“Now it’s your turn,” the woman declared, flashing large dark eyes at Corrina. It had been hard to miss all the hip-thrusting going on in her periphery and she wasn’t pleased. “If you want to change, we’ll have to start with the hair. We could buzz it right down to the scalp and go with a wig, or I can give her something of a mohawk.”
It was Cole’s turn to grin. “I was just telling her how much easier life will be if she were a boy. I say go with a mohawk.” In Corrina’s mind, there were only a few things worse than being a whore and one of those was being a boy. The whole idea was sickening, and she tried to back out of the room.
Anuba snatched her by the arm. “It will grow back,” she told the girl.
A strange, dark look passed between the man and the girl that Anuba did not understand. No, Corrina’s hair wasn’t likely to grow back unless it was true that a person’s hair continued to grow after they died. And if she didn’t die somewhere in the vast bowels of the Krupp facility, she didn’t think she’d care about her hair or anything else for that matter.
“Do it,” she said, climbing into the chair.
While Anuba made Corrina into a boy, Cole went to find someone willing to forge work papers for her. It wasn’t hard. There were fifty people within a mile radius who’d do it for two dollars. It took an hour all told and by the time he got back, Anuba had finished. She had darkened Corrina’s hair, which was now only a narrow strip of six-inch high spikes that ran back from her forehead. It made her seem oddly symmetrical. Cole had never seen her in such a balanced manner before. Usually, she had something of a list to her.
To add to the “boyish” effect, Anuba had also added a few face tattoos: crossed swords went half down her neck on one side and a pistol with the barrel pointing up at her forehead lay on the opposite cheek. She had even furbished Corrina with a ratty pair of castoff jeans and an old faux-leather jacket that was so patched over there was very little of the original leather left in it.
The only part of her that still looked like a her were her grey eyes. They were suddenly, strikingly feminine and they seemed to plead to Cole: Give this up now, while you still can. For a moment he hesitated, second-guessing himself for the hundredth time and he flung out, “Anuba, uh do you have any desire to take on an apprentice? Corrina’s a little rough around the edges, but she has a good heart. She just needs…”
“No,” Corrina snapped. “I’m going.”
“Either way, I can barely afford to support myself,” Anuba added, before their argument circulated back to her. She had never asked what Cole’s job was, for a reason. Like all of her clients, he seemed extremely shady. But shady or not, she needed her clients happy, which was why she flirted so outrageously with them. The girl was simply trouble.
“I had to ask, sorry,” he said. “How much for all this?” She told him twelve dollars. He gave her fifteen, and might’ve given her more except Corrina was watching. She still couldn’t count past twenty and adding small sums was a trial, but she knew a ten and a five was too much and gave him a warning sound in her throat. From early on in their relationship, she hadn’t just been in charge of saving his hide at the oddest times, she also “protected” him from being ripped off by sad urchins and women with ulterior motives, which was about every woman ever created as far as Corrina was concerned.
They left and started walking southeast. Although they were both still tired, it wouldn’t do to show up at Krupp in a cab. They stopped only once for Cole to call his boss. “Mister McGuigan’s office,” a perky-sounding female answered. There had been a new perky-sounding female answering his phones every other month. This one had been around just long enough to understand Cole’s lack of potential and the perkiness disappeared as she said, “Just a minute.”
“Cole, Cole, Cole, Cole,” McGuigan said, tutting him with his own name as a way of greeting. “I’m doing everything I can on my end, but there’s really nothing to be done at this point. You killed a human, Cole.”
“Yeah, I was there. I know what happened. Tell me, I’m still on the clock, right?” There was dead silence on the other end of the phone. “I’m on the trail of three or four and need to know I’m going to get paid before I put my ass on the line.”
The sound of a pencil tapping came through the phone. It tapped eleven times before McGuigan sighed. “Technically, yes you’re still a registered hunter. But Cole, shit, you got like nine hours or whatever before your stay runs out.”
“Let me worry about that. You just have the recovery team ready to go at my call.” Cole hung up and was so caught up grappling with his many anxieties that he almost missed that Corrina was wrestling with her own fear and was close to being pinned. “It’s okay to be nervous,” he told her. “It would be weird if you weren’t. They might ask you if you have any special skills or where you worked before. If so, say that you had a friend that told you Krupp was always hiring people for something called the pit.”
Her lip curled at the word. “The pit?”
“Yeah. The Infinity Pit. It’s so bad that even slags don’t want to work there. It’s where we’ll find the Dead-eyes. When we do, your whole job is to watch my back. That’s it. It’s not going to be you and me fighting side by side. I’ll do the fighting. If something happens to me, you are going to run or hide. That’s it. Got it?”
She agreed to this, but only as a concept. She would see how things played out before committing to an actual nonviolent stance. “And they won’t search me? Are you sure?” The Crown was strapped to one of her ankles and Cole’s Riker Mega was on the other, making her feel as though she were flinging out her right leg as they walked. Thankfully the pants Anuba had found for her were so baggy that neither was obvious.
“No. You’ll be fine.”
The closer they got to the towering smokestacks belching out black smoke amid a heat haze that made everything seem like part of an illusion, the more Corrina felt her need grow. The idea of going into the immense building with her head on completely straight made her nerves jangle stridently out of tune. More than anyone, she knew what evil the Tinsleys were capable of. And that included Cole, who was partially blind when it came to Ashley.
Ashley was a vamp and that meant she was more dead inside than any real zombie. Just then Corrina was envious. Her own insides were roiling as if she had swallowed a dozen live snakes and when she saw the job line stretching down the block, she had to struggle to keep from puking them out.
“I’ll be right behind you,” Cole whispered, giving her a little push. She left his side and immediately felt vulnerable and small, and more like a girl than she ever felt when she was turning tricks. When she had some stinky slag on her grunting like a pig, his pants around his ankles, she could just tune him out, knowing it would be over in a few minutes and she could go back to getting high. But out there on the street, without the glossing benefit of warm mule making everything alright, nothing was alright.
The wind whistled through the tattered old jacket that smelled of curry and armpits. The cold brought out the shivers and her nerves turned them into shakes. She wanted to pull the hood over her head, but was afraid that would ruin her spikes and then everyone would see she wasn’t a he. As the line moved forward, faster than she had expected, her fear ramped up and the shakes got worse. She began to look around at the men in line, hoping to see the vacant eyes of the blissed out.
No one was high, which was a good thing as far as the plan went. If she’d seen anyone riding the mule, nothing would’ve stopped her from pulling him into the closest alley and getting down on her scabby knees for a hit.
A big slag in a hooded trench and mismatched shoes pushed in front of Corrina. He glanced back once, daring her to say something. Even with Cole standing six people back, she didn’t have the courage to look him in the eye. “Fuggin kids takin’ a man’s job?” he muttered. “What da fuck is dat about?”
Corrina shrank even further into herself.
The man pulled a thermos from his pocket and
when he unscrewed the top, the smell of grain alcohol washed over Corrina. It ratcheted up the need inside her until it was howling like a dire wolf in the pit of her empty soul. “Can I get a sip of that?” she asked, her voice even higher than normal.
“Whut da fuck?” he said, turning to stare down at her. He loomed, scarred and mottled grey with slag. There was some even on the side of his mouth, but Corrina didn’t care. “You’re not a boy. You’re a fuggin’…”
“Shhh!” she hissed, harsh enough to make him lean back. “I need the job. A…boy’s gotta eat, ya know.” She gave him a wink, treating the situation very much like she would if she were looking for a customer. That was a world she understood and the men in it rarely frightened her. They had needs and for a price she would take care of those.
The big slag did not think that sharing his hooch constituted a pressing need, and he gave her a derisive snort. “You’re lucky I don’t turn you over to da guards.” He thought for a moment then added, “You best gimme a quarter or I will.” The situation was unraveling fast, and a part of her wanted it to go completely unwound so she could back out of the foolish commitment she had made. In the cold dark of night, the idea of breaking into Krupp to battle an unknown number of Dead-eyes in a toxic hole in the ground called the Infinity Pit, was beginning to feel like the stupidest thing she had ever agreed to.
She reached into her pocket but instead of grabbing the money that Cole had given her—just in case money, he had called it—she balled her fist and, with a flourish, presented him, not with a quarter, but with her middle finger. Sheer amazement kept him from immediately pummeling her right away. “If I had a quarter, do you think I’d be here?” she asked. She had her weight on her toes and could sprint away in a blink. “Why do you think I asked for a drink? A quarter would get me good and plastered.”
“That’s cuz you’re a fuggin’ lightweight. No girl can hold her booze. If you took a sip off dis stuff, you’d go crazy. If you could even swaller it, which I doubt.”
“I betcha I could down a topper full without a blink.”
He scoffed again, was about to turn away, when he gave her a half shrug and unscrewed the lid. He poured right to the rim and she took the drink eagerly. She was not the most experienced drinker and she made the mistake of sniffing the vile brew. It smelled like a combination of piss and grape nail polish remover. Her need was too great to care and she tipped the cup back and drank it off in one huge gulp. It was flavored like grape-tinged gasoline with an aftertaste that was foul and rotten as though it had been filtered through the spleen of a long-dead corpse. And it burned everything. Her tongue, her gums, her throat, her nasal passages, her esophagus and, worst of all, her stomach.
To the man’s great amusement, she choked and retched and gagged. Tears sprang from her reddened eyes. He laughed so hard he doubled over. “Har! Har! Har! Look at you. You look like you gonna cry. Are ya? Are ya gonna cry?”
Her eyes were already tearing up, but before a drop could fall, she pulled her sleeve across her face, casting a peek back at Cole as she did. He was scowling, which was reassuring in its way.
Corrina turned away, beginning to enjoy the burn as it slowly spread out through her chest. “I’m not crying, but maybe if you gave me another slug I will.”
“You’re a little drunk, ain’t you?” the slag asked, laughing again. “So, what do you think you’re gonna do in there? You ain’t gonna haul no girders with dem twiggy arms.” She told him about a friend who’d suggested the Infinity Pit which made his ugly, slag-covered face crinkle up. “Oh, yeah. You definitely wanna go to da Pit.”
For the next twenty minutes as they crept toward and through the gates, the slag laid on the lies about how great the Pit was. He thought he was being clever.
“Next!” a Tier 3 bawled when it was Corrina’s turn to sign in. She shuffled forward, afraid that if she walked normal, someone would notice that her feet flung out. “What the hell?” the Tier 3 demanded, peering at her with his chin down as if he were looking over imaginary glasses. “This ain’t no kiddie sweat shop.”
“I’m fourteen,” Corrina insisted making sure to pitch her voice as deep as it would go. “Here, look.” She handed over the faked work license. She pointed at the registration date and declared, “That there says I’m fourteen. And I’m stronger than I look. ‘Sides, my friend said you always take people for the Pit. That so, right?”
“Yeah, but don’t say you weren’t warned.” He then rattled off a script about where to go and how much she would make and what would happen if she got hurt. He then slid a number pin and a form across at her. “Sign your name or just an X is fine. You know what an X is?”
She grunted, suggesting that she did, but just then she couldn’t remember which letter was the X. She scribbled a Q, which was accepted. After that she walked straight into the woman’s locker room out of force of habit and only a growly voice stopped her. “Not that way!” It was Cole. “That’s the women’s locker. Yours is this way, kid.”
He walked away and she followed at a discreet distance, but got separated from him by the Tier 2s, who funneled her to her locker. There she put the brown jumpsuit on over her clothes. Even when she buttoned up the cuffs, the sleeves went past her fingers and the only thing she could see of her feet were the dirty tips of her shoes. She looked like more of a kid than ever.
Hurriedly, she rolled up her sleeves and the cuffs of her pants. Everyone stared and some laughed. She kept her head down as she left the locker room. Once in the immense factory, the air turned harsh and shimmered in a haze, distorting the distant furnaces and boilers and pipes, giving them a blurry, unreal texture as if she were peering at them from out of a dream. There was a metallic, chemical edge to the air that shriveled her lungs, making it impossible to take a full breath. None of the thousands of people going here and there seemed to notice, except her.
“You, kid. Ain’t no standing around,” a Tier 2 called out. She’d been loitering near the locker room, waiting for Cole. “Where you supposed to be?” When she told him the Pit, he gave her a queer look. It was a look that suggested he knew that something wasn’t right with her. He even hesitated before saying, “Take the stairs all the way down to the bottom.”
“So, there is a bottom?” she asked, clinging to this idea. She had pictured a pit with sheer sides that really was infinite and that if she fell in, she would fall forever.
“I meant to the bottom of the stairs. After that you have to be lowered down by rope.”
Corrina stared at the man in disbelief for a few seconds before he snapped his fingers and pointed to the stairs. Down she went. Down, down, down until the stairs opened onto an immense natural cavern that was nearly completely filled with trash. Bent girders, rusted refrigerators, smashed-in television sets, chunks of cement covered rebar, junked cars and more, endlessly more, sat piled higher than she could see.
A dozen slags crawled over the mass, picking out pieces and hauling them to a conveyor belt that rolled up at an angle into a bus-sized tunnel. She figured that would be her job, however a Tier 3 spotted her. A gleam came to his filmed-over eyes. “Excellent!” he said clapping his hands. She noted first that he possessed only seven fingers and that two of these were stubs. If anything, the rest of him was worse. His face had sprouted a colony of pea-sized warts that had begun to build one on top of the other. His nose had lost all semblance of shape and it wouldn’t be long before the warts enveloped his eyes.
“Come boy! I know where to put you. Yes. We have a great need for one like you. Trust me, it’s easy work. You know what copper is? Huh? Do you?”
He had been leading her around the edge of the trash pile and so far, she wasn’t that freaked out. The pile looked unstable, sure, but if she fell it would be more of a tumble. “It’s metal? Like reddish metal?” She had forgotten to pitch her voice low, but he didn’t notice.
“Exactly! And the spot price has gone up three cents in the last two days, so that’s what you’ll be hunt
ing. Look for wires or rubber-coated wires. Also pipes. Remember copper tarnishes. That means it turns green. Ah, here we are.”
They had come to the real Infinity Pit. The mountain of trash she had seen was just the tiniest tip. The trash flowed down and down forever. The Tier 3 brought her to the edge and as she stared down, all thought of helping Cole went out the window. All she wanted to do was run away.
Chapter 15
Looking down, she was greeted by a wall of hot air that was infused with an acid stench; it had her face twisting and cringing.
A heavy hand came down on her shoulder and rooted her in place. “You’ll get used to it,” the warty slag said. “Trust me.” He pointed a mutilated hand at the frightening mountain of trash. “There’s tunnels down in there. That’s where you’ll find the goods. Just make sure you don’t go bangin’ around too much or it might come down on top of you. Got it? Now, you gotta bring up three pounds of copper every hour to get a break. Don’t try to come up without it because they’ll toss you right back in.”
The heavy hand gripped her overalls with a friendly but rock-steady grip. “You’ll head off to the right. There. You see that platform jutting out way down there. That’s where you get lowered to the deeper section.” Far down a sloping path of old mismatched wood planks, she could see the tiny platform suspended over what looked like an endless abyss. She went stiff and the friendly hand shook her. “Trust me, we never had an accident going up or down, and that’s the truth.” The heavy hand gave her a shove. The slag stood with his fists on his hips, blocking the only way out. “Go on.”
There were two things she knew: if a stranger said something was the truth, it was a lie, and when they said they could be trusted, they couldn’t be.
Dead Eye Hunt (Book 2): Into The Rad Lands Page 14