by John Burks
I got out of the bed quietly and made my way back into the living room. Most everyone else had drifted off to bed. Frank sat there, sipping coffee, waiting for me.
“Was it everything you thought it would be?”
My temporary euphoria was replaced with guilt. “I’m sorry, man… I just…”
“Don’t worry one bit about that, Jack. If you hadn’t, Jane would have been punished tomorrow. Trust me, that the punishment would have been much worse than whatever the two of you did together. They might have even killed her, all things considered.”
“Which is what, exactly? Why the hell did they have a picture of me? Why are they looking for me?”
“That, kiddo, I don’t know. Honestly. I don’t have the slightest idea, though I’ve seen your picture all over Fortress. There are wanted posters with it on it. You were a lot younger in it, obviously, but there isn’t any doubt it’s you. They’ve been looking for you a long time, maybe since the place got started. I wish I could tell you more, but I don’t honestly know any more.”
I didn’t know what to think of just what he’d told me. Why would someone in Fortress be looking for me? The picture had come from the containment house my father and I had shared. He’d taken the picture. But he was dead now. The place was probably a moldy pile of rotted wood by now. I didn’t know for sure, obviously. I hadn’t been back since. There was no reason to. None of it made sense, but it didn’t matter. I’d figure all of that out when I got away from Fortress.
“I appreciate what you have told me,” I told Frank honestly.
“Are you going to do it?”
“What’s that?”
“Are you going to bring her back here? To trade.”
I didn’t hesitate. “I don’t think I can. Not with everything I’ve seen now. It isn’t… right. I lied about her wanting to come back. I’m sorry for that. I just didn’t know what to do.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Frank said with the first smile I’d seen on him since arriving. “I want you to take this. It isn’t much, but it might help you to get away from the guards they are going to send with you.”
He handed me a single shot derringer. I broke open the breech and pulled out the one round. I knocked against the table, making sure it sounded good.
“Guards?” I hadn’t planned on that. I figured I’d just walk out the Club Flesh gates in the morning.
“You don’t think they’re going to let the guy they’ve been searching after for nearly ten years, the guy who just happens to know where the prodigal daughter happens to be, go out into the city on his own, do you?”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” I told him honestly. My planning, as of late, hadn’t exactly been well thought out.
“Trust me on this one, kid. You’re not going out without an escort. I half suspect, as much as they’ve wanted you for whatever reason, you might never go anywhere without an escort again. Out there, tomorrow in the ruins, that’s going to be your one and only chance. That little gun isn’t much, I know. But use it right and get you and Jenna the hell away from this craziness.”
“Okay,” I said meekly, trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do.
“Promise me, kid. I need to hear it.”
“Why does it matter to you so much?”
“Because when they find out what I’ve done, at best, they’ll kill me. Worse, they’ll kill all the non-fertile Touchers.”
I started to argue with the man, to tell him there had to be another way, but he looked pretty adamant. I’d seen that look, though it had been a long time.
He had the look of someone resigned to their fate, someone who was tired of fighting it.
Scenic Route
Frank was, as it turned out, exactly right. Two guards waited for me outside the Hotel at daybreak. They held my suit between them and tossed it on the ground at my feet.
“Put it on,” one said. There was no telling them apart. Their military issue bio-armor was spotless and they were indistinguishable from each other.
I was surprised, when I began buckling it, that new seals were in place. All that heartache, all the stressing I’d done over it and there they were, good as new.
“I don’t understand. How do you know I’ll deliver on my end of the deal if you already gave me the seals?”
“Consider them a loan from the boss,” the soldier said. “If you don’t deliver he wants you tied from the top of Old Miss and left.”
I doubted that, but didn’t say anything. They weren’t going to kill me if they’d been looking for me that long. I might not be a Toucher, but I was valuable to these people for some reason. If anything, the boss was protecting me for whatever reason he’d been searching me out. I was careful to conceal the small pistol as I dressed, thankful the two men weren’t staring at me. I slid it into my gauntlet where I could palm it when I slid it back off. Hopefully I’d get the chance.
“So how was it?” one of the suited soldiers asked.
“And which one? Tell me it wasn’t the old one. I man, the really fucking old one. I hate that one.”
I knew they were talking about Jane and also knew exactly what they meant. I was sure the non-Toucher soldiers of Fortress got the whole tour on a regular basis. I wasn’t going to let them get to me. I’d keep my promise to her.
“I don’t mind her, so much,” the first soldier said. “It’s the damn Asian woman I can’t stand. All that goddamn crying. You’d think she’d be used to her place by now.”
“The fucking kids are great too,” the first added. “All that fucking squirming and kicking. Reminds me of the sandbox back in the day. Those were some tasty fucking treats man.”
“I’ll tell you what,” the second continued. “I can’t wait to get my hands back on Jenna. That was a sweet piece of sweet piece of ass right there. Is that pussy still good, kid? Or did you fuck it up?”
I ignored it. It was hard to do, but I got my armor on. I saw myself in the reflection of the Hotel’s glass door. My dented and dirty suit was a stark contrast to the soldier’s. The fact they both sported assault rifles didn’t help matters any either.
“Can we get this show on the road?” I asked, as I adjusted the suit’s speaker level. “I want to be free of you guys and this place. Let’s get this deal done.”
Their laughter only confirmed what I already knew. If I brought them Jenna, neither of us would ever leave this place again.
The drone circled out, away from us, high in the sky, as we stepped out of the front gates at Club Flesh. The buzz of its tiny electric motors was easily discernible and was going to announce our presence to every scavenger in the area. I didn’t know how many of those would try and attack the two armed guards. I wouldn’t have. But maybe, just maybe, if we made enough noise, I could somehow get away from them. All I needed was the right distraction.
“Which way to the girl, kid?” one asked. “I want to hurry up and get this shit over with.”
“That way,” I said, pointing in the absolute opposite direction of my penthouse. As a matter of fact, as I thought about it, I realized that I was pointing roughly in the direction of Big Woody’s place.
“Lead on, boy,” the other said and we began to march.
I figured the men were professional soldiers. They marched, one in front of me, one to the rear, and they were constantly scanning the area for threats. The drone buzzed above us and I had no doubt that the men at least had radio communications with Fortress. They might even have the full battlefield setup, with GPS positioning, video overlays, and active Heads Up Displays that the suits were designed form. I hadn’t turned on any of those systems in years. There hadn’t been anyone to talk to and there was no point, and the features were a battery drain. But, out of all around general curiosity, I fired them up.
It took a few moments for the HUD to light up, but, as it did, my suit automatically sought out the closest network. I saw the other two soldiers pop up on my display’s map, labeled as Loco One and Loco Two
.
“Don’t fuck up our net, kid,” I heard over the suit’s internal speakers. It wasn’t coming from the outside. I could tell by the lack of static. I was on their communications network.
“Loco One, Fortress.”
“Fortress, over.”
“Moving out, over.”
“Roger that, Loco One. Good hunting. And keep an eye on that kid. The boss is going to be furious if something happens to him. Over.”
“Roger that,” Loco One repeated. “We’ll talk to you when we get back in radio range.”
I don’t know if I was meant to hear that part or not. Or perhaps the men didn’t care if I knew they were going to be out of radio range. It was just one more piece of information to file away.
“Move it kid. Time’s wasting,” Loco One ordered.
“And there’s killing to do,” Loco Two answered.
“No problem,” I said, and then enabled the suit’s MP3 player. I figured a little Metallica would be enough to keep them off kilter.
“Turn that shit off,” Loco One ordered.
“Naw,” I replied, taking a risk. I needed to see how much I could get away with.
“Turn it off or I’ll fucking stomp your ass.”
“You really think the boss is going to want that?” I taunted. I needed to get them angry, get them off their game. It would be the only way I got through this.
“Fuck you, kid,” the soldier said, confirming what I was already thinking. He wasn’t going to do anything. “I will make you pay for this shit. It might not be today, but I will someday.”
As an answer I enabled the suit’s external speakers for music playback. The heavy guitar and drum lines rippled through the ruins. The two soldiers said nothing, but I was sure I could feel their anger. Good, I thought. Let them be angry.
We headed south, towards Big Woody’s and I did my absolute best to make as much noise as humanly possible. I’d never moved through the dangerous ruins like this, doing my best to attract trouble. I don’t know if my guards realized what I was doing or if they thought I was just stupid. I hoped for the later. We moved slowly, block to block, and I kept looking for an opportunity to get away from the two. Though distracted, they were good. They kept ordering me to slow down or speed up. I wasn’t going to be able to just slip away easily as I’d planned.
We moved though the city and I did my best not to lead them in complete circles. There wasn’t going to be any avoiding going to Big Woody’s, though, and when they finally realized I hadn’t led them right to Jenna, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. It was late afternoon by the time I finally got to Big Woody’s place.
“This is it?” One asked me. “This is where you’re keeping our girl?”
I had to turn down the Metallica in order to hear them. “Yeah, this is it. She’s up there,” I lied. I was going to have to do something between here and there. There just wasn’t any other choice. “I’ll go get her. Wait here.”
I started forward, but a hand on my shoulder stopped me. “You’re not going anywhere without us, kid,” Loco One told me. “And why do I get the impression that’s exactly what you want to do?”
Two stepped in front of me. “You know the boss wants you safe, kid,” he said, brandishing a long, sharp blade. “But what the boss doesn’t know won’t hurt him. You keep fucking us around, I’m going to cut you.”
With the music turned down I could finally hear the neighborhood. There were the typical sounds of the wind rustling trash in the streets, old, rotting wood creaking and giving with weight. I heard the tinkle of glass as a plate window, form somewhere high up on one of the buildings, gave way, showering the street. But I heard something else, too, something you’d only hear after staying alive for years. I heard the sound of a bio-armor shifting on concrete. It might be nothing, or it might be someone else out there, following us.
And that was exactly what I wanted.
I looked around, waiting for the person following us to do something. The drone circled overhead.
“What are you looking for, kid? You have someone out there?”
“Scavenger rats don’t have anyone,” Loco Two answered. “That’s their problem. They always work alone.”
“Yeah, maybe. But this fucker is up to something. Get up there and check it out. See if he has a friend. And, if he does, the boss didn’t say shit about that. Cut him into little pieces.”
“Roger that,” Loco Two replied with a zeal that told me the man had probably, at some point in the past, enjoyed cutting people into smaller pieces.
“Get behind that car,” Loco One ordered, shoving me down behind the rusted hulk of a pizza delivery vehicle. “Stay under cover.”
I watched Loco One watching as his friend dashed across the street, taking cover where he could. Once he’d ducked into the building across the street I knew I had to make my move. I carefully slid off my suit’s gauntlet and gripped the little derringer pistol. One shot… that was all I had. I clicked the hammer back and stood. Loco One turned to me.
“What the fuck?”
I put the pistol to his visor and pulled the trigger. The recoil on the little gun was insane, but the neat hole and spider webbed armor glass was quite satisfying. Loco One fell backwards, dead before he ever hit the pavement.
“What the fuck? Rick?” I heard over our ad hoc communications network. “You are so fucking dead, kid.”
What the hell am I doing? I thought seconds later. I bolted for the stairs, heading up to the twentieth floor apartment as gunfire erupted from the second floor of the building across the street.
I scrambled through the barricade on the second floor that I’d torn apart earlier and then, on second thought, pulled it down behind me. It would take Loco Two a precious few seconds to dig his way through it, seconds I could use up in Big Woody’s to figure out exactly what I was going to do. There was only one thing I could do, and as I bound up the stairs three at a time, my bio-suit clanking along like thunder in the stairwell, I tried to talk myself out of what I was going to have to do.
I’d killed my father. I had to. He was about to kill me. But I hadn’t taken another man’s life, not like this. At this point, though, it was like with my father. I was going to have to kill this guy or Jenna and I were going to be prisoners of Fortress for the rest or our lives. Worse, we might be killed. There wasn’t any getting around it.
Loco Two was going to have to die.
I made it up to the twentieth floor quicker than I had any of the times before, even with the heavy bio-suit. The apartment was just as I’d left and, for a second, I laughed about that. This place could go twenty years and stay exactly as I’d left it. The treasures contained in Big Woody’s apartment could rot there. It might be that no one ever found the place again.
I did my best to ignore Big Woody’s corpse under the plastic sheeting and went to the gun rack. There were a multitude of rifles and I selected an M-4, made sure the magazine was loaded, and pulled the charging lever. That’s when I saw the box of grenades.
“Kid…” I heard over the suit’s intercom. “Kid are you all right? Where the fuck are you?”
I didn’t answer and went to the stairwell. I waited.
“Kid, I’m hit pretty good, but I think I got that fucker. He’s not shooting anymore. Get back here. I need help.”
I heard the sound of footsteps in the stairwell followed by the crash of steel as he pushed through the barricade. I also saw his blip on the HUD coming closer. What was he trying to pull?
“Yeah,” he said with a laugh. “Maybe I ain’t hurt too bad. Get down here boy. I don’t give a fuck what your daddy says. You’re going to pay for setting us up like that.”
My daddy? What the hell was he talking about? He must have meant it metaphorically, as in protection. My father was dead. I’d killed him.
“If you leave now,” I finally replied, “I won’t kill you.”
“Kill me? Funny kid. I was putting assholes like you down when the plague start
ed. I’m a fucking warrior, boy. What the fuck are you?”
I let the first grenade drop and listened with satisfaction as it exploded. I had no idea how far down it had gone or if had even gotten close to the soldier.
“Oh, yeah. Funny asshole,” I heard, disappointed Loco Two hadn’t died. “Keep it up and I’m going to fucking kill you slow.”
I followed with three more grenades, listened, and then just started throwing everything in the box. Something was going to hit him, I was sure. I didn’t want to look at him and kill him, not like I had when I’d shot my father. I wanted it to be sterile. Maybe I wouldn’t have nightmares about it then.
Twenty-five explosions later I had convinced myself that if I dropped anymore, I was going to take down the building. His blip disappeared on my HUD, but that didn’t mean much. The tech we still relied on was old. It was falling apart. I listened for a long time and didn’t hear anything. That didn’t mean anything either. Loco Two was, just as he’d said, a professional soldier. He could move quietly. But he also knew I had the high ground and, with that, the advantage. I was going to have to go down there and look for myself.
I checked the rifle once more and headed down. I went as silently as I could, but each step reverberated like thunder in the stairwell. If he was waiting for me, he was going to have all the advantages. Sweat poured down my face, and it was fogging up the inside of my visor. There was no way to wipe it off without taking it off and I didn’t have time for that. Besides, if his suit had been damaged, I’d be exposed to him.
I crept down, shining the rifle’s light in the nooks and crannies. My rain of grenades had done a lot of damage to the stairwell and parts were unstable. I leapt over one six foot gap and there he was, laid up against the wall, his face shield busted and gurgling blood.
“Nice one there, kid,” he said, coughing up black death. “You fucking did me right, didn’t you?”
I kicked his rifle away, never taking the barrel of my own from his face. “What did you mean about my daddy?”