“Wh-whut?” Her breath came confused, blinking as if she couldn’t parse what she had heard. Her eyes glazed, and she fell against him.
“Whoa, there. Let’s get you to bed.” He swept her up in his arms, a fraction of the weight of the barbells he had been pumping, and carried her into the unoccupied bedroom, where he laid her on the bed, took off her shoes, and returned to the bar. Jack had just launched a tongue-wrestling match with the Death Match executive.
Horace sighed, poured himself another finger of scotch, and went out to the balcony overlooking the jeweled beauty of Las Vegas, breathed deep of the cold desert air and this life he had missed for so long. The Hammer was back.
A few minutes later, the sound of vomiting came from the master bathroom. He found Lilly there, hunched and spasming over the toilet bowl. When it subsided, he brought her a glass of water and a towel. She thanked him sheepishly and allowed him to help her back to the bed, where she passed out within moments.
He covered her up and returned to the balcony, where he slept in a chaise lounge until the sun drove railroad spikes into his eyes. In the harsh light of morning, she was gone.
In the days and weeks that followed, a wall came down in front of Lilly’s eyes the likes of which he hadn’t encountered since Amanda had told him she was pregnant. He tried to visit Lilly at the club, but she was “too busy” to do more than exchange shallow greetings and spent most of his visits hiding in the dressing room. The light in her eyes disappeared as if a lid had been thrown over the spark.
One night, he took her by the elbow.
She jerked her arm away. “What? What do you want?”
“I want you to tell me what’s different now. What happened?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You telling me you don’t remember?”
“Remember what?” Her eyes flared with challenge, with desperation that he not put anything into words that she would have to deny, even though she knew every word of it would be true.
“Nothing,” was all he could say.
Horace woke to a sound that blared a warning through his half-conscious mind. The whining rumble of the bus’ power plant, the hum of the road, the chill of the window against the side of his head remained, but those were not what had awakened him from his haunted doze. The murmur of quiet conversations between seatmates was not what had slapped him from sleep.
Here in the rear of the bus, the noise of the power plant was greater. Snatches of sound filtered rearward along the window glass: snoring, words, faint strains of music from earphones.
And there it was.
Someone toward the front was speaking Russian, quietly.
CHAPTER FIVE
Horace sat up straighter and peeked across the tops of the seats. Right behind the driver, a man sat alone, talking to someone. He tried to remember what the man looked like but couldn’t bring him to mind. All he could see now was a brown-fringed bald spot, nodding. Then the man’s head straightened, and the Russian fell into silence.
Horace’s hand slipped into the pocket of his leather jacket and found the slim grip of the electro-fiber dagger, the blade safely retracted.
The only question now was whether the Russian was a hitter, a tail, or just some poor unrelated slob. How could they have found him so quickly? The world was full of surveillance cameras tied to biometric recognition systems, but he was counting on being a needle in a haystack. Granted, he was an overlarge needle, but if they really had tracked him down already, their reach was far greater than he had anticipated.
A hitter wouldn’t take the shot on the bus; cross-country buses like this one dripped with surveillance, and the corps that owned the bus lines would come down like an anvil on anybody jeopardizing their business. When Horace was a kid, law enforcement was left to police; nowadays it fell just as often to corp security forces. In some areas of North America, where megacorp power was most concentrated, police forces were little more than a sham. Corp security forces each had their own brand of justice. No, if this guy was a hitter, he would wait for a rest stop, where a getaway car would be waiting. Or maybe he had a buddy waiting at the next rest stop with a nice, quiet rail rifle. Mono-fiber shuriken—little spinning razor-blades invented centuries ago by ninjas and modernized with twenty-first century technology, propelled at Mach 15 by silent bursts of electromagnetic flux—would cut through Horace like he wasn’t even there, even if he wore his armor. The mob had taken to using them for prominent hits when they wanted to make a point.
If the man was just a tail, Horace could not exactly stealth his way out of sight. At 210 centimeters and 170 kilos of pure muscle, he stood out like a mammoth among sheep. But then, he might keel over while trotting across a parking lot. His borrowed time was ticking away, but he would be damned if some Russian punk punched his time card.
The bus hummed along. Patches of light slid by, small towns disappearing into the sea of time behind him, fading into the past. An old woman tottered back to the toilet a couple of meters from where Horace sat. He tried to catch her eye, but she wouldn’t look at him. A waft of cloying chemical deodorant burst out as she opened the toilet door and closed it quickly behind her. He was used to her reaction. Just like sheep didn’t care to socialize with wolves, most normal people instinctively gave him a wide berth. Not that most normal people had anything to fear from him. He did all his killing in the pit. Except for Dmitri. What a can of hellworms he had opened up.
Gaston had told him once, after the last time Gaston had killed him, “Mon ami, we were born in the wrong fucking century, eh? We should have come out of mama’s womb with axe and shield in hand.”
Horace had said, “Who says I didn’t?”
But even a vibro-axe wasn’t something to bring to a gunfight, and the dagger in his pocket was for up-close-and-personal only. He knew the basics of firearms—at least enough to know which end to point at the other guy—but in many ways they had grown so advanced and arcane they required special training to pull the trigger.
The driver spoke over the PA system, “Happy three a.m., everyone. We’ll be pulling into a rest stop shortly. This will be your last chance to stretch your legs before Toledo.”
Horace sat up straighter and rubbed his eyes, then his face. He was doubtless quite a sight by this point. Yeah, he had “nice, non-threatening guy” written all over him. Then again, the woman was probably only ten or fifteen years older than he was, and here he was, thinking of her as an old lady.
When had he gotten so goddamn old?
The bus slowed and eased toward the right onto the offramp, pulling into a sprawling parking lot with a brightly lit fueling station at the center. Fast-food neon splattered the night above an accretion of buildings and brands, all under the Fusion Corp logo. Vehicles and transports came and went. The bus pulled into the rainbow glow of the central building.
“We’ll be pulling out again in about thirty minutes, folks,” the driver said, opening the door and shutting down the power plant.
Passengers stood and stretched, yawning, scratching, funneling toward the open door. The man up front did not move. Horace waited until all the other passengers disembarked, but still the man stayed put, just a bald spot visible above the seat.
Time to find out. Horace stood, having to stoop under the low ceiling, pulled his duffel bag and aluminum equipment case down from the rack, and moved toward the front of the bus. Letting the man believe Horace was getting off here would force his hand. Horace threaded his way between the seats and then pretended to snag his equipment case on something beside the man, giving him a look at the guy.
Completely nondescript, thirties, thin, dressed in bulky peacoat. He could be carrying an arsenal under there. His gaze darted toward Horace’s luggage, but otherwise remained downcast. Horace slid by him.
The driver peeked out of his enclosure. “You getting off, sir?”
Horace said, “Gotta make a call.”
“We’re leaving in thirty minutes.”
>
“Got it.”
A cool night breeze carried the smells of oil and rubber. When he was a boy, it would have been diesel exhaust, but not anymore. Even at three a.m., this place bustled with activity, mainly truckers coming and going. A broad swath of transport rigs were lined up in the far side of the parking lot.
Near them, a garishly painted road train stood parked like a line of six old rail cars. The doors hung open. The train’s engine resembled the bus behind him, a twenty-year-old hauler. On the side of it was painted “Norman Trask Promotions” in gaudy flames and holographic sparkles.
Why did the name Norman Trask ring a bell?
Might as well go take a piss before the Russians shoot me, Horace thought. Shoehorning his bulk into the bus toilet was more trouble than it was worth most of the time. He carried his two bags with him into the rest-stop toilet, keeping the electro-fiber dagger palmed in his right hand. People either stared at him as he passed or their eyes avoided him like he was a rust blight leper.
In the toilet, he clumped his luggage down on either side of him and stepped up to the urinal. Advertisements for farm implements, penis enhancements, and strip clubs filled his vision.
The strip club advertisements brought Lilly to mind, but she’d made it clear there was nothing between them. Besides, him being anywhere near her put her and her kids in danger.
One of the toilet stalls opened and a man came out. The man paused. “Holy shit!”
Horace glanced over his shoulder.
“Holy shit, it is you. Hammer Harkness!”
Standing perhaps a hand shorter than Horace but just as broad, the man beamed with a crooked, gap-toothed grin, crinkling the leathered maze of wrinkles and scars that made his face.
Horace grinned back. “Why, Sam Striker. I’d shake your hand, but I got a cock in mine.”
Striker laughed. “Nice timing, as always.”
Horace shook, zipped, and turned.
“Small world, huh?” Striker said.
“Why, the last time I saw you was what, Rio in ’64?” Horace said.
Striker shuffled his feet. “Yeah, met a nice gal, got married. She didn’t take kindly to me getting killed all the time.”
A weight settled on Horace’s already unsteady heart. “Good for you, brother.”
“You’re still at it. Damn, I watched you and The Freak the other night on pay-per-view. What a trip that was! Just like the old days. Ol’ Freak recovered okay?”
“Yeah, resurrected fine, no permanent damage, they said.”
“Ah, that’s good, that’s good. Yeah, me and the wife are on the way to Buffalo for a recruiting convention. Plus signing autographs and such. A little extra dough, but I got a good day job.”
“Yeah?”
“Consulting for Death Match Extreme. Screening new fighters and such. It’s a good gig, and I still get to watch the Business, you know? It’s not easy putting godhood aside.”
“You said it, brother.”
“So where you headed?” Sam said.
“Montreal.” This surprised him. Until that moment, he hadn’t thought about where he was going, except away from Las Vegas. “Gaston offered me a job in his training camp.”
“You retiring?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Well, the fresh meat could do a whole lot worse than learning from Hammer Harkness.”
“Then when they come crawling to your doorstep they’ll be the biggest badasses you’ve ever seen.” Horace cracked a grin.
“They’ll never be the badasses we were.”
“Fuckin’-A.”
“Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”
Horace considered for a moment. “I’m not gonna say no.”
Out in the shop next to the coffee machine, they got cups of cheap roadside coffee, just the kind Horace liked. When he was a kid, they called places like this “truck stops.” Nowadays, they were “comfort opportunity pavilions.” He scanned the shop’s patrons over the racks and rows but did not see the Russian. Holographic animals danced above snack racks and drink dispensers—pink sloths, blue elephants, a drug-addled raccoon. Buxom females and bulging males posed and flexed and beckoned toward profusions of hyper-specialized widgets and useless trinkets. The air itself sparkled so thoroughly it was like being inside a fireworks display. It all gave him a headache.
They sat in a plastic booth at a plastic table near the window. The stubby hairs on the back of Horace’s neck would not lie down as the vast light-smeared blackness outside yawned at him. An army of Russian hitters could be watching him from the darkness right now.
“So did you get a load of that road train out there?” Sam said.
“You don’t see the traveling circus leagues much anymore.”
“You ever hear of Norman Trask?”
It came to Horace then. “Yeah, I met Trask way back in the day. Threw him a bone once.”
“Now that you’re back in the Big Time,” Sam said, “you gonna miss the minors?”
How many times had he asked himself the same question, especially on those nights when he wanted to quit but couldn’t bring himself to do it? The minors, of which that road train outside was no doubt a part, had kept him going, kept him fed, and in an array of ironies, kept him alive.
That stab of failure came again. He was washed up. There would never be another score like his fight with Gaston, ever again. Until he got a new heart, he wouldn’t be able to go toe-to-toe with a high school wrestler. The Hammer’s run was over, once and for all. Never again would he charge into the pit with his theme music thundering through a coliseum crammed with a hundred thousand fans screaming his name.
What would he do when that yearning returned, the one that drove him into the gym, into working promo events, angling for another chance to put his life and the life of another fighter on the line, in a VFW somewhere for seventy people? Events like that could not afford a full suite of regeneration for the loser, and all the winner got was a month’s rent with two months of healing to do.
Across the parking lot, people were gathering around the road train doors. The headlights came on.
“Hey, hot stuff,” came a female voice from over Horace’s shoulder. “Who’s your—why I’ll be damned. Hammer Harkness!”
“And you must be Mrs. Striker.” Horace offered his hand to the woman standing by the table.
“Thea,” she said, shaking his hand. She tossed long silver hair over her shoulder and grinned a brilliant smile. Her denim-and-leather swathed body was taut as a twenty-year-old’s. Sharp eyes glittered behind violet glasses. “And you won’t remember me. I was one of the pit girls you didn’t sleep with.”
“I don’t know that I’d remember you if I had. What were you doing, Sam, picking up girls in grade school? Trolling maternity wards?”
Thea laughed and slid into the booth beside her husband, snuggling up to his bulk with a slim shoulder. “You’re still so full of shit, but I always liked your brand of it.”
“What made you hook up with this lummox?” Horace thumbed toward Sam.
She looked at her husband, and her black eyes sparkled like onyx. “It certainly wasn’t his manners.”
“It was all about dentition,” Sam said with a grin missing a couple of teeth. “And muscles. She likes really big...muscles.”
She punched him in the arm. “How’s life for you, Hammer?” she said. “You got a good woman to keep you between the ditches?”
“Uh, no.” Suddenly the conversation was making him as uncomfortable as sitting beside this big window. Why hadn’t he cracked smart-ass right there? “I guess I’m too attached to weeds in the grill.”
They laughed, and then he spotted the Russian walking across the parking lot.
Horace tried to gauge him, but the man was so utterly nondescript that he couldn’t get any kind of read. The man didn’t move like a fighter: in shape perhaps, but not a trained martial artist. Those guys moved like oil. That made him a shooter, and the peacoat was to
o bulky to discern if he was carrying weapons. Horace’s eyes followed him into the building, past the counter until he disappeared into the toilet. Horace shifted his body so that watching the toilet was less blatant and sipped his coffee.
“What the hell is this old lady doing?” Sam pointed out the window as the woman from the bus toilet stepped right up to the other side.
The next thing Horace saw was the barrel of a pistol yawning at his face like a cavern.
“Look out!” Thea screamed.
Horace threw himself sideways. A hail of slugs exploded the glass inward, tore chunks out of the tabletop. Something tugged at his jacket and shoulder. He snatched up a napkin holder and flung it backhanded at the old woman’s face. As she dodged the missile, he lunged out of the booth and seized the edge of the table with both hands.
Thea was screaming, sprawled on the floor with Sam on top of her.
Horace heaved up the tabletop, tearing it away from the wall with a crunch, and flipped it vertical, filling the window. Screams filled the store. An alarm blared.
Horace grabbed both Sam and Thea by the collars and charged toward the rear of the shop, dragging them behind.
The Russian man from the bus came out of the toilet, black metal in both hands. Automatic pistols came up, tracking laser dots.
Horace dropped Sam and Thea and dived behind a rack of snacks. Almonds and shrapnel sprayed above him. Sparks and soda fountained over him from behind. The air was muffled, as if cotton filled his ears. More screaming. He snatched up an entire meter-high rack of donuts and flung it toward the gunman. A crash and a curse. The whine of a hover drive blasted grit through the shattered front window.
Thea was crying.
His heart pounded like a broken trip-hammer in his chest, out of rhythm, out of time. Cold sweat flooded his skin.
He charged over the shattered snack rack toward the gunman, roaring like a bull. If Horace could get close, the Russian would be pasted bone and gristle. But he wasn’t going to make it.
The Hammer Falls Page 5