The Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance (Mammoth Books)

by Trisha Telep

  Frannie wanted to say, “I don’t,” and find out more, but she had to keep out of this. Just observe and hope some useful data was forthcoming.

  Salome grinned widely and clapped him on the shoulder again. “But you’ve decided to listen to him in person this time. A lot of us have. We’re beginning to believe. That’s a good sign.”

  “I’ve got deliveries in New York,” Rakesh said. “But I’m thinking about being there. Don’t.” He jerked aside before the woman could hit him once more.

  Salome laughed. “You’ll be there. Knowledge is power,” she added, then moved back to her own campsite.

  Frannie was hoping to get an explanation, but instead Rakesh said, “It’s been a long day. Let’s get some rest.”

  She couldn’t hide her surprise. “Don’t you want me to read?”

  He put a finger to his lips, looked around at his fellow mailmen, then whispered. “Knowledge may be power, but you’re not something I’m ready to share.”

  Frannie decided to take that as a compliment, and broke out her sleeping roll. She also took it as a good sign when he settled beside her and they ended up sleeping together spoon fashion.

  “How are we getting to New York?” Frannie asked once they were safely out of the secret Chunnel that let out at the bottom of a tall white chalk cliff. They moved quickly to a narrow path that led up from the seashore. Smugglers had been using this coast for hundreds of years.

  “Flying,” Rakesh answered when they reached the top of the cliff.

  Rolling green, empty countryside spread out before them.

  “Thank goodness you have access to a plane. I feared we’d be snorkeling across the Atlantic.”

  “There are still a few flights from Gatwick. If you have the right contacts. And the price,” he added.

  She frowned. “How much is this going to cost me?”

  “More data.”

  She tapped her forehead. “I’ve got some Laura Ingalls Wilder in here I’d be happy to share with the pilot.”

  He touched the same spot her finger had. “Save the story for me. I’ll take care of your ticket.”

  “When do we leave?” she asked. She had a time constraint to consider.

  “We have to deliver Mrs Bledsoe’s letter first.”

  Frannie had figured that was coming. She wondered if he noticed he’d said we. Oh, yeah, he had.

  “Bad neighborhood?” she asked.

  “Worse than most.”

  “Where you go I go,” she said. A true statement wasn’t a promise of help if his delivery turned dicey. But of course she’d have to help, because she needed him to get to her assignment. And she’d hate to see anything happen to his handsome ass.

  “The mailing address is Paddington Station.”

  Frannie took a shocked step back. Rakesh caught her before she could take a fatal fall backwards. He kept his arm firmly around her waist as they talked.

  “Paddington’s a quarantine zone,” she said.

  “I already know that. I’m immune,” he added. “I’m betting you are too.”

  “Yes. But that’s not the point. Brit security strictly enforces the zone around the area. Maybe you can sneak in, but getting out isn’t so easy. And the conditions inside . . .”

  “Gangs, gunfights, the usual stuff. Only a bit more concentrated.”

  “Zombies,” Frannie added.

  That was the common, if incorrect, name for those few who survived the engineered biological weapon that terrorists had set loose in London. Not that the scarred, brain-damaged ones who lived through the original sickness survived more than a year or so after the so-called recovery. They were crazy mean while they lived. Frannie knew she couldn’t catch anything from them, but the thought of being scratched and bitten by a stinking husk of human did not appeal in the least. And they were bound to be attacked if they went into Paddington Park, as the place had come to be called.

  “Hardly anybody inside the cordon is sick anymore. Most people packed in there are healthy, but they won’t be let out. Mrs Bledsoe wants her daughter to know that the kids she got out before the quarantine are safer than their mom will ever be.”

  Frannie cringed. “You’re trying to make me feel sorry for people,” she complained.

  “Is it working?”

  She relaxed against him. “Yes.” She sighed. “Let’s get this delivery over with.”

  Rakesh hugged her before he let her go. “You’re not so bad, for one of the Elect.”

  “I’m considered a rebel at home,” she told him. Which was sort of true. Rebel without a cause, or a clue, she guessed.

  They traveled to London on bicycles retrieved from a hidden smuggler’s cache, much of the way along a forgotten Roman track. And then along another ruined railway line that once led directly into Paddington Station. They had to abandon this route within a few miles of their destination, leave the bikes in another cache and move cautiously toward the security cordon on foot.

  As things went in this time, London was a fairly civilized place. At least the gangs that ran the various areas of the city mostly kept to an agreement that kept them from killing the people they exploited. The government spent its time either chasing the gangs or leaving them alone, depending on the current policy on bribes and corruption. The one thing the official security forces were good at was enforcing the quarantine. It kept the streets safe for the official gangs to go about their business, and the threat of ending up exiled to Paddington Park was a great incentive to keep the populace docile and tax-paying.

  Of course Frannie and Rakesh sneaked toward the quarantined area at night through a city under curfew. But it wasn’t like sneaking was that hard for either of them. Frannie just wished that Rakesh didn’t have an affinity for traveling in the sewers. It got them dirtier than they already were, and it kept them safe a while longer, but it still didn’t get them all the way to their destination.

  They emerged on the edge of Hyde Park and ducked into the entrance of the abandoned Lancaster Gate tube station. They paused long enough to clean off as much as they could in a lavatory that had a trickling water faucet.

  “I don’t suppose you have an invisibility cloak?” he asked when they headed back out into the dark street.

  “They’d still smell us coming.”

  “Okay. I guess we’ll just have to do this the old-fashioned way. Cover me,” he said, and walked boldly up to the nearest checkpoint gate.

  Frannie stayed in the shadows with her gun out. She felt terribly exposed, even if her implants made sure she at least couldn’t be picked up by infrared security cameras. She waited and watched in her hiding spot—

  While a bribe passed from Rakesh’s hand to a guard’s.

  Hey! That wasn’t fair.

  She was furious when Rakesh waved her forward. “Why didn’t you just ask her to deliver the letter?” Frannie asked after they were clear of the checkpoint.

  He was affronted. “My job is to deliver the mail, and I do exactly that.”

  She was unwillingly impressed, and mollified, by Rakesh’s professional integrity. Or possibly it was willful, stubborn insanity. She still kind of liked it.

  “Now that we’re in, how do we get out?”

  “We’ll think of something.”

  She’d suspected he’d say that. He took her by the hand as they walked into the abyss. She made sure her Glock was in the other.

  There was no curfew inside the crowded tangle of streets cordoned off with the ruined train station at its center. Most of the multistoried, close-set buildings around the station had been small hotels and pubs in the days when there were tourists in the world. Now it was an overcrowded tenement neighborhood that reminded Frannie of Whitechapel in the days of Jack the Ripper. Only not quite as safe.

  There weren’t many moving on the dark street. Greedy-eyed people were gathered on steps and seated on curbs, looking up as they passed, gazes following. Some were sharks, most of them were scavengers who could easily form into packs. Wal
king in a place like this was an art form that took total spacial awareness and cold confidence. Rakesh was as adept at the do-not-fuck-with-me dance as she was. They made good partners.

  The street had a way of clearing of people as they walked along. Which didn’t mean Frannie and Rakesh weren’t followed, or word of outsiders’ presence didn’t spread along the streets and alleys. It was only a matter of time.

  There was no electricity in this part of the city: only the occasional flicker of a candle or oil lamp behind a window throwing out faint puddles of light. It came as no surprise when a tall man with a large gun stepped into one of those puddles ahead of them.

  “Welcome to my territory. Why should I let you live?”

  Frannie sighed, not because of this threat, but over the fact that the people trapped in this slum had access to high-tech weapons but no way to make light bulbs work. Rakesh dropped her hand and stepped forward to confront the gunman. Frannie stayed in the shadows and watched his back. Further into the dark, others watched her.

  Rakesh showed the gunman his leather courier bag. “I have a delivery to make. Can I take anything out for you?” he added.

  Rakesh sounded so polite and helpful Frannie had to hide a smile. But it worked.

  “The mail has to get through, eh?” the gunman asked. He thoughtfully scratched his bearded jaw. “Heard about you lot.” All the bravado had left his voice.

  “Just shoot him and take what he’s got,” a watcher in the dark called.

  Frannie turned enough to make sure her gun was visible to the watchers. She caught the glitter of eyes. “Kindly keep out of this,” she suggested softly.

  “He’s a mailman,” the gunman called to the others. “Remember what happens when the mail doesn’t get through.”

  The troublemaker took a step out of concealment. “Who’ll know, if he’s dead?”

  “They’ll know,” Rakesh said. There wasn’t a hint of doubt in his voice. He didn’t bother to look at anyone but the gunman. “I’m on my way to Paddington. I’ll come back this way. Be waiting here if you have anything for me to deliver. Francine.” He gestured her forward.

  “What the—!” The troublemaker lunged.

  The gunman shot him before Frannie could. The man’s angry shout turned into a scream that nobody paid any attention to. The blood that flowed onto the ground was just one stain among many.

  “I’ll be here,” the gunman said. “Watch out for the Zs,” he called out as Frannie walked away with Rakesh.

  “So, you peace-loving ex-mercs retaliate when something happens to one of your own,” she said once they were away from the gang.

  “I’ve heard that rumor,” was his cool answer.

  When they reached the main entrance of the ruined rail station she asked, “How are we finding Mrs Bledsoe’s daughter?”

  He took out a handheld puter and used the keypad. “Easy. Mrs Bledsoe had her daughter chipped when she was a kid.”

  “Ah. Of course.” She kept her attention on the dark street and the shadows by the surrounding buildings while Rakesh used the primitive tracking function of his puter.

  She supposed the old lady’s daughter would be in the age range for that particular endtimes app. Identity/tracking chip implants had been all the rage for children back when civilization began seriously to fall apart. Even members of the Elect communities had used them. Frannie supposed the IT chips had been the first tech enhancements her ancestors had used.

  After a minute or two he lifted his head and looked to the left. “This way.”

  She accompanied him around a corner, into an area of tents and shacks set up on the street. They stopped in front of a tent, where they found a very surprised middle-aged woman who burst out crying when Rakesh gave her the letter. She said no when Rakesh asked her if she wanted him to bring an answer to her mother.

  Duty over, Rakesh and Frannie headed back the way they had come. They exchanged a glance to acknowledge they knew they were being followed as they approached the spot where the gunman had said he’d meet him.

  The gunman was there all right, a piece of mauled meat, with a pair of zombies kneeling on either side of him, munching away. The gangbanger had warned them to look out for the Zs, but had ended up a victim of the hunt himself.

  “Because he was alone,” Rakesh said. “Waiting for me.”

  The Zs sprang away from their kill, toward them.

  “Two more coming up behind us,” Frannie answered.

  “Aim for the head,” he said as she span around.

  “I know!”

  Her irritated shout was drowned by the roar of the Glock as she fired. The bullet went into the Z’s forehead with a horrible thud, blowing a much bigger hole in the attacker’s head than it should have. Stinking brain fragments flew away into the dark.

  Her next shot went through the second zombie’s shoulder. He slammed into Frannie without slowing at all. This one had enough intelligence left to grab her arms and wrench them so hard the Glock was forced from her grasp. She held the Z away from her while he snapped at her face. She brought up her knees from beneath him.

  But a knife sank to the hilt into the zombie’s head before she could lever him off.

  Rakesh flung the body away before it collapsed onto her. He pulled her to her feet. A quick glance told her Rakesh had taken out the other pair of zombies. No one else was around.

  “I owe you one,” she informed the mailman.

  He gave a curt nod. “I’ll hold you to it. Keeping promises and returning favors is the right way to live,” he added. He sounded like he expected her to argue.

  “Well, yeah,” she answered.

  They made their way back to the sentry post. Frannie had wondered if getting out would be as easy as getting in, but the guard was waiting there for them. She let them through and pressed a tiny bag into Rakesh’s hands. Mailmen had the run of the world, Frannie decided. What they did was just too useful to keep them from making their rounds.

  She and Rakesh spent some more time in the sewer, but were met by a smuggler’s van at the spot where they came out. It was just after dawn. The van took them deep into the hangars beyond the collapsed terminal buildings of Gatwick Airport. A well-maintained private jet was parked inside the hangar. They were taken past it, up a flight of metal stairs to an office/living area. A tall, thin man came from behind his desk to greet Rakesh, arms held out for a hug.

  He stopped inches away from the mailman and made a gagging noise. “Oh, God, you stink.” He went to a door in the back of the office and gestured them through. “Get cleaned up. There’ll be food waiting for you when you’re done.”

  Not only was there running water in the bathroom shower, but it was hot! Frannie stripped off her clothes and plunged into the steaming stream of water with her face turned up and her eyes closed. Heavenly!

  It wasn’t long before her rapture was interrupted as a naked Rakesh squeezed in beside her. “To save time and energy,” was his comment. He began to rub her skin, leaving a trail of lather and tingling pleasure. “I brought soap.”

  She gathered up soap bubbles and returned the favor, her hands gliding over his chest and hips and down his thighs.

  “We both know how this is going to end,” he said.

  “Uh-huh.” Frannie leaned her head against his shoulder, put a hand on his hip to steady herself and wrapped her leg around him, welcoming him inside.

  “What is it you want from me?” Frannie asked Rakesh. She didn’t turn away from watching the clouds below the airplane window, but she was acutely aware of him in the seat beside her. They’d both slept on the flight. When she woke up she found his head resting on her shoulder. She watched him for a while, then turned toward the window when he woke up.

  She held her wrist up, showing her implant. “I can’t offer you every bit of data I can access at the retrieval point. I certainly can’t download everything there is in the database into my one little brain. I’m letting you name what your help’s been worth. And it has
to be something accessible at my security level. I ain’t no hacker, hon.”

  He looked skeptical. “You’re just a simple little expendable scout roaming the outside world? Is that it?”

  “I wouldn’t say expendable.”

  He patted her shoulder. “Of course you wouldn’t. Everyone is, for the right reasons.”

  She thought about the man she was about to observe die. What really disturbed her was knowing that Rakesh would also see the man who’d been his leader, the one who’d led the mailmen to freedom, fall before an assassin. Then again, maybe it wasn’t a murder, Maybe General Dehn was about to have a fatal heart attack or stroke. There was no definitive proof of how the man had died. She was here to find out and bring back historical fact.

  Frannie showed her wrist again. “What can I get for you?”

  “Medicine,” he said promptly. “I want the formulas for cures, vaccines that I can get to chemists.”

  “There aren’t any chemists outside the enclaves.”

  “Who do you think does the processing for the drug cartels?”

  She shrugged in acknowledgment. “There’s no cure for the zombie plague,” she said. Not in this time, and anything she gave him would have to be from this era.

  “Give me the AIDS vaccine, aspirin. Anything to keep people alive.”

  She appreciated his desperate need to help, and kept silent about everything she’d been taught about overpopulation being the cause of civilization’s downfall. The Elect even called what was going on in the world right now the “hinning of the herd”. But the Elect didn’t come out of their enclaves to witness the horrible process in action. She believed her ancestors would have had more compassion if they had.

  “Medicines,” she said with a decisive nod. “I’ll get you what I can.”

  Would giving away a few formulas be breaking the rules? She suspected Rakesh’s compassionate request would only lead to an intensification of the drug wars that raged along with all the other wars infecting the planet. Rakesh believed he could do some good, and her admiration for him was such a strong, burning emotion that she suspected it was more than admiration.