Outrider

by Steven John

  “Just what the fuck are you thinking?”

  The leech was maybe thirty-five; older if he’d lived well, younger if he’d lived hard. He wore a long tan duster over a slate gray workman’s uniform and boots. His face was covered by a thin beard the same coffee brown as his close cropped hair. Beneath the beard his lips were turned up into a faint sneer.

  Scofield reined Reese to a halt within spitting distance of the smug bastard and reached across his torso to draw the revolver with his left hand, his right keeping the rifle barrel trained. Then he slung the rifle and leapt off his horse. The outrider switched his pistol into his shooting hand and slowly approached the leech.

  “Real slow, OK . . . real slow I want you to shed that jacket.” At first the man just stared back, eyes squinting in the sunlight but unblinking. Scofield didn’t move a muscle as he waited. Eventually the man nodded in mocking deference and slid both arms from his duster, letting the coat fall to the sand.

  “Now roll up that right sleeve and take two steps this way.” The leech complied, breaking eye contact. Scofield didn’t even have to ask: the fellow finished sliding the heavy cotton sleeve back and then presented his forearm. Sure enough, there was a ragged L-shaped scar carved into the flesh just below his elbow.

  “Fuck’s sake,” spat Scofield. “You stupid shit! A goddamn two-timer and. . . .” His arm trembling with a surge of anger, the outrider stepped even closer to the leech, the gun barrel a mere foot from the man’s chest. “Were you actually gonna power that goddamn jenny on?”

  “Wanted to listen to some radio.” The man said. His voice was calm and confident, arrogant.

  “Unless you went’n cut an L into your arm for fun, I’m gonna guess you kind of understand a thing or two about what’s out here, hm? What them big pillars and panels you were fuckin’ with back there do, yeah?”

  The leech was silent, his sneer returning.

  “Smilin’ at me, huh? Think it’s funny, hm? You know what woulda happened if you’d powered that thing up here?” Scofield snarled, pointing at the old, rusting generator the man had been crouched over. The leech was silent, his face melting back into an expressionless mask. “You’d be real fuckin’ dead, mister. And hell if I care about that, but me and my girl here woulda probably been scorched too.”

  “I’ve heard the lecture, Mr. Cowboy, sir.” He crooned back, his voice dripping with disdain as he tapped at his scar.

  Scofield’s face grew hot; his vision swam red. “Well,” his whispered inching closer, “perhaps you need to pay closer attention . . . in class!” He shouted these last words as he slammed a boot heel into the leech’s right knee. The man crumpled with a yelp. Scofield was on him in an instant, his left hand at the man’s throat, the pistol’s tip pressed to his forehead.

  “Now,” the outrider continued, his voice calm, “as much as I like your attitude, let’s us change our tone a bit, OK?”

  The leech groaned, cupping his injured knee.

  “O . . . Kaaay?” Scofield repeated.

  “Sure. Why not.”

  “We’re more’n five miles from the glowline. You think that thing’s for fun? Huh? If you’d gotten that old piece’a shit to fire up we’d both be charred nothing. Are you stupid or you got a deathwish or what?”

  “I saw you coming. I figured it’d give me a bargaining chip.”

  “Bullshit. You didn’t drag a generator five miles north of safety for a chip. Why the fuck are you out this far into the field with a generator?”

  “Just a living, man. Take it easy with the six gun.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Scofield rose, keeping his pistol trained on the leech’s chest. “Arms and legs out straight and don’t you even breathe.” The man complied, and Scofield searched him thoroughly; he removed the leech’s boots, checked every pocket and gave him the business, smiling ruefully as the man coughed and sputtered. The outrider rolled the thief over and ran a hand over every inch of his back, relishing the sound of the leech spitting sand. Finally, satisfied the fellow was unarmed, Scofield rose.

  “Stay just like that.” He searched through the pockets of the long coat and found some scraps of food, a large folding knife and a dog-eared novel. A small leather satchel lay near the ancient generator and loosely coiled tapline. In the bag Scofield found more rations, random tools—pliers, a wire cutter, and screwdrivers—and a worn pair of binoculars. The last item he pulled from the sack was wrapped in an oily rag. It was an old two-way radio, jury-rigged back to life. Copper wires stuck out from its rusted tin casing here and there and the mesh of the tiny speaker was ripped to shreds. Gingerly, Scofield eased open the slot on its back and exhaled in relief to find the battery housing empty. He tucked the radio under one arm.

  The outrider walked in a slow circle around the leech and his meager possessions. Something wasn’t right. As if to echo his thoughts, Reese tossed her mane and whinnied. Scofield raised a hand to calm the horse. “Wait a sec . . .” he muttered under his breath. Then aloud he asked: “Where’s your hook-up?”

  The leech raised his head from the sand and turned to look at Scofield but said nothing. “Where’s your tap rig, boy? And water . . . you ain’t got a drop of water on you. Fuckin’ speak up, leech!”

  “Just traveling light,” the man said, slowly rising from the sand. Scofield brandished his pistol but the leech continued to move, easing himself up to sit Indian style.

  “More like traveling short,” the outrider whispered. “You were actually gonna use this damn thing?” He indicated the radio. “You, a two-timer out here with a goddamn generator and radio? You must got a death wish, boy.” Scofield knelt near the man. “Can you think of any reason in particular why I ride a fuckin’ horse? Hm? See this here area around us? It don’t much care for sudden electrical charges, y’know?”

  With that Scofield tossed the radio aside and fired three rounds into it. The little device splintered apart across the desert.

  “That’s better.” The outrider rose and inclined his head to make the leech follow suit. The two men stood at about the same height and now for the first time Scofield studied his adversary’s face carefully. Lurid details that had earlier escaped him now stood out. The man’s forehead was covered with a spider web of fine veins. He had several hairless patches in his beard and his lips were pale and cracked. There were tight wrinkles framing gray, intensely staring eyes. When the leech did not look away, eventually Scofield broke the gaze and almost shuddered. There was something deeply disturbing in those eyes. Or behind them.

  Scofield took a few steps backward and then half turned to Reese. He pulled the coiled rope off her saddle and secured one end to the bridle. Then he made a slipknot on the other end of the rope. Turning to the leech, he quietly said “You try anything, this goes around your neck. Simple as that.”

  Without being asked, the leech pressed his wrists together. Scofield wrenched the slip knot shut and then looped several lengths of the coil around the man’s wrists, tying these off in a tight knot. Last, he fished a book of matches from his hip pocket and struck several at the same time. When he had melted the knot into a mass of fibers, he lit one more match and fished a cigarette from his vest.

  “Let’s take a walk.” The outrider mounted up and slid his boots into the stirrups. “Don’t come too close to my horse and don’t talk.” Scofield tapped Reese and the trio set out at a fast walk towards the nearest station, some twelve miles east.

  5

  Timothy Hale’s soles clicked loudly on the lobby’s marble floor. His shoes were polished and his shirt was smartly pressed and starched. He had resolved himself to remain calm today; to be analytical and objective, but his heart was racing and his flesh was pale and damp. The fabric of his stiff collar chafed against his neck. Hale checked his pulse three times while waiting for the elevator. It was shortly after 10 a.m. and already he had been to the power stations in Grids One and Two. He half hoped Maria Rodrigues would not be at her desk when he got here to Grid Three. Witho
ut Mayor Dreg, Hale felt less sure of himself and had less reason for diversion, so his normal air of confidence was gone. That coupled with his growing sense of dread and now Maria smiling at his approach rendered the usually cool and collected man near the point of hysteria.

  “Hi, Timothy.” Maria said as he stopped before her desk. “Flying solo today?” She asked. Her tone was warmer and more casual than he had ever heard it when accompanying Dreg, with a tone so unlike her usual professional voice it almost sounded like a different accent.

  “Yes, but still all business.” He replied, his voice oddly quiet. “Much to my chagrin, of course,” Hale added quickly. Smoothly done, idiot. Perfect, he thought to himself.

  “Isn’t it always?” She looked down at her monitor and pretended to be typing something, her voice reverting to its standard tenor. Hale drew in a breath, resolved to conduct his mission efficiently while not making a fool of himself.

  “Listen, Maria . . . I know whenever I come through here we always chat ever so briefly and I wish I had time now to be less . . . well, businessy, I guess . . . not that that’s a word, but you know what I mean.”

  She looked back up and Hale continued.

  “But something is up and I have nineteen more grids to visit, so I’ll just be my usual businessy self. Can you please run a scan on your usage fluctuations between midnight and dawn over the past week?”

  “Sure, Tim.” She put on a pair of reading glasses and clicked away at her console for a minute, then spoke without looking up. “Can’t you do that from your office? I mean I don’t mind at all, but I just figured you could save time.”

  “We can run diagnostics on everything, yeah. But only on the macro level. If there were any, eh, problems within the station itself it would just show up as a grid issue, not as a station issue . . . you see . . .”

  Maria nodded, watching a slew of orange and green numbers scroll past on the screen. A few strands of her coffee brown hair had slipped away from their silken cascade, dancing in the air-conditioned breeze. The scan finished and a detailed bar graph popped up on the monitor showing the peaks and valleys of power use over the last week. “It’s totally standard for the season.”

  “OK . . . OK well that’s good, then. And no one has reported anything unusual?”

  “Not to my knowledge. And I manage regulation so, y’know, if it’s not to my knowledge then no. Or someone needs to be fired.” She pulled her glasses off and smiled. Timothy forced a big grin in return, but quickly dropped it as she reflexively blinked and leaned ever so slightly away from him.

  “Anything I should be watching out for?”

  “Um, no . . . not really. Just some screwed up software someplace I’m sure. Just . . . just keep an eye out for irregularities and please report any if you see them.”

  “That’s pretty much my job description.” She replied, nodding.

  “That’s true—I don’t know why I . . . yes, that’s true.” Hale took a step back from her desk, feeling foolish. “OK, well, have good one, Maria.”

  “You too.” Hale began to turn when she added, “you know you can always just call.” He faced her again. “I mean it’s not that I mind you coming by, of course, I just meant to save yourself time,” Maria said, glancing up and then away again.

  “I don’t mind. I like to see you,” he paused for half a breath. “And everyone, face to face. To keep in touch.”

  “Sure. Well . . . I’ll be here watching the juice.”

  Hale pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes as he rode the elevator back down. Why don’t you ever grow out of that schoolboy bullshit? he asked himself, unsure whether the “you” in question was rhetorical or personal. He allowed himself the elevator ride and the walk back out into the sunshine to think of all the things he could have said to Maria, and then he reverted to focusing on the issue at hand.

  The massive dips in power supply had grown routine which, obviously, ruled out irregularities. There was still the outside chance that some software or machinery was running out of synchronization with the grids, but that was unlikely. The watt usage had begun spiking both day and night, and entirely different systems ran the current beacons used for sun power transmitted by daytime and the salt cavern heat stores used at night. Added to the issue was the fact that every bit of the grid was backed up by redundant mechanisms except for the actual sunfield itself and the molten salt caverns themselves. Hale loathed dealing with the outriders, but if he had no further clues by that evening, he would have to call Boss Hutton.

  Franklin Dreg stood in the middle of the Boston Common smiling like a schoolboy. Thick, luscious snowflakes drifted around him. The gauzy-white sky hung low above the city and the air was an indistinguishable mix of cloud, haze, and falling snow. The Mayor had not experienced true winter weather in years and he was held rapt by it—all of it: the white flakes, the biting cold . . . even the smell of the damp, frigid air and the hard packed soil beneath his polished wingtips.

  “You know, I could get used to this,” Dreg said, barely above a whisper, to no particular member of the entourage that stood waiting patiently around him. A committee of ten city officials, along with Dreg’s usual retinue of assistants and porters and security detail, exhaled thick plumes of breath into the afternoon. It had been Franklin’s idea to eschew the highly efficient—and heated—subterranean network of pods that crisscrossed the city to walk the three miles from Government Center to his grand hotel.

  The Mayor was positively smitten with the centuries old city. Its ancient brick buildings and real, working gas lamps (fueled by a small methane reserve dedicated solely to these archaic icons) and plural parks and trees were all so diametrically opposed to the parallel lines and right angles that made up New Las Vegas. It was a mix of acquired nostalgia and smug condescension that colored Dreg’s impression of this, America’s oldest megalopolis. Boston was charming, yes, but woefully inefficient, in his estimation.

  The Mayor wrapped a gloved fist around the lapels of his heavy black greatcoat and turned to face the waiting group. “Amazing, isn’t it, to think of the hundreds of years . . . the thousands of people who have stood here in this space . . .”

  Dreg trailed off and the chairman of the Greater Boston Commerce Department, a tall man with a birdlike face and an impossibly thin neck said: “Right here in the Common three hundred years ago there would have been cattle and sheep grazing where we stand.”

  “American history, gentlemen,” Dreg continued, utterly disregarding both the man who had just spoken and the fact that the group contained several women, “is the richest asset of our nation. Centuries of progress. Not once in this great land’s years have we had a single violent transfer of power. Not once have our citizens had to lie in their beds at night and wonder who was in control—who was looking out for them; wonder if in the morning there might not be a current behind the light switch or water in the tap.”

  The Mayor nodded at his own profundity while the Commerce chairman seethed beneath his heavy fur cap. The snow had begun two hours earlier and several inches blanketed the land, muffling the sounds of the city. An occasional rumble under foot or the moan of a ship’s horn drifting from the distant harbor melted into the soft whisper of the breeze and falling flakes.

  Mayor Dreg suddenly decided he wanted to be alone. He grunted out a summary “Good day all, I must go,” and began walking at a clip toward his hotel in Copley Square. He planned to go to his suite, don heavier shoes, and then set out incognito; he did not want to be seen as he met with the two men he had contacted earlier that afternoon, men who seemed very interested in a contract for well-priced power. It never crossed Dreg’s mind that no one here would recognize him anyway.

  It was late afternoon and the temperature had begun dropping. Wilton Kretch had long ago learned to trust both his eyes and his gut, but the two were at odds just now. On the distant horizon he could clearly see, or so he thought, a rippling mirage. But it was far too cold out for that to be the case. He bli
nked and rubbed his eyelids repeatedly, straining to make sense of the undulating vision.

  Shady whinnied in protest as the outrider stood in his stirrups, stretching to get a better view. The sun was setting behind the swirling air and only when Kretch looked indirectly west could he be sure there was indeed something there. But it was fading now, and as the shimmering patch of air grew ever fainter it seemed to be drifting south. The wind was gentle but steady and was decidedly blowing northeast. None of it added up, and reluctantly Kretch let himself assume his eyes had been playing tricks on him. He knew somewhere in his subconscious, though the notion never formed itself into a true thought, that eyes don’t play tricks—only the mind does.

  It could have been a dust devil caught in the shifting breeze. Or even just speck of dust on one cornea. He had never seen a mirage on a November evening, but thought to himself hell, I ain’t no weatherman. Kretch wheeled his mount and turned to face the sunfield. Here, at the westernmost tip of the miles and miles of arrays, he always felt the most isolated and, though he never allowed himself to call it such, afraid. There was nothing but open desert for the next hundred-plus miles to the west, and for a good part of that distance in any other direction. At any given time, the closest human being could be up to ten miles distant and riding farther away at that.

  At least, anyone who was supposed to be out here. Most leeches didn’t much frighten Kretch once he had eyes on them. But the unknown was a different story. The thought of being watched without knowing it chilled him to the bone. And not just by human eyes. There were countless other eyes out here. Late at night they became ever-present and even mythical. Glowing eyes perched unblinking above yellow fangs set in hungry jaws. Grasping hands and creeping feet. There was no solace to be found out here; not where electronics were forbidden and fires discouraged.

  Sometimes his fear would come to a head and Kretch would begin blind firing in the night, hoping to frighten off whatever was coming for him. Often the loud crack of the pistol was comforting—sometimes it was jarring and made things all the worse. After all, a shot in the dark could ward off evil but could also show evil exactly where you were.