Keith got it worse. The impact of the bolt with my indestructible hand sent shockwaves back down the barrel of the gun. The whole thing shattered under the pressure and shards of it peppered the surrounding area, including the poor farmer’s chest and arm. He staggered back.
It was my chance. I struggled to my feet, staggered forward, and pegged him to the wall with my metal forearm.
“Listen up.” I met his gaze, scowl for scowl. “You’re done. I don’t want to do nothing to you and you’re disarmed, so—”
He wasn’t disarmed.
His knife plunged into my belly and he spat in my face.
I took half a step back, punched the man in the gut, then lifted him high in the air by the ribcage. I sent him up, above me, thankful that my metal arm was long enough that he wasn’t able to stab me again.
Slamming him down hard on the table, I pulled out the needle-nose pliers I’d taken from the wall. I jammed it into his ear, nabbed a little tag of metal, and yanked. Blood and wire pulled free, more than I thought possible. His screams pierced the haze of my ringing ears. Wires just kept coming. His blade dropped to the floor.
Once the tech was out of that ear, I flipped him and pulled out the one on the other side.
“You need to listen,” I said. “And these aren’t helping you do it.”
His eyes regarded me with pain and fear. His body was so tense he seemed frozen to the spot.
I leaned down close to him and said in the clearest, calmest voice I could muster, “I’m not Tom. There’s no more pigs on this farm. You’d best go after Suzie, because there’s nothing good that’s going to happen here when these townsfolk figure out what you’ve been feeding them.”
He stared at me slack-jawed. Blood covered the sides of his face.
Clutching my bleeding belly, I staggered out of the room. After looking back a few times to make sure he wasn’t following, I did a quick check of the wound.
It was ugly. A deep, gaping hole oozed a river of blood. Pressure. It needed pressure. And stitches. The farmer’s house wasn’t far away. Maybe I’d find a kit there and I could stitch up. Maybe there was a place in the barn where the man worked on pigs. He would have some basic veterinary supplies.
Sunlight pierced right into my skull when I stepped outside. Then the dizziness hit.
Right about there was where I collapsed.
Chapter 10
The thick odor of fine barbecue tickled my senses as deep sleep grudgingly gave me up. I didn’t open my eyes at first; I just soaked in that smell. There wasn’t any pain. Everything was calm. Finally, peace was all I could sense. There really isn’t any better peace than that of a good barbecue. I pulled in a long, slow breath. Beef brisket, I thought. Someone who knew what they were doing was cooking because there wasn’t too much spice, but a perfect amount of char.
There was something else, though. It was just behind the beautiful scent of charred meat. The sour sting of rot hung in the air.
Gears started turning. Where were my aches? The painful reminders of my scrapes and bruises were completely gone. There wasn’t even any pain where I’d been stabbed in the gut.
My eyes snapped open.
A too-bright light shone down on me, eclipsed by a man’s shaggy silhouette. He leaned over me with a razor-sharp scalpel in one hand and a red-hot poker in the other.
“Mornin’,” said the farmer, his scruffy beard sticking out around a grimy surgical mask. He fumbled with his tools, getting them both in his left hand so he could offer his right for a shake. “Name’s Keith. Keith Woeberg.”
“Crow,” I said. “J.D.” My right arm wouldn’t move.
“Oh, right.” Keith reached down at something I couldn’t see, something on my chest. With a tug he removed it.
All of my pain hit like a longhorn running. I choked back a scream. Nearly blacked out.
Keith took a step back. The red-hot rod gave him an ominous cast. “I’m done. Got her all cauterized for you.”
I felt my belly with my fingers. Sure enough, where the cut had been there was a jagged series of bumps. My fingers still came away wet, but it wasn’t a gusher. Gingerly, I pushed myself up on my elbows.
Then crashed back down.
“You lost a bit of blood.” He nodded to a couple of empty plastic bags. “It’ll take some time for the synth to replace it for you.”
I lifted myself again, then swung my feet around so I could sit up. Keith had fixed me in just about the filthiest operating room there’d ever been. There were flies everywhere, and the steel table was a slick mixture of old blood and new. I only hoped that I had enough blood nannies left to fight off the dozen infections that Keith had probably given me.
“’Preciate it,” I said, eyeing him suspiciously.
“Well, seemed like patching the hole was the right thing to do after stickin’ you.” He peered at me, squinting. “You care to explain for me why you looked like Tom?”
“Can’t say that I understand it myself.” My hat was on the table next to me so I picked it up, cleaned it as best I could, and put it on.
He blinked a few times and shook his head as if to clear it. “You messed up my headgear something serious, then everything went to shit. Once I saw you weren’t Tom, I figured I’d better fix you up.”
Keith offered me an arm. I ignored his help and hopped down to the floor on my own. The dizziness nearly dropped me, but a hand on the table was all I needed to keep my balance. After a minute, I was walking again.
“Well, Mr. Crow.” Keith’s voice was flat. “What business you got here?”
Did he know? It seemed odd, but this polite farmer in front of me didn’t give me the feeling of someone who would kill children. “Maybe Zane forged the video.” That didn’t make sense either. Why did Zane want me to be here so badly?
“Come again?”
The glow cube was still on the table, so I snatched it up and shoved it in my ammo pouch. The information it gathered might be useful, but I wasn’t quite ready to hand it over to the town’s sheriff.
The first step lit my ribs on fire. The second was worse. It took a minute to regain my composure. “Keith,” I said. “You notice anything funny going on in town? Anything that doesn’t belong?”
Keith seemed to think about that for a minute. “Swallow Hill’s nothing but simple. Small town, we keep to ourselves. Some small trade for goods, but no real outside contact. Folks like it that way.” He touched the table, where sticky blood coated everything. “Mr. Crow, what’s happening here?”
“Haven’t figured it yet.”
“But where are my pigs?” His voice was getting high. Panicked. “I looked. All my pigs are gone. Where are they?”
I braced myself against the pain and pushed my way out of the room into the big slaughterhouse. From there, I made my way outside, squinting at the setting sun.
“Thought you said it was morning,” I said.
“Figure of speech. It’s still afternoon.”
“That bank still open? How long was I out?”
He blinked at me. “Most places close during the hot part of the day and open around evening and stay open past sunset. Why do you need a bank?”
“Why does anyone?”
“Well, changing money, I suppose.” He scratched at his scruffy beard and sent a dozen flies into the air. “Long-distance transactions. Savings. I don’t know. All my loans are community backed, so I’ve never much had a use for a bank.”
“Exactly.”
He fell in step next to me. The pain in my ribs felt like a fresh stab wound every time I took a breath, but the actual stab wound felt numb. More than once I stumbled and Keith had to get an arm under me to keep me from falling. More than once I shoved him away and stood on my own.
When we reached the main street, I found a nice bench and had myself a sit. Keith plopped down next to me. There were more people out this time of day. Every one of them gave me the stink-eye as they passed, though now I didn’t blame them. I was just about as bad as Keith;
blood drenched my torn shirt.
I didn’t know what I was looking for. Part of me wanted to get an idea of who went into the bank. Instinct told me that if that was a base of operations, it probably was best if I did some survey before going in. Zane must have sent me here for something and if that was the case then I wanted to know everything that was happening in town. Another part of me thought it might be nice to sit awhile. A long while.
Nobody went into the bank. Nobody came out.
“Well, I don’t remember the last time I ever went to a bank,” said Keith. “Been years since I used cash for anything. Got it all up here now.” He tapped a finger on his forehead. “Headchecks. You switched yet?”
I grunted something that I thought might be interpreted as an answer.
“Well, it sure is nice. Stars being mostly credits in the system now. Cash is for outsiders. This way, I just think my money to someone and they got it.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s been common around here awhile now.”
The man who had been winning poker left the tavern. He looked around, then marched straight to the bank. Apparently his winning streak had held, because he carried a pack that seemed heavy with coins.
“He uses coins,” I said.
Keith squinted. “Can’t play poker with headchecks.”
“Is he a local?”
“You don’t just think it, though. It’s all up in the neuro-tech. You think images to unlock the transaction. Usually you pick images that you wouldn’t usually think of—aw, dammit I just thought of mine.”
I stood up. A wave of dizziness hit me. I sat back down.
“Hold on,” said Keith. He closed his eyes, pensive thought on his face. “There. Got it locked up again. Now as long as I don’t think—dammit. Hold on.”
Standing up slowly this time, I made my way across the street to the bank. Keith didn’t follow. I pulled the heavy steel door open and slipped inside. Harsh white lights stung my eyes. Straight ahead sat a single teller’s desk: polished steel with a gold inlay. A steel railing separated the teller’s desk from what was presumably the customer section of the bank. Behind the teller’s desk was a wall of steel and black metal. Set inside that reinforced wall was an outline of a door with no hint of doorknob. The poker player was nowhere to be seen.
The hum of power vibrated in the floor and the teller’s desk lit up. Behind it, the projected image of a perky, young blonde appeared. Her image seemed to tap her fingernails on the desk as she silently regarded me. Her smile was wide and almost made it up to her eyes.
“Can I help you?”
I quit my rubbernecking and stepped up to the desk. Hat held close to my chest, I bowed my head slightly and cleared my throat. “Looking to put something in safety deposit, ma’am.”
Her eyebrows shot up. She acted just like a person, but it was hard to know if she was a projected image of a real worker or just a clever machine. Maybe this was a testament to how good machines have gotten. Or maybe it reflected poorly on the state of humanity.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “There are no safety-deposit boxes in this location.”
“You sure?” I leaned close to her flickering, projected face. She was semi-transparent and close up it was easy to see the door behind her. “’Cause, I can see the door to the vault right there and it makes not one bit of sense for a bank to have a vault but not rent out space in it.”
She blinked. “Come again?”
“What’s that vault for?” I leaned even closer, gripping the steel railing with both hands.
“This location does not contain a safety-deposit box. There is no vault for storing customer goods. The vault is for the sole purpose of holding cash reserves.”
I leaned back, pulled with my metal hand, and snapped a steel bar off the railing. “Whoops,” I said. With a quick twist, I bent the bar into a cane and leaned on it heavily as I walked out of the bank.
Sheriff Flores stood at the entrance, a scowl on his face. His pistol was out, but not pointed at me. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes were flashing with artificial light.
Hands raised, I said, “Just doing a little banking.” He didn’t respond, so I edged my way past him and crossed the street.
Once I was back on the bench with Keith, I lay the cane across my lap.
“Y’all are insane in this town, you know that, right?”
Keith blinked hard at me. “That you, J.D.?”
“Yup.”
“You’ve had a long day. Sun’s coming down. Should we head back to the ranch and I’ll let you bunk up at my place?”
“Nope.”
He looked at me.
“Too much work to do,” I said. “And too much walking.”
With that, I stood up and walked into the falling dusk, using the cane to keep me from stumbling. A clever man might be able to figure out this problem without violence. Maybe clever wasn’t my thing, but with enough time to ponder I was sure to come up with something.
To my surprise, Keith fell in step beside me.
“Go home, Keith.”
He didn’t answer. The sun ducked behind the horizon and soon the moon was out. As the air cooled, exhaustion crept in. Between blood loss and a poor night’s sleep, I was fading fast. It wasn’t long before the mere act of walking was making me breathe fast and my heart race.
“Nice town you have there,” I said.
“Swallow Hill wasn’t always like that.” Keith looked a mess. He spoke a little louder than was strictly necessary—probably a side effect of his ears getting messed up so badly. It was a little surprising that he could hear at all, really.
“Sorry about your ears.”
“The war messed up the town something fierce,” he continued. “It was bad before that, though. I wasn’t big enough to understand, but lots a folk didn’t come back after that. Nobody visited after the war. Nobody.”
A stray hunk of asphalt tripped me up and Keith kept me from falling. It was getting harder to focus. The road ahead doubled in my vision for a moment, but I aimed for the middle and kept walking. Abi wasn’t far. I’d make it. I had to.
“Folks fell to subsistence farming. My family’s pigs made me popular. A man has a lot of friends when he’s the only source of bacon in town. Life was good for a time. Comfortable.” A pained expression crossed his face. “Hardly anyone ever left for a while. The few goods we needed from outside were delivered by automated systems.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It was peaceful. That’s all we wanted after the war.”
That’s all anyone wanted after the war. Any war, really. After all that sacrifice, aren’t we owed a little peace? “You pay for peace,” I said. “You pay hard for it.”
A time passed with the only sound being the tap-tap of my makeshift cane on the broken road. The story of Swallow Hill saddened me. The thought of a small, peaceful town existing after the war sounded like a dream come true. Most towns had been forced into servitude to one degree or another. We in the outlands provided resources that the city consumed. Here was a town that didn’t do any of that. Here was a town that was left alone. But what did they sacrifice to gain that independence?
I stopped walking and turned to Keith. “You killed kids, Keith.”
“I know.” His lower lip trembled. “I figured it out once you wrecked my headgear.”
“You didn’t know what you were doing.”
“I should have.” His voice was barely a whisper. “Everything looked so perfect through the tech. Sounded perfect too. I should have known something was wrong. I just didn’t think…” His voice choked off in a sob.
A hundred questions swam around in my head, but I couldn’t make much sense of them in my current state. “You’re following because you want to make up for it?”
He nodded.
“Good.” I pointed to the spot not far away where Abi was silhouetted against the glow of the night sky. “That girl’s going to take us to a place in Dead Oak.
Trust her. Do anything she says.” Dizziness was nearly too much for me. Bracing against my cane, I was barely able to keep myself up. My chest felt tight and breath was hard to come by.
“Sure,” Keith said. “What are you going to do?”
I gasped a few breaths. “Nothing,” I said. Without trying, I dropped to one knee. “Nothing at all.”
The last thing I felt was Keith catching me as I collapsed the rest of the way to the ground.
Chapter 11
“Honey,” Josephine said, “you look like you let a butcher operate on you.”
Keith was doing his best to shrink into the corner. I lay on the steel table in the center of Josephine’s shack. Jo prodded me with tools that I didn’t even try to identify.
“Might’ve,” I said.
“Well, you know that was dumb, right? Nobody knows a body like a mechanic. Butcher’ll just cut you up into pieces.”
I tried to say something clever, but it came out as a pained grunt as Josephine dug a three-pronged device into my sore ribs.
“Not broken, you wuss.” She put the tool down and looked me right in the eyes. “And no, you don’t need no doctor. You’re half metal anyway, boy. What’s a doctor gonna do for you? A mechanic is what you need.”
“I’m getting tired of waking up on people’s tables,” I said.
“Always thought you were too soft, anyway. Little more tech will toughen you right up.”
Keith stepped up and helped me into a sitting position. I looked down at my chest. It was cleaner, but the left side where the bolt had hit had a dark purple welt the size of a fist. The welt now had three faint holes around it where Jo’s tool had burrowed in.
Josephine started cleaning her tools and putting them away. “I reinforced the ribs for you, in case there was a crack I couldn’t see. They’ll be tough as hell from now on. The tissue around them was badly bruised, but all I could do was numb the area. Your nannies ought to get things functional soon enough.” She eyed Keith. “Long as you don’t let a butcher get you, you should be fine.”
A fresh wave of nausea hit as I stood up. “I need help, Jo.” My voice was quiet.
Peace in an Age of Metal and Men Page 6