“That I don’t know.” The attempted hit at the rest stop was brazen. Dmitri’s father, Yvgeny, was no doubt monumentally miffed about Dmitri coming back without his head. Neither could Horace let Trask know just how much boiling oil he was swimming in. “But I need a ride. I need to disappear until the heat fades.” He looked Trask squarely in the eye.
Trask nodded as if he had been waiting for Horace to say it. “Trouble is, I’d rather be a live asshole than a dead one.”
Horace took another sip, feeling the burn down his throat, the cascade of subtle flavors of honey and oak and lost dreams crossing his tongue, filling his nose as the burn faded. Would Trask turn him over to the Russians? How much would they be willing to pay? What was Trask’s price?
“Those guys on top,” Trask said, “like we were once, can fall a long goddamn way. For all I know, you’re strung out on HypEx and Russian whores. Promoters like me can have a reputation too, but it generally involves things like greed and who fucked who over. If you’re really into it with the Russians, you might be wondering, ‘How much will this guy sell me to them for?’”
Horace nodded.
“The Russians don’t play nice. I try to make a deal with them, they’re more likely to kill me, then you, and then everybody on this fucking train, just to make a point. So let’s not tell them you’re here.”
Horace nodded again.
Trask said, “If they slice the parking lot video of you getting on this train, you might have already fucked me over before we even pull out.”
Horace leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I don’t want anybody to get hurt on account of me. I just need to get off this immediate spot before the next hitter shows up. The next rest stop, I don’t care.”
Trask’s eyes narrowed, calculating, chewing on his cigar. “A couple of things are working in your favor here. One, this whole train is full of trained badass killers, in case you forgot. Granted, they ain’t much with guns, but don’t get within reach. Two, I got other defenses that shall remain mum’s the fucking word. You don’t run this kind of operation as long as I have without making a few mortal enemies.”
“I don’t have any money to give you. I can’t afford any public appearances or fights. At least until I get this cleared up. But I’m willing to make it up you in any way I can. I’ll owe you a huge favor. Name it.”
“Teach my fighters.”
Fear around his ticker made Horace hesitate. “I can’t train them either.”
“Like I said, I got me a whole trainload of badass larvae. They’re fighters, every one of them, but none of them are great like you, like The Freak.”
“I can’t train them.” He rubbed his chest.
“I got a trainer. I want you to teach them. Help them over that next step. Make them stars.” Trask’s eyes twinkled with ambition. “I want every arena these boys walk into to go rabid-berserk-screaming-insane. I want their faces on the cover of every rag-mag from here to Buenos Aires. You can teach them how to do that.”
Trask downed his whiskey with finality. “You ride with us to Albany. I got an empty berth. Had a fatality last month, poor bastard. Albany’s a skip and skedaddle from Montreal. You ride with us that far. You do your best to teach my boys. In Albany, we re-evaluate. What do you say? You’re talking so fast I can’t get a fucking word in.”
Relief flooded Horace in a warm gush. He raised his glass. “I say I’d be much obliged.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Trask led Horace onto the pavement toward the rear of the road train, passing a couple of knots of fighters who all eyed him with mixtures of surprise and awe. He nodded to them as he passed. All of them were at least twenty years his junior. Young, hungry, desperate to build a record and stay alive long enough for a shot at the big time, but already showing the scars of natural healing that regenites would have simply erased.
“Hammer, the Crew,” Trask said. “Crew, The Hammer.”
As they walked toward the rear car and passed out of the other fighters’ earshot, Horace said, “All these guys know me. How long before they start spreading the word to their networks?”
Trask said, “I’ll take care of that. I run on what you might call a supervised public relations system. Nobody on this train spreads anything on the net without my stamp of approval.”
“How do you manage that with wireless everywhere?”
Trask tapped his temple with a finger. “Best not to ask too many questions.”
The rear car looked like something out of an old film, a train car repurposed for highway travel, complete with sleeping berths with Murphy beds and a hallway so low and narrow Horace had to stoop and walk sideways. At least he got a berth to himself.
Trask opened a door and gestured Horace into one of the sleeper berths. “An elephant could fill this up with a good dump, but it’s what we got.”
“I’ve had worse.”
A couple of heads poked out of other berths, one a young woman.
Trask said, “You look like you need some Z’s. Make sure you powder your nose. And, oh yeah, any of my boys gives you any shit, feel free to put them in their place, but don’t injure them. Keeping them alive already costs me a fortune. Tina, what the fuck, you never seen a legend before?”
A woman in her midtwenties with hair a rainbow of pink, purple, blue, and orange, stood in the doorway of the berth next to Horace’s. “I see you every day, Mr. Trask.”
“Suck-up. This here is one of the great ones. Meet Horace The Hammer Harkness. They call him—”
“The Man Who Won’t Stay Dead,” she said. “Twenty-seven resurrections, 287 victories—sorry, 288—plus 192 confirmed kills. Last weigh-in, 168.7 kilos, 210.4 centimeters.” As she reeled off these statistics, she looked him up and down. Dressed in white tights with red and black polka-dots, a faded red tank top, both arms fully sleeved in tattoos of Chinese dragons and characters, cherry blossoms, and geisha, she came to about his solar plexus, all round-faced, brown-eyed, sweet and adorable beyond comprehension.
Horace hated her already.
“Hammer, Tina. She runs the spit bucket and writes story copy.”
Horace cracked a grin. “Since when do they let junior high kids manage blood-swabs?”
Tina’s face darkened, a plump lip stuck out, and she stalked toward him with a pointed finger. “Since I’m the best there is, spit wad.” Then she glanced sheepishly at Trask. “I mean—er, Hammer, sir.”
Horace laughed at the conflict in her expression.
“You two play nice,” Trask said. “I’m going to bed.”
After Trask disappeared, Horace stowed his duffel and equipment case in his berth.
Tina leaned against the doorjamb, crossing her arms. “What the hell is a fucking legend doing here?”
“Needed a ride. What the hell is a snot-nosed kid doing with these yay-hoos?”
“Eat shit, Methuselah! I can handle myself.”
“Is there a shower in this place?”
“You do smell like rancid road-ass. Shower’s right in the back, but there’s no hot water.”
“I’ve smelled worse.” Horace dragged a towel out of his duffel. “And you’re not allowed to check me out when I’m coming out of the shower, kid. I’m old enough to be your father.”
“Grandfather.”
He could stand up straight in the berth, just barely, and faced her in the doorway. “Father.”
“Whatever you say, Moses.”
Horace shut the door to the cramped shower compartment and thumbed the switch on his netlink. He may as well turn it on for a few moments before the road train departed. The Russians already knew where he was, at least for the time being.
The first thing he saw was a long string of requests for interviews and media appearances. He could milk those for some cash—if he lived long enough.
The second thing was a voice message from a blocked source, two days ago. A thick Russian accent, coarse and throaty. “You the deadest motherfucker ever to get dead!” A delug
e of garbled Russian followed until the message ended with a click.
“People threaten my life every day, you pud-knocker,” Horace grumbled.
A voice message from Lilly, so choked with emotion she could barely get the words out. “Hammer, I don’t know what you did or how you did it, but...thank you so much! The doctors say Jimmy is going to be okay.” Her voice, weeping and half hysterical with joy, made his heart flutter. He closed his eyes and took a deep, slow breath. “Hammer, I wasn’t very nice the last time I saw you, and I’m sorry. Call me.”
A warm shiver raced up his spine and across his skull, and he almost choked with a sudden surge of emotion. His thumb hovered over the Call button, but he paused. He didn’t dare talk to her right now. What had he wanted her to do anyway, after his grand gesture? Come over and do him right then and there? Believe the look in his eyes that said he wanted more from her than just the pink parts?
“Goddammit,” he muttered.
Instead of calling her, he thumbed in a message:
I CAN’T CALL NOW. THERE ARE REALLY BAD PEOPLE AFTER ME. THEY MIGHT COME AFTER MY FRIENDS TO GET TO ME. TAKE A VACATION. AND STAY OFF THE NET. I’LL CALL WHEN I CAN.
But what if they already had her? He should have warned her sooner, told the cops or something. He was short on friends as it was without putting her in danger.
There was one more friend, however, who might be willing to help him.
He thumbed Jack’s icon. Two rings, and a tinny Arkansas twang with a four-pack-a-day habit buzzed into his ear. “Hammer, you’re alive, you crazy bastard!”
“Yeah, brother, still upright and ambulatory, at least until the Russians catch me.”
“Word on the street is you kicked the fucking hornet’s nest.”
“Stomped on it a couple of times.”
“What’d you—scratch that, I don’t wanna know.”
“Smart man. I need a favor—”
“You want me to look after Lilly for you.” The grin in Jack’s voice came through loud and clear, along with the hint that this would not be an unpleasant task.
“You’ll have to put this favor on credit. I’m tapped. Take her somewhere safe.”
“What if she ain’t inclined to go?”
“Convince her. She’s got two kids.”
“Look, amigo, I made the funds transfer for you, but that boy’s gonna be in the hospital for a few more days. They were talking about DNA reconfiguration, gene therapy, plus regeneration.”
The boy would be a target for as long as he was in the hospital. The thought of that old hit-woman waltzing into the boy’s hospital room and delivering a double-tap made Horace’s teeth grind. “Fuck.”
“Fuck is right. What you gonna do?”
“Destroy the entire Russian syndicate if I got to.”
“I might could keep an eye on her.”
“Thanks, brother.” Horace swallowed hard. Another debt he would never be able to pay. “You’re not going to be able to reach me. I’ll call you when I can.”
“Keep it tight, amigo.”
Horace thumbed off the netlink, closed his fist around it, and pressed his forehead against the fiberglass bulkhead.
The blood ran cold down the drain of the tiny shower stall. The inside sleeve of his leather jacket would be stiff with dried blood by morning. Even tepid water felt good after two days on the road. Waves of exhaustion stole the strength from his limbs until his hands felt too weak to grip a weapon. He let the shower massage the back of his neck until his muscles began to uncoil. Had he really been so tense for so long? The gunshot wounds would ache like hell in the morning, and worse the day after.
Would he have done anything differently over the last twenty years if he’d known that he would end up like this, a broken-down, old warrior with a bad ticker? After twenty-seven resurrections, some of the damage to his heart was permanent. There was no fixing this one. It was a new heart or a new urn. His winnings would have paid for a shiny, new heart, but there was an innocent kid and a desperate mama who needed the money more.
What about cybernetics? There was a whole league of cyborg gladiators now, doing much the same thing as he had been doing for decades, but flashier now, taking even less of the edge off of death. But those guys had high-powered corporate sponsors, the military-industrial kind that banked on prosthetics and enhancements that exceeded anything biology could do, and a ruling body Horace wanted to be nowhere near. The microprint on those contracts had to stretch into the thousands of pages. He’d heard some of those guys were working under repossession clauses: break the contract and they come and repo your limbs and organs. Corporations had turned government into an afterthought, running roughshod over the entire human race.
Running roughshod over an aging stripper and her son with a rare bone disease. The only way he could protect Lilly from the Russians now was to get as far away from her as possible and hope they didn’t go after her anyway. A sigh leaked out of him at the possibility that she might be dead already. He could just hear Dmitri’s voice, “Come and get your little titty-flasher, Hammer. Papa is unhappy with you.”
By now, Dmitri’s head and body had been joyfully reunited in a nice urn on Daddy’s mantelpiece.
There was no way the old man would let Dmitri’s death go unavenged. The Russians were worse than the Italians for their vendettas. They would hound Horace into an excruciating demise. And with his heart like this, that kind of relentless stress would take a toll very soon. For all he knew, he could die on the crapper during a strenuous dump.
He snorted at the idea of such a fool’s death. A nobody’s death.
How many more scars would he need to add to the road map on his body before he got somewhere he wanted to stay for a while? Every scar was a story, some of them triumphs, some of them defeats, some of them screaming clusterfucks. Most had been inflicted since the glory days of his early career. Way back then, the resurrections and regenerations all came on someone else’s dime, Regenecorp showcasing their world-changing technology. Nowadays, it was a whole different world, one he was barely a part of anymore.
How far would he have to go to evade the Russians’ reach? Maybe he would never go far enough. Maybe he just wanted the wild ride. Maybe what he told Thea was true: he loved the ditches.
A knock on the metal door. Tina’s voice came through. “You about done in there? You need a wheelchair?”
“I got your wheelchair right here, kid.” Wow, what a lame comeback. Why couldn’t he ever think of the snappy ones until hours later?
She snorted. “We’re pulling out, and Bunny drives like a fiend. You might want to hold onto your walker.”
The hiss of releasing air brakes echoed through the floor.
He shut off the water and toweled dry, babying his wounded arm, and stepped out into the hallway naked, concealing the goodies with a dangling towel.
Tina stepped backward with a strange grace. “Well aren’t you a sight.”
He paused at the door of his own berth. “I told you, you’re not allowed to check me out.”
“Just seeing if you needed a wheelchair, Grandpa.” She crossed her arms. “Do you automatically assume every woman you meet wants to sleep with you?”
“Are you telling me they don’t?”
“So is every woman a sexual object for you?”
“I prefer the term potential partner. It takes two to tango.”
She rolled her eyes with an exaggerated sigh. “And sexist pigs still exist.”
“Hey, there’s no need to insult me. I love women.” And he had once killed the great love of his life.
Tina sighed and rolled her eyes. “Look if you must, but if you try to put the moves on me, I’ll end you.”
Another head poked out of a berth further forward, the mature woman with the angular face he had seen outside, perhaps ten years older than Tina. The older woman spied Horace and smiled.
Horace winked at Tina. “See?” Then he slipped into his berth, slid the door shut, yanked the
Murphy bed out of the wall, and collapsed into it.
Before sleep claimed him, the room around him filled his mind with its own stories, echoes of a life now absent. A poster-size holograph of a beautiful woman taped to the ceiling. Stuck in the mirror over the minuscule bureau, a photograph of the same woman embracing a young fighter. A young, dead fighter.
Through his memory flashed a parade of faces, opponents who had not come back from death. Poor bastards. Well, most of them. Angus “The Highlander” MacLish had been an evil prick, someone who reveled in the killing itself, an abusive sadist who also liked to beat on pit girls and groupies. Crushing the Highlander’s skull with a Thunder Hammer, knowing MacLish’s entire brain would be rendered into crunchy blood-paste, knowing such a traumatic brain injury was irreparable, even by regenites, had been Horace’s gift to the world. MacLish’s ex-wife had sent Horace flowers. The rag-mags had put the blow on every cover for a month and had made Hammer Harkness a name to be feared in the pit.
The aches seeped out of Horace’s body into the bed. Streetlights shining through the window angled out of sight. The bed lurched once and began to vibrate with the feel of the road.
Horace jerked awake at a knock on the door. He lay naked on the bed, heedless of the cool air sifting through the cracked window.
“Who is it?” he croaked.
The door slid open to reveal the hard-angled face of the woman. “Let’s just say I’m a fan.” She smiled, apparently unfazed by the naked, hairy mound of muscle and scars in front of her.
“You getting a good enough look there?”
She opened the door just wide enough to admit her lithe form. She wore a black, silk robe that clung to her like synth-skin, embroidered in gold and scarlet with dragons and roses. “Not quite. I’m Jocie.”
“Well, Jocie, I’m kinda tired. How about you hold that thought till tomorrow?”
She had a dancer’s body, coal-black hair pulled into a tight bun behind her head, eyes roaming across his flesh with increasing hunger. “What thought is that?”
The Hammer Falls Page 7