Black Rust (16 page)

Knowing Warden Smallwood wasn’t in his residence, knowing the guard barracks were empty, and knowing the armory wasn’t, Goose drove the pickup toward the gate of Warden Smallwood’s compound.  The double row of barbed-wire-topped fences stood tall and intimidating.  The sign that warned of a deadly electric jolt for anyone who dared touch the fence was even more frightening.  But Goose knew the wiring on the fence had fried nearly eight months prior, and the Warden hadn’t been able to get a work order pushed through the State Comptroller’s office.

With Deke, his right-hand man in the truck beside him, Goose pulled the pickup to a stop just outside the gate.  A second pickup containing four other trustees—Rusty Jim, along with Bart and the two former cops, Taylor and Flores, now prisoners like the rest of them—came to a stop on the road behind.

“You still think this is a good idea?” Deke asked.

Goose swung the pickup door open as he looked at Deke.  “Boss Man said, and I quote, ‘do whatever it takes’.”

“He didn’t mean this.”  Deke looked worried.

“This is what it’s gonna take,” Goose told him, looking like a kid who’d just stolen a handful of candy.

Goose hopped out of the truck, took out his phone, and dialed. 

On the fifth ring, Goose decided if Warden Smallwood didn’t answer, he’d call it tacit approval.  He waited two more rings and as he was lowering the phone from his ear to hang up, the ringer cut.  A voice came on the line.  “Smallwood.”

“Warden, Goose Eckenhausen, I’m just outside the guard compound gettin’ ready to come in and see you.”  Keith Workman had given Goose free run of Blue Bean, but the guard compound was not technically Blue Bean property.  It belonged to the state prison system.  If Goose went in without permission, any one of the guards would be within his rights to put a bullet or two into Goose’s head. 

Warden Smallwood said, “I’m not at the compound.”  Goose knew that.

“Any of yer guards ‘round?”

“We’re out at a…” the Warden took a long time to find the right words, “a training event.”

Goose knew that wasn’t true.  He knew, too, when he drove up, how unlikely it was any guard on the state’s payroll would be within twenty miles of Blue Bean Farms.  It was a Thursday.  Most of them were in the habit of starting their weekends early—very early—probably off hunting whatever animal was in season at the moment or sleeping off hangovers after spending Wednesday night in Houston’s bar district, plying promiscuous ladies with alcohol.  “We got a problem here on the farm.”

“You handle the escapes most of the time without any help from us,” Smallwood replied.  “The weekend’s almost here.  Can you get this one yourself?”

“It’s not an escape, Warden.”

“What then?” Smallwood sounded mad. 

Goose didn’t care.  “It’s about them crooked Regulators you called me ‘bout earlier.  The ones the police called you about.  Now they’re rampagin’ ‘round, tearin’ ass through the fields, runnin’ down workers and disappearin’ into the woods.”

“I thought you said you were going to handle that problem.  Besides, me and my men don’t handle people trying to break
into
prison.”  Smallwood laughed.  It was the closest he could come to actual humor.

Goose persisted, “I need to git into the guard compound and—”

“Why would you need to enter my compound?” Smallwood asked testily.  “Are your crooked Regulators in there?”

“No,” answered Goose.  “The Regulators are in an SUV.  We’re having trouble findin’ them so we can catch ‘em.  Boss Man is pissed ‘cause all the damage they causin’ not to mention throwin’ off the work schedule.  They’re gonna put us behind on the harvest, and you know how Boss Man likes to stay on his schedule.” 

“Oh yeah,” Smallwood mocked.  “I’ve heard it all before about losing money on contracts and the commodity markets, and not meeting city contracts and empty troughs and rioting d-gens in the streets in Houston.  God damn, if I never hear one of Workman’s speeches again about how the whole goddamn world depends on this one stinking-ass farm, it’ll be too soon.  Reminds me of my old man.  I wish he’d just whip me instead of blabbering on like he does.”

Goose knew none of that stopped Smallwood from taking the envelope of money Workman gave him every quarter to keep his nose out of Workman’s management of the prisoners in the service of Blue Bean’s profits.

“What is it exactly Mr. Workman wants me to do?” Smallwood finally asked.

Time for the lie.  But that was okay because lying came easy to Goose.  “I need them new hover bikes Workman bought for your boys.”

Smallwood laughed heartily.  “You have got to be kidding?  Give hover bikes to trustees?  You must think I smoke as much of that wacky weed as you do, boy.”

“I’m serious, Warden.  We got to find those crooked Regulators before they shut the whole damn farm down.  You know how serious Boss Man gits about that.  You just said so yerself.”

“Goddamn.”  Smallwood was getting frustrated.

“I ain’t pleased about it neither,” Goose lied, and then lied again.  “I don’t wanna ride one of them thangs.  I’m afraid of heights.”  Total bullshit.

“Well, you know as well as I do, these hover bikes belong to Blue Bean Farms.  They’re on loan to the guard unit.  They ain’t mine to lend out.  I got to have direct permission from Mr. Workman himself.”

“You go ahead and call ‘im,” Goose bluffed, knowing and having it just reinforced that the Warden hated more than anything having to sit through Mr. Workman’s lectures.

Goose waited on the Warden, letting him stew with the decision.

The guards didn’t need the damn hover bikes anyway.  Even when they were around, they never did anything for Blue Bean Farms except horse around or try to scare up the local deer for target practice.  They didn’t need the hover bikes for that.  Goose could put them to good use.  Mostly, he liked the idea of riding one around the farm and looking down at everybody like a flying-carpet genie. 

“I’ll tell you what,” said Goose after he figured he’d given the Warden long enough, “I’m gonna go on in and git them bikes out.  You might be on the phone with Boss Man for an hour or more gittin’ an earful ‘bout how yer slowin’ shit down.”

Warden Smallwood groaned.

“You know I’m right,” said Goose.  “You go ahead and do it, though.”

Smallwood sighed.  “Not the two military bikes.”

“Say what?” Goose asked, deciding to play a little bit dumb.  He knew there were six bikes in the armory—four police models, bought from a department upgrading to newer ones, and two expensive military grade bikes, brand new.  If the rumors were to be believed, the new military models were as fast as all git-out and could turn on a dime.  Those cop buzz bikes took damn near half a mile to make it all the way ‘round if they were moving at top speed.  That is unless you came to a dead stop.  But slowing to a stop and accelerating to any decent speed took five minutes.

“You take them four old cop bikes out, but you leave the military bikes there.”

“Probably just take one or two anyway,” Goose told him.  “Just need to spot them dirty Regulators so my boys can round ‘em up in their trucks.”

“If any of your boys runs off,” threatened Smallwood, “it’s on you.  Not me.  You be sure Mr. Workman understands that, you hear?”

“Yessir, Warden.”

Goose wrapped up the conversation.  He had what he’d come for, permission to take out the bikes. 

Using the keypad, Goose opened the gate—Workman had provided Goose with the master code for all the keypads on the farm and he’d given him the secure code to Smallwood’s compound, too.  It was good to be the Boss Man’s favorite. 

Goose strode across the guard compound, heading straight for the armory’s garage.  He didn’t have any intention of taking one of the cop bikes.  He was going to fly one of the military bikes over the fence, and by the time the day was done all six bikes would have a new home at the trustee barracks. 

Sure, arguments would follow, but in the end, Warden Smallwood would give in because he didn’t give a beagle’s butthole for Blue Bean or the handful of work camps he oversaw.  He was happy to draw a dependable state salary and take his envelopes full of money.  He wasn’t about to make a big stink about stray buzz bikes that his higher-ups at the state didn’t even know about.

If not for the certainty that the work camp’s trustees would eventually figure out where I was, I could have been on a lazy Sunday drive through the country.  Once I got some distance between me and the pissant who took a shot at me just because I ran over a bunch of his little cotton bushes and scattered his d-gens across a couple of acres, I took a turn onto a red dirt road and slowed down to what I guessed might be an inconspicuous speed for driving around Blue Bean Farms.

I drove by the remains of a country house, one of many family homes back when all this land belonged to small farmers working plots measured in a few hundred or even a few thousand acres.  Most of those houses were in ruin.  The people who’d lived in them had died or turned d-gen twenty years back.  That’s why the land was available for Blue Bean Farms to squat.

In the distance I saw barracks, some in pairs, some in groups of four or five, all identical, all surrounded by tall fences.  In truth, they looked like barns more than barracks, a place to store the d-gens when they weren’t working the fields.  From the satellite photos Ricardo had provided, I knew small complexes of barracks were spread all over Blue Bean’s property—better to keep the livestock close to the land, I guessed.

I passed stands of trees and fields, some tilled under and ready for autumn planting, others with crops waiting to be harvested by d-gens.  I saw crews here and there, toiling in the sunshine.  I knew every group of d-gens was supervised by work camp prisoners—normal humans serving a sentence—but I figured none of them carried weapons.  The trustees who oversaw the other prisoners were armed, and as I’d found out, eager to shoot. 

I came to an intersection with a signpost on one corner providing directions: cannery, go straight; grain silo number seventeen, go left; administrative complex, turn right.

Right I went. 

According to the information Ricardo’s hacker—Blix—had gathered for me, the places Sienna Galloway might be were in or near the administrative complex.  All I needed was to get close, ditch the Mercedes in a stand of trees, and find a stealthy way to get myself to each of the three places I might find her.

One way or the other, the solution to my legal problem would materialize.

“You ridden one of these things before?” Goose asked.

Deke looked up and down the length of the camo green hover bike.  He glanced at the matching bike Goose was inspecting.  “Yup.”

“You sure?” Goose asked.

Deke looked down the row at the other four bikes, all painted in Blue Bean colors with logos on the sides.  “Something wrong with these two?  They didn’t paint ‘em yet.”

“These two came in yesterday,” said Goose.  “Come in from the Army.  They ain’t had time to paint ‘em.”

“Do they work?” Deke didn’t look comfortable with the idea of getting on the bike.

Goose was getting a bad feeling about his choice to put Deke on one of the Army bikes even though Deke was his number two.  Goose looked over the other trustees he’d brought along.  The two former policemen had spent plenty of time on hover bikes before their bad behavior had gotten them thrown into the work camp.  Bart was former Army.  He’d ridden the Army model some years ago for sure, at least several models older.  Rusty Jim was a braggart who fancied himself a daredevil who claimed to have ridden or driven everything with a motor, most of them stolen.  They all had more experience than Deke.

“I can put Bart on one of these fast ones,” said Goose.  He pointed at the daredevil.  “Or Rusty Jim.”

Deke looked down the row at his fellow prisoners.

Goose came around his bike and put a hand on Deke’s shoulder.  “Yer my right-hand man, Deke.  But if you don’t wanna ride one ah these thangs, well, that ain’t nuthin’ but a thang.  I just figured you an me, on these two here buzz bikes…you know.”

Deke shook his head.

“We run this camp,” said Goose.  “We borrowin’ these from the Warden but we ain’t givin’ ‘em back.  What you ride outta here, is gonna be yours long as yer here.”

“Which is forever,” muttered Deke. 

“Everybody’s gonna look up to us whether they like us or not,” said Goose.  “These bikes, they’re power.  Matter of fact, bein’ in the work camp won’t mean nuthin’ no more fer you an me.  We can skip into town, any town ‘round here and git right back.  All we got here is free food and a free place to sleep, long as we keep the rest of these fart suckers doin’ their jobs.”

Deke nodded.  “I like the sound of that.  But we can already drive into town now and again.  I don’t think we need these buzz bikes.”

“It’ll be easier.”  Goose was getting frustrated.  Why did he have to sell Deke on the idea of freedom?  He was going to be stuck on this goddamn farm for the rest of his life.  “You wanna git on or not?  I can git somebody else.”

“No, no,” Deke rubbed his face.  “I’ll do it.  I just ain’t never been on one—one like this before.”

The other trustees were dragging their bikes out into the yard and mounting up.

Goose told Deke, “I’ll show you.”

He straddled Deke’s hover bike and sat down, placing his feet on the rails that served both as foot rests and supports for the bike when it was sitting on the ground.  “See, just like a motorcycle.”  He reached forward, rested his elbows on the padded supports, and put his hands on the controls.  “Looky here, see?”

Deke leaned in for a close look at the controls.

“Easy as fuckin’ a chicken.”

Deke chuckled. 

Goose fingered a button.  “Turn it on and off there.  Use this joystick over here to move right, left, up, down.  This one here is the accelerator.”

“Where are the brakes?” Deke asked.

“Ain’t no brakes, you inbred peckerwood.  You’re flyin’ in the air.  What you gonna brake against?”

“How do I stop?”

“Pull back on the joystick, and pull back on the throttle.”

“What if I do it too far, and I fall out of the sky?” Deke asked.

“Software inside keeps you from killing yourself,” Goose told him.  “Don’t you know nuthin’ ‘bout how these things work?”

Deke shook his head.

“It’s simple.  Just do like I said.  Take it easy at first.  Don’t go racin’ or nothin’.  Don’t go tryin’ to keep up with me.  Just scoot along slow ‘til you get the hang of it.”

Deke took a headset out of a small compartment on the side of the bike.  He put it on with headphones over his ears and mic in front of his mouth.  “We can all talk to each other on this.  I’ll walk you through it if you got questions.  You got me?”

Deke nodded and pointed at the large, horizontal fans on both the front and the back.  “Why’s all them other bikes only got two big ones on the front and two on the back?  These two got these other small fans?”

“Acceleration and steering,” answered Goose.  “Them other bikes with just the big fans are more stable, but these two are fast as hell and can run little circles ‘round them others.  So be careful with the accelerator.  If you pull back too far, without expectin’ how fast this thing will take off, you’ll fly right off the back.”

Deke grimaced.

“Take yer time, like I said.  It ain’t that hard.”

The other trustees, all except Rusty Jim, had their bikes running, and two of them were hovering—one a few feet off the ground, one about ten feet up. 

“Kinda sound a bit like bumble bees,” said Deke.

“Makes you wonder why they call ‘em buzz bikes.”  Goose shook his head.  Maybe Deke wasn’t as smart as Goose thought.  Maybe he was just a liar and hadn’t ever ridden a hover bike.  “Now you wanna git on this thing or not?”

Deke took a big breath to reassure himself and said, “I’ll do it.”

Goose got off Deke’s bike and showed Deke where to grab it to drag it out into the courtyard.  He stayed close while Deke positioned himself correctly on the hover bike and got the engine started.  Over the sound of the motor and spinning fan blades, Goose hollered, “Now keep that joystick straight up and down, and ease forward on the throttle.”

The hover bike’s fan blades spun loudly, and Deke rose into the air.  His worry turned into a grin.

“Told you.”  Goose gave the other riders a quick glance.  Rusty Jim still wasn’t in the air.  He seemed to be confused about the controls.  Maybe Rusty Jim was a liar, too.

Goose jogged over to where his bike was sitting, still in the shed.  He dragged it out, mounted it, and put on his headset.  “You boys hear me alright?”

All acknowledged.

“Good.  Y’all listen to me once we git up there, ya hear?  Any man don’t do what I say, and I’ll put yer ass on the ground and git somebody else to fly that thing.  You got me?”

More acknowledgments.

Goose started his engine.  Feeling the machine vibrating and humming beneath him, he couldn’t help but smile. 

During the eighteen months he’d been in the Army back before he turned twenty, he’d spent a lot of time on military model hover bikes.  He’d never ridden one on any kind of military mission.  He was assigned to a maintenance squad as a flunky in charge of changing the oil and handling the most routine of maintenance tasks.  It was in the evenings after the sergeants and the officers went off duty that Goose and his buddies took the bikes out and raced them around the training courses.  That’s when Goose earned his nickname.  It was also when his buddy—a guy they called Mach 5—crashed his bike while racing drunk on a Saturday night.  Mach 5 died.  Goose earned two years in the stockade and a dishonorable discharge.

That was the last time Goose flew.

At nearly twenty feet up and hovering, Goose looked down on his men.  All were in the air around the yard in front of the armory except for Rusty Jim.  Goose called into his headset, “You comin’ Jim?”

“Yeah,” he answered, as his bike lifted off the ground and started to spin.  “Just takin’ a minute.”

“We’ll all stick together at first…”

Rusty Jim was drifting close to Deke.

“Jim!” Goose snapped.  “You give Deke some space.  Deke, come this way.”

Deke looked up, eyes wide, shaking his head.  “What do I do?”

Goose yelled, “Left hand, Deke!”

Rusty Jim spun faster, getting dangerously close to Deke.

“Down, Jim!” Goose hollered, “Go down.”

Deke shouted something into his headset that Goose didn’t understand, and he started to jerk his controls too quickly for his machine to respond.  The hover bike leaned left and right.

“Sorry, Goose,” said Rusty Jim, agitated.  “I got this.  I just—”

Rusty Jim’s bike pitched up just as Deke’s bike rolled in his direction and accelerated.  The two collided.  The men yelled, and Deke panicked as he gave his bike full throttle instead of backing off.  His bike got hung up on Rusty Jim’s, and the two careened across the courtyard.

“Let go of the throttle!” yelled Goose.

Deke didn’t.  His bike pushed faster until it violently rammed Rusty Jim’s into the chain-link fence.