“Hey, watch it,” Munk said strongly. “You want to get us killed?”
“Sorry, won’t do it again. Didn’t know you were so jumpy.”
“What do you expect after driving all day and night? I feel like a zombie.”
“Hey, you said you were fine. You should have told us. Earless or me could’ve spelled you a while.”
“Yeah, right. A drunken goon or a frazzled pleaser. Gee, which would drive off a cliff first, I wonder?”
“Lighten up. And don’t talk so loud.”
“Sure thing,” Munk muttered.
“Where are we?”
“About forty klicks from IC-40.”
“Are you kidding?” Grue leaned forward to look out the big cab window at the scrub that whizzed by outside. “Munk, you’re an automaniac! How’d you get us here so quick?”
“Quick? It’s almost noon. I could’ve been here ten hours ago if we didn’t have to drive through every arroyo on the continent.”
“Noon? What’d you let me sleep so long for?”
“What do you need to be awake for? So you can down another couple hundred beers?”
“I said lighten up,” Grue repeated, an edge growing in his voice. “Quit your bitching. We’re almost home free.”
“Almost don’t count for crap. And I’ll bitch all I want.”
“I’m getting a little sick of this, Munk.”
“Sick of what?”
“Your attitude. We’ve got ten million creds, you should be dancing up a storm instead of complaining all the time.”
“Dancing? Dancing like all those dwarves back in Atlanta? Dwarves whose only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“Drop it, Munk.”
“Why should I? Am I the only one who’s got a problem with massacring innocent people? I ain’t a mindless cyborg, Grue.”
“You saying I am?”
“You ain’t no cyborg, Grue. Just a useless drunk.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“Exactly what I said. You’ve been rolling around back there with a couple hundred liters of beer washing around in that gut of yours. You wake up every once in a while and tell me where to drive. You’re a zerohead. You and this patch-head pleaser belong together. You can compare hallucinations.”
“You just better dump the talk, Munk, or you’ll be hallucinating in a coma.”
“You dump, freak. I’m sick and tired of you. I followed you down the road to freaking poverty. We were Atlanta’s best. No one could touch us, then you got us all screwed over. I can’t believe I let you talk me into smearing those dwarves.” Munk hit the steering wheel, pressing down harder on the accelerator. He moved to the inner lane and passed a big Kenworth Pioneer semi with a double trailer hauling a load of twenty new cars.
“What I can’t believe,” Grue growled, “is that I kept working with a hopeless, dumbtech, has-been like you.”
“You don’t have to believe it much longer, apeface. Once we’re clear, I’m taking my cut and fading. I don’t want anything more to do with a murdering scum like you.”
“What’s going on?” Earless yawned in her seat.
“Butt out, Earless!” Grue yelled at her. He turned back to Munk. “Me murdering scum? You’re the one who fired that Akbar and roasted all those poor little runts. You killed those little gimlis, and now you can’t live with it. You’ve lost the edge. You’ll never be worth a damn again.”
“Hey, guys” Earless said, “cool down.”
“You were never worth a damn, Grue. And you won’t have to worry about me again.” He swung the Grand Safari off the road into a wide dirt lot in front of a roadside re-fueling station and eatery. Dust swirled up around the rig as it fishtailed through the lot, narrowly missing a parked Ford Mustang skycar.
“What the hell are you doing?” Grue yelled as he stumbled off-balance, finally landing with a loud thump facedown next to the sink.
The Safari came to a rest next to the fuel pumps, amidst billowing clouds of dust. Munk killed the engine and rose from the driver seat. Earless squealed in delight and clapped her hands.
“Lost my edge, did I?” Munk yelled as the goon rose from the floor. “I’d like to see you pull a one-eighty stop in a rig this size!”
A deep, throaty growl swelled into a yell as Grue swung his right arm, hitting Munk in the sternum. The man crashed against the far wall and fell on the small sofa. He jumped to his feet in milliseconds, and leaped at the goon. They grappled, hands at each other’s throats, and crashed onto the floor.
“Stop! Stop!” Earless yelled, standing over them. “What are you, crazy?”
They paid no attention to her. Grue squirmed around on top of Munk, and punched him repeatedly in the face. Munk shrugged off the pain. Short metal cyber-razors snicked out from beneath his fingernails and he sliced the goon across the face, drawing thick lines of blood.
Grue growled and backed up momentarily. He felt the wounds with his hand and looked at the blood on his fingers. He screamed, and three fifteen-centimeter blades popped out from the back of his hand. He aimed a lethal blow at Munk’s face.
Earless leapt forward and grabbed the goon’s upraised arm. “Damn it! Stop!”
“Get off!” Grue pushed the pleaser away as Munk’s razors dug into his arms. He slapped at the man with his left hand. “Now you’re gone!”
Three gunshots reverberated through the RV’s interior, ricochets zooming around them. Grue and Munk cringed and looked up to see Earless standing with a smoking 9mm aimed at the ceiling.
“Now that I’ve got your attention,” she said loudly, “I suggest you stop acting like idiots!”
“This isn’t your concern, Earless,” Grue growled, his arm still raised.
The woman aimed the gun at Grue. “I think it is. Munk, get the hell out of here and cool off.”
Munk, rubbing his bleeding jaw, squirmed out from under the goon and stumbled to the side door. “This ain’t over, Grue.”
“No kidding,” the goon responded, as the man stepped into the dusty sunlight.
Two young boys stood next to the fuel pumps, staring wide-eyed at Munk as he slammed the door shut behind him. One held a cola bottle motionless in front of his mouth.
Munk walked past the pumps and a muddy Chrysler Dirtboy toward the small roadside diner. The faded glopaint sign on the side of the building read Jumbo’s Eatery. He could see people inside gawking at him as he walked toward the exterior restrooms.
Shaking his head, he stormed around a large ice bin and angrily pulled the restroom door open just as a dwarf came walking out, zipping up his pants. Munk stormed into the restroom and looked into the mirror. Bruises and streaks of blood covered his face, and one eye was swollen shut.
Munk bent his head into the sink and ran water over his face, wiping away the blood and wincing as the water entered the cuts that Grue’s battering had inflicted.
Munk wondered why he’d never told the goon how he really felt before. It had been building up inside him for years. From one screwed op to another, he’d just kept following that goon. But not anymore.
The Stiltzkin job had been the biggest mistake he’d ever followed Grue into, and it was definitely the last. Hell, he wouldn’t even wait until they got to Arizona. He’d just take his cut now and get as far away as possible from that lunatic.
Munk turned from the sink, walked into one of the stalls and sat down on the toilet. Grue was just bad luck, since long before the Stiltzkin biz. The dwarf hit was just the culmination of long years of Grue’s blunders.
Munk’s hand stopped as he reached for the toilet paper. That dwarf! The one he’d brushed past coming into the bathroom! That was–
His hand was moving to his shoulder holster when the stall door slammed open and Noose pointed his Stormer at Munk’s head.
46
“I’ve been looking for you all over the plex and the wild, Munk,” Noose said, motioning with his Stormer for the man to keep his hands i
n view, “and now I find you in exactly the position that suits me.”
“Noose!” Munk whispered, unbelieving. “I thought–”
“Thought I was dead?” Noose finished for him. “That’s been going around a lot lately. Takes a lot more than nullheads like you to smear this gimli.”
Munk didn’t reply. He just glanced back and forth between Noose’s face and the gaping muzzle of the Stormer.
“I take it Earless and Grue are in the Grand Safari?”
Munk didn’t respond. He suddenly realized that no matter how much he might blame Grue for all the bad things that had happened over the past few years, he still couldn’t betray him. He was still…family.
“Listen, Noose, about Stiltzkin’s…”
“What about it?” Noose asked, his thin lips stretched taut.
“I…we…we didn’t mean to hit you. It was just biz. A contract. We didn’t know you were going to be there.”
“Who was the target?”
“Salvino.”
“Who was Smith working for?”
“I don’t know. We only met Smith. We didn’t ask.” He looked down at himself and moved his hands toward the pants around his ankles. “You mind if I pull–”
“Hold it!” Noose pushed the Stormer against Munk’s head. “I like it better just the way you are. Who set up the original meet with Smith?”
“Not me. It was Earless. She cued us to Smith’s biz. Damn, Noose! It was a ten meg payoff. It was just biz. You gotta understand that. We don’t have anything against you.”
“Did you have anything against those people you murdered?”
Munk looked down at the floor and did not answer.
“Did you have anything against Pamela Kniginyzky?”
“Knigi-what?”
“Pamela Kniginyzky. She died at Stiltzkin’s. You killed her.”
Munk’s mouth opened but no words came out.
“Thanks for your help, Munk,” Noose said, stepping back out of the stall and holding the door open. “I’ll get the rest of what I need from Grue and Earless.”
Munk raised his hands higher, palms facing Noose. “No! Please don’t–”
Noose fired five shredder rounds into Munk’s face, neck, and chest, spraying blood throughout the stall. The man jerked back and forth in the confined space before sliding off the toilet and collapsing in a deflated heap.
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Noose watched Munk die. Blood dripped down the walls. Noose closed the stall door.
Stepping over the dead man’s long legs protruding from the stall, the dwarf walked to the restroom door and stepped into the noonday glare. Dust puffed off the wall as bullets zinged past him. He dove behind the ice bin, and fired his Stormer at Earless near the far fuel pumps.
“Grue!” she yelled, glancing back to the eatery window while firing at Noose. “Grue! Get your ass out here! We gotta go!”
Noose fired again at the pleaser, but the shredder rounds in his Stormer weren’t effective at this range. As sparks flew off the ice bin, he dropped the shredder magazine and rammed home a clip of jacketed ammo.
Grue emerged from the eatery, a bag of fast food in one huge hand, an Ultima Heavy Bore in the other. The goon joined the pleaser in firing at Noose’s location, pinning down the dwarf.
As Grue neared, Earless jumped into the Grand Safari. “Start car!” she yelled, and the vehicle’s high-power engine whined to life.
“Go! Go!” Grue bellowed as he put one foot into the Safari. Earless jumped into the driver’s seat and gunned the vehicle forward.
Grue kept firing his heavy gun, standing in the open door. Earless struggled to turn the big rig and hit the parked Mustang. The heavy cross-country wheels of the Safari rolled over the skycar’s lightweight chassis, crumpling it like a piece of cardboard.
As the Safari drove past the eatery and the ice bin, Noose lost his cover. He and Grue exchanged a barrage of fire. One of the goon’s 13mm rounds hit Noose in his wounded shoulder, knocking him flat.
“Freak me!” Grue breathed, staring back toward the diner as they sped away. “That looked like Noose!”
“No kidding!” Earless called back.
“How the hell is he here? He’s dead!”
“I don’t think so.”
“How did he live through Stiltzkin’s?” The goon pulled himself into the Grand Safari and closed the door. Blood seeped from a wound in his leg. He dropped onto the sofa, yanked off his belt and, clenching his teeth, tightened it around his leg just above the wound. He opened the cupboard under the sink and found the first aid kit. A few moments later he slapped a disinfectant patch over the wound.
He threw the kit back in the cupboard and limped to the cab. The desert scrub zoomed by as Earless kept the accelerator hard on the floor. Grue noted the empty passenger seat and glanced around the Grand Safari.
“Where’s Munk?”
Earless kept her eyes on the road, squinting against the sunlight. “How the hell should I know?”
“I thought he was in here.”
“He ain’t. I ain’t seen him since you chased him out of here.”
“Well, damn it! We can’t leave him.”
Earless looked over her shoulder at the goon. “You were about to kill him before I stopped you. Now you want to go back and save his ass?”
“That was a mistake.”
“We’re almost to IC-40, with that maniac dwarf Noose on our tail, and you want to go back for Munk?”
Grue looked out the window. “First of all, you’re driving in the wrong direction. We’re heading east!”
Earless gaped out the window.
“Oops!” She let off the accelerator, and pulled onto the shoulder to turn around.
“Second,” Grue continued, “no matter what our disagreements may be, we’re family. We’ve been through everything together. I’m not going to leave him behind.” He grabbed his armored vest and put it on.
“That leaves that gimli,” Earless said as she wrenched the wheel around and headed in the right direction.
“I tagged him as we drove by, he’s probably dead.”
“You said that back at Stiltzkin’s and here he is again. That dwarf just doesn’t stay dead.”
“If I see him again he’ll stay dead.” He picked up his Ultima and reloaded it.
Earless moaned and pointed. “Well, here’s your chance.”
Grue peered over the woman’s head and saw a Chrysler Dirtboy speeding toward them. Grue’s cyberoptics zoomed in on the driver. It was Noose.
“I think he wants to play chicken,” Earless said as the Dirtboy swung into their lane.
“So let the little runt. This is an armored Rolls Royce. He don’t stand a chance.”
“Um, that Dirtboy’s not made out of feathers, either.”
Grue sat on the sofa and strapped himself in. “Just don’t chicken out. He’ll turn aside.”
Earless’ eyes widened as the Dirtboy came at her like a bullet, the big off-road vehicle taking up almost the whole lane.
“He’s not turning off, Grue!” she yelled, hands sweating on the wheel.
“Just ram the son of a bitch!”
The Dirtboy was almost on top of her when Earless yanked the wheel, skidding the Grand Safari aside. The rig jerked as the Dirtboy clipped its rear fender. Earless tried in vain to regain control and the Safari spun around in the scrub alongside the road. The vehicle finally came to a stop and the engine died.
“I told you not to turn off!”
“Then you drive!”
Earless jumped up and Grue took her place, adjusting the seat and starting the engine. He looked through the armored windshield just in time to see it crack and ding several times. He ducked involuntarily then looked again to see Noose standing next to the Dirtboy, firing straight at him.
“I think we should get moving, Grue!” Earless yelled in his ear.
Grue urged the Safari into motion, to bear down on the dwarf and his vehicle.
“What are you
doing?” Earless demanded as the windshield cracked even more under the dwarf’s concentrated fire.
“I’m going to take care of this dwarf while I got the chance.” Grue aimed the big Grand Safari at Noose, who jumped aside, and Grue smashed into the Dirtboy, knocking it off the road.
Earless looked out the rear window. “Great! You missed him!”
“I’ve got another chance.” Grue turned around and again drove straight toward the dwarf, who again dodged out of the way.
Earless groaned. “Munk could’ve hit him.”
Grue sped along the highway in silence while Earless watched the road behind through the rear window.
“He’s back!”
“Doesn’t he ever give up?” Grue glanced down at the rearview vidcam to see the battered Dirtboy gaining on them. He swerved the Grand Safari from side to side across the road. The Dirtboy accelerated rapidly and swung around on the right, easily outmaneuvering the bigger vehicle. Once alongside, the dwarf rammed his car into the side of the Safari.
“What the hell does he think he’s doing?” Earless asked, stumbling toward the cab as the Dirtboy crashed into them again.
Grue yanked the wheel toward Noose, trying to force him off the road. “Damned if I know. That Dirtboy isn’t big enough to take out this rig.”
The eatery came into view just ahead, and Grue slowed down slightly. Noose pulled ahead, and Grue accelerated, catching the Dirtboy on its rear fender. The smaller vehicle twisted around and got caught sideways on the front of the Safari.
“You got him!” Earless looked down on the Dirtboy to see Noose frowning and looking back up at them as his car scraped along the old road.
Earless pointed at the approaching eatery. “Push him into the building!”
Grue increased speed, the Safari’s engines whining.
Noose climbed over to the Dirtboy’s passenger door, opened it, and struggled out onto the roof. Grue drove onto the shoulder and toward the eatery. Noose knelt on the roof of the Dirtboy, steadying himself. He pulled out his Stormer and fired point-blank at Grue.
The glass splintered and cracked under the barrage of bullets.
“That window’s going to cave!” Earless warned.
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