two figures darting between an overturned postal van and the charred metal skeleton of a taxi. Already airborne, diving for her own spot sheltered in the lee of a sun-faded station wagon, she still had time to draw her sling back a little farther and loose three heavy steel balls in the direction of the attackers. She heard glass shatter, and steel punch through steel with a dull clang. Two shots had missed then.
But the third struck home with a satisfying, meaty thud that was lost in the gargling scream that followed. It was enough to take some of the sting out of landing heavily on the concrete.
“Smoke!” yelled Fifi, somewhere ahead of her, lighting and throwing both of her smoke pots from somewhere within the traffic pile up.
The crude grenades wouldn’t explode, of course. But they did an admirable job of filling the intersection with thick, gray chemical clouds. Julianne pulled the bandanna around her neck up to cover her mouth and throat. Fifi’s smoke bombs always tasted like shit.
“OH PETE! COME ON, NOW, MATE! THITH ITH UNNETHETHARY! DAN THAID YOU’D BE REATHONABLE ABOUT THINGTH!”
Jules cursed to herself.
Fucking.
Shoeless.
Dan.
That treacherous cunt. Was there a world somewhere in which he didn’t fuck them every fucking time?
She recognized the voice now, too. The harsh, rasping lisp of Dan’s one-time first mate, Jake “The Cobra” McTiernan. The Cobra liked to put it about that he got his nickname by virtue of his being so fast and deadly in a fight, but everyone knew it was because Dan had slit his tongue in two during a drunken disagreement over a salvage rights split six or seven years ago. Jake the Snake, as Jules preferred to think of him, had drifted from salvage into scavenging, but it seemed the rumors he’d patched it up with Shoeless Dan, at least in private, were no longer rumors.
“Fucking Shoeless Dan,” hissed Pete, warning her of his approach as he slid out of the acrid smoke to crouch beside her. “Treacherous motherfucker.”
Jules had already swapped out her slingshot for the twinned daggers. They’d be of much more use in this fight now. Pete’s club and sharpened tonfa, she saw, were already slicked with blood.
“Where’s Fifi?” she asked.
“Fucked if I know. She was moving fast when she popped smoke, should be headed for the rendezvous point by now, but . . .”
They heard a scream.
A scream with a noticeable lisp.
Then, “I am not a redneck, you ignorant cocksucker.”
“Bugger,” said Jules, at almost exactly the same moment as Pe
te, causing an odd, echo effect.
* * *
There were at least nine of them.
At least. Maybe ten. That was the rough number Fifi thought she counted in the sight-picture she took in the mad chaotic second after she sprang the ambush and Snake McTiernan’s little worms had all come wriggling out to play. That could mean there were only nine of them, but more likely meant they were facing a dozen or more.
Pete and Jules would head for the first rendezvous point as soon as the smoke gave them a chance to get gone. And she would too. She would totally do as she was supposed to do.
But by her best reckoning, that forked-tongue spudfucker McTiernan was standing between her and the quickest path to the first ERP, and that meant she was totally entitled to a reckoning with him for getting in her goddamned way.
She didn’t pause for sake of caution, or falter out of timidity. Sword and sai raised she moved into the thickest of the smoke, toward the voice that was now yelling in fury and exasperation to “Kill them, kill them all and get their thtuff.”
Fucking scavengers.
She hated these guys.
A face came at her out of the gray chemical soup, a leering fright mask of facial tattoos, nose bones, lip rings, and long, oiled hair. The eyes went wide as he saw her, first in triumph, then in horror as her hand licked out, driving the trident sword deep into his throat. The thrust destroyed his voice box, opened up the trachea, and he died trying to scream, but failing as Fifi ripped the sai out of his neck and spun on her heel, cleaving a trail through the smoky air with the razor-edged metal blade of her ninjaken sword. The sweeping blade failed to connect with the other scavenger who’d come up behind her, but the flash of lethal steel unmanned him completely. He stumbled over his own feet, trying to back up even as his earlier momentum and intent served to carry him forward.
She lashed out with a front kick, missing his groin but connecting with the inside of his upper thigh. Her heavy, steel-capped boot dug into the soft flesh around the femoral artery and he collapsed with a howl that she cut short by opening his throat with the chisel point of her longer weapon.
Tales of Downfall and Rebirth Page 34