A Hole in the Sky

by William C. Dietz

  Finally, after passing various points where raw sewage was pouring out of smaller pipes into the main tube, they came to the place where some sort of a pump had been demolished to make way for a wooden ramp. Pieces of machinery and chunks of broken concrete had been piled to either side, leaving the way clear for the slaves to muscle the wagon up the slope, through a ragged hole, and into the empty reservoir beyond. Judging from the presence of pens filled with pigs, cattle, and horses, it was being used as a communal barn. The odor that pervaded the place was only slightly less nauseating than the one in the big pipe.

  Tupo led Alfonso and the rest of them over to a spot where the wagon finally came to a halt, and Master Jack paid the entry fee with what Capelli felt sure was one of Locke’s gold coins.

  It was blessedly warm inside Tank Town. After being ordered to strip, the slaves were hosed off like animals. They were then allowed to dress in the same filthy clothes and led to a pen where they were watered and fed. Once his stomach was full, Capelli lay down on a fresh scattering of straw and went to sleep. It was like falling into a bottomless well, and he felt grateful as the blackness swallowed him up.

  The sun was just about to set, and Susan Farley was gnawing on a raw carrot as she sat on a ledge with her back against a rock. From her vantage point on the hillside, she could look down into the gully a couple of hundred feet below. The family, as she thought of the group, had chosen to camp under a railroad bridge next to a gurgling stream. An attempt had been made to screen the fire with pieces of canvas draped over a framework constructed with sticks, but she could see hints of the orange-red glow nevertheless, and took an odd sort of comfort from it.

  Susan had been following along behind the group of five men, three women, and two children for the better part of three days, with occasional breaks to forage for food. There were lots of overgrown vegetable gardens in Kansas. Not to mention wild carrots and so-called prairie potatoes, although she was tired of being a vegetarian.

  There was game, of course—plenty of it, given how few people there were. But Susan had been reluctant to shoot anything for fear of giving herself away to the Chimera, or alerting the “family” to her presence, which might cause them to break contact.

  That was silly, of course. Especially since the original plan had been to follow along behind and let them flush out any stinks that might be lying in wait. And the strategy worked, because a horde of about thirty Leapers attacked the group early the next afternoon, only to be decimated by the heavily armed humans.

  But gradually, as Susan watched the family through the Fareye’s scope, an unintended bond began to form. The members of the group appeared to be relatively happy, judging from the way they interacted with each other. It gave Susan a vicarious sense of companionship. Something she was surprised to discover that she both needed and felt guilty about. They’re going somewhere, Susan thought to herself. And I need supplies. So I’ll follow them. Then, once we arrive, I’ll break it off.

  So Susan ate a raw potato, made herself a cup of slightly bitter dandelion tea, and slipped into her sleeping bag half an hour later as a way to combat the cold. The family was still up, and the evening breeze brought occasional bursts of laughter her way. It felt good to know that some form of happiness was still possible—and the thought led to a pleasant dream.

  When Susan awoke the next morning the sun was up, although barely visible through a thick overcast, as a light drizzle fell. It was a miserable beginning to the day. But Susan had no choice but to get up, boil some vegetables for breakfast, and break camp.

  And it was then, as she was fastening the straps on her pack, that she spotted the Hybrids—a file of them, all crossing the railroad trestle, and silhouetted against the pewter-gray sky. Her heart skipped a beat. Would they look down? And see the family below? Or continue on their way?

  While mostly hidden from the family her position was visible from the bridge, so Susan took cover behind a large rock, before bringing the Fareye up. She was watching the stinks when one of them pointed downwards. Then it fired down between the railroad ties. The others did likewise, and the family answered from below.

  But the humans were going to be slaughtered. That much was obvious given how exposed they were and the fact that the stinks held the high ground. So she reacted accordingly. The Fareye barked and a Chimera fell. The body flipped end-for-end before splashing into the stream and being swept away.

  Meanwhile, as both the aliens and the group below them continued to exchange fire, Susan shot another Hybrid. A halo of blood appeared around its head before the creature collapsed onto the bridge, where it lay with an arm dangling over the side. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the battle was over as the last stink staggered and went down.

  Susan watched from above as the family broke camp. One of the men had a white bandage wrapped around his left bicep. But none of the group had been killed, and Susan was grateful.

  Once the family was ready to go, the woman Susan thought of as Nancy stepped out into the open. She held something over her head as she turned a full circle. Then, as if performing a pantomime, she bent over to place whatever it was on a flat rock next to the stream.

  After watching the group leave, Susan shouldered her pack, and made her way down the slope to the brook below. Once she splashed across she came to the rock, saw what the woman had left for her, and felt a sense of warmth. Because while the family didn’t know her name, or anything about her, they knew someone had been watching over them. And the Hershey bar was their way of saying “thanks.”

  Susan toyed with the idea of making herself known to the family during the next couple of days, but it didn’t feel right somehow, so she was still tagging along behind them when the oil refinery appeared on the far horizon. That’s what she assumed it was, anyway, although she was no expert.

  Was that where the family was headed? It looked that way. The complex was occupied, because the group was still a half-mile away from the assemblage of stacks, towers, and tanks when a group of three men popped up out of nowhere to intercept them.

  She watched their interaction through the Fareye’s scope, taking comfort from what appeared to be a friendly conversation. She continued to observe as the family was hustled off the highway. The people she had come to think of as her friends vanished shortly thereafter, only to reappear hours later as darkness settled over the land. All of which was a clear indication that the people associated with the refinery were very cautious indeed. An attitude that she approved of.

  Susan was close by then, much closer, and followed along behind as the family was led into the deep ditch that was designed to contain an oil spill, and from there into an open pipe. At that point she thought it best to make herself known, and was about to do so, when she caught a whiff of human sweat and felt something hard nudge the base of her skull. “That’s a .22 Ruger,” a male voice said. “Drop the rifle and put your hands on top of your head.”

  Susan did as she was told. A group of people dressed in black clothing and armed with Augers closed in around her. Here was the security team behind the security team. And, judging from the efficient way in which they questioned and then released her, they were used to intercepting people who wanted to enter Tank Town. It was, they informed her, open to anyone who could pay the entry fee. But the price was so steep she almost said no before finally caving in.

  Because the truth was that she needed supplies, and needed them badly. She’d consumed all of her food and had used up most of the Fareye ammo. That left Susan with no choice but to part with the Colt, the shoulder rig, and the remainder of her .45 ammo. A few minutes later she had the pleasure of entering a world where there were electric lights, sleeping cubes that could be rented by the day, separate showers for both sexes, self-service laundry facilities, a medical clinic, three restaurants, a gambling casino, and the so-called bowl, where all kinds of entertainment was available. All for a price of course, which was bad news for Susan, who was very nearly broke.

 
Having found her way into a dimly lit female dormitory, Susan was forced to part with twenty-five Reaper projectiles to buy a much-needed shower, wash her clothes, and rent a locker. Still, it was a thrill to crawl in between clean sheets for the first time in months and drift off to sleep without fear of being attacked.

  She awoke feeling refreshed and went in search of a big breakfast. The circular restaurant was crowded with people of every possible description. The common denominators being hard eyes, the fact that none of her fellow diners were over the age of sixty, and that they were all armed. She paid five projectiles for a rib-eye steak, three fried eggs, and several mugs of tea. And the meal was well worth the price.

  From there she set off for the casino, where if things went well, Susan hoped to recoup at least some of her losses. The entire complex had been emptied of oil and gasoline at some point. Probably during the desperate days just prior to the big collapse. But the odors lingered. And as Susan followed hand-printed signs through a maze of pipes, she noticed that the smell was stronger in some places than in others.

  The casino occupied a medium-sized tank. It was a simple affair that consisted of twelve tables, two of which were set up for blackjack. The concepts of day and night didn’t mean much inside Tank Town and the facility was about half full. What light there was emanated from cone-shaped fixtures that dangled over the tables. A thick cloud of cigarette, cigar, and pipe smoke eddied around them. A bar had been set up on one side of the tank and a booth labeled “Cashier” was located directly opposite it.

  After speaking with the woman inside the cage, Susan learned that she could borrow up to a hundred house tokens in various denominations by using the Reaper as collateral. “And if I lose?” she wanted to know.

  “Then we keep the Reaper,” the woman with frizzy red hair replied. “It’s up to you.”

  Susan didn’t want to risk the Reaper, but the only other way to make a significant amount of money in a relatively short period of time was to sell her body, and she wasn’t that desperate. Not yet.

  So she took the money and gave the Reaper over, wishing she still had the Colt. Because if the stinks attacked while she was playing cards she would be shit out of luck. A scary thought indeed, even though she could steal a weapon if she had to.

  After scanning the tables, Susan spotted one that had two empty slots and wandered over. A man who introduced himself as Tom was running the table. He was wearing a ball cap and a pair of glasses that had been mended with black electrical tape and was in need of a shave. When she asked if she could play, he looked her up and down and produced a phony-looking smile. “Sure, honey! You sit yourself down and we’ll deal you in. Are you familiar with seven-card stud?”

  “I used to play it with my family,” Susan said truthfully. “Dad said I was pretty good.” What Susan failed to mention was the fact that she had spent months playing poker in the Lucky Buckle Mine with a dealer from Las Vegas as her tutor.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Tom said condescendingly. “Because we wouldn’t want to take advantage of a pretty little thing like yourself.”

  The other men nodded agreeably, and Susan thought she could see dollar signs in their eyes, as she stacked the tokens in front of her. It didn’t take a genius to see that her fellow players thought they had an easy mark. But Susan had a good memory for cards and had an ability to read faces. That was the edge she needed. Or so she hoped.

  During the first hour of play, she discovered that Tom was an erratic player who allowed surges of emotion to influence his betting and wasn’t doing as well as the house should have.

  The man seated directly across from Susan was very different. His name was Carl. He was smarter than Tom, a lot more patient, and willing to take risks when it made sense to do so. He had a large bald spot surrounded by a fringe of hair that hung down to his shoulders, and he was chewing on a kitchen match.

  The third player was named George. His narrow-set eyes had a tendency to blink rapidly when he was going to bluff. A tactic he used far too often. And he had a hollow cough. The kind that kept people from sitting too close.

  So those were the personalities Susan had to interact with as rounds were won and lost, the towers of tokens in front of her continued to grow, and those belonging to the others dwindled. George lost the most, and was eventually forced to cash out, followed by Tom an hour later. That shut the game down and left Carl and Susan as winners.

  Susan had 326 tokens by then, which allowed her to pay back the advance, and reclaim the Reaper. Then, being more than two hundred ahead, it was time to enjoy a good lunch.

  Two hours later she returned to the casino determined to make some more money, buy the supplies she needed, and get the hell out of Tank Town as quickly as possible. Because even though the facility was well run, it was too big to last forever, and she wanted to be a long way off when the stinks brought the party to a close.

  Rather than play poker again, Susan decided to switch things up and, being a good card counter, blackjack was the obvious way to go. The objective of the game was to beat the dealer, and there were two ways to accomplish that. She could achieve a total higher than the dealer’s without exceeding twenty-one, or stay below that magic number while the dealer went over it.

  The homemade blackjack table stood waist high and consisted of a half-circle of plywood covered with a gray blanket, with mismatched bar stools for five players. The dealer, who was renting the table just as Tom had rented his earlier that day, stood on the other side of the flat surface. There was no shoe, which meant the table was set up for hand-held blackjack. Susan knew that in hand-held games, cards are dealt facedown and the players peek at them in order to see what they have.

  Piles of differently denominated house tokens were arrayed in front of the dealer. He had slicked-back hair and a neatly trimmed mustache, and he handled the single deck of cards with the confidence of a professional.

  But Susan had seen him sitting at the bar before lunch. And as she took her place on one of the wooden stools, she thought she noticed a slight slur to his speech. Was the dealer inebriated? If so, that could make a difference. She resolved to keep a careful eye on him.

  One man was already seated to her right, and it wasn’t long before three more bellied up to the table. The first few hands went smoothly enough. Susan won three times out of five and felt good about it. Meanwhile, one of the men won four times.

  His name was Cecil, and he looked ordinary enough, except for one thing. In a time and place when it was very difficult to stay clean, much less pursue the finer points of good grooming, Cecil’s long, slim fingers were manicured. In addition to that his fingernails were longer than Susan’s, filed to points, and appeared to be quite sharp.

  Was that a coincidence? Or was Cecil using his fingernails to mark cards? If so, that would enable him to know the value of at least some of the cards that were facedown in front of the dealer. But card marking was a well-known method of cheating at blackjack, so it seemed logical to suppose that the dealer would be watching for it.

  But as Susan watched the dealer, and saw the slightly glassy look in his eyes, she was reminded of her earlier observation. If he wasn’t drunk, he was impaired, and it appeared that Cecil was taking full advantage of that fact.

  So what to do? Make a public accusation, which could lead to an ugly confrontation? Or watch the cards and try to figure out which ones had been scratched? That would be dishonest, of course. But Susan figured that anyone stupid enough to deal blackjack while drunk was going to get cleaned out anyway.

  So she followed the cards, came to the conclusion that all of the aces were marked, and made her bets accordingly. Not with absolute consistency, which would have been enough to tip off the drunk, but often enough to rake in more money than she would have otherwise.

  Cecil had heavy brows, a beak-shaped nose, and thin lips. They were turned down disapprovingly, and Susan could tell that he was on to her. But he couldn’t complain without revealing his own perfidy, s
o the card shark was forced to settle for less, and share his ill-gotten gains.

  But not for long. Once Susan had what she judged to be enough, she excused herself rather than wait around to see Cecil clean the dealer out. Or get shot. Whichever came first. The 112 tokens won while playing blackjack brought her total winnings up to 338 tokens, minus the cost of lunch.

  It was time to go shopping.

  Capelli was going to fight El Diablo because Master Jack wanted to punish him for trying to escape. But there was a second reason as well—and that was to keep the rest of the donkeys living in fear. So they were allowed to watch from one of the animal pens that fronted the stands as Bam-Bam and Inkskin used their stick-mounted cattle prods to drive El Diablo out into the circular arena. The Hybrid screeched loudly, which was sufficient to claim the audience’s attention as Capelli was forced into the ring by blows from Alfonso’s whip. The runner was naked except for a loincloth, because as Bam-Bam put it, “The audience wants to see some blood.”

  Capelli heard the roar of applause and wondered who the onlookers were rooting for. Him? Or El Diablo? They were seated all around the circular arena, but their faces were a blur, as Ringmaster Jack came out to address the crowd.

  “Laaadies and gentlemen! Children of all ages! Tonight you are about to witness a battle between a human, armed only with a knife, and the Chimeran Steelhead we call El Diablo. If the human wins, he will be freed. And if El Diablo wins, he will eat well tonight! Now, settle back, and enjoy the show.”

  As Jack left the ring, Inkskin was there to give Capelli the single-edged knife. The blade was about six inches long. “Maybe you should slit your throat with it,” the tattooed man suggested, as he backed away. “The whole thing would be less painful that way.”