Outrider

by Steven John

  The Mayor could, of course, have ordered his staff to leave him alone. Many were the times, usually when drinking, that Dreg had simply turned to his retinue and said: “Fuck off.” Legally, they were obliged to do so; personally, they were thrilled to do so. But Timothy Hale had become such an integral part of his life, both personally and professionally, that “fuck off” no longer much applied to him. Even with his countless duties and responsibilities—in truth, Dreg understood less and less of Hale’s activities as the years went on—Hale always seemed to be there, whether The Mayor was chairing a conference on public transit or was passed out in his own alabaster bathtub.

  With Hale safely two-thousand-odd miles away, Dreg felt a thrilling sense of freedom. The Mayor loved the power and clout that came with his job but he hated the work. It was all bullshit to him until it came time to say “yes” or “no.” Dreg didn’t give a good goddamn how long someone had worked on this proposal or studied that phenomenon: give him a couple things he could decide between and he’d decide the matter with time for a toast left over. In truth it was Hale who usually made the decisions, presenting The Mayor with only the simplest of options after whittling away any confusing or conflicting aspects and then leading his boss to the conclusion he wanted; Dreg both saw through and rather preferred this arrangement. It left him free to talk big and think little.

  Franklin Dreg had put in his time, as he reasoned it. “Son of a goddamn coal miner,” as he always said. And birthed by a woman with terminal cancer. Never mind that his father had been a foreman and later manager of the mine, or that his mother’s cancer had been in remission at his birth, only to return years later when the young Dreg was away at boarding school. And never mind that said school was one of the most prestigious and expensive in the country. Franklin had spent as much of his time on horseback or playing golf as he had actually studying.

  But somewhere in his later teenage years, Dreg had slowly begun rejecting his pedigree. His distaste for the green lawns and white sweaters of his prep school grew steadily into disdain, and by the time of his graduation, Franklin had become Frank and would soon be introducing himself solely as Dreg. Frank had moved to Las Vegas (indeed at the time the city was known only informally as “New”—the official adjective was a part of Dreg’s legacy) because it was far from home, was different from home, and there were jobs available. All that, and he’d heard that people in Vegas didn’t ask too many questions. So the young man had reinvented himself, tougher, sharper, and colder.

  The Mayor rarely thought of and never missed the days of his youth. He was better off without any of it. But his looks had gone. As he wobbled unsteadily, his knees buckling, Dreg stared at his reflection in the shop window. Where was the handsome, square-jawed face that had once captured the interest of women and commanded the respect of men? Heaving a sigh, Dreg pulled off his fedora. When had his thick head of dark hair grown so thin and . . . and greasy? And that mustache! Why the hell had he grown that? Somewhere from his cavernous vault of suppressed memories—unlocked by the gin and wine and whatever else he’d drank—Dreg recalled once studying a photo of Joseph Stalin with something near reverence.

  It seemed foolish now as he began to lumber erratically down the street. It was all foolish: the mustache, the sneaking out to drink alone, Stalin, the many women come and gone. Dreg didn’t even know if his father was still alive. Or his sister, for that matter. He couldn’t remember the key code to his palatial apartment. He didn’t know any of the maids’, or cooks’, names or why he had grown that damn mustache. He scratched at his hairy upper lip in disgust. The snow was falling ever faster; the flakes ever larger. It was freezing cold in the deserted streets. There were no taxis and The Mayor did not know Boston’s transit system. Sighing, he fumbled about in several pockets before finding his phone.

  The meeting he had conducted alone after leaving the hotel that evening had not gone as well as he had hoped when he conceived of it back in Vegas. He had already been slightly drunk when he met the two Federal men and they had talked over him, rather than listened to his plan. He had accomplished little, gaining only their tacit support, not their guaranteed business, and he left saying he would follow up with them once he was back west and better informed. He was now so drunk he could hardly even remember what it was he needed to know more about. New arrays of some sort—some systemic vulnerability they would prevent . . . ?

  Dreg collapsed onto a bench and managed to hold down the large gold key at the bottom of the phone. He was vaguely aware of the chief security officer’s voice as his large, soft chin dropped forward onto his ample chest. Snow slowly piled up on and around the slumbering Mayor. Any passerby would have taken him for just another beaten-down drunk. Beneath the streets, trains ran here and there, humming along on magnetic rails. The streetlights dimmed as Boston shifted to a reduced usage pattern. The weather was not set to change for days, and power needed to be conserved.

  “I don’t like this part either, but it comes with the job description.” Scofield glowered through the iron bars at the crouching leech. In the pale light of the station, the outrider’s eyes were mere shadows. In his hand, the sinister, eight inch blade glowed orange. He could clearly see the leech, however, and the man’s face registered not so much fear but sorrow, resignation.

  Scofield was shocked when, without so much as a word of protest or even a sigh, the man stood and proffered his arm, sliding his bound hands between the iron bars.

  “Make it a clean cut if you can.” He whispered as Scofield took hold of his left forearm. The outrider nodded, and then quickly raked the smoking knifepoint along the man’s flesh, carving and instantly cauterizing a hash mark beside the L-shaped scar.

  The leech winced and pulled his arms back into the cell, hurrying to the tap on the wall and fumbling with both hands to get the water running.

  “Don’t use that shit!” Scofield barked loudly. “The water’s full of rust. Dip in the bucket.” The leech did so, glaring over his shoulder as he held his arms down into the tepid water. Scofield knelt and slid his knife into the sand to let it cool. “You smoke?” He asked, fishing for his pack of cigarettes.

  “Sometimes,” the man answered quietly, looking away.

  “Well, seems a good time to me. Got a name you like being called?”

  “My name is Sebastian. I like being called that.” The leech rose and shook the dripping water from his arms.

  “OK, Sebastian it is. You can call me Scofield. Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna chat you up all night. We’ll make this short’n sweet.” Scofield drew his blade from the cold soil and checked the metal. It was cool enough to touch so he waved Sebastian toward him and reached through the bars. The leech allowed him to cut away the knotted rope and then rubbed at the raw skin of his wrists. Beads of sweat had formed along his forehead despite the chill night air. His jaw was firm but the crows feet wrinkles by his eyes bunched more deeply as Sebastian fought the searing pain from his fresh wound.

  Scofield put two cigarettes in his mouth, lit them, and then passed one through the iron cage. The leech accepted it and took several long, deep drags.

  “You know three is the limit, right?” Scofield asked.

  “Limit . . . ?” Sebastian was confused, thinking the outrider referred to cigarettes.

  “I’m gonna have to bring you in but if you’re straight with me, I’ll give you a clean report and leave out the little bits about you going for my rifle and trying to blow up a goddamn square mile with that generator of yours. They’ll probably let you out in a few weeks. But three is the limit. You get caught one more time, you ain’t gonna see the sunshine again, be that from the pen or the grave. So listen real close, Sebastian—don’t fuck with me. I can make things very simple or very complicated for you.”

  Sebastian seemed to contemplate this for a moment, the cigarette hanging loosely from his chapped lips. Finally he nodded.

  “How long have you been leeching?”

  “Three years.”


  “When did you get that first cut?” Scofield pointed to the man’s arm.

  “About a year ago. It was in late ninety-four.”

  “What did you do before?”

  “I was an accountant.”

  “No shit. You—no shit? What changed?”

  “I got bored.” He shrugged. “What did you do before you got up on that horse?”

  Scofield blew smoke out through his nose and pulled off his hat. “We can keep this amiable or not, Sebastian. I don’t much care. You decide to answer me straight or not.”

  “I did answer you straight. I got bored. And sick.”

  “Sick?”

  “I have colon cancer. It keeps trying to take me and then giving up, coming back, going away. I’m dying and I was a fucking accountant. So I got bored. Came out here. Figured I’d leave a few extra bucks behind for some people.”

  “You’re terminal, hm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well I feel for ya, man. But I ain’t. And you were fixing to take me out with you. Why does a former pencil pusher with a death sentence want to kill a stranger?”

  “I didn’t want to kill you, Scofield. I just didn’t want to get caught. I’ve got precious little time. I didn’t want the end to come in a cell.”

  “That makes sense. But it don’t change the facts from where I sit.”

  “It does for me.”

  “Noted. You work alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Always?”

  “Yes.”

  Scofield had been crouched, continually flicking at the butt of his cigarette. Now he rose and dropped the smoke onto the sand, not bothering to stamp it out. He buttoned his long jacket closed against the breeze and put his hat back on, twisting it from side to side until it sat comfortably on his brow. It was near to 1 a.m., and Scofield planned to ride at first light. There was no doubt left that Sebastian was lying, so there was nothing more to be said. For now.

  Without another word, Scofield walked around the corner of the cement building. He paused out of sight of the cage for a minute, then walked back and stood before the iron bars.

  “So one sick man, working alone, dragged a three hundred pound generator five miles past the glowline? An accountant jury rigged an old radio to transmit shortwave? I don’t think so. I do not think so, Sebastian, or whatever the fuck it really is. We’ll talk again tomorrow before I bring you in to Corporal. You got one more shot at having a rest of your life, however short it may be.”

  7

  Dreg answered on the fifth ring. Of the seventh call. Hale had been repeatedly dialing The Mayor for a half hour, alternating between the Boston hotel room and Dreg’s personal cell phone. Hale had spoken to Colonel Ridley Strayer (the head of the Civil Defense Forces and thus the man in charge of the mayoral security detail whenever Dreg travelled) four times, but the man was adamant that he would not enter Dreg’s chambers; Franklin had ordered him and his men to stand fast, interrupting him for nothing, and Strayer was about the only man in the entire bureaucracy of New Las Vegas that Hale could not overrule. And there was no love lost between the two, so despite Timothy’s saber rattling—despite his use of the polite term “fucking emergency”—the secretary general had been reduced to dialing over and over again until finally he heard life at the other end of the phone line.

  Or something similar to life. Dreg said nothing. Hale could hear him muttering and rolling about in bed. He moaned several times and may have even vomited during one coughing spell. Timothy waited patiently for a few moments until there was relative quiet on the other end of the phone line and then spoke in loud, clearly enunciated words.

  “Frank. Can you hear me?”

  More coughing.

  “Mr. Mayor. It’s Hale. If you can hear me, just say anything, alright?”

  “Fuck man . . . what . . .” The Mayor slurred.

  “Sir—we have a situation. A bad one. I need you to put the phone to your ear.” Hale held his handset away from his head as Dreg shouted a series of curses and apparently knocked his mobile to the ground. Hale pressed the button for speaker phone and sat back in his chair as Dreg muttered something about: “Gotta piss . . . got to have a piss somewhere. . . .”

  It was a full five minutes before Hale heard the distinct sound of a toilet flushing followed by what may have been a cork pulled from a bottle. Finally, after more swearing and crashing about, Dreg’s voice came through the phone line loud and clear, though far from coherent.

  “The fuck it is . . . is . . . Hale?”

  “Sir . . . can you understand me? If you can’t, I’ll just deal with this for now and brief you later.”

  “Fucking talk man!” Dreg howled.

  “Frank . . . we’re being drained.” Silence. Timothy heard the distinct sound of a bottle hitting the floor followed by a low whimper and then another clatter, as if Dreg had tried to retrieve the liquor or wine or whatever and immediately dropped it again.

  “What?” The Mayor finally managed.

  “We are being drained.”

  “Drainers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well . . .” Dreg must have dropped the phone down on the bed. When next he spoke his voice was muffled. “Must be a malfunction or error . . . mistake. Error somewhere.”

  “It’s not, Frank!” Hale barked loudly, a finger pointing angrily toward the phone as if The Mayor would sense the urgency through the gesture.

  “Gotta be a fuckup, Tim. Gotta be someone’s fuckup. Don’t call me for an hour. I just . . . gimme an hour. Two hours. Leave this alone. You don’t know what yer talking about. Leave it all alone.” The line went dead.

  Hale leaped to his feet and grabbed the handset from his desk, slamming it home on the receiver. He pulled at his tie, loosening the knot, and stalked about his office looking for something to smash or upend. Then, quickly, Hale sat down and forced himself to count to ten. By number six he was already dialing Strayer again.

  “Security,” Strayer crooned into his phone. He knew damn well it was Hale.

  “Strayer. When will you be getting Dreg back here?”

  “Well, we were scheduled to travel at thirteen hundred, Hale, but with this weather I doubt we’ll be leaving anytime today.”

  “What the fuck do you mean?” Hale spat, seething.

  “What the fuck I mean, Timbo, is that there’s a blizzard here, and no plane is flying anytime soon. Situation back home or not.”

  Hale thought of a thousand things he could say but opted instead to very slowly, deliberately, hang up the phone. He rose again and walked to the window, keeping his steps calm and measured. It was a few minutes before nine a.m. Pacific Time and the city was just coming to life. On the streets some seven hundred feet below, pods shot to and fro and pedestrians scurried about like so many ants. So many blissfully ignorant ants, Hale thought. He alone knew what was happening. Or rather not he alone, but only he on this side of the situation.

  Timothy stood by the window for a long time debating his next move. Then he wheeled and made for the door, grabbing his suit coat off its hanger. As his hand grasped doorknob, the phone rang.

  “Came to your senses, asshole?” Hale whispered aloud. He practically leaped to the phone. “This is Hale.”

  “Hale?” came an unfamiliar voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Eight two one?”

  “Yes, dammit, this is Tim Hale, exec eight-two-one. Who is this?”

  “This is Supervisor Tansingco from Services twenty-three. You called to complain about one of my janitors?”

  “Oh. Yes. Forget about that. It doesn’t matter anymore—just cancel the report.” Hale moved to hang up the phone but heard the man continue speaking. He put the phone back to his ear in time to hear:

  “. . . all fine and good, but do you know where she went?”

  “What?” Hale asked, only half paying attention.

  “Do you know where my employee went?”

  “No. She got on an elevator.”
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br />   “OK, but that was a day ago now, and she hasn’t reported in since.”

  Hale worked his arms and shoulders into his suit coat until it fit him comfortably. He was standing before the bank of elevators, poised to summon a lift. But as he had exited his chambers, an idea had flitted through his mind. Unresolved, he hesitated, standing alone in the lobby, weighing his options. There weren’t many, with Dreg useless for the time being and his details still spotty. He’d been planning to travel across town to the Office of Security and mobilize an investigative team, but now the thought occurred to him that no one but he yet knew of the potentially dire straits facing . . . well, everyone.

  Timothy was in the position to call all the resources of the metropolis to bear, or to take a bit more time and see if he couldn’t work through some of this mess alone. He took a slow step back from the elevators, then turned on his heel. Hale let himself into The Mayor’s opulent reception room. He walked with purpose across the plush carpet and past the assembled treasures. Keying in the code known only to himself, Strayer, and Mayor Dreg himself, Hale entered The Mayor’s office. He pressed a few buttons and the exterior metal curtains slid up, letting morning sun bathe the room.

  Removing his blazer, Hale went to drape it across one of the chairs facing Dreg’s desk, but then turned and instead hung the jacket on the tree in the corner. Awkwardly self-aware, the secretary general slid The Mayor’s chair away from the desk and eased himself down into it. The soft leather caressed his thighs and back. Timothy allowed himself to savor the sensation for a moment, and then sat forward abruptly. He slid open the top left drawer of the desk and produced a remote control. He knew this device like the back of his hand, and casually punched in a host of commands.