Pennsylvania Omnibus (11 page)

“So, not Billy then?” Jed said, nodding his head toward
where the three militants were chatting about guns and insurrection.

“Billy?”

“Billy.”

“No!”  Dawn looked over at Billy and then back at Jed. 
“No.”

Jed tilted his head and raised his right eyebrow.

“No.  Not Billy.  No.”

“Wow.” That was all that Jed could say.

“No, listen.  It’s complicated,” Dawn said, and
unconsciously touched his arm to emphasize that he must be completely
misunderstanding her.

“Take it easy.  It was just a friendly question.” Now Jed
was teasing her.

“
You
take it easy!” Dawn said, pushing him back a
step.  She was smiling but not quite laughing, as if she didn’t know if Jed
really thought she was with Billy.  “I said no, and if you think differently,
then you’re wrong.”

“Just take it easy!” Jed said, eyes wide in mock
outrage.

“
You
take it easy, Mister!” Dawn said, and
smiled.

“Tell me about your brother,” Dawn said.  “Were you two
close?”

“Were?”  Jed shook his head, still trying to get his mind
around the ramifications of time and the confusions of interstellar travel. 
He’d left home nine years ago, and if all had gone according to plan, his
brother should already be on his way to New Pennsylvania.

“I think almost all Amish families are close.  We
are
close though.”  He smiled as he thought about his little brother. 
“Amos is the best.  He’s smart, wise, funny, and he is as earnest about our
culture and lifestyle as any Amish man I ever met.”

Dawn just nodded her head without saying anything.

“Amos didn’t like the idea of me coming here.  He was only
fourteen then, but he always seemed to be older than his age to me.  He thought
it was a mistake, emigrating, but he decided that if I was going to come, then
he was going to follow.  I haven’t had time to think about it yet, but I hope
he was able to make it.  I had so much trouble getting here that I hope he got
through it all and is on his way.”

Again, Dawn didn’t say anything.  Instead she stared
deeply into his eyes with that faraway gaze—like she’d done when he’d first met
her at the Columbia checkpoint.  Only this time, he knew she wasn’t on the
Internet in her head.  She’d had her BICE removed.  And she wasn’t on Quadrille
either.  In fact, he hadn’t yet seen anyone that he thought was on Q, so Dawn’s
faraway look must have been rooted in something real, something deeper than
drugs or the Internet. 
Perhaps she’s missing someone too
, Jed
thought.

“How is your wound doing?” he asked.

“My wound?”

“Yeah,” Jed said. “Where you had your BICE taken out.”

Her hand went up to the bandage on the back of her head. 
“Oh, it’s fine.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Maybe.  A little.  Maybe?  I don’t know.  Having constant
and seamless Internet access was like having a super-brain.  It was distracting
and sometimes frustrating, but it was still kind of handy.  I feel a little
dumber now, I guess.”

Pook heard some activity upstairs and signaled to Dawn
that they needed to be leaving.  As the whole group filed up the dark stairs
back into the Antique Shoppe, Jed noticed that Dawn left her hand very lightly
on his elbow—almost, but not quite, taking his arm like his mother did his
father’s when they would walk toward the garden in the cool of the morning like
lovers and friends.

More of Pook’s team had arrived at
Merrill’s Antique Shoppe, and they were milling around upstairs, drinking
coffee and chatting quietly when Pook, Jed, Jerry, Billy, and Dawn came back
upstairs with the guns and ammunition.  Pook handed out some of the pistols
from his black bag, while one of his men—a short, powerful-looking man that
Pook called “Ducky”—briefed him on the operation.

“We’ll need to move quickly, boss,” Ducky said in his
gruff voice.  “Transport is out in force, and there was at least one TRACER
came down on us.  Nasty bugger.  Stumbled on us by accident I reckon, but with
five of us bunched together and none of us emittin’ a Transport ID signal, it
didn’t take them long to make us as TRACE.  Clyde and Will took care of the
TRACER, but there may be more of ’em out there.  If you plan on takin’ the
package over the bridge, we can’t all go in a large group like this—we’d be
sittin’ ducks.  The rest of us—we’ll just have to make our own way. 

“Right,” Pook said.

“And we cleaned up the door and the entryway here, and
halfway up the block on the sidewalk and street out there.  There was blood
everywhere, man.  You need to be more careful about cleanup, Pook.  Someone
might’ve called Transport if they’d seen it.”

“That was my fault,” Pook said. “We had a situation and we
needed to move fast on getting these guns made.”

“Do I even want to ask?” Ducky said.

“It was Donavan, one of our inside men in Transport.  They
got onto him and shot him.  He made his way here to report before he died.  Guy
was a champion.  We’ll need to put up a statue for that man when we win this
war.”

“He marked?”

“He cut it out himself before he came here.”

“Seriously?”  Ducky said, screwing up his face.

“Seriously. I have it in my pack.”

“Wouldn’t that emit a signal that could be tracked here?”
Jed asked.

“Nope. BICE units run on the electricity produced in the
human brain,” Pook pointed to his head and winked at Jed, “and the human brain
produces a shocking amount of electricity!” He laughed at his own play on
words, but Jed didn’t really get it, so Pook continued. “Outside the brain, the
BICE doesn’t have a power source so it doesn’t transmit.  When they first came
out with these, they installed them with built-in backup power supplies like in
a LoJack or the older implanted ID chips that went in your hand or arm, but
over time those things tended to leak—causing brain damage or worse—and when
they failed that meant further surgeries.  Before the BICE was rolled out for
widespread use, Transport found a way to run them off of the electrical current
that the brain naturally produces, so if you cut one out, it’s a dead unit,
unless you hook it up to an outside power source.”

“Well, props to that dude, for sure—cutting out his own
BICE!  Where is he now?”  Ducky asked.  Jed noticed that the short soldier was
all business.

“Back in the back room, wrapped in a tarp.”

Ducky turned to a couple of his men and pointed with his
thumb back towards the rear of the shop.  “You two get rid of that body back
there.  Do it respectfully and properly because he was one of us.  Don’t leave
any evidence.  If we’re gone when you get back, meet us on the other side of
the river.  Camp Echo.  Now git!”

The two men nodded and walked toward the back of the
building.

“What do we have outside?” Pook asked.

Ducky jerked his head toward the door while simultaneously
indicating to Pook that he wanted a cigarette.  “I’ve got two men watchin’ this
place, lookin’ for eyes and tails, anyone gettin’ too curious, you know?  No
one will ever see them.  Invisible, they are.  Like the wind.”

Pook pulled out a pack, popped out a cigarette, and
offered it to Ducky, who took it and nodded his thanks.

“I’ve got two more soldiers watchin’ the bridge, makin’
sure everstuff is copacetic, you know?” Ducky puffed on the cigarette and blew
the smoke straight up into the air.

“What else?”

“It’s a mess out there, Pook.  Our own ordnance nearly
took out a few of our safe houses.  Whoever is callin’ the shots on this
offensive is makin’ it look all too real, know what I’m sayin’?”

“That’s what Billy said, and that was the plan,” Pook
said, “and the closer our offensive fire gets to our own safe houses, the less
suspicious are those houses, right?  I mean, who would fire on their own
hideouts?”

“Only crazy people, I ’spect.  Well, I hope we don’t have
any friendly-fire deaths before this thing is over.”

“Everything that can be done to minimize our losses is
being done, Ducky.”

“You sound like one of
them
.”

“The curse of management,” Pook said and punched Ducky
hard in the arm.

As the two men continued their conversation, Jed noticed
the knob on the front door twist and the door crack open slowly.  What happened
next occurred very quickly.  Like a cool, rainy evening interrupted by a sudden
strike of lightning, the familial atmosphere changed in an instant.  Jed was
one of the last to react.  Everyone else had been intensively trained on how to
deal with threats.

The door swung open and Jed instantly recognized the two
men who pushed their way into the room.  It was the two policemen who had
arrested him during his trip: Hugh Conrad of the Transport Authority and
Officer Rheems of the Transport Police.  The two men strained their eyes to see
through the relative darkness and smiled when they saw Jed’s face among those
of the other rebels in the room.

Before the two men had even stepped fully inside, guns
were snap-drawn throughout the shop, including the one wielded by Jerry Rios,
who also recognized the two cops—who were now smiling at him too.  Everyone
moved into position wordlessly—even Dawn—as if they were practiced at dealing
with just such an eventuality, and the tension in the room reached a new high
as eyes peered down gun barrels and fingers tensed on triggers.

“Look, Rheems, it’s Jerry Rios!” Hugh Conrad said with a
laugh.  Rheems nodded and smiled.  There was a twinkle in his eye.  “And
there’s the Amish kid!”

Most of the guns—the ones held by Pook’s men—came down,
but Jerry didn’t lower his gun at all.  He kept it pointed at Conrad’s face.

“Drop the gun, Jerry,” Pook said. “They’re with us.”

“They’re with
you?
” Jerry said.  There was
incredulity in his voice.  “How can they be with you?  They arrested Jed and me
during transport and almost kept us from making the trip!  They wanted to send
me to Oklahoma.”

Ducky raised his pistol silently, but this time it was
pointed at Jerry Rios.

“I told you, they’re with us, Jerry,” Pook said calmly.
“So lower your weapon.”

“Yeah,” Conrad said. “We’re with him.”

Jerry moved the gun so that it was pointing at Rheems.  He
wasn’t talking now.  The wheels were turning in his mind, but he didn’t have an
answer.  He moved the gun back toward Conrad.

“Easy, tiger…” Pook said with a smile on his face.

“I don’t understand,” Jerry said.  The tension in his
voice was mirrored by a very slight tremor in his pistol hand.  “If they’re
double agents working inside Transport, then why did they arrest us in West
Texas?  Why the charade?  And why are they exposing themselves now?”

“You’re new here, Jerry,” Pook said calmly, “and I really
don’t have to answer your questions.”  Pook exhaled deeply, and Jed could see
that the rebel leader was considering his options.  “I’ll tell you what I can.
But in the future, if I—or any one of my men—tells you to drop your weapon, you
will drop your weapon. There won’t be a second request.”

Everyone remained frozen as Jerry considered what Pook had
said.

“So this is it, Jerry.  Drop the weapon and I’ll tell you
what I can.  Or don’t drop it and we’re going to smoke you and get on with our
day.”

Jerry slowly lowered the pistol and pointed it toward the
floor.

“Good thinking,” Pook said.

“So what’s this all about?” Jerry said tersely.

“This is all about him,” Pook said, pointing toward Jed. 
“We’re doing whatever we have to do—putting everything and everyone at risk—to
get him where he needs to be.  Rheems and Conrad are here because we need their
help if we’re to get Jed out of the City and into the Amish Zone. That’s our
only mission right now.”

“Got it,” Jerry said.

“And going forward, I don’t have time to brief every
newbie and wannabe that hitches on to my mission, you understand?” Pook
said.

“I said I got it,” Jerry snapped.

Just then, one of Ducky’s men burst through the door with
a shout. “TRACER incoming!”

“MOVE!” Pook shouted, and just as he did, a thundering
explosion rocked the front of the shop, blowing away the door and a portion of
the building with it.  The sentry who’d just warned everyone was killed
instantly.

“Out the back!” Ducky yelled as smoke and dust and flying
debris filled the air around the team.

Two more of the men on Ducky’s squad were cut down
immediately.  Dawn grabbed Jed by the hand, and before he could really register
everything that was happening she’d pulled him down so that they were
low-crawling toward the rear of the building.  Jerry was pushing Jed forward as
they crawled, and seemed to be protecting him from fire from the rear. 
Phosphorescent projectiles sailed overhead and exploded when they came into
contact with the structure, sending glowing plasma raining down like magma. 
Jed looked back over his shoulder, and over Jerry’s head he could see a
floating TRACER drone hovering just outside the massive new hole in the
structure and firing rounds into the building.  Red and green laser beams
emitted by the drone crisscrossed through the smoke and dust, searching for
targets to destroy.

Looking back where they were crawling, Jed saw the rear
door open, and he, Dawn, and Jerry bolted for it, falling in line with the rest
of the team as they flowed out of the building like water escaping a crumbling
dam.