I looked at Collins and shrugged. We both took off at a run. I could tell I was a lot faster than I had been before, and Collins was about the same. We were halfway across the fields when Jimmy took off. He passed us before we reached the other end. Neither of us were winded, but Jimmy wasn’t either.
“The reason you run at the speed you do is because you don’t know you can do it faster. I don’t know what Zee’s capable of yet, but you’re capable of the same things I am. All Agents operate at different levels because of the imprint. The imprint tells them they can do something. The imprint they were installing in me knows the limitations of an Agent body. The speed I just ran across the field is the highest output you can achieve without the boost from the adrenals.”
“Holy shit,” Collins muttered.
“Now we’ll begin running at your normal speed around this field. When I speed up, I want you to match it. I’ll be twenty feet in front of you. Try to keep that range.”
Jimmy started at the speed we’d been running, and then he was pulling ahead. I tried harder, and found myself a lot closer than the twenty feet. I let it ease off a little and glanced to my right at Collins, who had a big grin on his face.
Then Jimmy was pulling ahead again, and we both picked up speed. I was grinning just as wide as Collins as we caught up again. Four more times Jimmy sped up, and we matched him. Now my breath was beginning to come faster than before, and the fifth speed-up left me lagging. I couldn’t match the other two. Collins was still hanging in there. I moved toward the center of the field and watched the two of them. I was starving. I pulled one of the calorie bars from an MRE in my pack and chewed on it.
The two of them made three more circles around the field before reaching Collins’ peak. It was a little less than Jimmy’s, but Jimmy was taller than Collins.
“Now I see what you meant when you asked how seven guys left me in the shape I was in.”
“I’ve seen Jimmy clear a building of close to fifty guys with nothing worse than skin busted on his knuckles. It healed right over in front of me. Damndest thing I ever saw. He doesn’t carry a weapon most days. Doesn’t need one.”
Jimmy pulled out a calorie bar as well and handed it to Collins. Then he opened one himself. “Operating at peak will burn calories very quickly.”
“I get that,” he said. “I’m starving.”
After we finished our MREs, Jimmy stood in front of Collins. “Now hit me.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
He looked over at me. I shrugged.
“Go ahead,” I said.
Collins raised his fists and swung a right hook. Jimmy was a foot to his right and the punch hit air.
“Damnit, man!” he swore.
“Again.”
Collins used a jab with much the same effect. Only Jimmy was behind him and tapped his shoulder.
“That speed you use while running is available for everything. You have to hone your focus so your mind is working with your speed. My program came with the skill; I’m guessing yours might not. It’ll take practice and a lot of focusing exercises. But you have the ability to move at that speed. I understand you’ve used your adrenals?”
“Yeah. Short bursts of speed and strength. But nothing like this.”
“This is what you can do without the adrenals. Using the boost from the adrenals should be a last resort if you’re already running at peak. Sometimes it may be necessary.”
“Like when you’re in a scrap with a Genofreak,” Collins said.
“Yes.”
“He may not be curious,” I said, “but I’d love to know how you ended up scrapping with a Genofreak.”
“It was down in Tennessee,” he said. “Guy was part lizard or something. He was a handful.”
“I imagine so,” I said. “There used to be a neighborhood in the city where a bunch of them still lived. Seems like it used to be over by the Convention Center.”
“The freaks took over the Convention Center,” Collins said. “There are several places you need to be careful of when you make these runs into the city. The Convention Center is one of them.”
“They’ll all need food.”
“What’s to keep them from taking it?” he asked.
“A fifty cal mounted on the second wagon, and two hundred or so Farmers with automatic weapons.”
“I hope that’s enough,” he said.
“I don’t think even the Genos will turn down free food,” I said. “If we were trying to take something from them, it might be different.”
“You can never depend on anyone thinking as rationally as you do,” he said. “There’s no telling what you’re going to run into in that place.”
“I’m planning on sending the next caravan in a different direction from the trouble spots. I plan on being with the one after that, so we’ll work our way deeper into that area and see if we can get this set up without bloodshed. But if we need blood, it would be better for Jimmy and me to be there.”
I took my place in front of Jimmy. I’d watched how fast he’d moved and came a great deal closer than Collins had come. Jimmy was still gone when my fist went through where he’d been.
“That’s faster than I did it,” Collins said.
“I watched him with you.”
“Smart move.”
“Still not fast enough,” I said.
“That’ll take time,” Jimmy said. “Not many people, Agent or not, can hit an assassin. The skill set available to one of us is nearly unparalleled. If they hadn’t messed up in the middle of the imprint, I’d have been gone and never come home. I have no idea what Stephen would have done in a world like this. I’m fairly certain he never would have returned to my home.”
“Stephen?”
“That was the name of the assassin in the database in which I was stored. His name was Stephen Gaunt.”
“So you think there’s a Stephen Gaunt running around out there?” Collins asked.
“It’s certainly possible,” Jimmy answered.
“I wonder if there’s a Joshua Collins. Or a Sam Spade.”
“Spade?” I asked.
“He was the imprint they tell me was used in my body more than any other. He was a hostage negotiator before the Fall.”
“I wonder if those people at the Mint really have an Imprinter still going.”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” he said. “Those clowns looked pretty damned dangerous. I never really knew how dangerous until today. I saw at least eight of them who had been Agents. They acted a whole lot like the guys I met back in Florida, but some of them were just regular people under the makeup. They didn’t move like the others, but there was something off about them. They all moved alike. It was really weird.”
“I wonder if they were imprints on normal people,” I said. “It would be a relief to know the nanites aren’t something they can use anymore. The personalities in the database would still make some pretty dangerous fighters if they have the same knowledge as someone like Jimmy.”
“That sure makes me feel…Nope, I don’t think that’s relief,” Collins said.
I chuckled. “You know, I guess that’s not what I feel either, when I think about it. Regardless, I’ll keep the next caravan away from that area of the city. I need to be here for a couple of weeks after what just went down with Drager.”
“If it means anything, I think you did the right thing with the man. I probably would have shot him. That’s how I figure you went the right direction. I usually do things the hardest way they could be done.”
“I do, too,” I said. “I wanted to just shoot the whole lot of ‘em. Pop would have been pissed about it though.”
“Let me ask you something.”
“What’s that?”
“Is he as tough as I think he is?”
“Tougher,” I said. “He and Jimmy walked right into Lassiter with me. We went through that zone and killed the whole lot of them. He never took a single bullet. I was shot to shit, and
Jimmy brought me back here. Pop stayed there and hung every one of them from the lampposts as a warning not to mess with the Farmers. Drager had no idea what he was getting himself into when he tried to get that fellow to kill Pop. He was lucky exile was all he got. A person needs to be careful who they cross in this Fallen World.”
* * * * *
Chapter 15
“Reckon it will do them any good?” I asked.
Pop and I stood watching the Caravan roll out. I’d spent the last two hours showing Kalet where I didn’t want the caravan to go in the city. While they were out, I planned to get the next one ready to go.
“I don’t know, son. It better, or they’re going to be joining Hollis.”
“We should have sent them out this time.”
“Try to remember where they came from, son. The world we lived in was one of corporate greed, and the only way to climb was to step on the backs of others to do it. We tried the old democratic way, but we’ve been corporate run for too long. Voting does no good when all you’ve known is taking care of yourself. I still remember the old way, and I tried my best to pass that on to you boys.”
“Some of them are old enough to have seen the old ways too, Pop.”
“Some aren’t, though,” he returned. “Trip is forty years old. He was pretty young when the corporations made their move. He doesn’t remember the Land of the Free. You wouldn’t know if I hadn’t preached it to you every day of your life. They sure didn’t teach about it in schools. The corporations had already subsidized the education system, and they taught a whole generation to be amenable to their control. Then some of the bigger cities like Detroit began turning their police force over to private security firms. I was twenty when Pennsylvania went corporate. Dad told me it was the beginning of the end, but I didn’t believe him until I joined the OAS. It was just ‘Obsidian Armed Security’ then. Didn’t take long to change that to Armed Forces when DU wanted to take Atlanta by force. Lost all my illusions about what we became after that. I sure hated to see my boys go off to fight for Obsidian, but the pay from service was good, and there hadn’t been any fighting for years.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Then JalCom.”
“Then JalCom.”
“Maybe if we’d gone west to the plains, you’d have seen some of the old US before they went corporate.”
“We’d be dead in a radiated wasteland right now.”
“You’ve got a point there,” he said. “Kind of like not being dead.”
“Me too, Pop.”
“Could have fooled me with that mad charge into Lassiter.”
“I didn’t like not being dead at the time,” I said. “I was still in pretty rough shape until you sent me out to see Allie.”
“I’ve been there, boy. You boys kept me alive when your mom passed away. In some ways I’m glad she didn’t have to see this.”
“She was always nice,” I said.
“I saw a lot of her in Neave,” he said. “I could see what you saw in that girl. Jayna would have had a kindred spirit in that girl.”
I nodded, watching the last wagon.
“I guess we better get back to work. I need to find a new suspension for Collins’ car. Already got the door patched and the window replaced. Most of the damage is taken care of.”
“Give him the car we took from those raiders in Destil.”
“I guess we could put the fuel from his car in the other.”
“Where is he?” he asked.
“He was out working with Jimmy last time I saw him. Where I should have been, I suppose. But they’re working at a higher level than I can do. The nanites are still working on me. I still have to eat every couple of hours. Hopefully that’ll taper off, or we’ll need all the MREs just to feed me.”
“Let’s hope not.”
“Speak of the devil,” I said. “There they come.”
I was pointing to our left toward the bean fields that had already been harvested.
“Damn, they’re moving fast,” Pop said.
“Yep.”
Both of them slowed as they reached the edge of our little settlement. Collins was grinning widely as he walked up to us. Jimmy was just…Jimmy.
“Now I see why you guys were so surprised that seven men had messed me up so bad,” he said. “Frankly, I’m a little embarrassed, now. Why the hell didn’t any of the others tell me I could do that?”
“Probably never occurred to them you didn’t know,” Jimmy said. “Also depends on what imprint they have. Some of the imprints only know they can do certain things. The assassin program knows all the limitations.”
“That makes sense,” he said. “Most of the guys are what they called guards.”
“Corporate guards are pretty tough to handle, but they’re nowhere near the limits of what they could really do. They’re programmed to protect the heads. Defensive abilities would be their prime skill packages. Used to be set up with an officer and six or seven guards to a squad.”
“That sounds about right,” he said. “Why am I able to match your speed then?”
“You don’t have anything telling you that you can’t. You didn’t have anything saying you could, either.”
“Then you said I could, so that changed things a little.”
Jimmy nodded.
“What if I told the others what they could do?”
“Might work, might not. The imprints tell the Agent what they can or can’t do. Breaking the programming might be hard to do.”
Collins nodded. “I’m going to have to get back down south soon.”
“We were working on repairs to the car, but the suspension is toast,” I said. “We might find the parts in time, but probably not anytime soon.”
“Damn, that’s a long walk.”
“Well, we do have a car we took from some raiders last year. It runs fine, but it doesn’t have the bulletproof glass like yours does.”
“Trade?”
“We can. We’ll get the fuel out of yours and put it in the other.”
“I don’t even know how to thank you guys for what you’ve done for me,” he said. “Not just with the car. The training is priceless.”
“We’ll stock the car with food and a couple of the Teledyne rifles. The only thing we really need is fuel. If we had diesel for the machinery, we could really do something about supplying enough food.”
“I might be able to do something about that. There are some folks down in Bayou La Batre with a lot of fuel. They could use some of this.”
He pointed toward the fields.
“I’m thinking we can do something with that,” Pop said. “Let’s talk a little before you head out. They’ll need some time to get your car stocked up anyway. Bayou La Batre, huh? I was down that way about thirty years ago. Wondered how much of the coast was left.”
“Some of it’s gone,” Collins said. “A big chunk of New Orleans is toast. Mobile is gone. Any of the bigger cities that aren’t gone are a lot like Philly. Some are worse. Chattanooga and Nashville are a mess. But there are some people out in the rural parts who still have some sort of civilization to them.”
Pop nodded. “Civilized folk are hard to come by in this Fallen World.”
* * * * *
Chapter 16
I watched the dust cloud as the car headed south. Collins was good people, even if he didn’t know who he was.
“Wonder if it’ll be a good thing to find his imprint, or a bad thing.”
“Yeah,” Pop said. “He’s good people now. What if he manages to get his imprint? He may be as bad as one of those clowns he was talking about. I wonder if he’s even thought about just living his life. He’s got a chance at a clean start to whatever life he wants.”
“Hope he doesn’t let those new skills go to his head. From the sound of those clowns, he still needs a lot of help to get into that place. I guess we’ll know more in a couple of weeks. I’m doing the run through that area on the next caravan.”
“You take Jimmy with you, son,�
� he said. “If those clowns are Agents, you may not be able to work them the same way as the others.”
“I know,” I said, “but the deal is more beneficial to them than it is to us. I can’t see them saying no to free food. And if they’re Agents, they’ll need more food than regular folks.”
“Just don’t go into the zone with guns blazing,” he said. “If they’re Agents, we don’t have enough people to do that.”
“I’ll be careful, Pop.”
“Maybe you should work those three zones on different trips.”
“Nope, I’ll go right through all three, one after the other. Frankly, I’m more worried about the Genos at the Convention Center. Gene splicing does things to people. Some of them have been driven crazy over the years. That’s part of why they ended that particular field, if I remember correctly.”
“They lived in the city for quite a while without any trouble,” Pop said. “Well, no trouble except the normal sort of trouble you find in one of the inner-city neighborhoods.”
“That’s true,” I said. “You know how feral regular people have gone. How feral will they go with those genetics?”
“Take plenty of ammo for the fifty,” he said.
“Damn straight.”
“I should go with you,” he said.
“You saw what happened last time you left the Farms, Pop,” I said. “We’ll take care of the trips out. You need to keep these people in line. We’ve got close to two thousand people out here, and I have no doubt there are some with aspirations.”
“I doubt it after what happened the last time. No one wants to be exiled from the Farms. Wouldn’t have sent Drager out, except he tried to have me killed.”
“Maybe you should keep Jimmy here.”
“Let’s just compare things,” he said. “You have a whole zone of assholes who dress in blue and snatch anyone they see fit, then you have a convention center full of Genofreaks. And on top of that, a bunch of former Agents dressed like friggin psychotic clowns. I have a few malcontents who just saw their shining example exiled from the Farms. I think Jimmy needs to go with you. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll double the Guard presence on this caravan. And everyone takes extra ammo.”
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