Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap (16 page)

He then punched me on the side of
the face, hurting his hand.

“I’ll…” but I couldn’t think of any
more dialogue, so I just made the motion of bringing the gun down on Yimm’dus’s
skull.

But he dodged to the side.

“You’ll never get away with this!”
He continued unnecessarily.

“Yes, Yimm’dus. I really need to
get away now.”

I moved closer and grabbed hold of
his shoulder with my left hand. I could see he was trying to resist and carry
this play on further, but I outvoted him and easily pushed him to the ground.

I then hit him on the cranium with
the gun.

“Ouch!” He complained, putting his
hands up to protect himself.

I hit him again. Then again. Not
incredibly hard, but it did draw blood.

“Enough,” Zadeck said, surprising
both me and Yimm’dus. “I’ll come with you.”

I had a hold of Zadeck by the back
of his jacket and shirt collar. I was holding him tight enough that a button
popped and he had to loosen his tie.

We walked into the outer rooms,
with Zadeck leading and me following, my gun resting on his right shoulder and
facing towards his head.

In the main room, whether people
saw us I couldn’t say, but no one reacted.

We came to the front door and I
stopped.

“I need to talk to you for a bit
and I don’t want to do it here. So we’re going to leave your street and find a
nice place to chat. If anyone tries to stop us, or squish me, I will shoot you.
So it is in your best interest to tell them to go away. I’ve survived Wallow
multiple times, but I’m pretty positive you won’t survive being shot in the
head point blank. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Zadeck said. He was far
calmer than I would have expected. But I guess he had been a crime boss for
some decades now.

“When we’re done talking, I’ll let
you go,” I continued. “I just need some information.”

We pushed outside and the bouncers
panicked.

I stayed close to Zadeck so they
would be worried about shooting at me and hitting him. I wasn’t concerned about
their guns, but Zadeck was.

“Hold your fire! Let us pass and do
not follow,” Zadeck ordered.

We began walking down the street
cautiously.

The street’s patrons pressed
themselves against the walls or entered buildings in a panic. They knew what
was going to come from this.

The street soon became empty.

Before I could even see him, I felt
the sidewalk shake and
boom
!

There was a forearm impeding our forward
progress. A forearm behind. And eight feet above us was Wallow’s brutal face.

“Wallow, I instruct you to wait
here. I will return shortly. I won’t be harmed,” Zadeck said.

We walked around his forearm and I kept
myself as absolutely close to Zadeck as possible. Wallow was fast on his feet
and agile, but his fingers were enormous without any joints. I did not believe
he could pluck me up without a serious risk of killing Zadeck.

As we continued down the street,
Wallow spider-walked above us, staying as close as possible without actually
crushing us. We were literally being shadowed, as he blocked out the light from
the latticework.

“Wallow, stay!” Zadeck commanded.
As scary as it was for me, this had to be terrifying for Zadeck, who was just a
normal fleshy Colmarian.

Wallow continued to hover above us
and I could see Zadeck was sweating profusely and appeared quite scared.

“W-Wallow, why are you still
following us?” Zadeck asked.

Wallow was quiet but his face was
contorted in rage.

I decided to take a chance, as I
couldn’t have this monster following me across Belvaille. I would never be able
to release Zadeck or he’d kill me the second I did.

“Wallow, if you don’t leave, I will
shoot your boss. You cannot help him by staying near,” I called up to him.

Through gritted teeth, Wallow
answered.

“You kill! You die!”

“Fair enough. But you need to stop.
He’ll be back shortly. I promise.”

Wallow finally stopped pursuing us.
After a moment we were out of his shadow and in the clear street. At the end of
the block I hazarded a backwards look and saw Wallow had resumed standing, and
was watching us go.

We took the train a bit south just
to get some distance. I didn’t often sit on trains with a gun to a crime boss’s
head. People, oddly, avoided us.

We got off the train and headed along
a random block and sat down. I handed Zadeck the last information sheet from
the passenger manifest.

“Have you seen this woman?” I
asked.

“Yes, she was my courtesan some
weeks ago, but no longer.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“I don’t. She left without a word.”

“Can I ask if she was a fairly
athletic woman?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, clearly not
favoring. “She was a brute. I believe she could kick open doors if she ever got
tired of turning the knobs.”

“Was her skin very pale?”

“Not on her face and hands. But I’d
catch glimpses on her ankles and lower neck sometimes and it was so white it
was almost reflective. I suspect she wore a cream to cover it. I’d say
foundation then a skin shade forty-three or forty-four. High quality.”

“What did she do for you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you don’t have to tell me
if you had sex, I mean what did she do at the club?”

“Sex? I don’t think I ever even
kissed her. She didn’t do anything except stand around on those thick legs
talking to people. Is this a former girlfriend of yours? She made no mention.”

“No, no. This is for work. I don’t
actually know her.”

“Don’t you think you could have
called me on the tele and asked?”

“Would you have told me? Besides, I
thought she might have been still working for you.”

“Her outside life was peculiar. I
had her followed frequently,” he said matter-of-factly.

Trust a boss to be insecure.

“She would visit restaurants,
sometimes five or more a night.”

“Did she go or leave with anyone?”
I asked.

“No, always alone. And she was
wearing disguises. Practically a new one each day.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, just different hair and
clothes and styles. I call it a disguise because she wasn’t dressing up. She
wasn’t even dressing down. She was completely changing her appearance. She even
visited your apartment twice.”

“Really?” I searched my memory. “When?”

“She didn’t go in. You weren’t
home.”

“And you don’t know where she is
now?”

“She vanished.”

“Hmm. Well, Zadeck, I want to thank
you for the help.”

“No problem,” he said without a
hint of sarcasm. “I hope you find her.”

“This was the only way I could see
doing it. I feared you would brush me off on the tele and it might alert her
enough to flee.”

Zadeck stood up with a smile,
touching my arm gently.

“No worries, old friend, these
things happen.”

After he left, I hurried to my
apartment. I took out everything of value, personal or monetary, and deposited it
in my new apartment, three houses down on the opposite side. It only took me a
few hours.

I was sleeping on the floor when I
heard the loudest metallic
Crang!

I woke up with a start and, with the
light still off, peeked out the front window.

Wallow was hammering my old
apartment building. Five stories were being slowly beaten into one.

Wallow seemed pleased when he was
done and turned to walk away, but then smashed my couch to dust just to be
sure.

When he had gone I heard my two
neighbors.

“Building flattened!” One Gandrine yelled.

“Yes!” The other replied.

The other pale sister, with
disintegrator, had gone to my apartment according to Zadeck; there were two
dangerous Gandrine sitting outside; someone was hanging around making corpses
of those who visited me; and Wallow may be coming back to try and pound my
apartment.

It was time for Hank to leave Hank
Block.

I took all my things and moved far
out in the northwest, five blocks from the last working train. I squatted in an
empty building. It wasn’t as nice as mine, but the front yard was considerably
cleaner.

“Hank, how you doing?” Bronze asked
enthusiastically on the tele. I could see it wasn’t his from the call name.

“Fine, I guess.”

“I just heard you got in a fight
with a Therezian! How did you manage that?”

“We didn’t fight. It’s a long
story.”

“Well, come on and join us! We’re
having dinner. I haven’t seen you in ages.”

From all my apartment moving, I was
starving. My stomach grumbled just hearing about food. I didn’t especially want
to have dinner with Garm and Bronze as it made me feel weird, but I should be
an adult about this. A hungry adult.

“Sure. I’ll be there in a bit.”

I got my autocannon ready and
opened my door. I was immediately greeted by the backs of two Gandrine sitting
on my front steps.

I stood there for what must have
been minutes. I had come to this apartment early in the morning. After three
transfers on three empty trains.

How did they even get out here?
They were probably too big to fit on a train. It’s hard to imagine them
shambling all the way out to the northwest. And how did they find me to begin
with? Did they have some super sense of smell?

I walked around in front of them.

I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to
see. They were just big rocks sitting there.

But this really defeated the
purpose of me trying to hide. I mean, it’s hard to miss the only two Gandrine
within thousands of light years. There wasn’t really anything for me to do,
however. I hiked to the train to meet up with Bronze.

I knew the restaurant well. It
served a particular ethnic food. There was only one item on their menu I liked,
but I liked it a lot.

The bouncer stopped me.

“Hank, I’m sorry but I can’t let
you go in carrying an anti-aircraft gun on your back.”

“Yeah? Why not?”

“My boss will kill me.”

“Have your boss come talk to me if
there’s a problem.”

I just wasn’t in the mood. I began
to walk past him and he moved in front to try and block my entrance. I kept
walking. He fell backwards and I did my best not to step on his chest, but I
did step on his arm which made him cry out in pain.

“Sorry.”

Inside, I found Bronze easily since
he was jumping up and down and waving his arms.

I went over to his table and saw
there was an attractive woman sitting next to him and judiciously not looking
at me.

“Hank! Hey, buddy. Sit down! Sit
down.”

I put my autocannon on the floor
and sat, feeling the booth tilt dangerously under me.

“This is my gal, Tuem-tai,” he
said, introducing the woman, who still wasn’t looking.

Since she hadn’t acknowledged my
presence, I felt it was okay to talk about anything I wanted.

“What happened to Garm?” I asked,
surprised.

Bronze also didn’t seem to mind
talking about anything.

“Garm’s my old lady. You know?
She’s a real keeper. We’re just having fun,” he said, indicating his
booth-mate.

I felt that Bronze did not know
Garm very well.

“Um.” How should I broach this? I
liked Bronze. “You know Garm is a really good fighter, right?”

“She’s a firebrand alright!”

“No. I mean. She might kill you.
Her too.”

I expected that mention of her
potential death might stir the woman to pay attention to our conversation, but
I was wrong.

“I think I might ask Garm to marry
me,” Bronze said. “Do you think she would go for it?”

The waiter came over and I
thankfully ordered some food. Ten orders with five to go.

“You must be hungry from fighting
Wallow! You get paid for that or did you just need to thump him?”

I shook my head at the concept.

“Have you ever seen Wallow?”

“Yeah, sure did. He seems like a
nice guy—though I’m sure you had your reasons for busting him. We chatted a few
days ago.”

“What? You talked to him?”

“It wasn’t exactly talking, I about
broke my voice shouting. He says he been here a long time. He’s been working
for Zadeck for I think seventy years. He used to be a miner and Zadeck bought
the mine and took him out. Then they came here.”

My mouth hung open.

No one had ever learned Wallow’s
story. And no one “talked” to him. You got the hell out of his way. How did Bronze
do it?

“So Hank, you know of any jobs that
I could do? I got kicked out of my apartment.”

“How can you get kicked out of a
place in Deadsouth? No one owns those buildings.”

“I guess I wasn’t really kicked
out. But some people are looking for me around there so I can’t go back.”

“Who? I can probably talk to them
and straighten it out.”

“Nah, it’s not like that. Just
women problems.”

“Who, Garm?”

“What? No. Different ones. My life
isn’t complete unless ten ex-girlfriends are mad at me.”

For someone who had such luck with
the ladies he sure managed to squander it.

“You’re going to die,” I said.

“Not if I keep moving. I understand
if you can’t, but you think I could crash at your place for a few days?”

“My apartment was turned into a
lump of metal by Wallow. And I got more dangerous people after me than jilted
lovers.”

“It’s cool. I would appreciate it
if any work comes along you think of me, though.”

“Sure.”

I felt a lot better after my meal
and talking to Bronze, who was always entertaining. On the way out I saw the bouncer
rubbing his arm.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“I think you sprained my shoulder,”
he said dejectedly.

I sighed.

I passed him fifty credits via
tele.

“We square?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, though not exactly
ecstatic.

Which was fine, I didn’t want it to
be so profitable to hassle me that everyone started doing it.