by Mick Farren
"I'm very disappointed in you, Streicher. Real disappointed. You know what I mean?"
Streicher's look was cold and hard but in the hardness there was a precise defeat. He'd lost control. Eggy looked him up and down and then stomped out. The lynching party rapidly disintegrated. Vickers glanced at Fenton, who was on his way to the door.
"I should thank you for backing me up tonight."
"You should, but later."
Vickers suddenly realized that Linda was waiting for Fenton. He grinned.
"Sure. Later."
The living room quickly emptied. Albert's helper had fallen asleep in the conversation pit. Streicher seemed about to say something to Vickers, then he thought better of it and left. Suddenly Vickers was alone to ask his own question as to why Ilsa van Doren should have been sent on what proved to be a suicide mission. At least he thought that he was alone. Then he saw Debbie. She was smiling wearily and holding out the bottle of Jack Daniels.
"It's been one long bastard of a night."
"That's true enough."
"You want to come back to my room for a nightcap?"
Vickers blinked. Debbie? It was the final twist in a very twisted day.
Once the passion had burned itself out, they slept together with the ill-fitting awkwardness of two people who are totally exhausted but also totally unfamiliar with each other. The sheets were bunched and bundled and Vickers drifted through fragmenting dreams of lights, explosions and tracer shells in the night. The knock on the door around two thirty in the afternoon came as something of a relief.
"What is it?"
The voice belonged to Gomez. "Streicher wants you down in the living room in twenty minutes. Both of you."
Vickers blinked. "How did you know I was in here?"
"Don't be ridiculous."
His boots moved away down the corridor. Debbie sat up. "Do I look as bad as you do?"
"Probably."
"That's not very complimentary after all I did for you."
"I didn't mean it that way. You ever been in a firefight before? It has its own unique hangover."
"I feel kind of numb."
"That's a part of it."
Debbie got out of bed and headed for the bathroom, Vickers was so numb that her legs caused no reaction. The hiss of the shower caused him to wonder about his own cleanliness. He was dirty and unshaven but what the hell. He rolled from the bed and started pulling on his pants. "Are you going to shower?"
"No. I need some clean clothes out of my room. I'll see what Streicher wants first."
Before going to the living room, they stopped by the kitchen to see if Albert had any coffee. Fenton was already there with Linda.
"Streicher want to see you too?"
"Both of us."
Linda mock pouted. "He didn't ask for me."
"You might be the lucky one."
"That's always possible."
Parkwood was already in the living room as was Streicher, who was standing staring out of the picture window with his hands locked behind his back. He not only looked as though he hadn't slept but as if he'd been through a hard morning as well. Even so, Vickers didn't bother with courtesy.
"What do you want?"
"We'll wait until everyone's here."
Eggy crashed through the door. "What the fuck do you want, Streicher? I was spark out. You had your money's worth out of me last night."
"Close the door."
Parkwood looked slowly around with quizically raised eyebrows.
"Just the five of us?"
"I've been told to ship you out."
"Why us? What did we do?"
"Around here we just follow orders."
Parkwood pursed his lips. "Could it be anything to do with us having the highest scores on that ridiculous combat range of yours?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Streicher's face had already given him away, however. Parkwood smiled.
"You don't take enough care of your computer."
"You shouldn't have done that."
Streicher didn't sound as though he had anything to back up the threat. Parkwood continued to smile.
"What was it? Some kind of selection process? Somebody playing Darwin?"
Eggy glared at everyone in turn, finishing up with Streicher.
"So where the fuck are we going now? I've had a gutfull of this place, I can tell you."
"You'll find out when you get there."
Vickers shook his head.
"Sweet Jesus Christ, this is ridiculous. This secrecy is obsessive."
Eggy snarled. "Can you manage to tell your asshole when to shit?"
"Transport is already here."
"What?"
"The transport is already here. You have fifteen minutes to gather up your stuff. I won't say it's been nice knowing you."
Debbie moved to protest. "Wait just a minute. What about the others? What's going to happen to them?"
"I don't have any instructions. I imagine they'll be transferred too. It seems that this place is going to be shut down."
"And we never filled the heart-shaped pool."
"Fuck you, Fenton."
Streicher stalked out of the room. Eggy spat after him.
"Fuck!" He again looked around. He still disliked the other four but he seemed to accept they were in the same circumstances and therefore had some common interests. "Shit!"
Vickers yawned and rubbed his eyes. He could have done with a couple more hours' sleep.
"That's the truth."
Debbie started for the door.
"I'm going to get my stuff together and say good-bye to the girls."
Apart from the wire mesh over the windows, the heavy duty, rough country tires and the lack of license plates, it was a regular, yellow school bus, the current year's model. The two men who came with it were less conventional. They were two of the most exquisitely turned out soldiers that Vickers had ever seen. The army-style steel helmets, the kind with the communicator in the side blister, were finished in polished chrome and the visors were mirrored to match. Their jump-boots were shined to a parade ground polish and their lightweight combat suits had knife-edge creases. Instead of the normal olive green they were a rather attractive mushroom gray. Of the five transportees, Eggy was the most disbelieving. He seemed to take their stylishness extremely personally. He bore down on them with a stiff-legged lurch.
"What the fuck are you supposed to be?"
The nearest of the pair raised his M90 and pointed uncompromisingly at Eggy's chest.
"Sir. You will surrender your weapon and board the bus." Eggy looked down at his worn MT and back to the soldier with a look of brute incomprehension.
"Run that by me again."
"Sir. You will surrender your weapon and board the bus. Your weapon will be stored in the luggage compartent and returned to you when we reach our destination."
The soldier had the robot voice of the hardcore corporate warrior. They might be prettied up but they were cold bastards who'd put a bullet through Eggy as easy as blinking. Debbie must have reached exactly that conclusion. She put down her bag and put a hand on Eggy's arm.
"Why don't you relax and go with the program until we get where we're going. He's got you cold anyway."
Eggy looked down at his gun again. He spun it on his finger and pushed it butt-end first toward the soldier.
"Here, cutie, stash it with the bags."
He climbed on board the bus. One by one the others followed him. Vickers paused before handing over his bag and his guns.
"I suppose it's no use in asking you where we're going."
"No sir."
"I thought not."
The bus was empty except for two more uniformed men. One was acting as a third guard, the other as driver. The five passengers spread out as far as possible, as though each one of them needed his or her privacy. Parkwood went all the way to the back and opened a dog-eared copy of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. Debbie pulled her
knees up to her chin and, almost immediately, appeared to go into a trance. Fenton flopped into a middle seat and stared out the window. Vickers did the same. Eggy, on the other hand, moved up to the front and stared through the windshield with the dumb rapt interest of a dog on a car ride. This rather discomfited the guard at the front. He'd positioned himself at the front of the bus with his back to the windshield. His M90 was slung across his chest. He tensed a little and his hand gripped the butt as Eggy lurched toward him. Eggy, however, simply looked him up and down and then ignored him. He took up position right beside him, only facing in the other direction. The other two guards boarded, the door closed with a hiss of air pressure, the air conditioner came on and the driver eased the bus into gear. They took up position in the back seat, one on each side of Parkwood. Parkwood apparently took exception to this as he immediately moved two seats forward and went back to his book.
The bus rolled and wallowed on the uneven desert road. The passengers hung onto the seats in front of them and, on a number of occasions, Eggy was jolted against the guard. On the third collision, he broke into a fiendishly vacant grin. Among the totems and geegaws festooned to his neck and chest was an old fashioned .45 caliber brass and lead bullet. It was clutched in an ornate silver eagle's claw that was in turn attached to a silver chain. Eggy dangled it in front of the guard's face.
"You know what's inside this?"
The guard was doing his best to keep his balance. For a brief instant he looked quite horrified. Beside Eggy he was just a callow boy. He swallowed and shook his head as the bus lurched again. Eggy laughed.
"Cyanide, cutie. Enough cyanide to kill four or five people. They ain't never going to touch me."
Fenton glanced at Vickers. He smiled ruefully and shook his head. Eggy was from some dangerous galaxy. Fenton seemed about to say something but, before he could, the bus was shaken by the boom of a not too distant explosion. The ground shook. Everyone in the bus hit the floor. They stayed down, counting the seconds. When there were no further explosions they gingerly moved to the back of the bus and looked out the window. Where El Rancho Mars had been there was now just a column of black smoke. The smoke from the first fireball was high in the air and starting to dissipate. A fresh black cloud was roiling up to replace it from what was obviously a raging inferno. Fenton looked at Vickers with narrowed eyes.
"They blew the house? Why in hell would they do that? It doesn't make any sense."
"Maybe it was another attack."
"Immediately after we left? It seems like too much of a coincidence."
Debbie was running down the bus, yelling at the driver. "Stop, goddamn it! Stop the damn bus!" She tried to grab him but, at the same time, the guard at the front grabbed her. She tried a hip throw on him but couldn't quite bring it off in the confined space. The guard managed to kick her feet out from under her and they both crashed into the first passenger seat. Eggy suddenly shrieked and charged down the bus to help out Debbie. He started pounding on the guard with his interlocked fists. The two guards in the rear had their guns up and, for a moment, it looked like carnage was going to spread all down the length of the bus. Vickers was on his feet and shouting, facing the rear guards and waving his arms.
"Hold it! For Christ's sakes hold it!"
Parkwood and Fenton hurried to the front and dragged the snarling Eggy off the guard and then helped the guard and Debbie disentangle themselves one from the other.
"Everyone just calm down now."
Eggy reluctantly relaxed but Debbie was still furious.
"I had friends in that place!"
The front guard had retrieved his gun and was wondering who to point it at. Fenton leaned toward the driver.
"It might be a good idea if you pulled over while we sort this thing out."
The driver had a voice like a robot.
"I have orders not to stop under any circumstance."
For a moment Fenton looked as though he was going to hit him. He clearly thought better of it and turned on the front guard.
"Do you know anything about this?"
"We were warned there might be an explosion. We were supposed to stop you becoming alarmed."
Vickers looked at the two rear guards.
"Is this what they told you?"
They both nodded. "We all had the same briefing."
Debbie continued to smoulder. "Why should they blow the place up? What happened to the people?"
One of the rear guards softened just the slightest fraction.
"They told us the others would be evacuated to another destination and then the place would be destroyed as a security precaution."
Neither Debbie nor Eggy seemed convinced. They both looked around belligerently.
"Does anyone believe this crap?"
The bus lurched, and Parkwood sat down.
"We may have been the cream of the crop, but the others who remained were valuable operatives and it would make no economic sense simply to destroy them. It goes against all corporate logic to wantonly waste money. On the other hand, though, the house itself was a moderately valuable installation and it also seems a great waste if they just blew it to cover our tracks. Of course, if we knew where our tracks were going, we'd have an idea how much they might be worth covering."
"But these bastards aren't going to tell us a fucking thing."
Eggy growled at the guards. They looked a little nervous but none of them volunteered any further information. Fenton and Vickers both sat down, but Debbie still stood, clutching the overhead rail with a white-knuckled hand.
"I think we should go back and find out exactly what happened. I want to know what became of Zoe, Bobbie and Linda."
Parkwood eyed the guards. "I don't think our friends are going to let us do that."
"Screw these assholes. We can take them."
Parkwood twitched his shoulder in the faintest of shrugs.
"Sure we could take them except we'd probably lose one, if not two of us in the process and the status of those of us left could become decidedly strange."
"You're a cold son of a bitch."
"Don't you think there's enough emotion flying around here?"
Eggy hulked over Parkwood.
"So what would you do, Iceman?"
"I'm going to stick with the program. Someone's gone to a lot of trouble to put us on this bus and I'm not about to get off it until I have a few more facts. Whatever happened at the house has happened and there's nothing we can do about it."
Debbie became stubborn. "You didn't have friends back there."
Parkwood's eyes froze. "If you were the professional you're supposed to be you wouldn't have had friends back there, either."
Vickers, who'd been watching intently, realized for the first time just how deadly Parkwood might be if pushed. He was what the Japanese had in mind when they made up the saying about the best killers being already dead. Eggy abruptly sat down.
"Yeah, go with the fucking program."
Debbie, now isolated, bit her lip. She pushed her way past the guards and went to the back of the bus. She sat down, staring out the rear window at the plume of smoke.
"You think I'm crazy, you should have seen my brother. He used to sit in the park and burn money until someone beat him up. Then he'd laugh in their faces. Somedays he'd go to the bank and he'd draw out a hundred in singles and then he'd go to this favorite bench that he had in the park and he'd take this big fucking radio that he had and he'd settle himself down and turn up the radio real loud so's people would notice him and then he'd start into setting fire to one bill after another. He'd do it real slow, holding each one up in the air until it was all burned up except for the last little corner that he was holding it by. He'd light them with this old fashioned Zippo that our uncle had given him. He claimed that he'd used it in Vietnam to burn gook huts."
"Your uncle was in Vietnam?"
Eggy shrugged. "I was never sure. He was my old man's oldest brother so I guess he could have been the right age. He cla
imed he was but I couldn't figure how he could have gone through all that and still stayed such an asshole."
Eggy's sudden burst of intimacy came out of nowhere. It was almost as much of a surprise as the blowing up of the house. They'd ridden in silence for a further two hours, bouncing and swaying along the unsurfaced desert trail when the outburst had begun without preamble or even a clearing of the throat. He talked at no one in particular, addressing the whole of the bus with the weird confidence of someone who lets go so rarely that he's certain everyone will be paying attention.
"Pretty soon, a crowd would start to gather. My brother would pretend not to notice them at first."
"What was your brother's name?"
"It don't matter." Eggy seemed to resent this second interuption. He glared around belligerently. "Anyone else got anything they want to ask?"
As one they shook their heads.
"Okay, like I was saying, first off a crowd would gather and my brother'd start by completely ignoring them. He'd just sit there burning his money, pretending it was the most normal thing in the world. Pretty soon some of the crowd would start mouthing off. They'd start making smart remarks to each other about how my brother was a mental case and ought to be locked up. If he wanted to get rid of his cash, he didn't have to burn it, he could give it to them. When my bro went on ignoring them, they got a bit bolder. They'd start coming onto him direct. 'Hey, fuck, what the fuck do you think you're doing? You insane or something? You gotta be fucking crazy.' You know what I mean? It was real slick, Oscar Wilde stuff. There was a pattern to it though, it always got physical in the end. They might make a grab for the money while it was actually burning but, usually, it would keep them mesmerized. Nine times out of ten, the violence would start when my bro reached into his pocket for a fresh bill. Some fool would grab for it, like he was rescuing the sacred dollar from the pyromaniac. My brother didn't actually resist, but he'd do his best not to let them get the bill and that always led to someone hitting him. Once the first punch had been thrown the dam was broken, all hell'd break loose. They'd be all over my brother and, because even then I wasn't going to stand by while a bunch of hysterical assholes beat on my bro, they be all over me too. Sometimes the cops would-come and we'd get beat up all over again. When you're a kid and the cops beat on you, it can really hurt. They can do it without leaving marks, too… Jesus fucking Christ! Will you look at that!"