Skin Game

by Max Allan Collins

  “Right, left, then straight up the ramp,” Max said.

  Driving like a lifelong racer, Logan followed her orders.

  As they accelerated up the incline, Max said, “Straight through the building.”

  Again Logan complied, steering through the maze of concrete pillars as fast as was possible in the unwieldy van. Finally, they reached a barricade of junk that not only prevented them from moving forward, but cut them off to the left and right as well.

  “End of the line,” Logan declared as he braked the van to a stop.

  Sketchy stopped the ambulance next to the van, and the police cars quickly formed a semicircle behind them to keep Max and crew from turning around and making a break for it. The light bars atop the police cars painted the scene red, blue, and shades of purple where the two colors met. Pouring out of their cars, twenty or so officers drew their guns, and Clemente’s voice once again came over a loudspeaker: “Throw down your weapons and let me see your hands. Now!”

  Mole spun angrily toward Max. “What’s your plan now?”

  “Show me your hands,” Clemente said over the speaker.

  Looking a little panicked, and sounding like a small boy and not a massive dog of a man, Joshua asked plaintively, “Max . . . ?”

  “Throw your weapons out now!”

  Max looked from face to face, seeing defeat, even despair, but she was unwilling to accept either.

  She made her decision. “You heard the man.”

  “Well,” Mole said, “this sucks.”

  Logan dropped his pistol through the open driver’s side window and it hit the concrete floor with a dull smack.

  “I fought the law and the law won,” Alec said, wry resignation in his voice.

  Moving to the back door and opening it a crack, Max dropped out Alec’s weapon and it clattered to the concrete.

  “Step out of the van with your hands up.”

  Grumbling the whole time, Mole followed suit, handing his gun to Max, who tossed it outside.

  Clemente’s voice came over the speaker again. “Do it—step away from the van, and keep your hands up!”

  Original Cindy, in her SWAT team drag, dropped her gun and Sketchy’s gun out the back of the ambulance as well.

  Max came out first, followed by Mole; then came Cindy, without her helmet and goggles; Gem and her new baby; Sketchy—also without his SWAT headgear—and finally young Dalton exited the ambulance.

  As Clemente and his men kept their guns trained on the transgenics, Max kicked a couple of the rifles even farther away so the cops wouldn’t think they were up to something. Joshua helped Alec down, Alec’s shoulder still giving him trouble from a bullet he’d taken early in the siege. Logan came out the driver’s side and marched to the back of the van to join the others.

  “Step away from the vehicles!” Clemente commanded. “On your knees—hands on top of your heads!”

  Sketchy dropped first, as if suddenly taken by the urge to pray, his hands shooting to the top of his head. Slowly, the others fell in line as well—Mole, then Alec, Logan, Original Cindy, Dalton, and Gem—all on their knees in defeat, all of them putting their hands on their heads, except Gem, who held her baby.

  All but Max.

  Max remained standing, her hands dangling at her sides. She kept her face calm, passive, showing neither anger nor deception. And yet her very failure to follow orders made her a pillar of defiance.

  “On your knees,” Clemente yelled, no longer on the loudspeaker.

  Instead, Max took two tentative steps forward.

  “Do it, now!”

  Ignoring the instruction, Max walked forward a few more steps, then stopped just a few feet from the police, their headlights bathing her and her friends in bright white light.

  “452?” Clemente asked, frowning. That was what she had told the cop to call her when they’d been negotiating the hostage crisis.

  But why hide any longer?

  She said, “You can call me Max.”

  He drew a breath. Then he said, “I think you should get on the ground.”

  Max’s face remained placid. “I think you should probably go.”

  Now Clemente’s expression hardened. “I’m not going to tell you again.”

  She gave him the tiniest of shrugs. “I’m not going to tell you again.”

  Luke and Dix—two of the transgenics that had started the settlement within the fences of the dead industrial park that was now Terminal City—stepped out of the shadows, pumping shotguns.

  In front of Max, the officers cocked their own guns and drew beads on the transgenics.

  Then, from the darkness, other armed transgenics emerged on nearby rooftops and on either flank of the policemen. The eerie, half-lit forms of these feared freaks could only give the police pause . . . and there were more and more of the figures. . . .

  The only escape route for the cops was to their rear. And by the time all the transgenics made their appearance known, over one hundred of them had the officers in their crosshairs.

  Max could see on Clemente’s face the realization that his forces were hopelessly outgunned.

  “You can try to arrest us all,” she suggested affably, her arms widening to include the whole group, “but you guys might want to call it a night . . . and go have a beer.”

  Clemente needed only a second to make up his mind. “Back it up! Outside the fence, people. Let’s go, move it back!”

  The officers looked from the transgenics to their leader, then started looking at one another.

  “Now!” Clemente yelled.

  Cops began holstering their weapons, jumping into cars, and soon police cruisers were moving in every direction as they tried to find the fastest way out of Terminal City. As the long line of cars broke and headed for the gate, Clemente watched them for a moment, then gingerly holstered his pistol and turned toward Max. Walking slowly, he crossed the short distance to her.

  Barely a foot from her, he said, “You kept today from turning into a bloodbath . . . and I respect that . . .”

  She gave him a slight nod. “You held up your end too.”

  The detective’s face remained a solemn mask. “. . . but you haven’t won anything. This is going to get ugly . . . and it’s way over my head now. These people’s lives depend on the decisions you make next.”

  Their eyes locked.

  He went on: “And I pray you make the right ones . . .”

  She stared at him, waiting.

  “. . . Max.”

  She was unprepared for the swell of pride she got when he said her name. Why couldn’t more of the “ordinaries” be like this one? Yes, they were adversaries—those lines had been drawn long ago. But in the tone of that one syllable, “Max,” she could tell they were not enemies.

  Turning on his heel, Clemente got into his car, dropped it into reverse, and backed out of the building toward the gate of Terminal City.

  The lights of the car weren’t even out of sight before Mole—ever the hotheaded activist—went to work. “Escape and evade. We divide into teams, pick a compass point, and go to ground.”

  Max surprised even herself when the words jumped out of her mouth: “No! . . . We stay here.”

  Mole spun to face her, his harsh-sounding voice even harsher than usual. “In a couple of hours that perimeter’ll be totally locked down . . . tanks, National Guard, and every cop within a hundred miles.”

  Stepping forward, Dix—a transgenic with a face like a pile of lumpy mashed potatoes and a half-assed goggle-cummonocle strapped to his one good eye—said, “We’ll be digging our own grave.”

  “Mole’s right,” said Luke, a transgenic with a cue ball for a head, red bags under his black eyes, and huge flaps over his tiny ears. “We move now, they won’t be able to catch us all.”

  “Where are you going to go?” Max asked, then turning her attention to the misfit throng, she added, “Look—I can’t stop anyone from leaving. But I’m through running and hiding and being afraid.” Making h
er point with a forceful pirouette, she said, “I’m not gonna live like that anymore. Aren’t you tired of living in darkness?”

  She saw a few nods and heard a few scattered mumbles of agreement.

  “Don’t you want to feel the sun on your face? Don’t you want to have a place of your own? A place where you can walk down the street without being afraid?”

  The noises of agreement grew louder.

  “They made us and they trained us to be soldiers . . . to defend this country. It’s time they face us and take responsibility for us instead of trying to sweep us away like garbage. We were made in America. And we aren’t going anywhere.”

  Original Cindy, nodding, said, “Speak your word.”

  Max looked at her for a split second, loving her sister, who had been with her since the very beginning; then she went on: “They call us freaks? Well, okay. Today . . . I’m proud to be a freak. And today, we’re gonna make our stand, right here.”

  Looking around her, she studied the faces, so many faces, of those she knew and those she didn’t know, but in her heart they were all her family. “Who’s with me?” Calmly, Max raised a fist in the air.

  Joshua’s fist shot up instantly and Original Cindy’s and Logan’s and Alec’s and one by one the others, even Dix and Luke. This was a solidarity none of them had ever known, not even back at Manticore. They were together, proud and defiant. Finally, only Mole stood alone, arms at his sides.

  Max studied the lizard-faced commando. As she watched him gazing from face to face, she could see he felt it too—brotherhood was in the air. Sisterhood too.

  Slowly, his fist rose in the air and something like a grin appeared on that lizard puss. “Aw, what the hell. . . .”

  A smile broke across Original Cindy’s face; few smiles on the planet were brighter. “Right on!”

  Feeling hope flood through her system like adrenaline, Max thought of the ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tze, who said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

  She hoped they were getting off on the right foot.

  For the next forty-eight hours the transgenics fortified their position inside and kept a careful eye on the police and National Guard outside, who—true to Mole’s prediction—had locked down the perimeter of Terminal City. Already a chain of command seemed to be establishing itself. Alec and Mole oversaw the upgrade in security, and Dix and Luke monitored the media—whose cameras gave them a nice look at the National Guard and police forces outside the fence. Joshua appointed himself Max’s personal bodyguard, while Logan and Max pored over strategies for their next step.

  It was late the second night when Dix called them into the transgenics’ makeshift media center. A dozen monitors were built into a pyramid, with four of their brethren watching them, sifting through the information from the various sources both local and national. Off to the left another baker’s dozen of monitors kept track of the security system the transgenics had installed and been upgrading since they first settled in the restricted area.

  “What’s going on?” Max asked.

  Dix pointed to a monitor in the third row; and an X5, a redheaded young woman about Max’s age, pointed a remote that raised the volume.

  On the screen, a reporter stood in front of Jam Pony, Normal standing next to the man. “But about your captors . . . what are these creatures like? Is it true you delivered a transgenic baby?”

  Normal beamed. He couldn’t have been any happier if he’d been the father himself. “I did, and a beautiful, bouncing baby girl she is.”

  The reporter asked, “So—you’re saying they’re not all monsters, then?”

  “Monsters?” Normal asked with a shake of his head, as if such a thought were foreign to him. “No more than you or me.”

  And with that he turned away and swept the sidewalk in front of Jam Pony. When he saw two of his riders not moving fast enough, he said, “Hey, Sparky—not a country club, get moving. Bip bip bip!”

  The two slackers headed off in opposite directions, each trying to get as far away from Normal as fast as they could.

  Max turned to Logan. “What do you make of that?”

  Grinning, Logan said, “Looks like you’ve got another convert.”

  With a perplexed look, Max asked, “Normal?”

  Logan shrugged. “Could be helpful to have another friend on the outside.”

  She nodded. “Can’t ever hurt to have another friend.” Turning to Dix, she said, “Anything else?”

  He shook his mashed-potato head. “You should get some rest, Max.”

  A yawn escaped from her. “Maybe you’re right.” She and Logan, as well as most of the rest of them, hadn’t slept for at least the last two days. A nap wouldn’t hurt her, and she knew Logan needed the rest even more than she. “Can you get somebody to wake us at dawn?”

  Dix nodded. “Take my room,” he said, pointing to a door off to the right.

  She took a few steps then turned back to Logan. “You comin’?”

  A small smile appeared and he said, “Yeah.”

  Dix’s room was a far cry from the penthouse apartment where not so long ago Logan had lived, or even Max’s condemned-building crib, for that matter; but it would do, for tonight anyway. About as big as a good-sized bathroom and illuminated by a single lightbulb dangling from a cord, it had an old double mattress on the floor in one corner, some bookshelves with a few volumes on the opposite wall to the left, a small round table near them with two chairs, and in the front left corner—below some steam pipes that Logan had to duck beneath—an old leather recliner that had been salvaged from God knew where.

  “You take the bed,” Max said. “I’ll take this.” She patted the recliner.

  “No,” Logan said. “You take the bed. . . .”

  She gave him a sharp look. “When was the last time you slept?”

  He shrugged, but said, “Can’t you let me be a gentleman about it?”

  She waggled a finger at him. “Who’s a genetically enhanced killing machine that can go days without sleep?”

  “You are,” he said hopelessly.

  She knew she had him now.

  Without any more argument, he spilled into the bed, took off his glasses, and instantly fell asleep. He hadn’t even bothered to take off the exoskeleton—the device affixed to the lower half of him that allowed him to walk. His wheelchair, the contraption he’d spent so much time in the last two years, lay in the pile of rubble that had been his apartment before White’s people trashed it.

  Logan Cale was, after all, Eyes Only—the cyber freedom fighter, a terrorist to the authorities, an identity secret to most (but not Max). Scion of a wealthy family, Logan used his inherited money to help those less fortunate than himself—like the transgenics; these efforts had led to the bullets that had put him into a wheelchair.

  Plopping onto the recliner, Max kicked back and listened as Logan started to snore softly. She couldn’t think of a prettier sound. Pulling the string on the light and grinning, she looked over at this man who she loved and adored, asleep in the darkness. “I love you,” she said quietly.

  He snorted a snore in response, and Max suddenly realized this was what they all wanted, what they were all fighting for—just a little peace and quiet in this big, noisy world.

  Logan’s snoring grew louder, and Max decided that even peace without quiet was good enough for her. Closing her eyes, she drifted off in a cloud of hope that carried over into sweet dreams.

  Which, when so many of her days were waking nightmares, was one small blessing, anyway.

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  SIEGING IS BELIEVING

  TERMINAL CITY, 7:35 A.M.

  SATURDAY, MAY 8, 2021

  The next morning, rested and refreshed, Max and Logan joined a number of their fellow outcasts in the Terminal City media center and watched the early morning news on KIPR. The picture showed a dozen police cars layered in front of the main gate in multiple barricades, their light bars fla
shing red and blue, heavily armed and armored officers running around behind the barricade.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Max said dryly.

  “Maybe she will,” Logan said, with a nod to the screen.

  The camera had settled on a female newscaster wearing too much lipstick. “As dawn breaks on the siege at Terminal City, the situation is tense but unchanged. While several hundred transgenics remain barricaded inside the restricted area, police and National Guard stand an uneasy watch at the perimeter, each side seemingly waiting to see what the other will do next.”

  “No kidding,” Max said to the TV.

  “You think they’re coming in?” Logan asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think they’re that stupid.”

  Logan shot her a quick grin. “What about White?”

  They exchanged glances—neither really considered Ames White stupid, but both knew him to be incredibly ruthless and reckless, with other people’s lives at least. White, with his antitransgenic agenda, had the most to gain if this siege turned into a slaughter. It didn’t even matter who on which side got slaughtered. . . .

  At the thought, Max’s face turned sour and an epithet formed on her pretty mouth. Just as she was about to let it explode out, the hulking figure that was Joshua burst through the door.

  “Everyone, come up to the roof,” he shouted, his canine face turned up in a broad smile, his eyes bright with excitement, alive with enthusiasm.

  Max turned to Logan, whose shrug and expression said, I have no idea—don’t ask me!

  Dix asked, “What?”

  But it was too late, Joshua had already bounded back through the door again and they could hear him pounding up the stairs just beyond the wall of the media center.

  “Better go see,” Max said. She had great affection for the keenly intelligent but childlike Joshua, and would gladly take time to humor him, even under these circumstances.

  Dutifully, they all fell in line behind Max and followed her out the door, then up the stairs, quickly taking the three flights to the roof. When she opened the door, golden sunlight flooded the stairwell. The little ragtag group—Max, Logan, Dix, Luke, and Mole—walked out onto the flat concrete roof, where they found a couple of dozen transgenics already there, including Joshua, Alec, Gem, and her new baby.