Torch Song: A Kickass Heroine, A Post-Apocalyptic World: Book One Of The Blackjack Trilogy

by Shelley Singer

  The trees and brush were thinning ahead. I couldn’t see any movement yet, but the hum of a laser pistol sent a cold draft to my bones. Nothing near me looked zapped but even so I dropped, crouching, then crawling to the edge of the wood, squinting out into a large clearing.

  Samm was there with several dozen people. Five of the women held laser pistols, burning holes in a painted cloth target strung between two trees at the other side of the open space a good 50 yards away. Some of the others were watching. One blond young woman with a strong swimmer’s build, early twenties I guessed— she looked familiar, did she work in the casino bar? No, she was a dealer— stepped up and aimed a sleek little gun, squeezed the trigger and burnt through the bullseye, a little puff of smoke announcing the hit.

  “Great shot, Emmy!” the next woman yelled, clapping her on the shoulder and taking her place. Emmy stepped back, smiling.

  Samm was talking to a small group of men and women who held a variety of weapons, everything from laser guns to old pistols to swords to bows to staffs. Or maybe they were spears. Yes. Some staffs and some spears. Among them, cheerfully twirling an old pistol around her right index finger, was Hannah Karlow, the fixer.

  Suddenly, loud voices and laughter erupted behind me on the trail, and the snapping and cracking and shuffling of someone crashing through the woods without stealth. I’d been so fascinated by the scene in the clearing that I’d closed the eyes on the back of my head. Stupid!

  I slipped behind a tree and watched them arrive. The latecomers were Zack, the poker dealer, Monte, the head cashier, and Drew. Zack and Drew were both carrying canvas bags; Zack’s looked heavy. Monte was carrying nothing but he was still having trouble keeping up, huffing and puffing. He wasn’t young, in his late fifties, at least, with gray hair, and he looked like he needed to eat more. I didn’t know how much time he’d spent struggling along in this army, but maybe a little more time would make him fit. Then again, it might kill him.

  They passed me and broke into the clearing. Zack handed his bag to Samm. “Here you go, Sammy-boy.” Was that how he talked to his “general?” Samm dropped it to the ground. It clanked. Drew kept his slung over his good shoulder, hanging on and smiling like holding that bag was making him happy. Watching Drew at the restaurant, working with him, I’d gotten the impression of strength, the personal awkwardness of a normal nineteen-year-old mixing oddly with a watchful, quiet, almost studious depth. I liked him. He was sweet.

  Samm smiled at the boy. “Drew. Welcome.”

  “Thanks. Lizzie’s really burned that she couldn’t come.”

  The two older men laughed and Zack said something about “growing up.” Drew stuck out his chest and swaggered a bit, finally laying the sack he’d been holding at Samm’s feet. Was this was the first time Drew had been allowed to come to this adult place? He was acting very proud of being there, and Samm’s welcome sounded significant.

  Samm dropped Drew’s bag on the ground alongside the other one. It didn’t clank. He knelt next to the noisy one, loosened the ties, reached in and pulled out a pistol that looked dull, even rusty, like it had been buried for 40 years. He and Zack talked a bit, too softly for me to hear, while Drew listened. They dumped the rest of the sack’s contents on the ground. A couple dozen guns of various ages and styles, from what I could see.

  Several of the troops came over to look. Hannah was one of the first, still twirling her pistol. Monte picked up a revolver, opened it, looked at it carefully, shook his head. Samm punched him on the shoulder, playful but, I thought, irritated by the small sign of doubt. The cashier shrugged, shoved all the guns back into their sack and dragged it to the side of the clearing, where he sat against a tree and began examining the weapons one by one. The bag that Drew had brought still lay on the ground, unopened.

  The women with the lasers surrendered them to five other people. A knot of soldiers paired off for hand-to-hand, proceeding to huff and puff and crash into “the enemy”, circle, and throw each other to the ground. Several men pulled out knives and swords, blunted with wooden sheaths, and ran at each other, thrusting and parrying, while Drew and a couple of men and women with large staffs tried to knock each other out. It all looked painful and a little silly but they seemed to be having a good time despite the bruises. At one point, Drew must have thought he’d taken enough hits because he went to try the laser pistols. He wasn’t as good as Emmy the dealer, but he got a bullseye after three tries.

  Samm talked with various of his soldiers, sat and scribbled some notes with Zack and Drew and Monte, all the time with one eye on the battles. Evaluating the troops every second. Once I’d convinced myself that I was well enough hidden, I kept myself amused by placing bets on combatants. I bet that Hannah would flatten the young, muscular man she was hand-to-hand fighting with— he looked too cocky— and she did.

  As soon as he yelled “enough!” she jumped up, breathing hard, grinning, and looked around the field of battle.

  Something caught her eye and she ran to a stack of weapons leaning against a tree, pulling two wood-sheathed swords from the tangle. Then she swung back around, carrying them across the field.

  “Samm!” she yelled “Want to have a go?”

  He turned from his notes, looking startled by the invitation, but he got over his surprise quickly enough, laughed and shook his head.

  “You can’t beat me, Hannah.”

  “We won’t know until I do it, will we?” She was laughing, too.

  He shrugged, grabbed one of the big swords out of her hands, and in the next breath, brought it down across her shoulder. She grunted. Red-faced, she jumped back and swung in a horizontal arc, catching him at the side of the waist, hard. He doubled over but recovered almost instantly, avoiding a downward chop and thrusting his weapon into her belly. She yelled, clutching her gut, but the cry of pain shifted mid-note into a roar. She straightened, looking taller than she had before, and went at him, thrusting, swinging, lunging. He fell back for a moment, feinted, feinted again, moving like a beautiful big dancer, graceful and powerful all at once, leaping and spinning. I could almost hear music. A big, crashing, Slavic dance. Or were those dances from western Asia? Hannah gripped her sword with both hands, yelling like the spotty hordes were at her back, missed a final thrust— and Samm caught her at the side of the head, spinning her around, whacking her broadside across the back. She stumbled, dropped her sword, shook her head to clear it.

  “Enough, Hannah?”

  She stared at her weapon, lying on the ground.

  “It seems that way, Samm.” She laughed, but the sound was jagged, forced. When she looked back up at him I couldn’t catch her expression from where I watched. But her voice was tight. “This time, anyway.”

  “Good fight,” he said.

  “Good fight,” she answered.

  He went back to his notes and she walked off toward the target practice, stiff-legged. She would have some physical pain that night, but I got the feeling her ego was hurting more.

  The disorganized-looking play went on for perhaps another hour, or maybe it just seemed that way to me, lying in the dusty needles. I was beginning to think it was time for me to leave, that nothing new was happening, that I’d memorized enough faces, heard enough chat, when Samm shouted, once, twice, until everyone had heard and stopped what they were doing. They all ran to the middle of the clearing and lined up in neat ranks. The general alone stood separate, pacing back and forth in front of his troops.

  “You’re still a rag-tag bunch of shitheads, but you’re getting better. You’re nowhere near ready to be an army, but you will, repeat will be one by the end of the year. Are you working to recruit more fighters?”

  They all screamed, “Yes!”

  “We need more of everything. Weapons, soldiers, dedication, training. Don’t ever forget that. The more ready… fewer casualties… ultimate victory…” I’d stopped listening. A pep talk. I let his words sink to a drone in my head, focused on his neatly lined up troops, young and youngi
sh and not-so-young at all, men and women, eager, fired up, ready to fight and die? Or ready to fight so they wouldn’t die, just like I was? I tuned in to Samm again. Samm standing in front of them like something out of a heroic myth. He had the look and, as I’d seen during his battle with Hannah, he fought like a hero.

  He was talking, now, in a slightly lower tone, which made it hard to hear. “Zack has set up the war-games plan for today… two opposing armies… all day… however long… the objective is the usual… trees…” He waved an arm toward some firs on a hillock to the east, where I could just make out what looked like a rough shed. The enemy castle?

  Suddenly he called out: “Drew!” The boy came running, sack in hand. Samm spoke to him, quietly. Then he called out to Hannah and Zack. They came forward. Drew reached into the sack and began to pull out scarves, red ones and blue ones. Hannah took all the red ones, Zack the blue.

  “Count off!” Samm yelled. The troops began to shout numbers and fall into two separate groups. Hannah and Zack distributed the “uniforms,” which the soldiers tied around their necks.

  A game of Capture the Shed. No need to stay for that. I had the information I’d come for. It was true. Blackjack— or at least Samm— was raising and training an army.

  Now I needed to find out what they planned to do with it, and when. Then I could tie up the package, hand it to Chief Graybel, and collect my pay.

  I was just about to turn away and slink off down the path again when Hannah Karlow’s eyes caught mine, dead on.

  Chapter Fourteen

  You have to try the pork buns

  How had she spotted me, smeared with camo and tucked behind the leaves? There couldn’t have been anything but my eyes showing. How had she managed to do that? Was she an eagle in disguise? A cat? Maybe she had caught a movement.

  I held my breath, pulse racing, watching her, crawling slowly and carefully away from the edge of the clearing, expecting every second to hear her yell “Spy!” and see her point right at me. But she didn’t.

  She hadn’t seen me, I decided. She was just staring into space and hadn’t seen me at all. That had to be it.

  She didn’t call out, didn’t point, didn’t start to move my way. She just stood there, staring into my eyes, a half-smile brushing her thin-lipped mouth.

  Hadn’t seen me? Bullshit. She was looking right at me and doing nothing. She was no ordinary Blackjack soldier, not even an ordinary scarfaced gambling fixer. The problem: I knew what she wasn’t, but I didn’t know what she was.

  I turned, rose into a crouch, and slithered away as fast and as silently as I could. When I’d gotten some distance between myself and the clearing full of Coleman army, I ran like crazy for my car, sweating in the dark and chilly woods, my ears tuned and damned near swiveling to catch any sound of pursuit.

  Nothing.

  Plowing back through the attacking berry patch, I yanked the tarp off my car, tossed it inside, slid into my seat, jabbed the starter and pulled the disk sharply to the left, skittering out onto the road.

  Still nothing. No shouts, no pursuing soldiers.

  Gripping the disk hard to keep my shaking hands under control, I kept hearing the same words over and over again in my head: why did Hannah let me get away? Was she telling Samm right now that I’d been spying on the maneuvers? Was she keeping the information to herself for some reason I had yet to discover? I had to choose between three courses of action. Behave as if Hannah had not seen me, since Hannah seemed to be pretending that she hadn’t; go to her with a good lie that justified my hiding outside the clearing; or give up on the job and go away. Or, if she told Samm she’d seen me, and he demanded to know what was going on, I could use the same lie on him I was planning to use on her. As soon as I figured out what the lie was. When I thought it was safe, I pulled over, opened a water bottle, and scrubbed the face camo off.

  Seemed like the best choice at this point was to be entirely innocent until challenged. After all, what could they do, kill me?

  Outside the casino I noticed a flyer tacked up on the parking lot fence, advertising a medicine show. The flyer said “The Truth About Antibiotics— what the vaxmakers don’t want you to know!” I didn’t know what kind of “antibiotic” these people had, but the odds were that it had no more effect on the poison plagues than the old stuff had. “We got what you need! Cures everything from cancer to Ebola to dengue to warts and menstrual cramps. Only Costs Five to Stay Alive! Come hear the music, come see the magic, come and meet the survivors. You have our guarantee!”

  All printed above a picture of a medicine bottle. The label read, “Omnicillin5.” Underneath the bottle, today’s date, the time, 2 p.m., and the place: right down the street near the Blue Chip diner where I’d had that nasty breakfast that second day.

  A dozen of the cheaply-made black and white sheets were pasted the length of the fence. I’d have to check out the show, if I didn’t have to fight my way out of town before then.

  Owen, the blind barker, was on duty at the front door. I greeted him by name and told him mine, saying “I work here.” He nodded and smiled. Blind people hear a lot; I wondered if he ever heard anything that might be useful to me.

  When I walked in, no one seemed to be watching for me. The change guy, Bernard, ignored me when I walked past him, but I didn’t think that meant anything. He might have been a spy— or an errand boy— but he was a timid one, and he had seemed terrified of being associated with me in any way since the day I’d arrived.

  “There you are!” the voice behind me crowed.

  I know what it means to feel like your heart has stopped because I’ve had that sensation a few times before. But just like those other times, it really hadn’t. I was alive enough to spin around, mouth dry, ready to fight.

  I landed face to face with a smiling Timmy, Fredo right beside him. My stomach dropped back where it belonged, my heart speeding but functional. “We left you a message,” Timmy added, “but maybe you didn’t get it?”

  My throat was tight. I managed to say, “Message?”

  “Yes, on the house sys. I thought it was working but you obviously didn’t get it. Anyway, you’re right on time. We’re going out to lunch for Fredo’s birthday. We’d love to have you come— do you like Chinese?”

  I studied their faces until Fredo squirmed. “Is something wrong, Rica?” he asked. He focused on my cheek. “Oh, my, that’s an angry scratch.”

  “No. Nothing’s wrong.” I touched my face. I needed to cover that scratch with makeup.

  This couldn’t be a trap. It was too sideways. If the Colemans wanted to kill me, I reasoned, they wouldn’t send Timmy and Fredo to do it, not with some elaborate chow fun scheme. They’d send someone up to my room at 3 a.m. and carry my body out in a money sack.

  “I’d love to go to lunch with you. Just let me make a quick stop first. Give me ten minutes.” They nodded and plunked themselves down on a couple of slot machine stools.

  I wanted to let the chief know about the war games. I wasn’t sure yet whether I should also tell her I had been spotted creeping around in the woods. I was reluctant to look clumsy this early in the game and I didn’t know what game Hannah was playing anyway.

  I was hungry, I realized. Starving even. Sometimes I get that way when I’ve been scared half to death, after the nausea passes. I liked and trusted Timmy, and I had no reason to think that Fredo was anything but what he appeared to be. Lunch away would give me an excuse to put some time and space between myself and the casino, and see if I could find out more about Blackjack, about the Colemans, and possibly about Hannah Karlow. Anything I could learn about her would be helpful at this point.

  I dashed to my room and closed the door. The chief answered immediately. I told her I’d followed Samm and watched their army on maneuvers.

  “How many people?” the chief wanted to know.

  “Around 50.” I wanted to get back downstairs before Timmy and Fredo started wondering where I was. But the chief was more eager to get offlin
e than I was.

  “Good work. I have to go now. Keep at it.” She was gone.

  Keep at it? She hadn’t bothered to ask where they held the war games or how good they looked or who was doing what. She must have been heading toward some kind of emergency. Even if I’d been sure I wanted to tell her Hannah had seen me, I’d have had no chance to do it. And I still had to let Newt know there was, indeed, an army of sorts, just as he’d heard.

  He wasn’t answering so I left a message. I gave him what I’d given the chief, and a very general, nearly useless, description of the location. The chief’s behavior had made me nervous and I wasn’t sure I wanted Newt to have more than she did. My gut was telling me to hold back until I knew more. About everybody.

  I didn’t bother to check the house sys for the message from Tim. I found my stage makeup and dabbed some on the scratch. Not bad. The entire side trip had taken twelve minutes and when I got back down to the casino, Tim and Fredo were still sitting on their stools, chatting happily, not the least put out by the wait.

  The three of us walked out the front door and east along the old strip. I hadn’t gone far in this direction before, always seemed to be heading toward or over the old California line. Hadn’t had much time for idle exploration.

  King Yen was a few blocks from Blackjack, a nicely decorated place with flamboyant Chinese masks on the walls, gilded mirrors, a dozen black-iron-legged tables and chairs, and white tablecloths and napkins.