by Jack Cuatt
The sound of running feet comes from the road above. The soldier with the AR-15 will be in firing range any second. Machine holsters the Smith, reaches into the chest-pack and pulls his last grenade. He hobbles toward the scrub brush and stunted trees growing through the wire fence that borders the pasture. Behind him, the soldier with the AR-15 fires off a wild burst as he heads down the slope after Machine.
Bullets rip bark and churn sod around Machine. He turns, lets the grenade's arming lever fly and pitches the frag at the rear of the Mercedes, under the gas tank, then throws himself down flat in the weeds.
The guy with the AR is still firing wildly as he passes the Mercedes. The grenade detonates and the gas tank explodes. He disappears in a column of flame that turns night to day and tosses the mangled Mercedes twenty yards into the pasture. Dead grass ignites with a crackling rush and a wave of flame spreads out from the car and inky smoke floods the pasture. Machine gets up and sprint-hobbles to the fence, climbs over it and heads toward the tree-shrouded creek.
Machine reaches the creek ten seconds before the flames do. He slides down the muddy embankment, landing on his knees in three-inches of water, out of view of the road. Fire crackles and shadows dance orange-black behind him. He pushes himself up and limps down the shoulder of the creek, dodging branches and dragging himself over deadfalls, staying within the high banks of the stream, putting distance between himself and Scarpo's estate. The wet ground sucks at his heels. He makes two miles, whipped by limbs and vines, before collapsing in a drift of leaves and ferns, breathing like a freight train. The woods are silent, deep, and dark. Overhead, bare limbs blot out the stars. No noise or lights. He is safe for the moment.
He has a good sense of direction and distance. He's almost sure of where he is, about six miles from the turnpike, straight across the fields and woods to the north. The hike will take a good three hours in his condition, and then he must face the problem of getting back to the city. But, first he has to tend to the wounds in his arm and thigh.
After pulling off the gloves, he carefully strips off his coat, T-shirt and chest-pack. The Kevlar vest is damaged but still serviceable. He shrugs out of it, drops it at his feet and inspects his bloody shoulder. It's not a pleasant sight. Thankfully none of the pellets had hit bone. If they had, he'd be in shock by now. Instead they had punched ragged holes deep into the bicep’s muscle tissue. The wound in his thigh is a little worse, but it's not bleeding. Caked blood crumbles at his touch.
Taking a roll of gauze and some surgical tape from the chest-pack, he forms a pad with the gauze and tapes it over the cluster of holes in his shoulder. He repeats the procedure on his thigh, then stands, slips into the T-shirt and the Kevlar vest, straps on the chest-pack, and puts the bloody jacket on over that.
He starts moving.
27
It takes more time to reach the highway than Machine had anticipated: close to four hours of wading streams and crossing open fields. The sun is a pale tinge on the horizon when he reaches the turnpike. For the hundredth time, he curses himself for not planting a car near the mansion, though he couldn't have, it would not have gone unnoticed. Working without a partner has its drawbacks. He tries to be grateful to be alive. That makes him want to vomit. He keeps his mind on what he has to do: survive.
Wounded and mud splattered, he walks along the bottom of the turnpike's overgrown embankment, ducking into the weeds when the infrequent car approaches. It’s more than three miles before he spots a halo of light surrounding a truckstop.
As dawn breaks, he drops to his knees and crawls through the underbrush that surrounds the truckstop’s parking lot, across a half-full drainage ditch thick with green water, to the edge of the asphalt.
Several tractor trailer rigs idle in a loose row between Machine and the truckstop's restaurant. A few cars and two more trucks are at the gas pumps. A trio of truckers in caps and jeans stand near the restaurant's door. Two of them have rifles over their shoulders, the other has a revolver on his hip. The trucker's strike is growing more violent by the day. These strike-breakers are taking no chances, the union drivers are out for blood.
Machine rises as the truckers disperse. He sticks to the darkest path available as he limps into the parking lot, keeping as many trucks between himself and the restaurant as possible, until he reaches the nearest of the idling trucks. He kneels at the rear of the trailer, half under it, dirty water dripping from his clothes, the smell of diesel fuel and oil almost overpowering. The rig rumbles patiently, running lights on. Machine eases the Smith out and slips along the trailer to the cab.
He steps on a stair notched in the gas tank and looks over the edge of the window. A carton of cigarettes is open on the bench seat and a red plastic cooler fills the passenger side floorboard. He tries the handle. Unlocked. He slips into the cab and closes the door gently behind him. The rig has a sleeping compartment behind a ragged blue curtain. He uses the silenced Smith to nose the curtain aside.
A large bed covered in a blue comforter, a thirteen inch TV bolted to the wall, and a small white refrigerator crowd the tiny space. There are stereo speakers in the corners and a pile of dirty clothes on the end of the bed. Otherwise, it's empty. Shoving the curtain aside, he climbs over the seat, pulls the curtain closed and drops to a seat on the edge of the bed to await the driver's return. All the night's action collapses on him. His eyelids feel like lead, his arms and legs ache dully. He wants nothing more than to be someplace safe. But there is no such place for him.
He rubs his eyes with the back of his hand and looks around the tiny room to keep his mind functioning. How nice it would be to lie back and close his eyes…
Machineis awakened by the click of the driver’s side door opening.
Blearily, he slides off the bed. The curtain brushes his face as he leans forward, Smith up, hammer back.
The smell of cheap cologne wafts through the curtain, and the cab settles under the weight of the driver. The shape of a head is outlined against the curtain by the low sunlight. The door slams, the seat belt clicks and the driver reaches for the gear shift.
Machine sticks his head through the curtain, followed closely by the Smith.
The driver is fiftyish, skinny and sunburnt. His face is deeply lined. Jailhouse tattoos cover the backs of both hands; sloppy stars, hearts, and crosses in cheap blue ink.
“Jesus!” he yells as Machine appears behind him. One look at the Smith and his mouth drops open and a dental bridge slides out, plopping wetly onto the front seat.
“Don't,” he whispers. “Don't kill me. Please, don't kill me. I’m union too! But I got a family! I gotta work!” Without the teeth, the words are blurred, almost unintelligible.
“I'm not in a killing mood anymore,” Machine says as he climbs over the seat, the 9mm an unwavering one foot from the driver's face. The driver leans away from Machine, eyes glued on the 9mm.
Machine drops into the passenger seat, reaches under his jacket, pulls out Scarpo's envelope and dumps it on the seat between himself and the driver.
“Take me into Low Town and the money's yours.”
The trucker's eyes jump from the 9mm to the green pile. He wipes spit from his lip with a shaky hand. “You aren't with the Union?” he asks, his greed getting the better of his fear.
“No. Take the turnpike into Low Town.”
The driver needs no more incentive. He pulls out of the lot, makes a wide turn and heads up the on-ramp, warily watching the pile of cash and the dead-eyed teenager from the corner of his eye. He heads for the city.
After a silent thirty minutes, they reach the outskirts of the dead city. From there Machine issues curt instructions, guiding the driver to the intersection of Shoreline and Washington, near the docks.
“Here,” Machine points at the curb, his hand already on the door handle.
Air brakes hiss as the trucker stops under the blank eyes of a dead traffic light. The sun is rising over the Easter Industries plant, a burnt cinder in a charred sky. The i
ntersection is empty.
The driver looks as scared as he had when Machine came over the truck's seat.
“I won't say nothin' about this,” he promises as Machine opens the door. “I won't tell nobody.”
Machine doesn’t reply. He drops to the pavement and heads for the nearest alley. The truck lumbers off, turns down Shoreline, and speeds away.
Machine walks as quickly as he can past mounds of broken bottles, dirty diapers, and bald tires. At the far end of the passage he stops and scans the street. He doesn't need any more trouble.
Nothing.
An abandoned middle school slouches on the opposite side of the street. Rusted swing sets, smashed windows and a collapsed roof. He cuts across the school's old football field and heads toward his hotel.
The street in front of his hotel is deserted. He enters by the fire escape. The climb is a cruel test of his wounded and weary limbs. Once in his room, he doesn't take time to strip, wash or clean his wounds. He drags the musty mattress from the bed, drops it on the floor in front of the door, lies down in his clothes, and is instantly asleep.
28
Machine awakens just after 5:00 PM feeling like a hot-wired corpse. His eyes, reflected in the mirror above the sink, are bloodshot. Bone-deep purple-yellow bruises cover his stomach, upper-chest and right shoulder. The bruises are painful but better than the alternative. Without the Kevlar vest, he'd be in the morgue now. The wounds in his thigh and shoulder are small blue-black holes, puckered-closed and starting to scab.
After a careful shower, he slips on a pair of rubber surgical gloves and seats himself on the toilet lid with gauze, alcohol, a pair of tweezers, and tape.
He grinds his teeth as he re-opens the wounds with the tweezers and extracts the lead-pellets. The pain is like being shot all over again, but he's been through this before. He rinses the wounds with alcohol and applies a topical antibiotic. When he's finished bandaging his arm and thigh, he dresses quickly and seats himself at the room's battered dresser. After slipping on a fresh pair of surgical gloves, he breaks down the Smith and takes a small rat-tail file from the chest-pack. Carefully, he works the file, subtly altering the barrel, shell chamber, loading ramp and the ejector. All of these leave their mark on either the slug or the casing. He repeats the process with the Škorpion. The cops don't waste time investigating street killings in Low Town, but Scarpo had been a man with influential friends. Machine will not carry a weapon that links him conclusively to a high profile assassination.
After reassembling the Smith and the Škorpion, he stows the weapons under his jacket, bundles up his clothes from the night before, gives the room a cursory wipe down, and leaves the hotel. He won't be back.
As he walks toward the Avenue, he dumps his bloody clothing a piece at a time. A hobo or rag picker will be wearing them within the hour. With that done, he stops by Horace’s, ditches the Škorpion in the trunk of one of the Lincolns and heads into the Zone.
On Washington the evening's parade is beginning. The junkies shake off the dope sleep. Prostitutes apply eyeliner. He stops at a convenience store, buys orange juice, a plastic-wrapped sandwich, and milk. He wolfs it down while leaning against the corner of the building, watching the gray day fade to hopeless night, barely noticing the activity on the street. His mind is on the night before, on what Scarpo had said. He believes that Scarpo paid off Moses. And that means that Moses had betrayed Kukov, a transgression that would have earned him a death sentence if Vlad had found out.
And maybe Vlad had. Secrets are cheap in Low Town. But, either way, Vlad is still Machine’s best hope of finding the blond chopper. And if Vlad was the one who hired him, then Vlad would die.
Machine buys a new prepaid phone and dials the apartment in New Town. The female monotone answers.
“You have one new message. Would you like to hear it now?”
Machine presses ‘one.’
“Stanley here.” The ex-Jesus creep sounds excited, half-drunk. “I got something for you. Call me at the house.” The message is two hours old.
Machine dials Stanley's number.
“Hello?”
“You called?”
“Meet me here. 11:00 PM.” Click.
Machine hangs up. Four hours until 11:00. That gives him time to track down Finnegan. Maybe the junkie has found out something about Sculli.
29
Machine doesn't find the red-headed junkie. He's probably nodding in an alley somewhere, or shooting-up in some flophouse.
It's just before 11:00 when Machine arrives at Stanley's apartment building.
Most of the building's windows are dark, Stanley's included. The hallway reeks of urine. A 100-watt bulb inside a wire screen casts a dirty yellow pallor on walls covered with Crip graffiti. Dozens of street-tags in elaborate script, most of them crossed out and dated, indicating that their owners have been killed. A lot of dead Crips. The Hammerskins are definitely winning the war between the two gangs.
Machine crosses the threshold and hits the stairs, walking softly, listening to the creaks and moans of the crumbling old structure. Rats scramble in the walls and in the piles of trash that clutter every landing. The third floor hall is dark, the only light coming from a filthy window that looks out on the rear courtyard. He pauses on the top step and allows his eyes to adjust before proceeding to Stanley's door. He knocks and cocks his head to listen. Something moves on the other side of the door. A whisper of sound and then nothing. Probably a rat. Machine knocks again. No answer. Stanley must be out. That's surprising. The old and infirm usually keep to their houses after nightfall, lock the doors and bar the windows. Machine tries the knob. It's locked.
Stanley's door is narrow and the gap between it and the jamb is wide. A pass with a credit card slips the bolt. Machine steps left out of the line of fire, and pushes the door open on the smell of cheap wine, cigarettes, and old man's sweat. The room is lit dimly by light seeping in through the window overlooking the street. Machine steps inside and closes the door softly behind him.
As the door clicks closed, sounding huge in the silent, musty apartment, he’s struck by the underlying smell of fresh blood. Meat turning rotten. He stops dead and pulls the Velcro. The razor slaps his palm.
A bulky shape leaps off the floor on his right. He spins to face it as another shadow charges from the kitchen doorway.
Machine sidesteps the first attacker, whips the razor across the man's chest and punches him hard in the throat. The wounded man hits the floor, and rolls away, choking and bleeding but not mortally wounded. Machine doesn't stop to think about him, he reaches for the Smith as he pivots to face the man rushing from the kitchen. Slowed by the previous night's injuries, he doesn't make it. A knife stabs into his bicep and pain flashes like sheet lightning across his brain. The blade digs deep into the muscle, twists cruelly and is withdrawn in a quicksilver motion. The twist will keep the wound from closing. Professional. The assassin from the kitchen drops back, his blood-streaked knife centered, blade up. His face above the blade is pale, his scalp shaved. A swastika tattoo mars his right cheek. A Hammerskin. The skinhead feints left then lunges forward, leading with the blade, anxious for the kill.
Machine sidesteps the lunge and snaps a kick into the Hammerskin's kneecap. It doesn't take much pressure to break a limb at the joint. The skinhead's knee gives with a crack and his leg folds in the wrong direction. The knife clatters on the floor as he goes down on his good knee, screaming. Not for long. Machine whips the razor across his throat, severing the skin’s jugular. The skinhead hits the carpet in a pile, gargling blood, bleeding out fast.
Machine spins to face the wounded Hammerskin, who has regained his feet. He’s got his left hand pressed over the cut across his chest; in his right is a seven-inch hunting knife.
Machine offers up a quick thanks to the killer-God that the Hammerskins prefer knives and numbers, to one professional with a gun. If the skins were smarter, he’d be a corpse by now.
The Hammerskin feints a slash at
Machine's midsection.
Machine doesn’t jump back; he jumps forward, slaps the knife out of the skin’s hand, grabs a fistful of the guy’s leather jacket and jerks him forward, into the sharpened tip of the razor. The blade sinks deep into the skin's chest cavity, between the third and fourth ribs. Machine twists the blade and the skinhead gasps and staggers backward, his brain running out of oxygen fast. He drops to his knees then falls forward to join his dead friend on the floor. The two hundred pound thump of the skin hitting the floor almost covers the sound of someone rapidly approaching from the kitchen behind Machine. Machine spins to face this new adversary, but he’s too slow. A knife carves across his ribs with a blinding flash of pain. He twists away from the blade as the attacker falls back. He’s a rat-faced skinhead with a spider web tattoo on his elbow and a switchblade in his hand. The skinhead springs forward again, too quickly for the wounded Machine. He slashes Machine’s right cheek and drops back again, holding the knife like he knows how to use it.
Machine is done with blades. He reaches for the Smith just as two more Hammerskins rush in from the bedroom. They slam into him and all three men hit the floor, the skinheads atop Machine, crushing him, gouging and kicking. Machine lashes out at the skinheads with elbows and knees, his heart pounding in his chest, blood roaring in his head. He's fighting for his life and knows it.
“Slice the fucker,” one of the skins pants.
Machine knees the talker in the groin, shoves him off and rolls left, rising to his knees in one motion. He reaches for the Smith again, but a booted foot lashes out from the darkness and smashes into his jaw. He goes down hard on his back.
The skins move in, a half-circle of shadowy faces, a trio of blades slashing down. Machine fends off the blades with his arms and hands, twisting across the floor, trying to escape the onslaught. The pain is almost unbearable, but he’s been here before; it doesn’t cloud his mind or weaken his will. Blood flows warm across his skin. He won’t last long at this rate. He has to take the fight to them or die. He quits trying to escape, kicks out with both feet, catching the nearest skin in the stomach. The man staggers back and Machine rolls through the gap, spinning through a mess of his own blood, his teeth clenched in a struggle against the light headedness that warps his vision. He gets his knees under him and lurches to his feet. A blade pierces his forearm as he lunges forward and snaps a kick at the nearest skinhead's shin, connecting with the heel of his right shoe. In his weakened state, the blow doesn’t have much behind it, but the point of impact is precise. The skinhead howls as his shin fractures. He hits the floor cursing. The other two fall back to regroup. That’s a mistake they will not live to regret.