“Now that’s the Sassy that I remember,” Mandy thought, and she smiled at that thought, adding to herself, “I think that I should start making some new enquiries. Maybe things have eased a bit. Maybe I can get her home before it’s too late.”
The next day Sarah began her patrols early. She covered the scavenger areas around dusk, looking for the predators. She found nothing. The same thing the next night. As time went on Sarah found that the perverts only came once or twice a week, often less than that. Once she got the rhythm down, hunting was good.
Occasionally more than one would come looking for “action” in the same pod. One evening she was nearly caught as the “perv” brought a friend in a separate pod. As she took down the first one, his partner pulled up behind and attempted his rescue. That evening when she returned to the library she had deposited two more would-be predators at different access points to Queens, and had sold two more pods to two different outer-marketers.
When Sarah had good hunting, she made sure that she sold her goods to different outer-market merchants, so no one had any sure idea of what she was doing. Also, she didn’t go out every evening, and always hunted in a different part of the borough so that neither the predators nor the merchants caught on to the fact that this was a regular activity that might be exploited.
Later at night she still hunted with Mandy. They patrolled the enclave borders, the former public buildings, and the more sparsely populated areas where the zoners, who lived outside of the enclaves, made their homes.
They protected the communities from raiding parties, and individual zoner families from attack. In the cases of the latter Sarah very often used the occasion to distribute some of the wealth her early-evening hunts had earned. She was especially generous to orphans living on their own, and to families whose children had disappeared without a trace.
At the same time as all this was going on Mandy continually worked trying to find a way to get Sarah home. Despite her best efforts, every way was still blocked. She tried everything, even offering one of the Guard stations on the Queens border a large bribe from the funds that Sarah had raised from her predator hunting. Nothing worked.
In the beginning, Sarah used to talk quite a bit about her home in Manhattan. As time passed it became less and less. By her fifteenth birthday she rarely spoke of home and family. Mandy felt that she had failed to keep her promise. Worse yet, she was worried by how well Sarah had adjusted to the life of a hunter. She wondered if there was anything left of that special little girl she had saved from the Eaters almost four years ago.
Worries aside, life at the library continued. Sarah had been with Mandy for about a year when Mandy became infected with Sarah’s love of learning. Now it was a regular part of their routine. They both spent at least two to four hours a day reading books, doing on-line webinars from the archives.
Their internet connection went only as far as the other branches of the library, and even there they needed to be careful. If the other branches traced their use of the system back to them, they could be discovered, maybe even forced out of their home. No one knew that under that great pile of rubble their library was still, mostly, intact.
For Sarah it wasn’t her old Manhattan home, but life with Mandy was good. Her life as a hunter was brutal, it was hardening her, but Mandy did her best to keep her balanced.
Nights were always busy. The pair patrolled at different times and on different nights so the gangs never knew when they might be about. It reduced gang activities, because the gangers could never be sure when they might run into the hunter team that was credited with more kills than any other.
It was six months after Sarah’s seventeenth birthday, while they were out on patrol that they came upon a small band of Knockers circling a zoner family. Five young men had surrounded a mother, father and young daughter, about twelve years old. The Knockers seemed to range in age from around sixteen to about twenty-five. The eldest was obviously the leader.
The gang was circling the family threateningly. “You haven’t paid your ‘insurance premiums’ this week, Jefferson,” the leader said. “Now, how are we to keep you and your family safe if your ‘insurance’ isn’t paid for, eh? I mean, you never know when some low-lifes might take a fancy to your sexy wife. She is so hot, isn’t she?”
He looked the woman’s husband straight in the eye as he ran his hands over her body. The young woman shuddered under his touch and began to cry.
Then the leader turned to the young girl. She, too, was crying. “And, what about little Bethany here, eh? I know that Peter, there, thinks that she’s real cute. You know that he can be quite the animal when he gets all turned on.”
He pushed the child into the youngest Knocker’s arms. “Go on Pete, show them what could happen.” He gave the boy a shove, pushing him closer to the girl. Her face was the picture of terror.
Peter wrapped his arms around her and whispered in her ear, “Don’t cry, I won’t let them hurt you.” She gave him a shocked look. “When I ‘lose my grip on you’, kick me hard you know where, then run as fast as you can for the Owls Head Park enclave. They’ll take you in.”
The little girl was shaken, but she did as she was told. She made a show of struggling, then seemed to slip out of Peter’s grasp. She unleashed a wild kick that seemed to catch him in the groin. Peter crumpled to the ground and the child ran in the direction he indicated.
Two of the remaining Knockers took off after her, only to be intercepted by Mandy. At the same time Sarah came flying out of the air. Her boot struck the leader in the back of his neck. Under her weight and the force of the blow he fell, face first, into the concrete. Whether from the force of his landing or the blow to his spine, no one ever bothered to find out, he simply was dead.
While Mandy was making short work of the two Knockers pursuing the girl. One of the remaining Knockers turned on Sarah. He drew a long dagger from his belt and rushed her. Her shuriken caught him in the neck. Like those Eaters so long ago, he tried to remove it, sealing his end.
As he hit the ground, Peter rose to his feet. He seemed fully recovered from the kick to his groin. Sarah prepared to attack, but he just stood there. “Please don’t kill me,” he pleaded. “I wasn’t goin’ to let them hurt the girl. I saw you coming out of the corner of my eye. I knew that if she ran it would give you the opening.”
Sarah didn’t initially react, so Peter dropped to his knees and placed his hands on his head just as Mandy approached from behind.
She drew a bead on Peter’s head, but Sarah stayed her hand. “I think that he’s telling the truth. You saw it, the girl missed his family jewels by a mile, but he fell as if it was a dead-on shot.” She turned to Peter, “Okay, explain.”
“I’m tired,” Peter began. “This shit is not my thing. I can’t do it anymore.” He dropped his hands in a way that almost said “Shoot me, I’m done!”
Mandy approached cautiously, but Sarah relaxed her posture. “Alright, Peter is it? Go, try at Owls Head Park. Maybe the enclave will take you in. That family will certainly vouch for you. Just don’t let me catch you in Knocker colours again, or I will drop you where you stand.”
Peter relaxed. “Yeah, I’m Peter, Peter Preston. I know who you are. You’re Sassy. You got a mean rep in the zone. You won’t see me in colours again; even if it means that I become a scavenger,” Peter promised. He turned and lit out in the direction of the enclave.
Mandy joined Sarah as she watched him go. “You’re getting soft, Sassy,” she told her.
“Maybe I’m tired of all this killing, too,” Sarah answered with a sigh, “I hope he makes it. He could turn out to be a good guy.”
Around about 3:00 AM they took a break from their patrol, and stopped off at the Bedford-Stuyvesant enclave. There was an all-night café there that all the hunters liked to drop in on; not just for the good coffee, or because the owner gave it to them free, but because by dropping in at irregular times the gangs left the place alone. It had also become the place where t
he hunters would keep each other up-to-date on news inside and outside of the zone.
This night Sarah and Mandy met the Nelson twins, Jonathan and Rick, and Boris Keppling, who everyone called “The Bear”. As Mandy went to the counter to request their coffees, Sarah joined their fellow hunters at a table in the back. It was a large round table that after 10:00 PM was, by unspoken agreement among the other patrons, reserved for the hunters.
“S’up guys?” Sarah asked as she approached the table, “Busy night?”
“Not much,” Boris responded. I found a few Eaters over by the old cemetery on the north-east border. They resisted my suggestion that they stop attacking a couple of young scavengers who got caught out late. Well, if you gotta die I guess a cemetery is as good a place as any. How about you two?” he asked as Mandy joined them.
“Not too busy,” Mandy said. “Earlier on we took down a small group of Knockers, over by Owls Head Park enclave. Sassy went all soft on a Knocker kid named Preston.”
“Well he did try to save that little scavenger girl, didn’t he?” Sarah responded to her partner’s jibe. “Besides, he promised to drop his colours.”
Jonathan Nelson snorted. “As if that’s going to happen; when have you ever seen a ganger drop his colours? Even if he wants to, if he does, he’s dead. You know that. No one quits a gang and survives, not even if he’s Masher Mike’s kid brother.”
“I dunno Jon,” Sarah countered, “I can’t help thinking that this kid is going to try. He would have been dead anyway, if the big guy had noticed his fake. At least I hope he’ll try.”
“Any other news?” Mandy asked.
“Yeah,” Boris answered. “Could be a big noise coming from across the river. You know that for a while now someone has been taking down the chicken hawks, and ripping them off for their credits and their pods? Well it seems that the pervs have gotten together to catch the one who’s doing it.
“I have a source in Queens that says they’ve hired a bunch of off-duty cops from the NYPD, and a couple of retired Guardsmen, to come over here and catch him or her. They rented skimmers from the Galoran embassy to avoid having to go through Bridge Security protocols. They are really serious.”
As he finished his report he looked directly at Sarah, adding “They’re out for revenge. If I were the hunter doing this, I would back off for a while. You never know when it might be a trap”
“Your source is good?” Mandy asked, concerned.
“Very good, he is an NYPD cop named Digby, who lives in Queens, where they tried to recruit first; you know, to avoid the river crossing altogether. Only they got almost no takers there when it became obvious that they were looking to have the hunter killed. In the beginning the pervs didn’t want a live defendant testifying in court about what they are doing with Brooklyn’s scavenger children.”
“So what’s their mission now?” Sarah asked.
“Take her alive,” Rick Nelson said flatly. Everyone at the table turned to look at him in surprise. Among the hunters everyone knew that Sarah was the “Pervert Hunter”, but no one admitted it. Even when talking to her they kept her identity generic, just in case anyone was listening. There was a large reward already being offered by a front group for the offenders. It was large enough to seduce even an enclave resident to turn her in if they knew.
Without missing a beat Rick continued, “They’ll kill him themselves,” he said to throw off any listeners. “It ain’t as if they’re shy ’bout killing. Though I can’t help but have pity for whoever it is. I am sure that his or her death will be long and painful.”
Everyone around the table nodded their agreement of his assessment. Everyone went quiet for a while, and a cloud hung over the group.
“Oh,” Mandy finally said, in an effort to lighten the mood, “In other news, Ellen Schmidt and Geo Evans are getting hitched. They are planning to hold it near Sunset Park. It will be in the ruins of the old basilica on 60th Street. Reverend Olsen and Rabbi Nichols will co-officiate. It’s set for next May. It’s just too bad they can’t get out of the borough for their honeymoon, though I suppose that we’ll all have to watch their usual patrol routes for a couple of weeks anyway.”
Mandy’s attempt to change the mood worked. For the next hour the conversation was on much more pleasant topics. Nonetheless, Sarah was going over Boris’ news in the back of her head for the rest of the night.
Next day, as the afternoon waned, Sarah began to prepare for her evening hunt. She donned a very fetching outfit normally worn by a girl of twelve or thirteen. “Being small has its advantages,” she often said. She had bought a few different sets of clothing from the scavengers. They were old enough and worn enough to make her look authentic. They were loose enough to give her fighting room, and they were brief enough to get her target “audience” to start salivating. As she stuffed her nunchaku into a concealed pocket in her specially constructed scavengers’ bag, Mandy came to her room.
“I don’t know, Sassy,” she began, “don’t you think that you should lay low for a while? I mean you said it yourself, the numbers are way down. You’ve obviously got them scared.”
“Scared is not enough, Mandy,” Sarah replied. “They’re still coming, and kids are still disappearing.”
“You realize that fewer pods means a greater chance that one of them might be a trap vehicle. You could make your move and find yourself waking up in binders in the back of a Manhattan bound skimmer.”
“It’s worth the risk,” Sarah argued, “I’ve saved more than fifty children and confiscated enough travelpods that I’ve driven down the price with the outer-marketers.”
“Sassy,” Mandy pleaded, “I don’t want to lose you.” Sarah could see the worry on her face. “You’re not just my partner and my friend; you’re the little sister I never had. I’d rather die that death myself than let you suffer it. Please don’t go.”
“Compromise, you come along as back up” Sarah offered. “They can’t have recruited that many cops; not without giving them a really good cover story. We can take them, together. And if it isn’t a trap, we have one more perv out of our territory. Besides,” she added, “at least I’d die in Manhattan. I’d be closer to my folks.”
“Actually you wouldn’t.” Mandy told her. “I forgot to tell you. I was visiting Señora Gutiérrez yesterday. She had a copy of The Times. Your father was just elected Earth’s Vice-Chancellor. Your family is in The Hague.”
Sarah had mixed emotions about the news. She was proud of her father and pleased about his election, but now the possibility of ever reuniting seemed very dim. She paused for a moment, then steeling herself she said, “Time to hunt pervs. You coming?”
Her momentary mood shift was not lost on Mandy, but seeing her determination she responded, “Compromise accepted, just let me change.”
The pair went out to an area by the north-east boundary line with Queens, not far from where Boris the Bear said he had taken down a couple of Eaters the night before. One of the exit points to and from Queens was close by. Sarah reasoned, as it turned out correctly, that the pervs wouldn’t be going far from an escape point to do their hunting. They would want a quick in-and-out.
Near the end of the Jackie Robison Parkway there were a lot of abandoned homes, still standing, but just barely. There was also a public storage that was teetering on its last legs. In the past the scavengers used to give that area a pass as too dangerous. Only, so many decades after the blast, the safest sites had been picked clean, so scavenger children were beginning to venture into this area.
Mandy positioned herself on the roof of the remains of the post office at the corner of Atlantic and Pennsylvania. Sarah hid just inside the door. If Mandy saw a pod approaching from the vicinity of the Parkway she would signal Sarah, who would pretend to be a scavenger girl who had just struck out inside.
The pair took their respective positions. They didn’t have long to wait. Within fifteen minutes a very high-end looking pod turned slowly onto Atlantic. Sarah went into her
act. She hadn’t considered it, but her increased caution as she showed herself to the passing driver actually made her seem younger.
The pod stopped and the driver lowered the window. “Hey little girl, any luck? No? If you want, I can help you.” He waved his credit chip.
Sarah brightened up for the man. She gave him a nervous smile. “What do I have to do?” she asked in a small voice.
“Nothing difficult, just come for a drive with me. I’m looking for my lost puppy. The guard at the Queens gate says he ran this way. It’s hard to drive and look. Will you help? I’ll give you twenty credits.”
Sarah’s eyes went wide. For any scavenger girl twenty credits was a fortune. She ran to the opening passenger door. The driver proffered his hand as though to help her in. Sarah noticed the tube inside his sleeve. He was going to use a tranquilizer dart. She beat him to it. Her stinger was set to max stun. He slumped over the control panel. Only the open door prevented the pod from instantly going into auto-return mode. The pervs were learning.
Leaving the door open, Sarah disabled the auto return and opened the driver’s door. She pulled the perv from the car and proceeded to search him for his valuables. As she went she removed all his clothing. Just as she was stripping off the last stitch, Mandy joined her. “He’s a real perv, I guess. There are no observers in the area,” she reported.
Together they bound the victim and tossed him in the back of the pod along with Mandy’s bike. Driving to an area near Jamaican Bay, they dropped him off near the Belt Way gate into Queens, and then took the pod to Mortimer Snerd. Mortimer was a most disagreeable outer-market dealer, but he had the reputation for the zone’s version of honesty that many didn’t. Negotiations went quickly and Sarah and Mandy were out of his “place” early enough for one more perv hunt.
Chronicles of the Stellar Corps: Sassy Page 5