Rage (22 page)

Clayton had walked around to the front of the desk. He sat down on the edge, looking down at Raine. So close now. He stubbed out the ersatz stogie in a glass ashtray.

“The races keep people happy. Lets people fit in here, too. You race, why you’d be just like anyone else who came here seeking … fame and fortune.”

The bastard knows, Raine thought. But he’s willing to risk using me.

“So you’re saying you’ll let me stay if—”

Clayton put up a hand. “Son, I can find you real work. On the routes. But you’re going to need to work up to a better buggy.”
He thought for a moment—or at least was putting on a show of thinking. “The races,” Clayton said, snapping his fingers. “
That’s
the ticket.”

In just moments the job, a real job, had vanished.

“You see, Wellspring is an open city. You can come and go as you like. That is, if you got a place to stay. Place to keep your buggy. If you got work. Then, it’s an open city. I’m just … 
suggesting
 … that if you want to stay. If you want to get yourself some better wheels …”

Clayton sent another ring of smoke up toward the ceiling. “If you want to avoid any
problems
 … you’ll race. Maybe then, after a while, I can get you some work keeping the routes open.”

Again Raine thought about Dan talking about the races. He had seen the stadium as he drove here. Big place. Hold a lot of good citizens.

The racing car fans.

Thinking:
The bastard has me.

If I have to race, then I’ll race.

After all—how bad could it be?

“Okay. I’ll race, then.”

Clayton leaned forward and slapped him on the shoulder, a big smile showing his teeth freshly covered with the brownish goo from his smoke.

“Welcome to Wellspring, Raine.”

C
layton led Raine out of his office and down to the street. The two guards at the entrance nodded.

“That your buggy? God—not much, is she?”

“Does what it has to.”

“Well, if you’re gonna race, you’ll have to get some tweaking done to it. And you’ll need a sponsor.”

“What is that?”

“Sponsor, son. Someone who pays your way into the race in exchange for getting their name promoted. Advertising. Not my area of … expertise. Go see Jackie Weeks, the race promoter; he can get you set up. Tell him I sent you. Race is tomorrow. I’ll be there. So will everyone else in town.”

Clayton again shook his head at Raine’s buggy. “Didn’t know you were driving something so … small, so beat-up. But hell, got you here, didn’t it?”

“Yes, it did.”

Clayton flipped his monocle device up, like a jeweler looking away from his examination of a rare stone.

“I can’t make you any promises, Raine. About anything. But you just remember that today, here, now … I did you …” He leaned close “… a fucking favor.”

Raine nodded. This was a world of fear. You never knew when you would need something, from somebody. A place where favors could be very, very valuable.

Is that why Clayton didn’t deal him to the Authority?

Or did that deal lay ahead?

One day at a time.

Clayton told him how to find Weeks—in his office at the back entrance to the stadium—and Raine got into his buggy. As he drove, he thought of Dan … and Loosum.

If there was a way he could do anything about that, he would. And Kvasir, too.

He felt a growing need for payback, a need to change things. But for now he had a race to worry about.

Jackie Weeks walked around Raine’s buggy.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah—Clayton called me … told me you’d be coming over. Christ,
look
at this thing.” Weeks looked up, his round face disgusted. “You want to take this into the stadium?”

“If you have something better …”

“Right, right right—sure, we just
give
away Cuprinos.”

“Cuprino?”

Another shake of Weeks’s head, followed by no explanation. “Look, Mick in the shop handles all the prerace checkouts. Could be he can do something with this. Engine may not be too bad. But where the hell are your defenses?”

“Defenses? It’s a race, isn’t it?”

Weeks smiled now, followed by the condescending groan of one who knew something about talking to a total newbie.

“Yeah. Just a race.” He shook his head. “You need to protect your buggy. Accidents happen out there. Got it?”

Raine wasn’t too sure.

“Accidents? What the hell kind of accidents?”

Weeks leaned close, as if passing on a secret. “The cars, they bump into each other. Sometimes they crash. It’s a race, but … it’s also something else.”

Raine thought:
Right. It’s a goddamn demolition derby.

“So, Mick might be able to do something for you. But Clayton said you got no sponsor? Key-rist. You can’t drive—can’t pay the tab—without a sponsor.”

“Any ideas?”

“Been to Sally’s yet?”

“What is that?”

“Keep forgetting … you’re new here. You know
nothing.
Sally’s is a bar, run by Sally LePrine. She used to be a regular sponsor at the races. Lets everyone know where to go for a drink, to hang and talk buggies. But she lost her driver.”

“He quit?”

“Er—no. He lost a race.”

“So?”

“Starky beat him. And when Starky wins, usually the other driver doesn’t do so well. Trip to the Wellspring hospital at the least. Not a place I’d recommend visiting. Sally’s driver avoided that fate, though.”

Raine waited for Weeks to finish his tale. He didn’t wait long.

“He didn’t make it out of the stadium alive. Great fucking race, man. Great one. Just what the crowds love.”

Rome, Raine thought. This place was ancient fucking Rome.

And I’m getting thrown to the lions.

But his face didn’t betray anything. Instead, he simply said, “You think she wants to be a sponsor again?”

“Don’t know. But worth a shot. Worth a shot. Meanwhile, I’ll have Mick take a look at this piece … of automotive wonder, ’kay? Sally’s is down that alley there. Don’t stop at any of the cafés. They’re not real cafés, if you understand my meaning. New blood like you wouldn’t last a Wasteland minute in one of them. Oh—and get some new damn clothes. This is fucking entertainment after all.”

Raine nodded and, leaving his buggy, started on foot for Sally’s bar.

Sally LePrine looked around at the usual suspects sitting at the bar.

When a Mutant Bash show was on, the place would be filled, barely room for anyone to get to the bar for a drink as they watched the blood and death in the MB Arena.

But now, midday … her bar harbored only those who had given up any hope of anything, nursing their stim drinks, eyes bleary. Every now and then she’d have to call for Sheriff Black to send a few burly deputies to toss the guys out. But for now the place was quiet.

And that wasn’t what she needed.

No, not after being on her own for the past two months. And despite the fact that she’d been assured it was an accident—that she had lost Jack to a bad move during a race—she didn’t believe it.

The races could be fixed.

Everyone said that.

And the best racer in Wellspring, Starky, could make anything happen that he wanted to.

When Starky came into the bar, to pay his respects—“Sorry … Jack was a good driver … He went down like a good driver”—Sally didn’t believe that’s all Starky had come for. Because since then, Starky made a point of stopping by, moments when she would make herself busy behind the bar, run into the back, do anything so she didn’t have to look into his black eyes or hear his words.

Circling me, she thought.

Does he think I’m the goddamn prize as well?

Beat my man and you get me?

There were things Sally would do before it ever got to that.

For now, she just tried to pass every day with running the bar, because it was all she knew, even if she didn’t know how long she could keep it up.

Wandering the Wasteland might be better than this, she thought.

One of the regulars raised his head. No table service; if he wanted another stim drink, he’d have to get himself to the bar.

The customer got up, making himself stand steady, and then began his wobbling course to the bar. When he got there, he looked left and right for someone to hear his order.

“Be right there, JT. Just hang on.”

JT could maybe have one more drink before she’d have to eject him. Or maybe he’d fall asleep in a dark corner of the place.

Sally wished today was a Bash day. The quiet here, so deadly.

But then—as she ducked under the fold-down railing of the bar and popped up in front of a bleary-eyed JT—someone new walked into the place.

And even in those first few seconds, seeing the stranger back-lit by the bright sunlight outside, she thought,
Who the hell is he …

 … and what kind of trouble was he bringing with him?

•  •  •

The man walked up to the bar, positioning himself well away from JT, who hadn’t attempted a tricky return to his seat. He stood there, scanning the row of drinks in the back.

Sally walked over to him.

“What can I get you?”

“Not sure,” the man said. She looked at his clothes. Stained. She noticed the deep reddish-brown of the stains.

Blood. The guy had been into something.

Should I be nervous?

The man smiled at her. “Never seen those … things before. These drinks.”

“Yeah? Never drank stim?”

He shook his head. “Where I come from—”

“No need to explain, mister. You want to try one, I’d recommend something light … here. This—”

She poured a half glass of one of the sweet stims. Good for dates. Or so some of the more experienced drinkers said.

She watched as the man took a sip.

His face registered that he didn’t love it.

“Kinda sweet.”

“Grows on you,” she said.

She turned away and walked back to JT, who had picked up his glass and was about to find his way back to his table.

“You okay, JT?”

He nodded, then began the perilous journey, glass in hand.

Definitely cut off, Sally thought. Last call.

Later she’d get some of the Salvage Factory workers streaming in for after-work stories and drinks, their hands nicked by all the pieces of random metal, wood, and junk they handled.

Big deal in Wellspring.

Taking stuff found in the Wasteland and turning it into something
useful. A door, a window, building material, car parts,
anything.

Worse things than running a bar, she thought.

She wiped a spot on the bar where JT had dribbled some of his drink.

A glance at the stranger.

Looking right at her.

He didn’t come in here for a drink, she thought. As if on cue, he spoke again.

“Excuse me, can I ask you something?”

And she walked down to the stranger, with his stains and air of someone from very far away.

He leaned close, taking a look at the near-empty bar. For now, it was just the two of them there.

“You’re Sally LePrine?”

“Place is called Sally’s, so that’s a good guess.”

He nodded. Something in his eyes drew her. A haunted look. Driven.

Guy’s either on the run from something or is thinking about something that would soon have him on the run.

“I’m Raine.”

“Like,” she grinned, “the weather?”

“If you like.”

“Okay, Raine—you had a question?”

He rubbed his chin. “I want to enter tomorrow’s race.”

Sally lost interest.
The goddamn races.
“Yeah. So enter it. Look, I got things—”

She turned to move away, but then she felt his hand shoot out. Not a tight grip, but he stopped her by the wrist, then released her.

“I need a sponsor.”

“Right. Can’t race without one. Unless you sponsor yourself.”

“I heard that you sponsor drivers.”

“Used to. Not anymore, Raine. Look, I said I have—”

“I know. Things to do. In a near-empty bar.”

“Gets busy later.”

“Can I be honest with you?” He took a breath. “Can I trust you?”

“That would be your decision. People come into my bar all the time. Lot of them tell me things. Is it trust or the stim speaking? Who the hell knows?”

“If I don’t race, I can’t stay here. Clayton as much as told me that. Said I could blend in. Someone from the Wasteland trying to make some money. And, well—I got to stay here for a while.”

“Got business here?” she said, doing nothing to mask the sarcasm in her voice.

“Can you help?”

“I
told
you. I used to sponsor drivers. I don’t anymore.”

That seemed to silence the stranger. He looked away, as if thinking.

“Guess, well—thanks. Maybe I can find someone else, right?”

Except Sally knew that anyone who wanted to sponsor a driver would already have one. Raine would find no one.

Again she was drawn to his eyes. Something different about this man.

“Tell me why you have to stay. Tell me why you can’t just wander around Wellspring.”

For a second he just kept looking at her, as if debating telling her.

Finally, he spoke. “My guess is eventually Enforcers will come looking for me. They will ask questions. Clayton says—”

“You can’t believe everything that liar says. In fact, I wouldn’t believe much of it. Especially when it comes to the damn Authority.”

Careful there
, she told herself. She looked around the bar. One had to watch to whom one expressed anything other than perfect loyalty in regards to the Authority.

“But he’s not lying about the races, right?” Raine said. “Lots of strangers come into the city to race, no?”

“Yeah. He has that right. You’d stick out less as a hungry racer than wandering around the city looking for work and a place to sleep.”

“Do—” he said, now with a smile—“you see my problem?”

And she did. Though she wasn’t sure how that made it
her
problem. She wanted no more to do with the Authority than she did with the races. She had enough trouble. Yet, something made her want to help this man. Instinct, she thought. Bartenders had to have good instincts.