by Jeff Somers
The lightning flashed, and Adora sat forward, slowing us down. “Fuck,” she muttered. “Looks like some trees in the road.”
I hunched my shoulders and leaned forward too, squinting. My augments, buried in my head, sharpened my vision slightly and the darkness outside took on a pale green clarity, like my own personal moon beaming down. A few hundred feet ahead four trees, thick trunks a few feet around, lay across the road, blocking it completely at a point where sheer rocky hills rose up on either side.
She let us glide to a halt, then sat for a moment peering into the storm.
“We can’t go off-road here,” she said, calm and thoughtful. “We could back up a ways and try, but in this weather it might not be a good idea. I’m going to scout around a bit, see if there’s any way around.”
I stared at the trees as lightning flashed again, and as Adora started to squirm out of the safety netting, I put a hand on her arm, my HUD rippling in my vision as adrenaline dumped.
“Wait,” I said. I felt her stiffen under my hand—it was, I realized, the first time I’d ever touched her. I took my hand off her shoulder carefully and pointed. “The trunks are cut smooth—these trees were cut down,” I said. “This is a roadblock.”
She looked at me, then back at the scene in front of us. “Out here? You telling me people just camp here waiting for someone to show up every year or so?”
I bit back some mean-spirited words, twisting around to try and peer out the back. “They’ve got a trip somewhere down the road, probably right where the pavement starts—it’s rough and rocky there, and you wouldn’t notice a pressure plate. Can run something like that off a battery for years. All it does is light a bulb a mile up the road, and the team goes into action.” I looked forward and nodded. “Trust me, we’re about to be killed and robbed.”
“I’ll back out,” she said, sounding suddenly young and nervous.
“Too late,” I said. There was movement out near the felled trees. I shrugged off the safety netting and heaved myself up off the hard seat in order to pull my gun. I checked the chamber and flicked off the safety, twisting my arms up to slide the gun into my shirt collar, pressed against the back of my neck, cold and uncomfortable. I twisted around and lashed a hand into Remy’s face. He grunted and opened one eye.
“Trouble,” I said. “Stay here and keep her alive.”
He opened his other eye and raised an eyebrow. I turned and popped open the door, letting it rise up on its hydraulic hinges. I put my hands up into the pelting rain.
“Coming out!” I shouted. They’ll be behind you, I thought. Pincered. That’s how I would do it.
Hands up, I stood and stepped into the wind and rain. The door slammed down as I stepped clear. I looked behind us and saw the chain they’d stretched across the road, a heavy rope of metal. Two of them stood in front of it, just silhouettes, no guns that I could see. Guns were problematic—not the guns, which were fucking everywhere, but the ammunition, which was fucking nowhere. I turned to face forward again and decided the two behind me didn’t have any barkers.
Up ahead was just one figure, but it carried a scoped weapon, a rifle of some make. The details were stolen away by the rain and the dark. Lacing my hands behind my head, over the cold butt of my Roon, I started walking forward.
“We don’t want trouble!” I shouted. “We have nothing to steal!”
I was just buying a few seconds. I put my eyes everywhere as I shuffled forward, looking for anyone hiding on the edges, which would be the smart play. I didn’t see anything.
“Are you fucking simple?” the woman up ahead shouted back, her accent harsh and German sounding as she pointed the rifle at me. “That fucking wagon’s worth a fortune. That’s close enough.”
I didn’t stop walking. In the old days she would have just cut me down, sprayed some bullets and hosed the four-wheeler down later. If she even had bullets; these days they were too expensive to just waste. “Come on,” I shouted back, trying to keep my shoulders down and cowed, my voice shaky. “You can’t—”
Without rushing, I yanked my gun up out of my collar and took two steps to my left as I got my grip and raised it up. With a squawk she let loose, the rifle spitting flares and jerking in her wet hands. I took a brath and squeezed the trigger twice, and the vaguely feminine shadow by the trees dropped without another word.
I let myself fall to the muddy pavement and I rolled toward the four-wheeler, shouts following me. I pushed myself under the vehicle and rolled to the opposite side; in the pitch dark I figured I’d disappeared, as far as the others were concerned. Pulling myself up into a crouch on the other side, I peered around, finally spying two shadows creeping up toward us, pressed against the embankment, two assholes who couldn’t be sure I hadn’t caught some rifle fire, and who couldn’t pass up the vehicle. The battery and solar collector alone were worth the risk.
I steadied myself against the body of the car and took a careful bead; no sense in wasting bullets. I took another breath—and suddenly sensed someone behind me, a last-second wet smack of bare feet against the pavement. I ducked and someone scraped me, knocking my head painfully into the solid metal of the wheel well and rolling with a grunt onto the pavement. My vision lit up red and I sprawled on the ground, rain drilling down onto me, into my eyes and mouth, choking me.
Before I could get up, they were on me—a kid. Fifty pounds, maybe, tiny hands on my wrist, digging in nails and trying to pound the gun out of my hand. I reached up blindly and took hold of some wet, greasy hair and yanked with all I had, spinning them off me and getting a screech as a reward. I rolled away and pushed myself up in time to see a dark shape leaping for me. I swung my gun at it and clubbed it down just as two more shapes skidded from behind the four-wheeler. They slid to a halt as I raised my arm, putting their arms up as if I gave a shit. Before they could say anything, I fired twice and put them both down.
The kid was a few feet away, sniffling. Warily, I stood up and limped over to the huddled shape. My leg didn’t normally bother me these days, with my implants regulating my pain, but during times of exertion the dull ache, familiar and dreadful, faded back in like a signal being picked up.
I circled around. I saw myself leaning over the kid and getting a razor in my face for my trouble, so I took some time.
“The other three are dead,” I said. “You know how to work that chain?”
The kid—I didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl—sniffled. I stood over it and clicked the hammer back on my Roon. It was drama, but drama sometimes got your point across.
“You know how to work that chain?” I said.
After a moment, there was one last heroic sniffle. “Si,” a tiny girl’s voice whispered. It sounded like defeat. It sounded like not eating and having no one to walk home with. As I stood there she hauled herself up, a scrap of shadow, four feet tall and nothing but bones, and limped back to the chain. I watched until she’d blended into the darkness and then pretended I could still see her. Another few seconds were measured out by cold water soaking into me and the thick chain suddenly went limp, dropping back to the ground.
I limped over to the car and the door popped up as I approached. I slid in and let the door sink shut, sealing me in. I looked at Adora, who was staring at me, then at myself in the dim reflection afforded by the glass. I’d opened up a gash on my forehead, and blood ran down my face like ink. I’d thought it was rain. I thought of the kid, slogging home alone in the storm, nothing to show for it. Had I just saved her from three assholes? Killed her family? I’d never know.
Adora shook herself and put the four-wheeler into reverse. “Holy shit,” she muttered.
I closed my eyes, hearing that wet sniffle. Avery Cates, Salgado suddenly whispered, sounding somehow mean in my head, the Gweat and Tewwible, scourge of children everywhere. “Sorry about the blood,” I said, feeling empty, wanting to do some violence, break some windows. I flicked the safety back on and pocketed my gun.
V
LIKE
FATHER FUCKING TIME IN THE FLESH
I missed the fucking System Pigs.
I left the door open and leaned back against the four-wheeler’s chassis, feeling its warmth through my coat. I felt stiff and sticky, covered in a layer of my own sweat and brine. I rubbed my head and felt the stiff brush of my receding hair like steel wool, so dirty it was like mold growing on me. I wanted to walk around and stretch. I wanted a cigarette—a real cigarette, something pre–civil war at least if they existed—so badly my mouth watered. No matter how long I went without smoking, I wanted cigarettes, their taste and reassuring presence.
Mexico City had been pretty fucking huge, I had to admit. We’d hit the suburbs several hours ago and had picked our way through ruined streets and abandoned blocks, edging inward toward the remnants of it. I guessed twenty million people had lived here at some point. Adora estimated we still had an hour’s driving through the rubble-strewn streets before we reached the small inhabited core, but the clouds had been constant and thick for days, and the battery was nearly dead. With the sun peeking out here and there, we were forced to just pull over and orient the collector to best advantage, sitting and waiting for the cells to at least read half charged. We were in a large old hangar of some sort, a big empty shell of a building with a poured-concrete floor and lots of rusted chains hanging from rigging attached to the ceiling. It was open to the air on the south side and afforded a good view of the rest of the industrial complex we’d limped into, a sad collection of warehouses with broken windows like crooked teeth and small runty buildings of gray cinderblocks and missing roofs.
I looked up and squinted at the sun. A moment later there was a scrape, distant and muffled, and I whipped my eyes back down, scanning the sun-bleached area, hand on the butt of my gun. A silver hover, split into two, lay blocking one of the roads, the army insignia still bright and clear on it. There was no army anymore, but its artifacts were everywhere.
I was afraid to leave the four-wheeler. We’d seen lots of evidence of population out here—smoke rising in the near distance, two entertaining periods of having rocks thrown at us as we raced by, fist-sized pebbles smacking into the windows like Psionic fists, and one more attempted blockade of the road, this time using an impressive amount of rusting metal junk, which we’d spotted easily in time to avoid. As Remy and Adora went out in search of water to refil our empty canteens, I’d realized that leaving the four-wheeler unattended was a sure way to have it stolen—probably by the simple expedient of getting a dozen people to lift it up and carry it away. A few years ago, the System Police had had everything under control, and I could have left the fucking thing unlocked and in gear and nothing would have happened unless the cops on duty had something against me. Now, I had to stand there, and I could feel eyes on me, hungry and patient.
I had to piss. I stepped forward and undid my pants right there. If I offended any of the bandits watching me, I figured that was an acceptable risk. I only hoped they didn’t somehow manage to steal the four-wheeler from behind me while I went, or I’d never be able to look Remy in the eye again.
Behind me, the battery sensor on the dash chimed softly, indicating a charge of fifty percent—good enough to get moving. As I stood there, a wolf ambled into my field of vision, a hundred feet away, maybe, and then stopped to stare at me for three heartbeats before putting its head down and prowling back into the shadows.
It felt good, at least, to be back in a city. Mexico City didn’t remind me much of New York, which was what I compared every city to—it was too wide open, the sky too big above me and the buildings too colorful, everything red and purple and green and orange. But it was better than the wilderness we’d been driving through, the mysterious fucking jungles, all wet shadows and damp hollows, vines twisting around your ankles.
Buttoning up, I turned back, half expecting someone had snuck behind me to steal the vehicle, and I heard Wa Belling’s voice in my head, his rolling accent, all charm and venom, telling me I was the worst fucking Gunner he’d ever seen. I put one hand on the warm metal and grimaced. I was going to put a bullet in Wa’s face for past betrayals. Or I intended to. Wa was an old man, but he was good—better than me, certainly, in a fair fight. He knew how to kill, and even Michaleen—Cainnic Orel himself—had said Wa was the best he’d ever seen with a gun. It wasn’t going to be easy.
I stared into the shadows of the hangar and considered the possibility that this was, again, a trick. Belling had tricked me plenty of times, and his tricks were professional, done with style and attention to detail. Fuck, the man had pretended to be a completely different person for several weeks during the Hong Kong job, complete with backstory and supporting details—the man had method. If he was setting me up for some new hell, some new humiliation, this was how it might start: information that didn’t seem to just fall into my hands, pointing me in his direction.
I shrugged inwardly and turned, half-expecting to see a dozen people creeping toward me in the sunlight, knives clenched between teeth, and hands curled into fists. There was no one. When people were throwing rocks at you, one man with a working gun was scary. I leaned back against the four-wheeler and pushed aside my coat, resting one hand on the Roon and letting it glint in the sun, in case anyone was watching. A scoped rifle would blow my head into a million pieces, but scoped rifles had been rare and expensive before the war, then common and easy during the war, and now it wasn’t the scoped rifles that were difficult to find but the ammunition they required. Besides, if you started worrying about snipers, you might as well dig a hole and stay buried, because that sort of thinking went crazy real fast.
Movement out on the edge of the industrial park made me jerk to attention briefly, but it was Remy and Adora. It was warmer up north than it had been in Potosí, and Adora had stripped off her heavy underclothes and now just wore the overalls, her bare skin tan and smooth, her curves strongly hinted at by the shadows created by the unveiled sunlight. Remy behind her was like a shadow in his black coat, shirt, and pants, his pale face hidden by the mess of dark hair. As they walked toward me they talked, and suddenly, about halfway to me, Adora burst out laughing again, her face contorted into a mask of hilarity, her whole body hunching and quivering with sudden mirth. A stabbing bolt of jealousy went through me, and I shook myself.
“Don’t be a fucking asshole, Avery,” I muttered. This was rookie shit, getting jealous of the only woman in the room. Adora wouldn’t be dumb enough to start fucking one of us, anyway—that was a chip that could always be played, and you didn’t play it until you had to. Not out here, in fucking Mexico City.
“Water,” she said, still grinning, as they approached, and held up one of the plastic jugs they’d taken out with them.
“Clean?” I asked.
She nodded. “Rainwater. Silt had settled, mesh screening kept it clean.” She shook her head. “This is the largest city I have ever seen.”
I thought of Hong Kong. “I’ve seen larger,” I said. “We should get moving.”
She nodded and stepped around to the driver’s side. Remy paused and stood for a moment next to me, staring off into the distance.
“She called me forzudo.”
I didn’t look at him. “Get in the fucking cab,” I said, “before I break your hand.”
He sketched a salute in the air.
* * *
Forty minutes later we started to see people on the streets, first as quick shadows springing for hiding places, then, slowly, as clumps of people staring at us as we sped by. I thought about Gleason, a girl I’d adopted years ago and tried to bring up, a girl I’d gotten killed. I had a bad record when it came to keeping people alive—I’d been put on the world to kill people. But I kept trying to pick up strays and teach them, and it kept ending badly.
“Where should I drop you?”
I glanced at Adora and blinked. “Slow down,” I said. As we slowed to a rumbling crawl, I toggled the window in the door down and leaned out.
“Zocalo?” I said, trying
to remember how Morales had pronounced it.
An old man with dark brown skin like mud that had hardened fast in the sun and bright white hair in a cloud on top of his head stared at me as I drifted past and extended an arm, pointing northeast.
When the buildings melted away a few minutes later and the sun hit us from the side like a bomb going off on the hoizon, I first thought we’d hit a crater, some void in the city created by a bombing run, but the pavement was too regular, and I realized we were in a huge square, a vast empty space bordered on all sides by buildings.
“Shit!” Adora cursed, throwing the four-wheeler into a skidding turn to avoid the crowds gathered everywhere. The whole area was filled with people—some minding makeshift storefronts like I’d seen in Potosí, carts and wagons, walls of fabric, sometimes just marked out on the ground in chalk, others milling this way and that. Some were obviously living in the square, huddled under more blue tarp in front of messy, smoky cooking fires. Screams rippled away from us as we smashed through it all, everything lurching this way and that as we spun, finally smacking into a large metal pole that stuck up from the ground in the center of it all. For a few seconds I could feel the whole chassis vibrating under me.
“Shit,” Remy said quietly over the dim ticking of the hot engine. “I thought you said this was safer than a hover flight.”
I laughed, and then Adora and Remy laughed, too. “I’ve still crashed more often in a hover,” I said, struggling with the safety netting.