Last Life (Lifers Book 1)

by Thomas,Michael G.

  Why?

  It wouldn’t take much. A single shot to the head or body from someone like the Sheriff, or some redneck bounty hunter, and it was all over. Even a serious body trauma would be enough. For Cage, there would be no new life, even if he were part of the program, instead of a wanted man. He’d crossed the last bridge. He was on last life. It didn’t matter. He didn’t care. Just one task to complete, talk to Rose Romero, and he could meet his death without complaint. Even welcome it.

  He pushed on through the thick scrub and emerged on a cracked, concrete roadway that skirted an old, abandoned industrial town. It stretched as far as he could see, at least five klicks to the West, a dense jungle of decaying, part-dismantled buildings. Broken glass, rust, and decay, with a thick overlay of leaves and dirt, a ghost town.

  An icon for PanAm?

  The tangled mass of broken buildings would allow him to reach the side of the town under cover and enter from the other side. He’d find a booth, call Rose Romero, and if she wanted it, pay her a visit. It wouldn’t take long to tell her what happened. Because he didn’t know what caused that massive explosion that killed his men. He’d tell her what he knew, what he saw, and leave her to her grief. Only then could he head out to oblivion.

  * * *

  Bowen drove fast, and Vos enjoyed the adrenaline rush of the race to answer an emergency call. The wail of the siren was sweet music, and the flashing light on the roof a banner to announce the Sheriff was coming. He was king in this town. Dawson Public owned the contract, and they’d appointed him, Harrison Vos, to maintain order. He kept order. Vos, one year off his sixtieth birthday, a long way from the mandatory retirement at age eighty-five, which suited him. He loved his work, loved the awesome power he wielded. Even in such a rotting, flyspeck of a town. It was his town, and he demanded respect from his people, the citizens of Westbank.

  Sure, he’d heard the sniggers. He wasn’t the thinnest lawman in the country. Knew some of the people he protected referred to him as ‘Sheriff Lardball.’ It didn’t worry him, not too much. When it mattered, he wielded his authority and broke heads, sometimes fatally. People were wary of his .44, and he left them in no doubt he was prepared to use it, anytime, anyplace. Few argued with him.

  Vos always got his man, always. Like those old time lawmen in the country they used to call Canada, before PanAmerica swallowed it up, together with most of what used to be South America.

  What were they? The Mounties, yeah, that’s it. Like the Mounties, I always get my man, a one hundred percent of the time, dead or alive. What difference does carrying a few extra pounds make?

  Bowen interrupted his thoughts. “The guy with no ID, what did you make of him, Sheriff? There was something about him that didn’t sit right. He was no civilian. Jesus, did you see the size of his arms? Tough guy, a soldier, probably one of those overpaid mercs."

  “Could be.”

  Bowen spat on the ground. "Dirty bastard, hadn’t washed or shaved in I don’t know how long. I could smell him from inside the car. That vagrant is on the run, that’s my guess.”

  Vos nodded. Most vagrants were running from something, he couldn't argue with that. He sniffed as he recalled the stink. It was true. He could do with a wash. “The bastard came to the wrong place when he arrived in Westbank, Bowen. This is my town, and we do things the way I tell it."

  "Sure we do, Boss.”

  They had his face recorded on the cruiser’s camera system, and the imagery would automatically upload to the company's cloud-based analysis engine when he parked in the lot behind the Sheriff’s office. Unlike most of the town, his office still maintained a connection to the old public Internet system. They run automatic facial recognition routines and interrogate the company's extensive databases, even out here in this dump. The wireless system on his car had died years before he'd ever sat inside it.

  When I get back, I’ll find out who that vagrant is. If there’s paper out on him, I’ll chase him down, and the stranger better watch his back. Sheriff Vos owns your ass, pal.

  The call that forced him to abandon the stranger was a robbery in progress at the local gas station, out on the other side of town. He knew it would be the metal scavengers, all of them vagrants. The locals called them Scavs. The bastards lived rough, out in the wreckage of the old deuterium plant. Many of them were former company employees, forced into destitution when the plant closed. They eked out an existence selling the metal and equipment from the factories they’d once worked in, with no shortage of eager buyers in the local scrapyards and recycling outfits. The Scavs never had enough cash to buy liquefied petroleum gas for the makeshift trucks they used to transport the metal. So they stole it.

  They said they had to have money to buy food if they were to survive. He said they should move on if they couldn’t make it in his town. They claimed it was the same all over PanAm. People were unemployed and hungry as the infrastructure crumbled, except for the folks who had the skills or the money, and took off for Mars. Vos didn’t give a shit. They could move on or starve. If they kept on stealing, he’d get in some practice with the .44. This would make the ninth robbery in less than eight weeks. It was time to sling some lead.

  He was an hour late arriving at the crime scene. The cruiser came to a halt when a loud rattle beneath the hood signaled equipment malfunction. A light on the display announced, ‘battery cell charging failure. Please call a certified technician.’

  No chance.

  “Can you fix it?”

  Bowen frowned. “I doubt it, Sheriff. These motors are a mystery to me. I tried reading the manual, but it was like it was written in Mandarin.”

  He stifled his frustration and hit the icon showing a battered looking truck on his phone. It was almost a minute before the familiar voice answered. Cliff Trudel, who ran a repair shop in town. He sounded stoned. He usually did.

  “Whaddaya want?”

  “It’s Sheriff Vos, Cliff. I need a tow.”

  A sigh. “Again! Sheriff, those heaps of yours ain’t worth shit. I told you already, your cell packs are fried. You need to replace them. Now call someone else, I’m busy.”

  “There is no one else. It’s an emergency. Get into your truck and head out toward Murphy’s Gas Station. You’ll see me stopped at the side of road.”

  “Harrison, I can’t…”

  “You have ten minutes, and then I start looking hard at the way you do business, Cliff. You wouldn’t like that, believe me.”

  “Screw you, Harrison.”

  “It’s Sheriff Vos. You have ten minutes.”

  He hung up. Fifteen minutes later, the tow truck appeared. He was still grousing.

  “Hey, Sheriff, I’m low on power. I can get you back to town, but that’s as far as I go. I had to leave important work unfinished to come here. It’ll cost me a packet.”

  He ignored the moans. “Hook up the cruiser, and drive me to Murphy’s. When I’m done, we’ll head back to town when I say so.”

  When they reached the gas station, after enduring the stench of the greasy tow truck, it was all over. The owner, Ed Murphy, was going from pump to pump, assessing his losses. The disintegrating combined electricity and data Grid system had been to his advantage. Now more people ran cars with autogas generator conversions than pure electrics. Replacement energy cells cost more than two or three used cars, and over time they decayed until becoming little more than deadweight. The junkyards were full of old powercells. Progress traveled in reverse out here. He’d been estimating how much to inflate them for the insurance claim. The owner glanced at the cruiser suspended from the truck and didn’t seem surprised. He nodded a greeting.

  “Sheriff, about time. You took your time getting here. The bastards got away, almost cleaned me out.”

  “Scavs?”

  He grimaced. “What else?”

  Vos hoisted up his gun belt as he exited the Aircruiser. The scissor doors lifted up, with the right side sticking two thirds up. Both squeaked as they moved, and Vos' nostrils fla
red as they finished their movement up. The gun belt slipped, and he cursed to himself as he adjusted it once more. The damn thing always slipped down over his pants.

  “You use your gun on them, Ed?”

  Murphy grimaced. “They were armed with rifles, and I mean old fashioned army weapons, like that old Colt of yours.” He nodded at the pistol in the holster, “None of that modern polymer stuff, shooting out energy beams or whatever. Like some damned Martian comic book.”

  The weapons he referred to were imported by Dawson, and far from the energy beam weapons of science fiction. One of their tactical products designed and built on technology-rich Mars. Imports had restarted once the war was over for those that could afford them. The export models were heavy, and not as advanced as the native Martian equipment, but at least the cost of bringing them to Earth was tolerable, especially when the parent company, RedCorp, bumped the price of building them Earthside under license.

  Vos didn't care for them, with their complex energy capacitors, power coils, and power packs. As far as he was concerned, they were over engineered crap that could do no more than his trusty .44, but who cared? PanAm needed modern weapons after the huge loses they’d suffered during the war. The word was the CEO of RedCorp handed out bundles of NewDollars to grease the palms of the PanAm buyers, but it was never proved.

  “The new guns are fine, Ed. Maybe you should learn how to use them right.” Staying loyal was important. Dawson Public had strong ties to RedCorp, “You lose much?”

  “Enough. I’m still working it out. They filled a big bowser with my autogas.”

  “Uh, huh.”

  A pause. “And a tanker trailer.”

  He smiled. “Don’t push it too hard. You know what they’re like.”

  Dawson Public owned all the insurance paper for the town. They never paid out when the business owner was negligent. Negligent meant failing to shoot those people who came to rob them. The company said it made sense. Shoot the miscreants dead and they wouldn’t come back. Plus, if you put a round in their heads, there wouldn't be a need for a payout.

  Murphy spat. “Scavs, bloody vultures.”

  Bowen was walking around the site, maybe looking for clues.

  In your dreams.

  Cliff strolled up to listen and sniggered. “Hell, yeah. They’re all thieving scum. We oughta shoot the bastards on sight next time they show their faces around here. I gotta few real guns in my shop, not those shit toys they’re selling these days. I'm talking old school 7.62 army gear. Hell, I've even got an old Soviet Kalashnikov. Cover it in mud, leave it in the sun or swim in the sea, it still works! This thing will put a hole in anything you point it at."

  Vos gave him a sour look. “Shut your mouth, Cliff. Last I heard Dawson carries the mortgage on your shop. And you know the law on automatic antiques. Do I need to come for an inspection again?”

  He shut up, and the cops got to work. Vos took the details and recorded them on his state-issued communicator, while Bowen continued to prowl around. It was no surprise when he returned to Vos and said, “Nothing we can use to identify them, Sheriff, sorry.”

  “Yeah.”

  Cliff towed them back to town. They unhitched the Aircruiser in the lot behind the Sheriff’s office and left it with the others in the queue for repairs. Cliff drove around the front, and people stared as their Sheriff and Deputy Bowen emerged from the decrepit tow truck parked outside his office. He stopped on the stoop and stared back at their idiot faces.

  “What're you all looking at? Don’t you have jobs to go to? Get moving. The town needs men for the road gang. You want me to make arrests for vagrancy?”

  To emphasize the point, he hitched up the heavy gun belt. The antique Colt was persuasive; in ways a modern energy pistol wasn’t. The weapon spoke a single language. Death. They dispersed, and behind him, he heard Cliff’s laughter.

  “Damn, if that ain’t the funniest thing I ever seen, Sheriff. Yeah, you sure told ‘em.”

  He swung around, his anger needing a target. He had plenty of reasons to despise the man. “You, too, Cliff. Move that damn truck from the front of my office.”

  He spread his hands wide, the picture of offended innocence. “Aw, Harrison, give me a break. I towed your cruiser back to town. Gimme a half hour, I need to look up a guy I know.” He winked, “Owes me money.”

  He froze him with a hard stare. “Owes you money for what, Cliff? Are you doing something illegal? Been using that weird truck of yours to loot precious metals from the old deuterium plant?” He glanced at Bowen. “You got your handcuffs ready?”

  Trudel spread his hands wide in an innocent gesture. “No need for that. I ain’t done nothing. You’re talking about my old military Hagglund? I haven’t used it in months.”

  “People said they saw you in it two days ago, driving away from the plant. Said you had a full load strapped on the roof. Cliff, you know the law. It’s company property, belongs to Dawson Public. If they make a complaint, I’ll have to arrest you.”

  He shuffled dust with his toe. “I ain’t done nothing wrong, Sheriff. Man’s gotta eat, and that metal is worth a bundle. Come on, half an hour, that’s not much to ask. How about a bit of gratitude when a guy's done you a favor?”

  Because you’re a creep and a thief, Cliff, and I'd have you in one of my cells right now if I didn’t need you. If there were any other way, anyone else who could keep my vehicles moving, I’d use them. But there isn’t anyone else.

  “Half an hour. No more.”

  Trudel grinned and gave him a playful punch to the stomach. “You’re all right, Harrison. Half an hour.”

  He walked away, whistling. Vos hated him even more. Hated him, and needed him. Inside his office, he booted the main power trip, and one by one the few internal systems powered up. An irritating whine from the aircon kicked in, followed by flickering lights as the office's outdated computer system activated. The connection between his Aircruiser and the computer system was automatic, as the contactless connections out-front linked the two together. In the old days half a dozen electrically powered Aircruisers would have sat there. Now there was just his. The system automatically transferred the recording from the onboard storage, and in a fraction of a second the imagery showed on the large, flat display panel.

  "Who are you?"

  He moved his finger to the image and slid it to the left. The image activated, showing a short video clip that rotated a few degrees each way. It wasn't a full three-dimensional scan, but it was enough to calculate a full height, width, and mass entry for the database. The composite digital image of the vagrant appeared on his screen, along with all known statistics, including an approximate weight that did little to improve Vos' mood. He tapped the trace icon, and a long list of highlights popped up. These database checks could take some time, but to his surprise he had a response in less than a minute. Vos leaned in close to look at the specifics, and a wry smile spread across his face.

  “Sonofabitch. Alive or dead, he must be one bad hombre.”

  * * *

  The streets were empty as he entered the outskirts of Westbank. He couldn’t find a communication booth, so he followed narrow paths and alleyways into the center of town to find a phone booth. He found one, but it was vandalized, and where there should have been a communicator screen was nothing more than torn plastic and aluminum. Nervous about running into another cop, he entered a bar, and tired eyes followed him as he walked through to the back. The screen had disappeared, and the wall showed a lighter patch where it had once been. But what mattered was the audio payphone, which worked. He entered the code Rob Romero had talked about so often. For some reason Noah had memorized it, amongst the other trivia he’d set his mind to learning. The boredom of the long and monotonous journey to Mars was enough to drive a sane man to despair. The code would allow him to connect privately, instead of routing through the national communication centers.

  “Yes?”

  At first, he couldn’t find the words. It had been so l
ong. More than three years since that day, and a year before that when he’d last seen Rose, at a barbecue she’d thrown before they left for Mars.

  She spoke again, “Who is this?” The voice was firm, impatient, commanding. He remembered she held down a senior position with her employer.

  He cleared his throat. “This is Cage.” It came out hoarse. He didn’t do much talking. Not for a long time.

  “Who?”

  “Cage. Noah Cage.”

  A pause, and he thought he heard a low moan of despair. “Lieutenant Cage? Noah, you’re back?”

  “Yeah. Been a long time.”

  “What...I don't understand."

  There was another long pause, and Noah was sure he could hear her breathing loudly, as though she was about to have a panic attack.

  "It can't be. They told me what happened.”

  Noah lowered his head and sighed. Something moved to the left, and his eyes drifted across, checking for signs of trouble. Part of it was instinct, but most of it was training. It had been hammered in to them at boot and had never left him.

  “No, they...RedCorp. They captured me and kept me up there. After the…”

  "No," she replied, "That's not true."

  Again came the breathing, and then what could have been sobs.

  “The war was over three years ago. I've been trying to..."

  Her words became muffled, impossible to understand. Noah moved closer to the device as though that one action might help.

  "Who are you? It took me months to come to terms with what happened to Rob. Why did it take so long for you to reach me? Why not send me a voice comms?”

  “Long story. Listen, Rose, I promised Rob I’d see you, tell you about what happened.”

  “I don't understand."

  Again came that pause. He wondered if it might be better to wait, or keep it to himself. But then he remembered what his friend had begged him for.

  "It can't be you, Cage. I've been told about how he died. I've had the payments from his pension already, a war widow’s pension. He was a war hero and got himself killed."