by Ric Beard
“Jenna, we’ve been sitting here for half an hour.”
Jenna’s eyes had fluttered open to find Sean standing in front of her with his back to the edge of the cliff and the Western horizon, wearing a smile.
“I thought maybe you were asleep.”
“Keep talking, smart ass,” Lexi had said, somehow in the same, comforting tone. “You’ll be sitting here next.”
Sean had held his hands up in a defensive gesture and walked away.
“He doesn’t strike me as the kind to settle his mind,” Jenna had said.
“You should talk.” Lexi had rubbed soft circles in Jenna’s back. “I haven’t seen him in a hundred years until a few days ago. But he’s the same guy I knew. Still impatient. Still jumpy. He needs to meditate.” She’d patted Jenna’s back and rubbed in a circle. “Now that you’ve been there, you’ll learn not to let your natural instincts bring you out of it. I’ll teach you how to time your meditation, so you come out when you want to. You can slow your heartbeat, even keep yourself warm.”
“How can you teach me all this?”
“The same way my foster father taught me. by giving me the tools to teach myself.”
Jenna heard a rattling sound and glanced to see the mother fucker screwing the hose into threads at the bottom of the tank.
10…9…8…
Her arms stroked in long even strides rippling the water as her feet dipped evenly in and out. Gently. Waking from the half-trance had caused her heart rate to rise, and the cold to rattle her muscles. The sound of water draining tempted her to smile, but she had work left to do here and smiling was a distraction.
Don’t show it. Give them nothing.
“Pretty impressive there, Jenna,” the woman’s deep, soft voice trailed in through the holes in the glass. “You look like a kitten at a cow’s tit.”
Nothing. 2…3…4…5…
“Silent treatment today, then?”
8…9…10…
“Is the water cold?”
8…7…6…
“You can stand up now, if you want.”
Keep floating until you feel the floor on your back, because fuck them.
Water flowed evenly back and forth as she matched her stroke to the count flowing through her mind.
This time, it was Augustus’s nasal whine that spoke.
“It’s almost like watching an angel, swimming on your back like that.”
1500-meter freestyle at Virginia Tech, asshole.
Her hand scraped something on the next down stroke.
The floor. Tank’s almost empty.
When she lowered her hands to the floor, they wiggled like overcooked spaghetti, and her legs weren’t any better. Bending at the waist so she could sit up, Jenna smiled at her accomplishment.
I live another day.
“Hello, Jenna,” the woman said. “I’m Ruby. I work for Sampson De Le court.”
Jenna considered the woman. A moment ago, in her semi-tranced state, she hadn’t acknowledged her existence. Now that she’d spoken the one name that piqued Jenna’s interest…
“I’m Jenna Clark,” she said through a shiver as she pushed herself up onto her feet. Fighting the desire of her legs to bend like tree saplings under a strong wind, she stepped closer to the glass. “You can tell Sampson De Le Court that he can go fuck himself.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
LIKE A GRAPE
32
After Moss used one of his shiny toys to scan the truck for trackers, besides the one Lexi and Sean had slapped on this one, they set up camp for the night. The post-adrenaline effects of the gunfight in the warehouse had left them both drained. Neither had slept since splitting off from Lexi and Sasha the previous morning. They’d reconfigured the stacks of drugs to fit Sean’s bike on the back, beneath the hard shell, and he drove for a few hours with Moss in tow in his Black Cat, to watch Sean’s six.
Waking early, they’d checked the sync of their throat mics and ear pieces before eating some rations Moss kept in his vehicle.
Even the guy’s field rations were good.
When Sean had asked Moss what they were made with, however, Moss said he probably didn’t want to know, but assured him they had plenty of protein. Sean had suddenly lost his appetite and agreed with Moss. He didn’t want to know.
Another line of storms moved in, and rain pounded the truck for hours. They’d had to pull off a few times when its wipers couldn’t clear the rain fast enough. This was one of those times.
Sean lounged with his pulse rifle resting next to him in the passenger’s seat, while Moss scouted ahead. It seemed the Black Cat had a water-repellant windshield to compliment horizontal wipers that joined in the center and zoomed to each side to repel the water.
The sinkholes they’d negotiated before had proved problematic on the return trip. The bulky truck suffered a much slower crawl than his bike had as it dismounted the remnants of asphalt and crossed muddy, rock-packed terrain down one unstable slope and up the other. Sean had been careful to keep the truck rolling, lest he beach the metal whale in the black muck.
Regardless of his preference to reach the compound in short order, he welcomed the stop to take a few breaths and rest his arms, sore from maneuvering the massive machine via the wide steering wheel.
Sean looked into his rearview and spied the wooden crates filled with yellow powder surrounding his hover bike. It occurred to him that, when Lexi and he had scouted the trucks throughout the region and tagged them, they might have better put two-and-two together by noting some trucks were covered with hard shells, when all the others they saw only contained rolled-up tarps for inclement weather. By ruling out the majority of the vehicles, they might have isolated the drug hauler a lot sooner and spared themselves camping in their pop-tents for months on end.
Hindsight is 20/20. Sean chuckled. Then again, Lexi would’ve wanted to mark them all anyway, for phase two.
He was pondering what destruction his sister might be raining down at that moment, when a blur of black motion appeared at the crest of the hill atop the broken asphalt. Sean’s earpiece clicked.
“All clear up ahead, looks like the scavengers have moved on.”
Sean nodded to himself. “Cool.”
“I’ve never understood that expression.”
“What, ‘cool?’”
“Yes.”
“I guess it’s stupid. It means, ‘good.’”
“Then why not say that? It’s still only one syllable.”
Sean shrugged, though he knew Moss couldn’t see it. “Looks like the rain is letting up; we can get rolling again.”
“Considering the storms and the broken road, we’ve made good time. I think when the rain clears, you should send your comm drone and check in with Lexi.”
Sean agreed. He wanted to know how it was going out there with Sasha and what his sister and the little ninja, as he was beginning to think of her, were up to.
The B.C. pulled alongside and halted with a jerk. Sean noticed how it only jerked once before coming to a complete rest.
“Can I ask you a blunt question, Sean?”
Sean shrugged at the tinted window of the shorter vehicle from inside the raised cab.
“Um, sure. Shoot.”
“What do you know about this lawkeeper?”
“What? Oh, you mean the one that turned up dead?”
“Um, yeah?”
Smart ass.
“I don’t know what to make of it. Lexi and I can’t seem to nail down consistent details, you know how small town rumors are.” It then occurred to him, Moss might have no idea.
“Yes, people are superstitious with the less exposure they have to more technological society.”
Scratch that notion.
“Yeah, right. The two details I’ve heard enough times to take seriously are that—” he flicked up fingers with each point, “one, he died in a back alley, and two, his eyeballs melted.”
“I don’t think they melted,” Moss said. “
I think they exploded.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Remember what happened to the guy you shot in the warehouse?”
“Damn, I guess the heat of the moment allowed me to draw the correlation in my mind. It squashed his eyeball like a grape.”
“Thanks for that visual.”
“Welcome.”
“Humph. Anyway, whoever’s killing them is stealthy and has transport. In the MidEast, if the former doesn’t narrow the field, the latter certainly does.”
“Now perhaps you’ll tell me the whole truth.” The Black Cat’s vertical door whirred open at a crawl and Moss stepped out to stare up, into the window.
“What truth is—”
Moss raised a hand in objection. “Hey, brother, I could give a shit. Seriously. You can’t offend me. I know I come off as even and proper and might seem like an uptight asshole to you, but that time out on the interstate? I was playing my role. I fell into my tough guy persona like I was taught to do. I clocked you because I believed that was who I was in that moment. I’m not a loose fusion cannon. I can take it. Just tell me what you heard.”
“I heard the townspeople spotted a man wearing all black leaving the town on the night the lawkeeper was murdered. That straight enough for you?”
“Fucking A, bro. Perfect. So, do you think we did it?”
“Honestly, I don’t care if you did it or not.”
Moss’s hat quivered. “That answer, I didn’t expect.”
“Well, what skin is it off my ass?” Sean asked. “They’re Sampson’s guys. The lawkeeper Jenna is working with up north to get people off the green—or, I guess they said ‘yellow,’—packs seems to be the exception to the rule, if you’re asking for my experience.” He shrugged. “Sometimes a dead cop is the best kind, if they’re crooked. And believe me, I’d know.”
“Why would you know?”
“Let’s just say the old world wasn’t kind to me, even before it collapsed, and leave it at that, hey?”
Moss’s head bobbed up and down in compliance. “Agreed.”
Rain drops bounced off the brim of his hat as Moss walked around to the passenger side of the truck and mounted up. Sean slid his rifle out of the way. Moss removed his hat and threw an arm up on the back of the seat so he could face Sean.
“Sasha and I have had to take a more limited role in the MidEast of late. Whereas we used to roam freely, the rumors about these dead lawkeepers are making it more difficult.”
“Wait. Are you saying people think you’re the killers?”
Moss cackled like some kind of creature one might have seen on safari in the old days.
“You’re funny, Stone.”
Sean smiled in response, thinking this guy might not be so bad.
“We spend a considerable amount of time in Blacksburg. I have a friend there.”
“Ah,” Sean said, nodding. “The last refuge from Sampson’s influence.”
It was Moss’s turn to nod. “If you and I should’ve learned anything by now, it’s that walls make a big difference in a society’s success. Seeing as Blacksburg is the main trading hub for the entire region, Sampson probably surmises it isn’t in his best interest to force his will there. Have you ever been?”
“To Blacksburg? Even Lexi avoided it when she was doing recon. Too populated, too well-lit for her taste. Even when she approaches people to talk, she tends to like shadows, darker pubs. My sister might be the most paranoid person I’ve ever met, though she doesn’t show it outwardly. Her stealthy ways conflict with mine, and she bitches a lot about my gait, but it’s been nice to have some time alone with her, anyway. We’ve been out here a couple months and I think we’re a pretty good team. We’ve been pretty successful, over all.”
“Except for that whole thing with getting tied to poles.”
“Moss, have I ever told you how funny you are?”
“You haven’t.”
Sean smiled and stayed quiet. Moss chuckled.
“My friend in Blacksburg is of some renown. She deals in a lot of trades, but her primary is weaponry.”
“Like rifles?”
“Yes. Handguns and rifles, primarily. The bullet-firing kind. However, she has interests in expanding her inventory to include more modern equipment.” His head ticked down toward Sean’s rifle.
“Energy and plasma weapons.”
“Yes. Fusion really intrigues her. I believe half the reason Sampson accepted her refusal to allow him to leave a lawkeeper behind in Blacksburg was because she is the unofficial mayor of sorts, but I also think it had something to do with her arming the whole town.”
“Sounds influential.”
“Lucinda is definitely that. She’s very slick of the tongue while being genteel.” He tapped his temple. “People underestimate her at times, to their peril, but Sampson…he’s no idiot. If he’s standing in the middle of Blacksburg, he sees men and women alike, most wearing sidearms, the vast majority of which were bought from Lucinda’s family. Bought cheap. So, maybe he doesn’t push his luck.”
“No-brainer.”
Moss clicked his tongue and nodded. It was strange.
“If Sampson’s an astute observer, he sees a self-ruled town with a de-facto leader as opposed to an elected official. An advisor, of sorts. The town has a marshal, but he’s as much a figurehead as a real lawman. They don’t need one. Though everyone carries guns, no one unholsters them in town.”
“Sounds pretty libertarian.”
“I don’t know the word.”
“Um, I think you can infer. Limited government, freedom, mind your own business, all that shit.”
“Got it. Yes, that sounds about right.”
“Do you see the irony?” Sean asked.
“Which irony?”
“Sampson sees Lucinda as the exact same thing he is. An unelected official who found a way to draw power to himself.”
“Lucinda is very different than Sampson De Le Court.”
“How so?”
Moss took a moment while peering into Sean’s eyes. He found the way the man in black stared disconcerting, the way he didn’t break focus or deter his eyes.
“She’s a good person. She doesn’t tell people what to do.”
“If you say so.”
Moss nodded once. “I say so.”
“So, what does all this have to do with you and the murdering of the lawkeepers?”
“Lucinda was the one who warned us. Since people from all walks come to Blacksburg, she has her finger on the pulse of the MidEast—another reason for Sampson to tread carefully. You’ll often find her circulating in the market, talking to folk from the towns outside her sight. The rumors are now that the Black Ghosts, that’s us—”
“I inferred. See how that works?”
“Have I ever told you how funny you are, Sean?” Moss’s white teeth appeared in an artificial curve.
“Nice.”
“Lucinda says that Sampson is using this lawkeeper’s death as a rallying cry against outsiders. It seems our refined and learned man, our prodigal son returned from the big bad city to save his homeland, isn’t big on immigration.”
“Old World sentiments never seem to die,” Sean muttered. When he read the curious look on Moss’s face, he elaborated. “When this place was called the United States, countries had borders to keep people from other nations out.”
“Like walls?”
“Well, more like fences. But the borders were patrolled. It’s a long and boring story, but suffice it to say that nations have always had borders, and demonization of outsiders was commonplace. Calling immigrants criminals for one’s own political gain is certainly nothing new.”
“I see you’re a wise man,” Moss said.
“Don’t tell my sister that. She’ll think you’re crazy.”
“She already thinks I’m crazy. I see it in those unique eyes of hers.”
The rattle of the rain on the roof of the truck lightened suddenly, and Sean looked to the West.
“Looks like it’s clearing up.”
“Yeah. We can ride on. Before we do, I just wanted to make sure you’re clear on something.”
Sean nodded. “I think I get it. A lawkeeper is dead and, since Sampson can’t find the people who are actually doing it, he’s demonizing you. My only question is, how does he know you exist?”
“That’s what I wanted you to understand. I have a man in Blacksburg. His lone mission is to protect Lucinda and her family. I believe Sampson knows about him and is using the convenience of this lawkeeper’s death and stories about a farm we’ve taken under our protection, to cast us as demons so we can’t protect Lucinda.”
“Sneaky.”
“Very.”
“People don’t see through it?”
“That’s where it gets interesting. He has legend on his side. Lexi has probably heard the stories,” Moss said. “The idea of Black Ghosts running around in the night is an old superstition in this region. Superstitions are sometimes born from actual circumstances, though, and for twenty or thirty years, the rumors of the Black Ghosts have been whispered throughout the MidEast.” He stopped suddenly and his eyes floated around the cab.
“What is it?”
“Hm. I’m wondering…has your sister told you about any of these legends?”
“She’s always railing on peoples’ belief systems. I don’t pay it much mind. Why?”
“I think the Black Ghosts derive from an earlier time, when an assassin roamed the east and MidEast and the townships of the East Coast, killing those who took power for themselves. Lore recalls sightings of this assassin in the shadows at night. I’ve always thought the stories resembled the kinds of things people teach their children to scare them into behaving.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Except for the dead bodies that accompanied the assassinations.”
“Oh.”
“Right. It’s easy to dismiss legend, but when bodies turn up, bodies with real names associated with them…”
“I see your point.”
“There were rumors that the assassin was a woman, dressed in black, like us.”
“And you think the Black Ghosts are what? An extension of it? Or do you think this assassin is back?”