Peace in an Age of Metal and Men (4 page)

Bad things happened in the desert. Corporations made profits on the backs of men. Bandits killed for upgrades. Most who’d be called innocent weren’t even close. A religion of pain grew like a cancer in the darkest corners of the wasteland. Injustice thrived everywhere from city to town.

None of that put to rest my outrage at what I’d seen. Something had to be done. That man, that horrible man who had murdered a kid, he had to be stopped. Killed.

What did I need? I grabbed my gun and clipped the holster on. Plain, simple justice. That’s all this was going to take. The glow cube might be helpful. I stuffed it into an ammo pouch, which I hung from my belt. The ruined duster wouldn’t do me any good in the desert, so it needed to stay behind. A man can’t leave the house without his hat or a good knife. Knife, gun, hat. Yes, that’s all I needed.

But I hesitated. The gun felt so heavy at my side. So awkward. How long had it been since I’d carried it on a regular basis? How long since I’d dispensed justice? How long since I’d killed someone? That wasn’t me anymore. A good sheriff could do that. Not me.

I drew the gun and looked at it. My hand shook and no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn’t stop. The butcher wasn’t a bandit. He wasn’t a gunslinger. He was just a man. He could be stopped without a bullet. This was a test. Years ago I’d sworn off guns. Killing never did me any good back then and it wouldn’t now.

Would it?

Ben and Francis Brown could answer that. Were their lives better with their mama dead? Was that the justice they needed for her killing their pa? If I’d let it go from the start, they’d still be together. She’d have guilt eating at her, but guilty is a hell of a lot better than dead. The gun went back on its peg.

My skidder was still a ruined mess, and getting around the desert on foot was a slow suicide of heat stroke and dehydration. Nobody deserved that, not even me.

The aches in my body were easy enough to shake off, but the one in my metal arm still throbbed. It needed a half a day at a charging station, but since that wasn’t an option I opted for the next best thing: ignoring the problem. It wasn’t a great solution, but it was the best I had. The thing would last days on low battery. Experience had taught me that much. It took time for my eyes to adjust to the black of the moonless night. The scattered mess of the Milky Way stretched across the night sky.

My skidder’s antigrav still worked, but propelling it would be a problem. I had no rockets handy, so my best idea involved pushing myself along with an old steel bar I’d picked up from a scrap pile. I got my bearings with the stars, pointed my skidder in the right direction, and pushed. It was just like poling a boat.

Movement was slow at first, so I pushed again. Then again. Soon I was moving at a reasonable clip and the kilometers vanished behind me. Cool, dry air tugged at my hat and chilled my bones. It would take an hour or two to reach Dead Oak, but it was better than walking.

The glow of that small town graced the horizon right around the same time that the eastern sky lightened with the impending morn. Dead Oak was a town of modernized hogans. They were lumps on the surface of the desert. Along the outskirts of town were some of the old structures: buildings constructed before the megastorms started scouring the land on a regular basis. Most of them were crumbled into ruin, but a few still stood, monuments to a time when Texas was a far friendlier place.

A few stabs with the steel bar adjusted my direction. On the near side of town, over a short rise, was the junkyard. That’s where I needed to go. My skidder slid forward silently, taking a slightly sideways angle toward its destination. It slid effortlessly over the rise, cresting with a gentle leap off the top of a hill.

The junkyard was closer than I remembered. Too close. A couple hundred meters away, there loomed a junk pile outside of the metal wall, mangled into sculpture of expressive anger. It was a heap of hurt with jagged metal and slender spikes of glass sticking up everywhere.

I grabbed the steel bar in both hands, braced myself, and jammed it hard into the ground in front of the skidder. It hit a rock, jerked back, flew out of my hands sliding straight through my giant metal fist.

The force of the impact slowed me a little, but now the skidder was spinning. I gripped the handlebars.

Nearly a hundred meters away now, the junk pile gleamed in the first rays of morning. Steel and stone jutted from the heap like jagged teeth getting ready to chew a meaty breakfast. Fifty meters.

I yanked the bars right, trying to compensate for a hard counterclockwise spin. It wasn’t enough. My head whipped around as I tried to track the incoming heap.

Twenty meters. I leaned hard. The skidder was sliding fast, but if I could get hold of some scrub on the ground maybe I could—

Ten meters. It wasn’t working. I was going to hit and there wasn’t anything—

I cranked the antigrav as hard as I could. My stomach dropped and the skidder launched straight up, catching the top spire of the heap as it passed. The skidder spun faster, up, up, over the wall and into the junkyard proper.

With a twist, I cut power. The skidder plunged down, hit the red dirt with an ear-splitting crash, and sent me flying into a dingy shack. My back hit the door, tumbling through with enough noise and violence to wake anybody a hundred meters around.

It didn’t need to. The two women were sitting at a tiny table holding cards and smoking cigars. When I crashed through the door, neither one of them so much as flinched.

The older of the two women placed her cards down on the table, took a swig from a bottle of amber liquid, stubbed out her cigar, and smiled at me. “Evening, J.D.,” she said.

The younger woman smiled. “It’s morning, Auntie.”

The older woman frowned at that. After a moment, she smiled. “Morning, J.D.”

I stood up, realized I was still terribly dizzy, and fell flat on my ass.

Josephine Jefferson had a laugh like a hyena—a hyena that had just spent a hard day drinking and a hard life smoking. She laughed so hard that tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down the smooth, dark skin of her cheeks. She clutched her belly as if to keep it from shaking right off. Jo was a big woman with the grimy fingernails of someone who worked and the nimble fingers of someone who knew how to operate tech. She wore overalls and her bare arms were covered with scars. When she laughed, her age showed in the tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She had lived in Dead Oak all the while that I was the sheriff, but I’d had little to do with her other than to have her work on the cruisers from time to time.

The young woman across from Jo was probably in her late teens and pretty as they get. She was just as dark as Jo, but where Jo’s skin bore the lines of a life well fought, this girl had the smooth shine of tech-enhanced skin. Her hair was a long, dark mess of unkempt dreadlocks. She was nearly drowning in a pair of Jo’s old overalls, and her feet were bare. She looked at me with wide eyes that glittered with tech and struggled to focus, as if a night of drinking whiskey had taken its toll.

The younger woman’s eyes showed just as much laughter as Jo’s, but she had significantly more tact. That’s not to say she kept from laughing entirely. Rather, she covered her mouth politely and snickered like a pot of humor was nearly ready to boil over. The restraint was appreciated, but a man’s pride can only take so much humiliation.

My head steadied itself so I stood up, tipped my hat, which was somehow still on, and said, “Howdy,” to the young girl. “Name’s J.D.”

“I gathered.”

The shack was little more than a machine shed with workbenches along three of the four thin, metal walls. The fourth wall sported a lofted bed and a hammock. Shelves covered every surface that might support a shelf and some that looked like they didn’t. Elaborate overhead storage dominated the center of the room. To my left was a collection of brutal, heavy tools like saws, vices, and hammers. Moving clockwise, the tools got progressively higher-tech. Wrenches gave way to spanners, arc-circuits, and nano-gel. Directly to my right, an array of rockets was prominently displayed above a row of parts from old combustion engines that would do any museum proud. The whole place was filled with cigar smoke.

“Bit of a time crunch,” I said.

Josephine gasped a noisy breath of air, then coughed up another peel of laughter.

The younger girl spoke. “Auntie was just telling me how much we needed a man around here.”

“That so?” I said.

Josephine clutched the edge of the table and, with apparently great effort, kept her laugh down to a low chuckle.

“It’s true,” continued the girl. “Why, we were just having a nice, pleasant drink and a game of hold-em this evening.” She peered at the door behind me. “Morning,” she corrected. She indicated a nearly empty whiskey bottle, reached behind her to produce a second empty bottle, and then pointed across the room to where the remnants of a third bottle were shattered next to a garbage can. “Well, the topic of men did come up once or twice, though I must say it wasn’t the main topic.”

Josephine shook her head.

“Well, it was not five minutes ago we decided just exactly how much a representative of the male community was needed around here.”

There was a long moment of silence.

“Not very much,” said the girl.

The high, hyena laughter burst out of Josephine like TNT out of a coal mine. I endured it for what seemed like an age. It finally settled, and the two women looked at me expectantly.

“Ms. Jefferson,” I said, “remember that skidder I stopped by with a while ago?”

“That death trap?” Josephine stood up and brushed past me on her way out the door. The girl and I followed. “Well, look at that. The rockets finally crapped out?”

“That they did.”

“Antigrav?”

“Still not bad.”

“Well, that’s not a surprise. These puppies ought to last a good long while. It’s the regulators and rockets that’ll probably kill you.”

I nodded like I had some idea what she was saying.

“‘Suppose you need this fixed up?”

“Right quick too,” I said. “Got some business to attend to.”

Josephine clicked her tongue, circling my broken skidder. The sad-looking thing was upside-down and dented in at least five new places. The blue flames painted along the sides were worn down to metal so badly that the faded paint was hardly recognizable. The sharp chemical smell of solid fuel tickled my nose. The girl must have smelled it too, because she took a step back and stubbed out her cigar.

“Abi,” Jo said to the younger woman, “why don’t you head down and get my arms for me?”

Abi stared, wide-eyed, at the skidder. She didn’t look like she was going to move at first, but then she dashed away behind the shack. Josephine continued to prod at the upended skidder.

“Yep,” she said. “Leak’s right here. Looks like you cracked it open on your landing.” Her eyes twinkled with amusement. “Why you in such a hurry, J.D.?”

I turned and squinted at the sunrise. Why was I in such a hurry? Anger tasted like acid in the back of my throat. The boy’s death had affected me. Zane must have known how I’d react. Even knowing that he was manipulating me didn’t affect the feeling of urgency.

“There’s a need,” I said.

Jo must have read the anger in my face. “Thought you didn’t do this kind of thing anymore, Sheriff.”

I nodded.

“The new sheriff’s not bad, you know. She does a fine job.”

“True.”

“So what is it that’s happening that she can’t take care of? You into something illegal?”

“I aim to stay on the right side of the law.”

Abi returned, struggling to drag a backpack made of dull metal and scuffed plastic. She dumped the thing at Josephine’s feet, panting from the effort. Josephine looked at it with one eyebrow raised. She tapped her foot.

“Well,” said Josephine. “You going to put it on or what?”

“Me?” Abi’s eyes got wide.

“Yes, you. You think I trust J.D. with any kind of tech? That boy breaks every damn thing he touches.”

Abi squatted down and fit her arms into the straps of the backpack. The pack whirred, clicked, and fastened itself to her, effectively pinning her to the ground. A collar emerged from the top of the pack, clamping around her neck. Her eyes flashed an unnatural green, and a wisp of a smile crossed her face. She stood up, lifting the pack with ease.

A dozen slender, articulated arms supported the pack and nearly lifted the girl off the ground. Her toes barely scraped the dust. Larger arms emerged from the top of the pack, thick as a cigar and long enough to reach around the skidder twice. She slid a few steps forward. With three of her articulated arms, she grasped the skidder and gently righted it. She held it aloft with seemingly no effort.

Josephine peered at the skidder, prodding at damaged parts and fiddling with the controls. She frowned as she did so, her brow furrowing in concentration. She located the crack in a fuel cell, gently extracted the cylinder, and replaced it with one that appeared to be in much, much worse shape. The new one didn’t stink, though, so appearances might not be everything.

After half an hour, she stood back and shook her head. “Rockets are busted. Regulator’s two spits from shot. Fuel cells are all good now, but without rockets you’re not going anywhere soon.”

I swore and kicked at the dirt.

Abi set down the skidder. “Needs a paint job too,” she said, and then flinched at my scowl. “It does.”

“Talk to Trish,” Josephine said. “She’ll help. She still talks about you sometimes, you know. She respects you.”

I shook my head. “No. There’s no reason to involve her.”

“She’s sheriff. That’s reason enough.”

“No.”

Josephine made a disgusted noise and went back into her shack. Abi followed.

I followed. “It’s the corporations, Jo,” I said. “Goodwin sent a man to talk to me. There’s something bad happening out around a town called Swallow Hill.” Zane had given me the location, but almost no other details.

Abi seemed to shrink back into herself.

Jo’s expression got dark. “You stay away from Swallow Hill.”

“People are dying.”

She shook her head. “Just stay away.” My expression must have been enough, because her shoulders sagged. “There’s more about that place than you need to know.”

“I expect there is.”

We looked at each other for a long moment, neither of us backing down.

Abi had backed all the way against the wall and knocked a cascading series of saw blades off their hooks. She winced at each one that fell, but Jo didn’t flinch.

“I’ll bring the sheriff in when I know the story,” I said. “Until then, I don’t want her involved. She might cover something up.”

Josephine locked eyes with me. “You don’t trust her.”

“I don’t trust anyone.”

She nodded. She bit a lip and peered at the sun, now sitting fat in the sky. “That’s a good policy if you’re headed to Swallow Hill. What about that man from Goodwin? Are you trusting him more than you trust Trish?”

I shook my head. “I trust what I see with my own eyes.”

Josephine sighed. “Fine.”

“Fine?”

“You remember back when you were sheriff and a big fella rolled into town and started hitting ladies and robbing stores?”

“Sure.” She’d just described about a dozen instances from my time as sheriff.

“This was maybe ten years ago. Fella was tall, really big. Really ugly. Had a tattoo of a snake across his face.”

This was starting to ring bells. The man wouldn’t leave town and he wouldn’t settle down. Every time I locked him up he’d promise to never cause trouble. One day I’d had enough.

“I shot the man,” I said. “Right in the eye.”

“That’s right. He was mean, but he was slow on the draw.”

“What’s that have to do with this?”

“He was my husband.”

She peered at me for a minute, her face all kinds of serious. I didn’t give an inch. There was no doubt at the time that shooting that man was the right thing and there was no point in saying otherwise.

Was there? It seemed that maybe the conviction of my younger days was too strict. The man might have lived if things had been handled differently. He might have been turned around or even sent off to prison. Was a bullet the right answer for that man, or was a bullet just the simplest answer?

The grin crept back onto Jo’s face. “Sheriff,” she said, “you did me a favor back then, so I’m doing you a favor now. I’ll let you ride my Bessie there and back.” She whistled and somewhere in the junkyard the subsonic hum of power started up. “If you so much as scuff the fender, though…”

A crack like thunder rolled through the yard. A mass of metal and plastic floated over to where we stood, hovering with a rumbling roar that I could feel in my chest. The mass didn’t even look like a vehicle, with jagged shreds of metal sticking out in all directions. Rockets flared in sequence, helping to stabilize what was presumably a mess of antigrav.

Josephine spoke in barely a whisper, but I could hear it clearly over the rumbling roar. “If you so much as scuff her, you’ll be paying for it from your hide.”

I believed her. “How do I drive it?”

She looked at me like I was stupid.

“I suppose you think you’re coming with?”

Josephine’s eyes widened for a flicker of a second, but she shook her head. “Abi will take you where you need to go.”

“No.”

“She’ll be taking you where you need to go or you ain’t going there.”

“But—”

“But nothing. I’ve been teaching Abi everything I know and she’s been learning it. She’ll get you there. If you’re not dead, she’ll get you back.” Josephine turned on her heel and disappeared into the shack.

Abi disengaged her articulated arms, rubbing her neck where it must have attached directly to her spine. She gave me a sheepish grin and gestured for me to step into the vehicle.

I took a closer look at it. The thing was actually mostly shaped like a car, but plates of armor jutted at odd angles from the sides and bottom. A dozen rockets flared in various places on the bottom and sides. Some even seemed to be pointed upward. The thing made little sense, but it was clear that there was room for several people right in the center of it all. One thing was not clear.

“How in the hell do I get up there?”

She whistled—long, slow, and low. Two slabs of armor slid to the side and a slip-thin ladder lowered itself to the ground. Abi, with a flourish, gestured again for me to step inside.

I climbed into the car, shuffling sideways on one of two utilitarian benches. It wasn’t comfortable, but it sure as hell felt safe. Armored panels jutted up, nearly closing off above our heads. Abi climbed in, belching out a whiskey-scented cloud as she sat down. Panels slid closed and a series of screens flickered to life around us. Abi put a hand on the center console and with a jolt sent us spinning into the air. Within minutes, we were cruising in relative comfort over the baked desert.