Peace in an Age of Metal and Men (15 page)

The trapdoor was a safe. It was heavy steel, but not locked. I heaved it open to find a tiny compartment below. Abi barely fit, curled in a ball and crammed in amongst some metal boxes. When the light hit her, she looked up. Tears streamed down her face and blood soaked her clothes. The safe had leaked. The poor girl had been right there when her aunt had been torn to shreds. Hell, Abi probably didn’t know whether or not she’d be able to get out.

I helped Abi up and half carried her to the door. We blinked at the piercing sun as we stepped outside. Both of us were covered in gore, but at that point I didn’t care. My brain felt numb.

My right eye flashed blue and a series of text messages appeared that were too quick to read. My eyes kept trying to track the words, but wherever I looked the words seemed to float in front of me. Finally, I stopped flailing around and stared straight forward.

It was a call.

Francis Brown appeared in front of me out of nowhere, visible only to my modified eye. The boy wore fancy duds and no expression on his gaunt white face. The white suit he wore was pristine, even though he appeared to be walking through a wind-whipped section of the courtyard. His blond hair was long, tied back in a ponytail. His eyes glowed white.

“You took something of mine and I’ve taken something of yours,” he said. “Now we’re even.” His voice was dull, lacking affect.

I blinked. His words made sense in the way that the words of a foreign tongue sound like words with no meaning. The boy looked me up and down for a minute as I shuffled Abi farther away from the shack. The image of the boy walked alongside us, looking us up and down the whole way.

“Aren’t you happy, J.D.?” He straightened his string tie. “This is your kind of justice, isn’t it?”

I looked at him, incredulous. Without a word, I scooped up my pistol, swore at the damn thing, and holstered it.

“Sure, it’s a little more creative than what you’re used to doing, but isn’t it nice that we’re on the same side? Isn’t it nice that we can both work together for justice?” The hint of a smile touched the corners of his mouth. “She was a thief, J.D., She killed people and stole from Quintech. Important stuff too. Now justice has been served.”

The doors I’d twisted apart weren’t going to close anytime soon, so the junkyard wasn’t safe. Francis talked like the attack was done, but I trusted that kid just about as much as I trusted a coyote in a chicken coop. We needed to leave, and soon. There wasn’t any sound of activity outside the door, but I poked my head out all cautious anyway. Nothing. I led Abi through and we started making our way to my skidder.

Abi walked the walk of the half dead. She shuffled when I led her, but she didn’t talk. I could have walked her off a cliff and she wouldn’t have hesitated.

About halfway to the skidder, things got ugly. The yip-howls of the coyotes rang out around the bend. They were getting closer. The image of Francis still looked at me with cold, emotionless eyes. He’d stopped talking and seemed to regard me the way an intellectual regards a curio. His head cocked to one side and his eyes tracked us closely.

“You’re in no danger, Mr. Crow,” the boy said. “No danger at all.”

“Who else did you attack, boy?”

“I’m not attacking anyone. This is justice, plain and clear.”

The coyotes rounded the corner. There were three of them, one much larger than the rest. Only the biggest had part of its skull replaced with steel. The others had what looked to be leather harnesses cinched tight across their necks and torsos. The largest one stopped and perked its ears up, looking at Abi and me.

My fingers lingered near the grip of my pistol. The hand shook. The taste of bile rose in my throat and suddenly all I wanted was a stiff drink and a night of oblivion.

It wasn’t going to happen.

The coyotes edged closer. They crept up like sneaky hunters, but in broad daylight they weren’t any stealthier than I was in my boots. Still, they came closer and the big one’s shining metal teeth shone as its lips pulled back in a near-silent growl. Blood caked the fur of its muzzle and crusted over its paws. The creature’s hideous form edged closer and closer, faster and faster.

“Call them back, Francis,” I said.

“I’ve got no responsibility here. Nature does what nature does.”

“That ain’t nature, kid.” I pulled Abi faster, but she wasn’t going to move faster than a walk unless I picked her up. That would leave me vulnerable to an attack. “Them things are too far gone from nature for that argument.”

“They’re simple creatures all the same.”

“And you can call them off. Makes this your responsibility.”

“Does it? So, if I can stop a war, I should do that too, right?”

The smallest of the three coyotes closed the last few meters in one quick lunge, nipping at my ankle. I felt it tug hard on the leather of the boot, even getting a tooth deep enough in to find flesh. A kick sent it scampering away, but by then the other small one had circled around and was moving up on me.

“Don’t you even,” I said, glaring at the creature. It hunched its shoulders and slinked back a few steps.

The big coyote took the opportunity to attack. It dug its wicked metal teeth into my calf. Needles of pain shot up my leg.

Then the coyote shook.

I didn’t fight it. Fighting would make it worse. If I pulled against the coyote’s bite, all that would happen was I’d tear the muscle even worse. So, I didn’t work against it. I moved with the shake as well I could. It stopped, looking up at me with hate-filled eyes. Warning me. Hating me.

Hate. This wasn’t a creature of nature any more than Francis was standing right next to me. There was intelligence in the coyote’s eyes. His hackles raised and the fur around his metal harness stood on end.

On the far side of the junkyard a familiar hum shook the heaps of metal. Bessie, Jo’s tank rose from the ground with Keith riding in the open top. He had his rifle in hand and opened fire on the straggling coyotes. The one on my leg was the only one that stayed put; the others ran.

“Coyote,” I said. I nudged Abi and she walked the last couple steps and sat on the skidder. “You might wreck my leg, but if you do I’m going to crush your skull.” I wiggled the fingers of my metal hand.

The coyote let go.

“See?” Francis said. “That wasn’t so hard. Justice is that thing that powerful people do to keep the weak in line. It’s how we keep the peace. Without a threat like that, there’d be no peace at all.”

I limped the rest of the way to my skidder, wary of the too-close coyotes. They didn’t attack. My metal hand slid into the console and I painfully straddled the vehicle. Abi was already seated on the back, and she held me tight as we lifted off into the sky.

“J.D.,” said Ben, “I’d say that you look like shit, but you always look like shit, and I wouldn’t be giving this particular circumstance proper credit.”

Ben was bandaging my leg with something that looked likely to be designed for livestock. It was a fibrous material and seemed to sink into the wounds in my leg as he wrapped it tightly into place. It was bright yellow, but where it came in contact with damaged flesh, it turned red then faded quickly to dull orange. I could feel it working, like a worm crawling under my flesh. The crippling pain of torn muscle faded to a dull ache that matched nicely with all of my other dull aches.

Abi was curled up on a sofa near where Ben had me sprawled out on the floor. Her eyes were shut hard, as if they could keep the whole world out if she only held them tight enough. Hell, I might have been doing the same thing if I thought it would work. We’d checked her over and found no obvious injuries. The damage was all in her head. Worst kind of injury, really.

Ben stepped back and admired his work on my leg. “The hardest thing with the longhorns is keeping them off the injured leg. They don’t feel the pain, so they figure it’s not injured anymore. Truth is, it’s not really fixed yet. Won’t be for days.” He poked at the bandage. “I’m just happy to be putting it on someone who understands what I’m saying when I say to stay off the damn thing.”

“Thanks, Ben.” I stood up, testing the repaired leg. It felt fine.

Ben rolled his eyes for some reason.

“We didn’t have anywhere else to go,” I said. “My home isn’t safe and there just aren’t many places I’d consider friendly anymore.”

“And here I thought you came to help me find Francis.” Ben handed me a glass of lemonade.

“That too.” I took a sip of the lemonade and then downed the whole glass. It was good, cool, and clean. My whole insides shivered, which felt good considering how hot the day had gotten. “He’s tied up in all this somehow. Finding him is the top of the list now.”

“Oh, now it’s important? You selfish son of a bitch.”

I turned on him, poked him in the chest with my finger. “Listen here, son,” I said, “you didn’t tell me he was a killer. You didn’t tell me he was psycho.”

Abi whimpered and curled up tighter.

Ben lowered his voice. “Is he?”

“I don’t know. Something doesn’t seem right. People’s lives are at stake.” I picked my hat up and put it on. “Maybe even yours,” I said in a low voice. “Maybe her too.”

“Doesn’t matter, though, does it? We still don’t know where to find him.”

“No,” I said. “But it’d be nice to take a look around his lab.”

“Lab?” Ben scratched his chin. “I’m not sure what you mean by that.”

“He doesn’t have anything in the house or the barn?”

Ben’s shoulders slumped. He shook his head. “He would always disappear during the day. I’m not sure where he went.”

“If it’s on your land, we should be able to find it.”

The day was hot. The windmills in the distance wobbled as heat waves rose from the scorched land. It was late afternoon, the hottest time of day. I’d have to endure it if I wanted my search to yield anything.

It had been days since the boy had disappeared. There hadn’t been any rain, and there hadn’t been very much wind. There was a chance that his trail was still intact, so long as the boy had gone by land. Nothing really guaranteed that, of course. The only way to find out was to walk the perimeter.

“I’ll stay with her,” Ben said, standing behind me on the porch. “Somebody should be here for her.”

I nodded.

He handed me a canteen, which I took and clipped to my belt.

“I’ll start my walk at the perimeter’s edge, near your cattle path,” I said. “If luck’s with us, I’ll spot his trail before night falls.” My leg muscles tightened, so I stretched as best I could. “If I don’t find anything before sunset, well, I’ll keep looking.”

“Did you even hear me when I said to stay off that busted leg?”

“Nope.”

My skidder was still nearby, so I used it to fly out into the field. The giant longhorns that Ben still kept on the ranch lived in the barn and grazed anywhere they damn well pleased. Obedient, docile creatures that they were, there was something intimidating about the beasts. They walked along their path, the ground shaking below their enormous hooves. The first perimeter post shined in the afternoon sun. Ben had told me what to look for; otherwise it would have been hard to spot. It was nestled amongst the black windmills and stood barely a meter out of the cracked soil.

I made a quick survey of the area. The ground here was red clay, cracked from the dry heat. Short, scrubby grasses shot up in lower dips of the ground, but most of it was dead or desiccated. Grasses didn’t fare well in such heat, except in more protected areas. The path that the lumbering longhorns followed was just a short distance away, and a long line of the beasts was rumbling back home already. What protected field were they coming from? How was it shielded from this brutal heat? There were hills that might shelter them from winds and sun, but the heat of the past few days would threaten even that.

The next post was thirty meters off to the right. The ground was hard, near as hard as rock. It wouldn’t be easy to spot a several-days-old trail even in the best conditions. It was a very real possibility that there was no information to gain, in which case, the backup plan was to charge back into Swallow Hill looking for trouble. That was not a great option. It would be much better to go in informed.

After a half-hour I stopped to take a swig of warm water from the canteen. The wind had caked my whole body with silt, making my lips gritty and the water taste like clay. I patted myself down, looking for my snuff or a cigarette. Nothing. The sun beat a fierce retreat now, lower on the horizon, but still hot. There wasn’t a damn cloud in the sky.

When I started walking again, my injured leg felt about as stiff as a petrified log. It took ten minutes just to get so I could walk without a heavy limp, but I got there. Another kilometer passed, nice and slow. Post after post passed, each humming with a subsonic thrum that rattled my teeth and made my fingernails itch.

The first trail I found was halfway around the ranch. As soon as I saw it, I knew I’d made a serious mistake.

They were coyote tracks. Fresh ones, clear as day in the red light of the setting sun. A dip in the land took me to a basin of clay that was still soft. In it, I saw several clear tracks and the smell of the coyotes was a hint of musk in the air.

My pistol still hung on my hip, but there still hadn’t been time to sight it in properly or check how it worked. Hell, I didn’t even know how much ammo was in it. Might be that there was none. It hadn’t occurred to me to get a rifle from Ben while I was at the ranch and now I was a couple kilometers away, on foot, and still wounded.

All the more reason to keep moving.

The sun bled crimson across the sky before dying into dusk. There was no use walking when it was dark, but the moon would be out soon, so I set up against one of the windmills and took a nervous break.

It wasn’t long before I heard howls in the distance. They were far off, hidden and distorted by the low hum of the mills. My pulse quickened. The natural fight-or-flight response triggered by the frightening predators of night. Before I could think about it, my weapon was in hand.

Fear is a damn useful thing in certain circumstances, but it can also be a hell of a distraction.

My hand shook, the weapon quaking so badly that I couldn’t even justify keeping it out. I holstered it and pulled out a jagged hunting knife. It was a damn fine knife. When the coyotes came I’d take one down before the others tore me to shreds.

“Ben,” I said, touching my ear. There was no answer on the other side. Either he was asleep already or ignoring my call. How rude. Youngsters have no manners these days.

It wasn’t like I was blind. My right eye was adjusting perfectly to the night, giving me a full view of the colorless terrain. I didn’t trust it to help me track my quarry, but it’d at least let me know when I was about to become a snack.

An eerie howl rang clear through the night, answered afar by another. A third howl pierced the night, then a fourth.

Minutes passed in dead silence.

All around, windmills hummed in the darkness. A gentle breeze kept the whole field in a constant state of motion and noise. It made locating the coyotes impossible. There was always movement visible in the corner of my eye.

My muscles ached from the tension. Knuckles were white from gripping my knife.

The coyotes howled again, closer this time. Were they tracking me? Were they getting ready to spring on me as soon as I closed my eyes?

I closed my eyes.

Fear wouldn’t rule me. My breath slowed, deep and strong. The cracked ribs still stung with every breath. My body still ached. After a few minutes my heartbeat slowed.

My eyes snapped open. A howl. Close this time.

There wasn’t anything to see. Nothing lurked in the shadows or darted between mills. Nothing crept closer in the night.

I was still alone.

The coyotes out there near the ranch couldn’t possibly be the same as the ones that had attacked the junkyard. It was too much distance for them to cover in so little time. These were likely run-of-the-mill coyotes out searching for carrion. They’d leave me alone.

An hour passed. The moon came up and it was time to move. I shifted the knife in my hand and stood up. The injured leg seized up. Liquid fire shot all the way up my side, worse than when I first got the wound. The shock of it dropped me back to the ground and curled me up like a millipede. Long seconds passed like that.

Slowly, carefully, I worked my leg until it would move again. I tested it carefully and was finally able to put weight on it.

I could walk, but my modified right eye was making it impossible for my left eye to adjust to the moonlight. My finger found the slight impression in front of my ear: the power switch. I pushed it hard for three seconds, and the augmentation powered down. I felt a pang as the sounds of the night faded to near nothing.

My eyes adjusted to the dark and I started walking.

Finding the trail wasn’t going to be easy. Moonlight isn’t a whole lot of light, after all. This moon wasn’t even full. The night was clear, though, and the angle of the light was good for picking out slight imperfections in the soil. It was plenty to spot crushed grasses or broken cacti. More coyote tracks proved to me that it was at least possible to spot something.

They sure didn’t make me feel much better.

The bright eyes of a predator appeared a short distance ahead, glowing in the deep night.

“Howdy,” I said, using my knife to tip my hat. There was no reason not to be polite.

The eyes blinked.

“Well, are we finishing this here, then?”

A long minute passed. Another set of eyes appeared a short distance away, then another. Three of them. I had no doubt that they could finish me without any real trouble.

But they didn’t. Moments later, the three sets of eyes disappeared back into the night.

By then I was nearly all the way around the ranch. Another half-hour would finish the loop. It would also prove me a failure. I’d have to come back and try again in the morning. The idea of it sapped the strength from me and I stumbled, dropping to one knee.

How long had I been pushing too hard? How long had this been too much? I’d lost sight of reason a long time ago. Nothing but stubborn grit moved me now. Hopeless tasks seemed like all I’d seen for years out in this waste. Hell, hopeless didn’t seem so bad anymore.

Still, I kept going.

The last segment of the perimeter went fast. The moon was higher, brighter. The coyotes came back. They were behind me now. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them. They sniffed and scratched at my trail. The wind hinted at their stink.

Running would be foolish, but my pace quickened. The hopelessness of the task choked at me, making my eyes quicker to dismiss the small things that need to be registered to pick up such a tricky trail.

That’s why I nearly missed it.

The longhorns’ trail cut like a gorge across the moonlit earth. It was like a road crushed into the ground and kept clear by constant use. Nothing grew anywhere near it, so I knew I was in the right place. My skidder was just on the other side of it, and I hurried to it, spitting mad at my own failure.

When I crossed the path, though, my foot twisted on the hard, uneven ground. I dropped again, wincing at the tearing sensation in the wounded leg. I stared at the ground, forcing my breath to slow down. Sweat broke on my brow.

The branch in the path was almost invisible. From any other angle it would have been almost impossible to see. Down near the ground I could see how the plants just a short distance from the longhorns’ path were stunted and crushed. It was only about fifteen meters away, but I would have missed it if I hadn’t fallen.

I forced myself to my feet and rushed to the impression.

Cracked clay soil sported broken edges and several tufts of grasses were crushed entirely to the ground. It wasn’t the lone path of something that had been passed once. This was a trail that had been used for months, maybe years.