The Brummie Con

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  More gunfire pops in the night. Puo in the front seat ducks his head. Winn continues to drive the hovercar unpredictably while still climbing.

  Ugh—starting to get a little nauseated. And getting tired of being pelted with our equipment. I struggle to grab an empty bag Puo had dumped everything out of and start shoving stuff away.

  “Alllmost therrre,” Winn grinds out.

  Blackness engulfs the hovercar—back into the clouds we go. “Level out at thirty-two hundred feet,” I say to Winn. “Then start heading east.”

  “Where we goin’?” Puo asks quietly as he looks down below us for pursuit.

  “I don’t know yet,” I answer truthfully. I force myself to slow down and think. “We need to ditch the hovercar; the ass-glitterers know about it.” It’s how they followed us to Hank and June’s place. That’s at least step one.

  Puo brings up his laptop to start searching the area for a place we can easily swap out hovercars. The screen comes up without any delay.

  “Updating, hunh?” I ask, baiting him.

  “Well,” Puo says carefully, “now you know how it feels.”

  “All right,” I say, drawing the phrase out quietly. “I see how it is.”

  Puo shifts slightly to glance at me.

  I purposefully keep packing up the loose equipment, keeping my helmet on.

  Winn levels out the hovercar.

  I continue, “I’ll remember this for the future.” To Winn I say, “Kill the lights.”

  Winn complies plunging us into darkness. The light from Puo’s laptop is enough for the nightvision to paint the interior of the car in fairly good blue pixelated detail.

  “Queeen Beee,” Puo starts to complain. “Heart attack, remember?”

  “What?” I ask innocently. “You wanted me to know how it feels. And I was just saying I’ll remember that for the future, just like you want me to.” Oh yeah, Puo, I’m totally going to remember this.

  “Queeen Beee,” Puo continues to whine, all too familiar with my thought patterns.

  Pretty sure I’m going to orchestrate a date between Puo and the anti-gravity suits—

  The clouds rapidly lighten below us and to the left.

  “Son of a bitch!” I swear. “Dive to twenty-seven hundred feet and head north,” I yell at Winn. What are the odds of them randomly finding us like this with the jammer running?

  Winn doesn’t need to be told twice, as he was already maneuvering the hovercar away.

  The equipment bags shift around in the backseat, smacking up against my legs. I’ve almost got everything packed away.

  We level out shortly on our new course and I continue to pack away the last of our equipment. “Why were all the bags open?” I ask in annoyance.

  “Looking for my laptop,” Puo says.

  “And you couldn’t zip them back up?” I scoop up one of the riders we used on the British Museum job and push it into the last black Kevlar bag.

  “And I’ll remember that,” Puo says, “the next time your hurtling toward the ground without your anti-gravity suit and no parachute.”

  I instinctively stick my tongue out at him, which only serves to lick the inside of my helmet—gross.

  “No effing way,” Winn says in disbelief.

  “What—?” I arch my back to look out the front window—the clouds are getting lighter from below. The second SUV. “Shit.”

  “They got a tracker on us,” I say.

  “On us, or on the hovercar?” Puo asks.

  “The hovercar,” I say. “They had time to plant it before we stole it.” And a tracker on us doesn’t make sense for a whole host of reasons—the least of which is they used the attack on my father’s compound to flush us out and track us here.

  “Plan?” Winn asks in a hurry.

  I think quickly, but only one plan comes to mind for ditching the ass-glitterers.

  “Head to the city,” I say. “Stay in the cloud deck as much as possible. Keep up evasive maneuvers. Chameleon,” I can’t help but ask with a bit of smile, “Where are the anti-gravity suits?” I start transferring some of the goodies, like the electronic tumbler, from my coat to my jeans pockets.

  Puo twists in his seat to look at me. I can’t see the color of his face, but I can see the wrinkles in his forehead. “No,” he says simply.

  “Ah, denial. The first stage of grief,” I say. I ball up my coat and stuff it into one of the equipment bags.

  “This is nuts, Queen Bee!” Puo snaps at me. “You’re just doing this to get back at me.”

  “And there’s the second stage,” I say. “Anger.”

  “Queen Bee, no! There’s got to be another way. Let’s just think.”

  “And there’s the third,” I say. “Bargaining. While you’re doing that, where’s the rest of my anti-gravity suit?”

  Winn is the one that answers. “It’s in the trunk.”

  “See!” Puo says triumphantly. “The suits are in the trunk. We can’t get to them.”

  I look critically at the back seat. “Falcon, turn the internal lights on.”

  Winn does as instructed and I use the catch to pull the back seat down and access the trunk. “You were saying, Chameleon?” I ask.

  Winn jerks the car upward sliding me halfway into the trunk. Oww. Rug burn.

  Puo says, “I was saying this is stupid! Reckless! Needlessly dangerous!”

  “Slipping back into the second stage, hunh?” I ask. I grab my black rubbery anti-gravity suit and push my way back into the rear seat.

  Winn levels out and turns to the left.

  I push my feet through the legs, down into the boots.

  “Queen Bee,” Puo starts to plead.

  I reach forward and squeeze his shoulder to cut him off. “I love you, Chameleon,” I say with a grin.

  “Well, I don’t love you,” Puo snaps at me. “I swear all you try to do is get me killed—”

  “How else do you know you’re alive?” I ask. I flop on my back across the back seat—oof—and pull the suit over my legs.

  “And that,” Chameleon says, “is the fundamental problem with your psychology. I know I’m alive because I think. ‘I think, therefore I am.’ You should read a philosophy book sometime—”

  I sit up and slide the suit more comfortably over my waist. Winn pushes the hovercar downward and Puo’s helmet rolls into the backseat. I take the opportunity to pass it forward and drop it in his lap.

  Puo continues, “—Then you wouldn’t need all this adrenaline malarkey to feel alive.”

  “Ohh, Chameleon just swore,” I tell Winn, to needle Puo. Malarkey isn’t a swear word, but honestly, this is the best way for Puo to deal with this. If he’s talking and verbally sparring with me, then he’s not fixating on the very unpleasant thing (at least according to him) that’s about to happen.

  “I did not,” Puo says indignantly.

  “Malarkey is an Italian swear word,” Winn lies. “It’s the equivalent of shit.”

  “Yeah,” I say to Puo. As if this just occurred to me, I ask, “Why don’t you swear?”

  “Because unlike you, I was brought up with manners,” Puo says as he slides his helmet on.

  I shimmy my arms into the suit, rolling it up over my shoulders. “We were brought up the same way,” I say. Which is pretty close to the truth. Puo and I connected when we were ten and have been together ever since.

  “We are not having this conversation right now!” Puo snaps.

  We all slide to the right as Winn slams the hovercar away from the clouds lightening to the upper right.

  I zipper up the front of the suit and latch it onto my helmet. “Okay,” I say. “I’m good to go. Puo switch places with me so you can get yours on.”

  Puo silently does as he’s told, his helmet already on.

  And there’s the fourth stage, depression—him being quiet, growing sullen. But this time, I decide not to needle him on it.

  I climb into the front seat to give Puo room to get his suit on.

 
Winn continues zigzagging the car and changing altitude. He’s doing a good job; the brightening clouds never get clear enough for the SUVs to emerge and get any shots off. Although, they obviously have some sort of tracker as they keep on us.

  According to Puo’s laptop sitting next me, we’re nearing the northern edge of Atlanta’s metropolis. Atlanta is nearly a thousand feet above sea-level and was spared the rising coastlines caused by the mega-quake eighty-six odd years ago. As a result the city has grown into one of the largest sprawling metropolitan cities in the world—there are tons of places to hide and it’s our home turf.

  Puo, continuing to put on his anti-gravity suit, asks tightly, “Do I want to know where we’re dropping?”

  “Probably not,” I answer.

  Winn jerks the car away from another lightening cloud and says, “There’s a third hovercar up here.”

  “Damn,” I say. “They’ve called in reinforcements.”

  Puo audibly zips up the front of his suit. “Tell me,” he says quietly, ignoring the implications of the third hovercar showing up.

  I hesitate a brief second before answering, “The bridge to the kingdom of the rats.”

  Puo groans under his breath.

  “What was that?” I ask.

  “Never mind,” Puo says. “I’m suited up. Falcon’s turn.”

  I slide over next to Winn and take the controls while he slithers over the front seat into the back to put on his anti-gravity suit. Puo climbs back into his original seat in the front and picks up his laptop. “So,” Puo says, “a low altitude precision drop.”

  “Yup,” I say. I dive the hovercar down and pivot in a new random direction.

  “Over concrete,” Puo observes.

  “Yup,” I say.

  Puo’s quiet for a second and then says, “I hate you.”

  I shrug. “Tell me it won’t work.”

  Winn shifts around in the back seat wiggling into his anti-gravity suit.

  Puo taps on his keyboard and then says, “You need to head—” He then taps me on the shoulder and signs one-nine-oh.

  I steer the hovercar in that general direction, still making random turns and dodging lightening clouds as necessary.

  Winn audibly zips up his suit and sits forward. “So where we droppin’?” he asks without a trace of Puo’s angst—he loves being in the anti-gravity suits.

  “Over the—” I start to answer when Puo cuts me off.

  “Not over the comm-link! If we survive this astounding asinine stupidity, I don’t want even the smallest chance it won’t work and that we’ll immediately have to get back on the run.”

  “Is asinine a swear word?” I ask the hovercar in general, part needling Puo, part general curiosity. The clouds are getting lighter from the city glow underneath. We’re getting closer to the city center.

  “No,” Puo says.

  “Has ‘ass’ in it,” I reason.

  “Yeah,” Winn says, “but you hear it in polite society, so I would say no.”

  “People swear in polite society,” I say.

  “If people swear, then it’s not polite society,” Puo says. “That’s how those words are defined.”

  “Shit,” I mutter under my breath. Our cloud cover is starting to dissipate.

  “See,” Puo says, “you’ve proved my point.” He gestures around the hovercar. “Not polite society.”

  Grr. I explain the obvious situation to them. Other hovercar traffic is starting to pop up around the city and I tell Puo to turn off the jammer. There’s no point now with a tracker on us and it’s only going to make it more dangerous for everyone else. It’s close to three a.m. here—there’s always hovercar traffic in a city as large as Atlanta, but it shouldn’t be too bad this early in the morning for what we want to do.

  “What about the equipment?” Puo asks about our impending free-fall.

  I turn on the headlights and dive down into traffic, staying in the upper-altitude skylane heading straight for the city center.

  “Leave the monitors,” I say. The retro monitors are big and clunky and not necessary. Puo only insists on them for his own proclivities.

  Puo sighs heavily, but doesn’t otherwise bitch and moan.

  “How many equipment bags are there?” I ask.

  Winn’s silent as he counts.

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  I jerk the car away and climb rapidly. “Are you fucking kidding me!” We’re in the city and they’re just randomly popping off gunfire?

  “They’re going to bring the cops down on us,” Puo rushes.

  “Duh,” I say. “Assholes. How many bags?” I ask again.

  “Four,” Winn answers.

  “That’s their plan,” Puo says. “If they can’t get us, the cops will. And once we’re in custody they can take care of us at their leisure.”

  Like hell they can. We’re getting close to our drop point.

  Oh, man—a set of hovercar headlights breaks off of traffic up ahead and makes a beeline straight for us. I dive the car back down.

  “Who takes the second bag?” I ask in hurry.

  “Falcon and I will each take two,” Puo says. “You concentrate on the drop and set the marker. Falcon and I will inherit what you set. So don’t mess up.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I say.

  Winn passes two of the equipment bags into the front seat. Puo slings one on his back like a backpack and starts to thread the second one across his front.

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  Damn it! “We’re almost there!” I yell. “Get ready on my mark.”

  The lights of the city below us flood the hovercar. The city center is populated with skyscrapers and layers of hovercar traffic and multi-leveled bridges for land traffic.

  I get the marker queued up inside my helmet with retina controls. At this point, I don’t need Puo’s laptop (which he shoved into his front equipment bag) to tell me where to drop. I know this area like only an orphaned street urchin could.

  “Mark!” I scream and open my passenger side door and roll out into void.

  Altitude fifty-two hundred feet and falling. The city lights rush up to meet me like an old friend. Wind gobs over me as the heads-up displays snap to the tops of buildings that I’m rapidly approaching. Track us now, assholes.

  I recognize the tops of the Elite One Banking and Wyoming skyscrapers. There’s the east-bound mid-altitude skylane, and Upper Pryor Bridge. And there, just to the right of the Upper Pryor Bridge is a little black gap down into the mid-level. I set the first marker. Eight hundred feet to the marker.

  I glance above me and see two dark forms following me. “Marker’s been set,” I say.

  “I’m reading it,” Puo says followed quickly by Winn saying the same thing.

  No snippy comment about making sure to set the second marker quickly? I think to myself. Puo must be trying not to puke.

  Five hundred feet. I plunge below the tops of Elite One Banking and Wyoming skyscrapers. The heads-up displays snap to the surface of the Upper Pryor Bridge that runs between them and is rapidly approaching.

  Three hundred feet. Sweat pools on my forehead. I maneuver slightly closer to the Wyoming skyscraper, preparing to shoot the gap.

  My breath catches in my throat as the blue bulls-eye looms up on me. There’s some light traffic on the bridge, a couple pairs of headlights. Here’s a memory for them.

  I switch to a standing position and tuck my arms in close to my body as I zip down past the concrete bridge, although I can’t resist waving to the nearest landcar rushing by.

  “I’m through,” I say. I rotate back to the standard skydive pose and search frantically for the next gap to set the marker.

  There. I set a new marker. Four hundred feet.

  “I’m through,” Puo says breathlessly. A second later Winn announces he’s through too and seeing the new marker.

  “Chameleon, do you read the marker?”

  “Yes,” Puo bites off.

  I leave Puo alone as I get ready to shoot th
e second gap. After this comes the hard part. I stay in the standard skydiver pose to be able to maneuver quickly once through.

  Fifty feet. I drop through the second gap, remembering to wave to the sparsely populated landcars. Once through, I immediately angle my body to float to the center and set a new landing marker on the lower level Pryor bridge near the gap in the center. Three hundred feet.

  “I’m through,” Puo says.

  “I’m—” Winn suddenly grunts loudly and commotion breaks out on the comm-link.

  My heart stops in my chest as I flip over and frantically search for Winn. “Falcon!” There! He’s tumbling; he’s lost control!

  “Falcon!” I call out again. He’s not responding!

  I set a marker on Winn and start reversing gravity to intercept him.

  “What are you doing?” Puo yells.

  “Going after him!”

  “There isn’t time!” Puo screams back. “You’ve removed the landing marker!”

  Fuck! The system only allows one landing marker that utilizes the anti-gravity to be set. “Set your own!”

  Puo makes a terrified sound that he stifles.

  My helmet projects a path to intercept Winn and I nearly retch myself. The intercept point is barely above the concrete bridge.

  I will myself to go faster, too terrified to mess with any of the anti-gravity settings lest I erase the marker on Winn.

  One hundred feet.

  Oh, God. That concrete is too close.

  I slam into Winn and wrap him up as tightly as I can while jamming on the anti-gravity. I throw up as the suit jerks me upward.

  But I’m still falling too fast.

  Crunch.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE FIRST THING I become aware of is being jostled.

  Puo. It’s Puo. He’s carrying me. I can feel his arms holding me, feel his body against mine as he cradles me.

  There are car horns whipping by; the crunch of fast-moving tires on concrete.

  I smell the rubber of my anti-gravity suit. Taste my sour vomit.

  He gently sets me down on the concrete. It hurts. My body aches against the unforgiving hardness. I don’t yet have the strength to open my eyes.