Justice in an Age of Metal and Men

by Justice in an Age of Metal

  The other person in the elevator was Ben. His spiky hair was somewhat in disarray, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. He looked at me with a mixture of fear and hatred.

  “Please, Mr. Crow, lower your weapon.” Her voice was unnatural and ethereal. It flowed with the heavy air and carried with it an accent I had never heard before.

  I didn’t lower my weapon.

  “You may not understand. That is my ride. It is very special.”

  I did understand. I did not lower my weapon.

  “I am told you are a reasonable man. You see, that vehicle is powered with a solid fusion reactor coil. It’s quite powerful, but a bullet from such a crude weapon as yours would likely pierce its containment and kill us all.”

  I hesitated but still didn’t lower my weapon. I looked from her to the bike and back again, cursing myself for failing to hide my hesitation.

  She took a few steps forward, pulling Ben out of the elevator. “You think you are threatening my skidder, but you are really threatening us all.” She smiled a wicked sort of hyena smile. “I assure you, we will not kill you or your little friend.”

  I holstered my weapon.

  “Thank you.”

  With a fluid motion, she swept up Ben and threw him in my direction. He hit the roof hard and skidded to a stop.

  “Now be gone.”

  “One question.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “It will cost.”

  “I bet.” I reached down to help Ben up. He shot a look of hatred at me and brushed aside my hand.

  “I had it under control,” he whispered through gritted teeth.

  “Tell me, Courtney,” I started.

  “Court is fine.”

  “Miss Court, I am here on the trail of a murderer. I believe your boys had dealings with the victim last night. Some of them might’ve roughed him up a little.”

  “None of these are questions.”

  “No, ma’am. They are not. My question is, who followed Mr. Brown back to his house.”

  Court smiled, revealing a row of shiny sharp teeth. She took a graceful step forward, closing the distance between us unbelievably fast. She was nearly a head taller than me. Her perfect lips brushed my ear and she whispered her answer.

  “Both of them?” I asked in reply.

  She pulled back just a little and gazed into my eyes and gave an almost imperceptible nod. Her green irises danced with mischief. With one slender hand, she cupped my jawline gently and turned my head from side to side.

  “Handsome, in a way,” she said. “Charmingly soft.”

  With a downward snap, she raked three fingers across my jaw. Her keenly sharpened claws shredded lines into my cheek from just below my eye all the way down to my chin. I did not flinch.

  Blood ran down my face.

  “We have all we need, Ben. Let’s go.” I looked Court in the eyes, noting the amused look she was giving me.

  Ben didn’t move.

  “Ben,” I said. “It’s time to go.” I didn’t take my eyes off of Court, but I could hear a murmur of amusement moving through the crowd.

  I set my jaw, feeling the sting of the wound on my cheek. Pain was creeping back now. My adrenaline was dropping fast. My head throbbed and it wasn’t helping my mood. With my right hand, I brushed back my coat, revealing the pistol holstered there.

  The murmur of amusement exploded into a cacophony of laughter. One high-pitched wail pierced the rest. It was that runner who had mocked me earlier in the day outside of the Dry Goat. His mouth opened wide in laughter, metal teeth showing in the eerie dusk.

  “Tell me something, man of the law,” said Court. “Did you kill Sammer the Hammer for his skidder, or did you just happen to steal it off of his corpse.”

  I was taken aback. “Sam was dead when we found him.”

  “Was he?”

  “The bike’s not stolen. It’s confiscated.”

  “Interesting how a choice of words can change things.” She took a step back. “Confiscating a bike sounds so much more legitimate, does it not?”

  I turned my back on Court and her followers. Struggling to mask my limp, I strode confidently over to the skidder. With my metal hand I grabbed the handlebars and pulled the vehicle around to face the crowd. I was conflicted but determined to not let it show. How could I leave the kid behind when just hours ago all I had wanted was to protect him. This gang of criminals was no protection for an eleven-year-old boy, yet I couldn’t think of any way to get him out of there safely.

  I found the dial that controlled the jets and dialed it all the way up.

  “Boy,” I said. “You got one last chance to man up. Come chase down your father’s killer. Make it right.”

  The boy spoke. “Ain’t nothin’ right about what you do, lawman.” He pulled what looked like a small, black pistol from the back of his pants and pointed it at me. “You fucked this up all day, old man. Thanks for the ride but you’d best be going now.”

  What I did next was stupid.

  In my defense, I couldn’t exactly leave the biker gang without dispensing some form of justice. I was in the justice business, after all. They were criminals. They terrorized the good people of my town and someone had to do something about it. Also, any biker stupid enough to park right on the unprotected edge of a three-story building ought to be taught a lesson. I knew that what I did wouldn’t break up the gang, but I thought it might at least slow them down.

  It didn’t help that I was made a little dumb by rage and pain. Some of the finer points in my plan may have been miscalculated or misinformed.

  I tipped my hat to Court.

  My metal hand clamped hard onto the middle of the handlebars, and I punched the ignition with my human hand.

  Explosive blue flames went off like a gunshot. The skidder launched into the darkening night and the hot air blasted my face. Behind me, skidders slid off the edge of the building. Court’s ride teetered on the edge.

  Howls of amusement transformed into cries of rage. I dropped hard, banked left. Gunshots went off, but nothing came close—not yet.

  “Shoot the bastard down!” Ben shouted and wasted his clip in my direction. He might as well have been firing at the night sky for all the good it did. Others were shooting now too. Something pinged off of the rear fender.

  I swooped down below the edge of the building and then pulled up hard above. I was close now, so I kept my movements erratic.

  Below, Court slowly drew a long, slender tube that was half a meter long and shined like a chrome spear.

  With my head low, I gunned the ignition hard. One pass was all I was likely to get.

  I rammed Court’s bike as I passed far too close to the crowd. Another shot rang off of Sam’s skidder.

  Court’s bike fell. I dropped hard to get below the side of the building in order to make myself a harder target. They’d have to run to the edge to get a good shot at me.

  It was a bad idea.

  Court had not been bluffing when she’d said the bike was explosive.

  I felt a tug on my chest. It didn’t hurt. It felt like someone had tweaked it just a little. I glanced down to see blood welling up through the coat from just below the left nipple. The console on my bike shot sparks from a new hole.

  I glanced back and saw Court’s gleaming eyes staring me down. She was pointing her thin chrome tube in my direction.

  That’s when the explosion hit.

  Being hit by a concussive blast hurts a lot less than a person might expect. One second I was looking back at the tower, waiting for the next shot to finish me off. Then there was a light from below, the flare lit up the night like it was the middle of the day.

  Then there was nothing.

  Chapter 13

  Being hit by a concussive blast hurts a lot more than a person might expect.

  “Eep, eep.”

  For a full minute, I lay there with my eyes closed, trying to figure out what she was saying.

  “Eep, eep.”

  She just kept rep
eating it. My head hurt, but that fit pretty good with what the rest of my body was up to.

  “Eep, eep.”

  Wind whipped past, tugging my coat, my face, my hair. I briefly wondered where my hat had gone, as if that was the most pressing issue at the moment.

  It wasn’t.

  “Eep, eep.”

  I couldn’t figure out what she was saying. It didn’t even sound like words to me, and I’d be damned if I was going to decipher what she was trying to say if she wasn’t even using words. Slowly, I forced one eye open.

  That’s when it all came back: the explosion, the narrow tube that Court had been pointing at me, and my hurried escape from the angry biker gang. How long had I been out?

  It was dark. I could feel the wind jerking the bike around as it sped through the air. My metallic hand still gripped the middle of the handlebars, which explained why I hadn’t fallen off. The bike was moving fast—not at full throttle, but close.

  “Eep, eep.”

  It wasn’t a girl’s voice. It was a warning. A light on the dash blinked in rhythm with the noise, probably indicating a lack of fuel.

  My metal grip left kinks in the handlebars when I let go. A swift manipulation of the controls slowed me down and carried me to the ground. I powered down the jets and switched everything off before slumping off of the bike and landing on my back.

  There were no stars—only a boiling mass of fast-moving clouds. Yellow lightning lit up the sky from time to time, but no rain fell. The megastorm was coming. It wouldn’t be there that night, by the look of it, but it was on its way. You could always see those things coming for a few days, which always made me wonder how people ever got caught out in them.

  It looked as though I might soon enough find out.

  My bike was low on fuel. If I had been unconscious long enough to run out of fuel at nearly full speed, I could be hundreds of kilometers away—maybe a thousand. I wondered if I had been moving in a straight line. Regardless, I certainly wasn’t going to walk back, and there probably wasn’t enough fuel to ride back. Also, without the stars it was going to be difficult to tell which direction I’d gone.

  I sat up.

  Something never sat well with me whenever I had to depend on technology. I never trusted it. The skills I learned from my father had never let me down: shooting, tracking, hunting. My mother’s dislike for tech kept me natural, even in an era when raising a kid without enhanced eyes or skin was considered borderline abusive. She taught me how to see the world and make my own observations, even when discovery via tech would have been so much easier. Even when I was a kid I understood the value of finding water in the desert. Tracking animals or men didn’t come easy, but I always knew it was a skill that wouldn’t let me down. I had used it since then too. It was always hard, but it always worked.

  Tech comes easy, makes life easy. Then it breaks. When that happened, if you were tech, you were broken too.

  Lately, though, I’d been more dependent on technology. The strength of my arm could win my fights. The scans from my glow cube or sunglasses gave me easy information. That skidder got me where I needed to be faster than anything I had ever ridden. Only, now it didn’t.

  I had to admit it; I was addicted to tech, and there was no way out. I fumbled in my pocket for the sunglasses. Those sunglasses could let me communicate with Trish. She could have gotten out there to pick me up. I couldn’t think of any other option.

  The glasses had exploded all over the inside of my pocket. This confused me at first. Then I poked a finger through the chest pocket of my duster. The hole went all the way through. In fact, it went down to my chest where I spotted a small hole in my skin that looked like it had already sealed itself. My back and the back of my duster had similar holes. What the hell kind of bullet passes through its victim without causing any damage?

  I remembered the sparks from the console. Using my enormously strong metal fingers, I pried back a piece of the broken steel so that I could see the skidder’s internal damage. It didn’t take long for me to discover two things. First, I did not in any way understand the internal workings of the modern flying vehicle.

  Second, the bullet that had damaged the console and likely passed through me was nothing more than a single sliver of black metal.

  I flopped back to the ground and stared up at the boiling sky.

  Maybe there was justice in the world. There I was, dying in the desert just like the kid whose bike I’d stolen. Court was right. Whether you called it confiscating or stealing, it was the same damn thing. How many people had died back at the junction? Had the explosion been enough to topple the building? Thinking back, I didn’t think so, but that didn’t make me feel any less guilty.

  I had tried to save Ben when he didn’t even want to be saved. Then I’d put his life at risk because of my own anger.

  Was it my anger? The question came in to my head in a flash, and I didn’t know what to think. Of course it was my anger. Whose else would it be?

  There was something strange. It was strange that I wasn’t numb. I had spent so many years in suffocating numbness that I had forgotten what real passion felt like. Real anger at injustice drove a man to do great things. Since the war, since I had been forever mutilated, the passion had been gone. Justice was a habit—something I fought for because I didn’t know what else to do.

  I fought for it but what did it mean to me anymore?

  That whole day I had been having odd mood swings. Could it have been something connected with the case? Was it something to do with Ma Brown or Trish or maybe the man in black who kept trying to track me down? Whatever it was had triggered strong emotions in me. In contrast, my last twenty years looked like a gray waste.

  I thought of how nice it might be if the man in black had found me right about then. Maybe I would have been able to clear up some questions and get a ride back to town. I wasn’t counting on such luck, though. If I wanted to find a way out of this, I’d need to do it myself.

  Still, I didn’t move.

  The question still lingered in my mind. Should I find a way out? If this was the world dispensing justice, then maybe just staying still was the easiest way to go. My whole body hurt. My head pulsed with an ache like none I’d ever known. My chest stung where I’d been shot, as did my back, just below the shoulder blade. I felt like I had been bruised from head to toe. I could sleep like this. It would be one final night in the great feral frontier. One more night under the rolling sky.

  My eyes drifted shut.

  Ma Brown used emo chips to handle her herd. She transmitted her own feelings to them to better control otherwise unmanageable creatures. It made sense. I’d felt rage at that milk distribution man from this morning. It seemed like that was weeks ago. I had cried at the thought of Mrs. Brown being alone mourning her husband’s death. I shuddered at the memory of the dream I’d had in Trish’s cruiser. Were any of these emotions my own? I’d felt a surge of protectiveness when the topic at the dinner table had been Ben’s safety. Her feelings were being pushed onto me, and I very much would have liked to know how this was happening. More importantly, I would have liked to know why.

  That, however, wasn’t enough to get me off of the ground. I forced my eyes open.

  It must have been the milk. The same nannies that controlled the herd and contaminated the milk supply were running around in my system and mucking with my emotions. I’d had two doses, once in the morning and again for lunch. Had any of my emotions been real that day?

  Something passed overhead. For a moment, I thought the man in black might actually have tracked me down. It wasn’t him, though. Silhouetted by the flashes in the sky, the black shape swooped around three times and then landed on the skidder. It was a bird.

  It was a crow.

  The crow stared at me with its pale yellow eyes. It clacked its beak and stretched its black wings.

  An omen. My mother always described crows as omens, but my muddled brain was having trouble sorting it out. The crow peered at
me with those oddly intelligent eyes.

  I slowly turned my head toward it to get a better look. “What the hell do you want, bird?”

  It folded its wings and shifted restlessly from one foot to the other.

  “Come a little early for the feast, huh?” With protesting muscles I sat up.

  For the first time since I had landed, I took in my surroundings. The crow and I were on a hillside. Scraggly grasses covered the dry earth and danced feverishly to summon the coming storm. I tasted fine Texas soil in my mouth, a sandy mixture whipped up by the wind. Fifty meters down the rocky slope ran a small stream. Fifty meters up the hill, an overhang of jagged sandstone blocked the wind and spun it into a frenzy.

  The crow spread its wings and flapped but didn’t take off. It watched me with eyes that seemed to know what I was thinking.

  Lightning flashed through the clouds again. It had yet to arc to the ground, but those flashes were enough to light up the world. Beyond the crow, I spotted a slight glimmer of hope: a stout, black building, nearly invisible in the night.

  My knees cracked as I forced them to bend. Muscles screamed at me and dizziness threatened to land me back on my ass. Still, I forced myself to stand.

  The crow took flight.

  My heart raced. My jaw hardened. I felt a swell of contempt at all of the old people and their omens. My mother had taught me something of the Hopi tradition, but what did she know? One eighth Hopi does not make a person an expert. She was removed enough from the old ways that there was no way to know what came from that proud tradition and what had been invented in subsequent years. So much had been lost to casinos and cultural warfare. When the language was lost, so was memory. The Hopi tradition was dead long before I ever heard of it. It had always fascinated me, though. What little my mother had shared rang true and drove me. Whatever life was like back then, it must have been better than what we had to suffer through.