by E. E. Knight
Maynes, after his initial suspicion about me, began to treat me as part of the team. Not an important part, I was rather like a big, friendly dog to him. He would reach up and scratch the hair on my cheek or forehead when he greeted me in the morning. I don’t care to be touched, especially not about the snout and ears, and I had to suppress the instinct to return his hand minus a few fingers.
It didn’t stop me from imagining the cartilaginous crunch or the salty, hot surprise of fresh blood.
He learned that I had a taste for nuts and took to tossing me a big brown paper bag of walnuts if he thought we were to be long on the road before reaching our destination. I made a point of carefully collecting the empty shells and returning them to him in the brown bag, as though they were ammunition casings that could be reloaded.
I enjoyed this time, especially when we left the towns behind and negotiated the mountain roads. The hills and trees drew sound and absorbed it like a sponge, so that it seemed I could hardly hear the throaty blat of the exhaust. Home drove, alert and both hands holding the wheel in firm fingers, MacTierney with his lap-folder full of notated maps and communication printouts. I sat in the back, holding either a shotgun clamped to one side of my improvised seat or a battle rifle on the other, ready to grab up either at a threat or a flash of game. Maynes liked to bring home his dinner freshly bled.
Other than some mischievous boys in Logan who startled us by throwing a handful of lighted firecrackers in our wake, the days passed without any danger worse than negotiating a road washout or a flood-damaged bridge.
As one draws closer to the borders of the Coal Country, particularly those parts joining Kentucky or the Southern Appalachians, less so the Virginia border, the country becomes wilder and sparsely settled. The roads degenerate into jeep trails, then paths. Only a single maintained highway links the Northwest Ordnance to the Coal Country, and another extends up toward Maryland and Pennsylvania, largely used for maintenance on power lines and the railroads.
Most of the Kurians like a strip of wilderness that takes a day or two to cross dividing their zones. Escape becomes more hazardous, as the Nomansland between is stalked by bandits and bounty hunters. If you are lucky, the former will only strip you of your possessions and subject you to sexual pawing and penetration. The latter will usually do the same, then haul you and your family to whichever nearby Kurian Zone pays the best for still-breathing humans. Of course, this sort of brigandage has its hazards, for a bigger band will swallow, absorb, and sell off a smaller one. Now and then Kurian Zone Special Forces engage in training in the wilds of the borderlands and are happy to use live targets for their live ammunition. These bandits have been overly romanticized in the past few years; only a very few did anything more than passively resist the Kurian Order. Most aided it by feeding the captive and the kidnapped into the regime’s Molochian maw.
Late one May afternoon, we drove into a border post on the Coal Country side of the border with the Northwest Ordnance, along that lone highway heading over the Ohio River a few dozen miles away. A little roadside town existed there for the benefit of the truckers who would drop a trailer at the border and pick up one to be returned into their zone (at this time, east of the Mississippi there were very few cross-zone drivers; west of the Mississippi convoys under escort could pass through).
The town had a small trooper station representing the Coal Country Order, a little repair facility, and a clapped-together mass of cypress planking that served as a combination hotel, bar, and grill for the benefit of those waiting for a load to show up called the “NbW Roadhouse.”
It was a pleasantly warm day. An overnight rain had dropped a heavy shower left over from April, but it had blown north by the time we finished breakfast, and the day turned nice. The long-promised summer had arrived at last. The roads had more than the usual pedestrians, bicyclists, and bus riders out enjoying the filtered sun, hot enough to be felt upon bare skin.
Someone had inserted the word “whore” into the NbW Roadhouse sign, with an arrow to clear up any doubt as to where the substitution belonged.
“What’s the NbW stand for?” Home asked.
“North by west,” MacTierney said.
Home looked at the other side of the sign as we passed it, perhaps hoping for a coda. “I was hoping for ‘naked beautiful women.’”
“Hope away. It’s a sunny afternoon. Maybe some skin will be out hanging her wash in the raw.”
After checking fuel and fluids courtesy of the trooper station, with only two duty troopers supporting a single vehicle patrolling the highway from the Ordnance border to the nearest crossroads, we idled outside the Maynes Trekker. I pretended to go to sleep with my back against the warm radiator. Home and MacTierney engaged in their usual conversational nothings, with MacTierney giving answers that showed he was only half paying attention to Home’s chatter; yet Home pressed on with the conversation nonetheless.
“Wonder if there are any quality girls in the roadhouse,” Home said.
“Wouldn’t know.”
“Not, like, pros,” Home said. “They’d starve out here, doing a couple truckers a week. Just girls working the bar. A pair of tits always makes me feel like staying around for another round.”
“Don’t say. Do you ever talk about anything but pussy, Home?”
Home ignored him. “Still, bad country for a woman. Nowhere to shop, nothing to do that isn’t a two-hour trip on a bike. In good weather.”
MacTierney looked at the sky. “Now that the storm’s blown out. Don’t know that it’ll stay good. I bet we get another before long.”
“Suppose if there is any gash open for business, Mr. Maynes will smell it out. He could find pussy on a drifting iceberg.”
The sound of distant motorcycles echoed off the NbW. I stopped pretending to sleep and rose.
“Trouble, Boss?” I asked.
“Could be,” MacTierney said. He was the only one who spoke to me in tone and terms other than those you might employ on a dog. “King, stay here. Don’t let anyone into the Trekker, and if they try to block it in, swing around in front of the roadhouse and pick us up. . . . Home, best if we get to Maynes.”
They hurried across the road. The engine noises were identifiable now, a few motorcycles. I could see a mass of headlights moving south toward us.
Just to stay on the safe side, I slipped into the driver’s seat and pulled the Trekker around to the NbW. I saw one flash of concern from MacTierney and Home—perhaps they thought I was panicking and running south—but when I backed up again, neatly parking on the “wrong” side of the road, still facing south in case we needed to escape, they hurried in to get Mr. Maynes.
The new arrivals were a convoy of large vehicles and a few bikes. They slowed as they pulled into town, and at a signal from a diesel horn perhaps stripped from a train, they pulled over on the shoulder opposite the NbW Roadhouse. All the vehicles bore the red-and-white nine-square checkerboard of licensed bounty hunters, though a few had added tic-tac-toe, obscene crosswords, or chess endgame layouts with black markers or some such.
Painted on the side of the bus were white block letters: ZIHU’S ASSURED.
MacTierney and Home reemerged from the roadhouse. It had gone quiet inside and faces were populating the windows.
I opened the door of the Trekker to speak to the humans. “Boss come?” I asked.
MacTierney shrugged and Home let out a low “hoooooo!” “He paused to refresh himself. He’s getting dressed. But we’re not leaving; he’s greeting the newcomers on behalf of the family and the Coal Country.”
“It’s Zihu’s mob,” MacTierney said to Home.
“What ass-red?” I asked, pointing to the sign.
“Assureds,” Home said. “As in assured of not being klinked up as Reaper fodder.”
They parked with a precision unmatched by any military convoy I witnessed in my career. On the edges, motorcycles light and heavy pulled up, their riders waiting for orders to switch off and dismount. Strippe
d-down pickups with high-clearance suspensions and crew-served light cannon, .20 mm drum-guns, and the best Italian-made barrels with Japanese optics, had leather harnesses for the comfort of the gunners. The bikes and pickups had tow cables, chain saws, and other accoutrements for moving obstacles out of the way. A bus and an armored van carried the payload—captives and valuables scavenged from their trips into the wilderness. A small tanker truck idled at the heart of the formation.
Maynes joined the other two on the porch/sidewalk in front of the roadhouse. He was still closing buttons. “We’re not the only visitors to this one-holer, I see,” he said.
“Fresh out of Kentucky,” Home said. “See the piles of legworm skins tied on the pickup roof?”
“Wonder if they’ve picked anyone up?” MacTierney asked no one in particular.
“They might just be running bodyguard for a brass ring, even a Kurian and his Reapers,” Maynes said. “The transports might not even have any rabbits.*”
These days, I often hear a misperception about headhunting bands that deserves correction. They did not simply sweep the countryside, raking up warm bodies for the Reapers. While that justified their existence in the Kurian Order and gave them a welcome in different Kurian principalities, the bands would also gather labor for large projects, return runaways to their home counties, and even act as an escort to skilled technical personnel who wished, for whatever reason, to switch from one Kurian Zone to another.
Those fleeing a Kurian Zone weren’t the wretched barefoot lumpen prole figures depicted in popular culture. A moment’s exercise of reason will illustrate: who is most likely to foment an escape? A person with the imagination to envision a better life, the intelligence to pick a course of action that gets him over the border, and the drive to carry out the plan. Generally the individuals and families who would “rabbit” were superior specimens just to make it out of their township and across a divide.
For those who point to the photographs of those emerged from the brush looking like a lice-infested feral tribe of reverted humans, I can only commend them to traveling almost path-free border country for a few hundred miles, moving out of sight by day, and holing up at night in deep ditches or barn stalls in an effort to hide the aural signature the Reapers read—then pose for a photograph.
The caravan therefore had both a comfortable bus for dignitaries and paying customers and an armored car for captives to cover any eventualities. They had the rude welds and checkerboard paint job over primer that identified the owners as licensed bounty hunters and prisoner transports. The bus would carry those who might be valuable as more than just fodder, while the armored car would usually make its first stop at a Kurian tower or a basement door of a New Universal Church fortified cathedral.
“Let’s be hospitable,” Maynes said. “Home, with me. MacTierney, radio in a report to the palace and the troopers, just in case our boys across the street are asleep at the switch. King, out of the Trekker. I want you walking tall at my heel, please.”
Maynes must have enjoyed his “refreshment”—he was a little drunk and being polite in a baronial way.
Crossing the street, we passed close to one of the gun-mounted pickups. “So this is what stupid smells like,” the gunner remarked to the driver. His voice crackled with fatigue.
“It’s civilization. After a fashion,” the driver replied. “Be grateful for it and don’t go giving us a bad name in a zone.”
The bounty hunters hung an advertisement for personnel on a wire clipboard bound to the grille, where it could be read by the vehicle’s lights, if needed. It was printed on the blank side of some church bulletin—a frequent source of paper for those who had a hard time finding inexpensive stationery. Someone, perhaps a bored rider on the bus or in one of the trucks, had handwritten each one with a marker.
I saved a copy and reproduce it below:
GOOD MONEY, BARTER, and GRATUITIES!
INDEPENDENT WORK!
DRIVING AND SECURITY EXPERIENCE!
Interested in the risks and rewards of travel? Want a valuable, protected job? Our caravan is looking for a few motivated, tough-minded individuals seeking the experience of a lifetime. We bounty hunt, personal transport between the Ohio and the Greensboro-Asheville corridor. Fifteen years of valued service and extensive interzone travel. Good training, experience, money, and bonuses, all travel supported. No bravos or cruelty jukes, we want smart, careful individuals who can play on a team.
• • •
The bounty hunters surveyed us. We looked official, but since we had just sidearms and the civilian-looking Trekker, they were probably wondering if we were the local honcho or travellers like themselves.
Maynes introduced himself to the driver, offering to shake hands. They held a brief conversation—Maynes was friendly and didn’t brandish his name as either stick or carrot. The driver pointed to the SUV with a heavy-duty off-loading suspension, light-bar, and several radio aerials.
I stayed at Maynes’s heel. He sauntered over to the black monster; it reminded me of the big doctor’s vehicle we’d crammed into on our escape from Xanadu. I smelled sweat and musky perfume like incense on Maynes as he passed. I’d long since come to the conclusion that my employer could find time for an assignation in the middle of a knife fight.
A little black-haired man in a red leather coat hopped out and greeted Maynes. He reminded me a little of a portrait I’d seen of a young Napoleon Bonaparte; he had the same cherubic features and serene, fixed-on-his-star eyes, though Bonaparte was Mediterranean and this fellow was Asian. I wondered how he came to command such a mob; usually they were led by the biggest, toughest thug in the group. I checked his hands as they shook—the stranger had had a manicure recently.
He introduced himself as only “Zihu.” When Maynes gave his name, Zihu grew suddenly wary and took a step back from us.
“Well, Mr. Zihu,” Maynes said. “You mind showing me what you’re importing to the Coal Country?”
“Not an import, Mr. Maynes, just transit,” Zihu said. He formed his words slowly and carefully and had the flatter tones of the Midwest, sounding to me like a man of Kansas, Nebraska, or Iowa. Perhaps he was some scion of one of the brass ring estates in Iowa, making a name for himself. “We’re on our way to Baltimore.”
“Ever been in the Coal Country before?”
“I did my trade in the Ordnance, but they’ve been cracking down of late, more permits and checks on visitors and border security. I don’t mind crossing a palm or two with silver, but paperwork gives me a headache. I’m trying the eastern seaboard, assuming I can find a route through these darned mountains not blocked by a slide. I thought you people were good with shovels.”
Maynes shrugged. “You must take that up with the Kentuckians, Mr. Zihu. Don’t believe what they tell you about the Coal Country. We’re richer than we look.”
A thin, rat-faced man with a big courier case fell in behind Zihu. “Everyone’s accounted for. Scouts want to know if they can bed down.”
“If the locals don’t object . . . ,” Zihu said, raising an eyebrow at Maynes.
“We’re a little suspicious of strangers, but that doesn’t mean we’re inhospitable,” Maynes said, waving a hand toward the trooper post. “You’ll just want to check in with the troopers, is all. They might want to take a quick look at everyone’s faces, unless you want to post a travel bond.”
Zihu turned and muttered something to the rat-faced man, who walked over to the troopers.
“If that’s an example of your muscle, I can see how your mines are so productive,” Zihu said, looking up at me. “Can I acquire another like him here?”
“He’s one of a kind,” Maynes said. “Let’s see what you’re taking across the Coal Country.”
Zihu lost gracefully. “Of course,” he said, showing a small smile. He led Maynes over to the armored car. “I’ve one paying customer in the bus, a trade delegate heading for a ship in Baltimore’s outer harbor. Brass ring. We’ve also fifteen benighted so
uls netted on the run.”
Home crowded up, eager for a view of the captives.
The rat-faced man returned. “They’re fine with the standard New Universal Church bond,” he told Zihu. “You’ll have to sign off.”
“Rota, open the bin, please,” Zihu said. “Our hosts might be interested.”
Home used his flashlight to pass over the faces of the poor captives huddled within.
A sickly, pale girl of about fourteen years was chained to the armored car bench, keeping to the lee of an older, heavier, dark-skinned female. Her hair was still a childlike white, but her body showed that she’d started the transition to adulthood.
“You can turn that one over to me,” Maynes said, pointing. The girl-woman tried to burrow into the fleshy breast of her protector.
“How much are—”
“I’m not buying,” Maynes said. “I just want use of her for an hour or so.”
“Oh, I hope she has puffy little nips,” Home said. “I love the puffy little nips.”
“Just remember, droits and all that,” Maynes said. “Wait your turn.”
“Let’s talk inside, shall we?” Zihu asked. “I hate discussing business in the wind.”
• • •
The NbW was filling up with drivers, mechanics, scouts, scavengers, and other assorted personnel of Zihu’s Assured. The woman in charge of the rooms was issuing orders for cots, soap, and laundry tubs for the men fresh from the Kentucky woods. Her scruffy staff moved quickly; they seemed to know how to convert the bar and upstairs rooms into a hotel in short order. A heavyset man with wary eyes was negotiating the exact price in labeled Kentucky bourbon of bullets, pharmaceuticals, and other light and easily negotiated items.
I’d long since grown accustomed to stares from strangers, so I ignored the curious eyes on me from the newcomers.
“Damn, there’d better be a bed available,” Maynes said. “I’d hate to have us welcome that girl to the Coal Country on a firewood bin.” Maynes, like many such deviants, believed that all men shared his sexual tastes—even if they wouldn’t admit it. In Home he had a man who enthusiastically shared them.