Duke loped easily by my side, oblivious to the infrequent intrusions of other bikers on the road. He was wearing a red bandana and carrying light bullet proof saddle bags. I always seemed to get the right of way when Duke ran alongside the bike. We hadn’t seen any road surfers, with their elaborate set ups which combined mini-surf boards on skate wheels with billowing nylon sails designed to catch the wind. They usually keep to the huge eight- or ten-lane old expressways where breezes are not deflected by buildings and there is more room to work up to the breakneck speeds they seek.
Bikers and road surfers use the abandoned super highways with enough frequency to keep several lanes relatively weed free, although the multitude of rusting vehicles make for an interesting obstacle course. The steep, circular concrete ramps that mark the confluence of two or more mega roads, are often sites of clan skate board competitions. And I have heard that north of the city at O’Hare airport there are well organized road surfing races—complete with a gambling operation and a food franchise run by a northside Folks clan.
It is rare that I see someone riding a horse. To the west of us there are several wild herds, but no one—including ourselves—has attempted to domesticate the beautiful animals. The maintenance of a bike is much less demanding than that of a horse. But of course, you can’t eat a bike if things get rough. It occurred to me then that the four of us should discuss taming horses for transportation and hauling.
Despite decades of the ravages of fire and never-ending rust and weeds and trees, the buildings and roads are relatively undamaged. In my reading I discovered that the roads, bridges and finite, man-made structures that supported civilization and technology in the 20th and 21st had been called the “infrastructure.” And apparently in America it had been crumbling.
But in the past three decades, the infrastructure that had worried 20th cen politicos has received no wear and tear from cars and trucks; and no acid rain or toxic fumes from exhausts. Plants, weather, and rust are the only enemies of these roads, bridges, and buildings. According to the vids, the pyramids are still standing after thousands of years, so I figure it is safe for Duke and me to travel on the highways…at least for a few more decades.
When prepping our missions, the four of us scout likely locations of valued supplies and equipment in the yellow pages and old newspaper ads—warehouses, grocery stores, drug stores, manufacturing facilities, computer stores—and then target ten or twenty good prospects within a mile radius on the map. Most of the time the sites have already been ransacked by local clans, but Chicago and suburbs is a big place with a small population so there is plenty to go around if you are persistent.
On this trip I investigated nineteen targeted sites and found usable items in three of them. But what I found along the way was usually more interesting than the primary objectives. The journey itself was always a source of discovery.
Since I had stumbled upon the massacre in the parking lot, we had been in a frenzy of new construction and modification of our compound. Relations were getting very spooky among the clans and we were determined to be as ready if someone came calling. Discovery, we felt, was inevitable. Only the fact that the Messengers were too busy battling other clans and locating weapons and food sources for their new members had spared us. The Babe still wanted Duke and me, but matters of state kept him from mounting a systematic search.
Maybe, Sarah wished, eventually The Babe would lose interest. Weasel raised his eyebrows and tsked, the professor admonishing an errant student.
The main focus of my trip was the restocking of construction materials—sealed boxes of nails, powered drills and and screw drivers with new bits, wood screws, carriage bolts. Our latest concentration had been in hiding all traces of the walls and strengthening the razor-topped barbed wire, grape vines and a raspberry patch barrier that stood between enemies and the house.
I clearly recalled a years old conversation—Sarah, Weasel and I, inspecting the compound’s defenses. When we had finished the outer perimeter, Weasel had leaned up against the wall and thumped his knuckles on it a few times.
“They got this new thing out now,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “What’s that?”
“It’s called fire,” he said. “Been known to demolish things like walls.”
“Well, shit,” I replied, frustrated by the fact that Sarah and I had never figured out that we should have worried about fire, “they were plumb out of structural steel when me and Sarah built this thing. Taking, I might add, six months of our lives at hard labor.”
“Gonna take much less time to bring it down,” Weasel replied.
As I prepared to sleep, my thoughts turned not to house and hearth, but bunkers, booby traps, and saturation fire zones. I wasn’t sure, but I knew that if a couple hundred screaming Messengers pumped up on Bad Boy or Slammer attacked the compound, we would need all the extra protection we could muster. Each of us could only fire one assault rifle at a time. And Duke still hadn’t figured out modern warfare. He remained an old fashioned tooth and claw guy.
I found an innocuous vacuum repair store in a strip mall in Addison for the night. My last thought as I drifted into sleep was that getting the hell out seemed the better alternative than fighting.
• • • •
The next morning Duke and I continued to scout, walking the streets, careful of whose turf we ventured across, looking for nothing in particular, open to anything that could catch my eye. That was how I stumbled onto a store in a little high end strip mall called I Spy, You Spy. Weapons and security systems came into mind, and I walked through the doorless entrance hoping to get lucky.
Beneath the dust and litter, the broken cases and faded paint, pitted and peeling chrome, I saw it had been a boutiquey little joint, lots of greys and blacks and whites, a high tech little shop full of eavesdropping devices and home and auto security systems. One stop shopping for New Millennials who wanted to eavesdrop on their lovers and friends.
On the floor behind the cash register, where it had probably fallen from a wall display, I found the little treasure—PRIVCOM 2023. The tag line on the box called it “the ultimate in covert communication.” It also informed me it was the first time this “military and police communication system was available to the general public”. The bantam box, half the size of a brick, light as a sparrow, was priced at $1999.95. Grabbed my attention. We didn’t use money, but I knew the item was pricey.
Inside the box was a crystal stud earring, “adaptable to pierced or cuff styles” said the instructions. It was about the size of a half carat diamond. Also inside the box was a dozen finger nail size adhesive skin patches (derms) in different skin tones, three wafers half the size of a penny and a tiny chip with two little hair thin wires protruding from one corner.
As I read the instructions, I discovered the earring was a receiver, the circuitry embedded in the crystal and 18k gold setting. Cuff style, it fit over the outer ear, lipping into the big indentation that surrounded the ear canal. If used as a pierced earring, it had to be on the lobe or near the lobe.
The little chip with the two minuscule antennae was a wireless microphone, which fit one of the small wafers, which were paper thin lithium ion batteries. The mike and the battery then slipped into a little pocket on the derm, which in turn was placed on the throat, over the voice box. If you matched skin color, the derm was nearly invisible.
The finished product, when packaged with one or more identical systems attached to fellow clandestine friends, lovers, or co-conspirators, was a hands-free wireless communication system. Same principle as the walkie-talkies still used by some of the clans or the headsets used by security forces in the 21st. Just smaller.
Only two problems. Finding some more and getting the batteries charged. In the back room I found seven more boxes. I owed I Spy, You Spy $16,000.00. Weasel would solve the battery dilemma. This, I said to myself, was a good two days’ work.
• • • •
New day, home in our sites, Duk
e and I had a typical field breakfast, biscuits, raspberry jelly, venison jerky, and cider. I stuffed about fifty pounds of my loot into the Orleib panniers, mostly tools and nails, plus the eight comm sets, and strapped them on the rear and front bike mounts. The weapons were not stored. The Glock 17L went in its holster across my chest and an Uzi 9mm machine pistol with two twenty round clips crossed the Glock, so I had a weapon available on each side. I covered them both with a light army camo jacket. After checking the tires on the 18 speed, I headed home, moving at a leisurely pace west on Roosevelt Road, Duke cruising by my right side.
As we moved into a town called Lombard, we entered a zone which was essentially about fifteen km of strip malls. On both sides of Roosevelt Road there were fast food places and countless consumer stores catering to every possible human and machine necessity—office equipment, beauty houses, drugstores, restaurants, auto repair, stereo and vid sales, medical centers, used cars, furniture. They had all been looted, burned or trashed. Most of the bare walls wore the signs of the clan who claimed that territory.
At the precise moment that I realized that I made an enormous blunder, it was too late to correct it. It had over two months since The Babe and Satan’s Messengers slaughtered the Gaylords in the college parking lot. All had been quiet since then. No bad news. No news at all.
That was the mistake. I had allowed the Cobras to slip from my mind, replaced by the Messengers as a point of concern. The Babe was standing right next to a Cobra when the parking lot massacre was over.
Thinking of how Stevie and Weasel would react to the treasure I carried, looking forward to seeing Sarah, sleeping in our own bed, making love, I had unknowingly passed a border about a mile back.
We were in Insane Cobra Nation territory…and I was in a daydream, a space cadet not ready for any sort of trouble, thinking about sex, visualizing Sarah, when Duke growled a warning, snapping me out of my fantasy.
Up ahead about 200 meters I could see a group of ten men spread across the road, standing in front of their bikes.
“Easy, boy,” I said, slipping off the bike and walking it. If I turned and ran, exposing my back, they would run us down. Had they been on foot, we would have bolted. I chose to face them, hoping to talk my way out.
As we got closer, I could make out their green and black colors. Cobras. I did not see distinctive 280 pound form of their leader, Roberto. He was a huge man, built like a block of granite with a head on top. Even his cranium was square. But he was always quick to smile; and every time we had met, the two of us had spent at least an hour talking, trading stories and stockpiling bits of intelligence about what was happening with the clans.
All of those friendly meets had been before I had witnessed a Cobra in bloody consort with the Messengers at the college parking lot. There had been no communication between us since then. I didn’t know if it was good news or bad news that Roberto was absent.
I scanned right and left, glanced quickly behind us. It was all clear. The danger was in front. Too close to outrun bullets, I kept on walking, hoping I appeared unalarmed. Showing fear or hostility would encourage their aggression.
“I’m sorry, boy,” I told Duke. “I fucked up. We get out of this and I owe you one.” He looked up at me, and I scratched his ear.
I stopped within 6 meters of them, laid the bike on the road and put Duke on heel. He would remain still unless someone made an aggressive move toward me. He did not growl. He did not snarl. He just sat on his haunches and observed.
He was trying to look as harmless as 120 pounds of golden lab could. I didn’t see him passing as a toy poodle, but the group of Cobras were not focusing on him.
When we stopped, the ten Cobras spread out in a semi-circle around us. Not a welcoming gesture. They kept the six meters distance between us. Their posturing disturbed me.
By my left side, I could feel Duke shift his weight. He transitioned into high alert. I trusted his instincts, shared his apprehension. I could feel my heartbeat increasing and tried to keep the adrenalin down by breathing slowly and remaining focused. I knew Duke’s head was slowly traversing a 180 degree arc defined by the ten clan members. I wasn’t worried about his breaking position. He would not move unless I signaled or the Cobras attacked.
The man in the middle was the best dressed and most heavily armed. He had an old short barrel .38 special in his belt right in the center and an army issue .45 holstered on his right side, gun slinger fashion. The flap was still buttoned, telling me he felt he was in control. Duke was on my left, so I shifted very slightly to my right so he could have a better line at the leader.
I could see in his eyes that he recognized me. It made him very happy. I kept my face blank, not wanting him to know that I, too, remembered our last encounter, recognized the bright cobra tattoo on his left cheek, recalled how it had filled the lenses of my binoculars as he stood with The Babe watching Duke and me survey the the remnants of their bloody handiwork.
I directed my comments to him. At six feet tall, he was shorter than I and a very thin, pallid man. His hair was jet black, shoulder length and incredibly dirty. I wanted to ask him if there was a water shortage.
A nasty herpes sore adorned his thin, cracked lips. His eyes shined with a drug induced intensity, probably crystal meth or wicki, hopefully not Slammer or Bad Boy. I guessed him to be about 22 years of age. He looked 40, but most clan soldiers didn’t live that long.
When I last saw him in the parking lot with The Babe, the sun had just risen over a blood washed battlefield. His face was sharply focused in my binoculars, eyes gleaming with rage, clothes soaked in blood, lips twisted in a maniacal smile that distorted the tattoo of a hooded cobra on his right cheek. I would never forget his face.
We were in deep shit.
“I am honored to be in the territory of the Insane Cobra Nation,” I said in my most obsequious tone. “Where’s Roberto? I would like to pay my respects to him.”
The man in the middle smiled. There was no warmth and very few teeth in it. “Roberto takes care of business elsewhere,” he said. “My soldiers and I patrol this area. I’m the man here. You talk with me. My name is Felipe, but they call me `The Edge.’ You will call me ‘sir’.” He tapped a huge Bowie knife strapped to his belt and smiled again, a walking monument to all the dead dentists.
I bowed from the waist, keeping contact with his eyes, a difficult task as they danced in and out of reality. “Perhaps you could escort me to Roberto. I have some information for him,” I lied to his greasiness. The only thing I had for Roberto was a profound wish that he could get us out of this situation.
“Tell me your tales,” he said. “I will pass it on if it seems important.”
Having no information to share and doubting the Edge would remember a word I said even if I did, I improvised. “I feel it would be disrespectful to Roberto’s position if I do not tell him directly.”
Chain of command was big in the Cobras. Maybe he would pass me through out of respect for his leader, send some men back to his headquarters, give us a chance to escape.
The Edge graced me with another picket fence smile. This time a few facial tics dotted his face, a sign he was mixing his drugs and was a few minutes beyond the need for a tune up.
“I know you, McCall. You talk with many clans,” he said.
They had my name. I hoped that was all. McCall and a dog.
Felipe continued. “We don’t like that any more. The Cobras aren’t interested in a `peaceful relationship’ with you.” He spat a hocker toward my feet, as if the concept of harmony left a bitter taste in his mouth. “We don’t like you in our territory any more. This is for People only.” He made a grand sweeping gesture, as if he personally ruled over vast regions of wealth, rather than a minuscule corner of the Cobra Nation, a border outpost, a collection of burned out bagel stores and beauty shops and less than a dozen freaked out punks with a bad color sense.
Then he spoke the words that that triggered a profound appreciation of home and hear
th in my mind. “I speak for the Cobras and our new allies, Satan’s Messengers. You will no longer walk our territories.”
Bribery was my best shot. “I’ve got two O Z of dynamite weed,” I said, deliberately avoiding referring to him as `Sir’. “I offer this as a token of my high esteem to both you and Roberto. But I can also give you valuable information on the location of food and weapons, and when I return, I will bring items of value that will show my respect. I can bring you more weed. One hit stuff. It’ll blow you away. My gift to you when I come back.”
His smile returned and so did the tics, making it appear as his mouth was seeking a new home. The thought occurred to me that his clan name, `The Edge’, referred to the cliff that his sanity was teetering over.
“Listen to me, McCall,” he replied. “We don’t want your gifts; we don’t want your tolls; and we don’t want no fucking talk out of your mouth. We want you gone.” He dropped his eyes to my bike and backpack. “I think you are mistaken about having things to give us. I see many gifts that you can honor me with now. There is no need to wait. That bike is primo. Your weapons are very valuable. So are your shoes and clothing. Those Air Jordan’s you got on, McCall? We haven’t seen those for years around here.”
“Why settle for one pair?” I offered, lying through my teeth. “I can bring you back enough Jordan’s for you to form your own basketball league.”
“I think the one pair and your clothes and weapons will be enough for us today,” Felipe responded, his eyes greedily appraising my gear. “We will also take your dog. The women have nothing to cook for dinner tonight and all this work makes us very hungry.” A chorus of twitters followed his attempt at humor.
I could see in his eyes that we were already dead. He was mentally tallying the value of my cache, calculating what he could get in trade for the shoes, bike, and weapons. One of Weasel’s maxims popped into my head. Sometimes you do what they expect, make ‘em comfortable. Then you look real careful for the moment to do the unexpected. It’s always there. Finding it is the key—the exact right moment when you can surprise ‘em.
Blood of the Dogs_Book I_Annihilation Page 19