Skylock (3 page)

No. It was time to get real. He had a wounded man and priority cargo in tow—charges beyond just himself. Trennt leaned against the car's warm fender and looked to the brightening east. He drew a slow breath and listened. Through the heavy dank air he heard the sound of their returning engines. The bad guys would know where he was now and they wouldn't be forgiving.

Trennt fished about his shirt pocket. Out came a pear-shaped lump of crinkled black foil—his own lucky piece. Inside sat an old hunk of rock candy—Mother's little helper. He twirled the nugget speculatively between his fingers.

From kitchen labs all over greater Chicagoland came simmering stews of low-grade amphetamines. Alcohol was too expensive for the modern despairing masses; religion, unbelievable and abandoned.

But synthetic bulk chemicals had long since become a cheap, state-funded substitute. And the crock pots of a million orphaned grandmothers, forever empty of prime meat cuts, now held new and much more enterprising personal recipes. Conscientious product served up with the same loving care as ancient Sunday roasts.

Trennt had never subscribed to the chemical confederacy. Too many zombies out there already. And he didn't deserve the raw edge of his memories being falsely dulled. But Mama Loo, the resident chemist of his old neighborhood, had coaxed him into carrying a single tab as a sort of combination lucky piece and emergency mind fuel.

For more runs than Trennt could remember, that same tab had ridden quietly forgotten in his pocket. Wonderful Mama herself was long gone, another victim of the deadly ozone inversions which fell unannounced over the sluggish downtown area. But her spirit lived on in this tiny piece of cottage chemistry. And to that memory, Trennt now surrendered.

He reverently peeled off the old foil. The pearly rock inside was gummy with age, melted by sweat and re-formed in that same battered wrap a hundred times without ever seeing the light of day. It might not even carry a punch anymore. Still, Trennt raised it in salute, then slipped its metallic bitterness under his tongue and began the wait.

In a couple of minutes he felt the change. His exhaustion flaked off and fresh juices of optimism soared up inside like sweet springwater. Thank you, Mama.

Okay. The bad guys would have them zeroed before long, set for a last-ditch try at his car and cargo. Sunrise was working against him. But, there was also a satellite farm due south of here, just a few miles cross-country. Several thousand acres Trennt recalled from the times he'd worked the ration trucks as a "Common Displaced" person.

He knew sector farms had their own police forces—and electric minefields surrounding. The good guys wouldn't know he was coming. If they misunderstood his charge into their defensive perimeter, he could expect even less mercy than from the mobsters. But waiting here longer only gave the hijackers their own private hunting preserve.

"Okay, sis," Trennt encouraged the idling night pony. "One, the hard way."

The gas pedal went flat and the Chevy burst in the open. Squirting twin rooster tails of orange brick dust high into the clammy dawn air, it vaulted the ruined crown of Pershing Road like a hot black missile. And as expected, a half dozen pursuit cars bored in, snapping at its flanks.

The prairie was hard going. All potholes, stumps, and weeds. The floorboards banged. Trennt's teeth chattered. His hands looked transparent on the gyrating steering wheel and, across the car, his silent passenger rattled with a brutal palsy.

Still, he forced more gas to the thundering pony. Cresting 100 miles per hour over terrain that would have tested the best dirt bikes, Trennt's 3800-pound car blitzed like a rocket—wide open, on the deck, and below radar.

The bandits were now tired of all the effort they'd invested in their quarry and wanted a quick end. Bullets again peppered Trennt's fenders and roof. They stitched trails across the resistant window glass and punched into his doors.

But ahead, his distant target also appeared. A teasing green mirage that rose and sank in the thick dawn air. A dusty emerald crowned in flickering pearls of stainless razor wire, it cycled in and out of a heat-soaked pulse that seemed to mock his efforts to reach.

Then, it burst upon him. The farm's minefield materialized so abruptly that Trennt barely swung away in time. He glanced longingly beyond, through the deadly twinkling coils of heaped barrier wire and broad irrigation moat, to the safety of the farm's thick-packed rampart walls.

Inside, they'd heard him coming. From behind a line of automatic weapons, a cluster of armed men appeared. Atop an earthen parapet, they curiously watched him approach.

Trennt veered hard and raced parallel to the deadly earthwork, hoping to show his plight without forcing a test of their hospitality. But the farm cops were slow at taking the hint and the bandits were not about to give up. Still closing in, enemy gunfire came thicker with each new second.

Hundreds of yards flashed by without any sign of invitation from the farm. It was down to crunch time. Trennt's gas gauge now tickled empty and no other evasion was possible. Desperation fueled a reckless plan.

He'd make his own entrance. A low spot in the glinting lacework showed itself. A gate. At this speed, it'd be the weakest link. But he was at the wrong angle to channel his full momentum into piercing it. He'd have to loop back and gain speed—right through the snapping hounds.

They momentarily gave way to his surprising charge, though quickly recovered, dousing the Chevy in even more concentrated gunfire.

A determined bandit car cut in from the right. Trennt countered with a quick tap of his brakes and hard right turn. His opponent spun off through the dirt, tail first.

A second tried forcing him over from the left. Trennt reversed his first maneuver, easily twirling the car amidships and away to his rear. With all their high-tech engineering, newer graphite-composite autos just didn't have the spunk to go one-on-one with an old hunk of Dee-troit iron. A strange and heady euphoria grew from Trennt's mix of adrenaline and meth cocktail. All the danger was almost becoming fun.

Then above the engine roar and popping weapons, friendly fire announced itself. The slow, throaty clap of armor-piercing slugs came arcing in from the farm's fifty-cal. The good guys finally understood and were trying to cover his escape.

Hoping they had also turned off the mines, Trennt cut back hard for the barrier wire. But his swing went wide in the soft loam and the Chevy slid outside its tight umbrella of supporting fire. He felt the vehicle buck and nose with hits from his own people. Through the dusty swirl of his dashboard, he saw the oil gauge bolt, tremble, and plummet. A quick gush of rank steam licked over the windshield. One of the big farm rounds had split the night pony's engine.

"Not now," he pleaded. But the Chevy's hurt was too big to cure with a wish. She was fast going lame.

Trennt managed to straighten his broad, shearing turn and throttled hard, back toward the farm. His engine now groaned with slapping pistons and dry, hammering valves. Beneath the hood a speeding tick sprouted, quickly growing to a chorus of screaming metal.

The car barreled across the deactivated minefield. It springboarded off the thick dirt ramp and launched with a rolling
CRUMP!
Connecting rods and scalded oil blew from the engine compartment as the auto spiked the gate dead center, exploding the barrier in a spray of shocked glitter. Coils of lethal razor wire sang invisibly by, clawing both roof and floorboards a time each in passing.

Trennt felt a momentary nothingness under his wheels; the brief peace of a quick heavenly passage. Dena and the kids filled his windshield. Then the Chevy impacted, plowing itself a watery grave in the deep muck of the farm's irrigation moat.

Clinical experts had long claimed that extinction through starvation was simply the natural avenue man was choosing for himself. His persistent meddling in the earth's basic crop stock through splicing, hybrid development, and chemical dependency had diluted rudimentary genetic codes in each succeeding generation of foodstuffs.

Of equal consequence was a secondary trespass into the arena of socioeconomics. For hybrids meant higher yields from less ground. Higher yields insured a mounting birth rate with more need of land dedicated to housing, education, and commerce; and a natural reduction of the ground reserved for farming.

And so, a mighty doomsday machine was born. One which grew larger with each new decade, until civilization's entire presence came to hinge on a collection of high yield, fertilizer sensitive weeds—themselves existing in an ever narrowing band of production and fertility.

Warnings of potential catastrophe had surfaced periodically throughout recent years of industrialization. The Irish Potato Famine of 1845, the corn leaf blight of 1970, the worldwide wheat smut and soybean leaf rust epidemics of the late twentieth century all hinted at a mounting likelihood for disaster.

With each new growing season, the firing mechanism of the great doomsday machine drew a little tighter. At the turn of the new century, it was finally set fully cocked and awaiting just the right trigger to start it in motion.

That trigger arrived by way of chance solar convulsions early in the new millennia. Fickle spasms of mass and energy in earth's distant benefactor that bombarded the solar system with immense gravitational, magnetic, and ultraviolet fluctuations. Given the innocuous nickname of "Skylock," the event itself would not be anything as trivial.

A consequential fluxing of its poles resulted in a minute reduction of the earth's rotational speed. The varied densities of planet crust and core fell ever so slightly out of synch with its atmosphere, rattling tectonic plates worldwide and giving rise to a subsequent increase in earthquake and geothermal activity.

Erratic and violent weather grew commonplace. Besides obvious land damage, resulting high-altitude soot layers also changed the specific light bands necessary for proper plant growth. Radical ozone generation at ground level impeded crop ability to absorb nutrients, making root systems easy prey for disease and hearty droves of mutant insect strains. Contagion ravaged the planet and worldwide crop harvests fell off by forty percent.

Enter the Manna Project, a global research campaign created by the United Nations and run under license of its Disaster Relief Foundation. It parceled out assignments in plant genetics and was regulated by a world governing board with total project sovereignty over all governments and powers.

But too many jealousies had been fostered for too long a time. And even united in the starkness of their common need, what surfaced among countries was a gaggle of uneasy alliances, which held little trust in their counterparts and gave birth to the inevitable secret societies.

Royce Corealis pumped through the last of his midmorning push-ups. He drew a deep breath and snapped to his feet, savoring the exhilarating rush of fresh blood through his system. Eighty hard ones, like clockwork. Just the right finish to his daily regimen of weights, running, and bag time.

Checking his profile in a gym mirror, the USDA director and head of American Grain Studies was well satisfied with what he saw. At fifty-six, Director Corealis still cut a dynamic figure. Steel gray eyes set in a square, powerful face returned his stare. A set of broad shoulders, firm arms, and flat stomach boasted a man willing to expend whatever personal exertion was required to achieve his goals.

As appointee to the American chapter of the Manna Project, Corealis proved as hard a charger in his professional labors. Under his capable direction, the main research station at Fort Collins, Colorado, and a smattering of contributing countrywide sites delved headlong into their world-class assignment.

Through their studies of plant cloning, cell fusion, and gene splicing, the Crop Research Division of the USDA searched for the isolated traits which would strengthen the UV and ozone resistance of cereal grasses.

A spartan life had toughened Royce Corealis and forced him to achieve things in the old-fashioned way: with smarts and drive.

The eldest of a struggling Iowa farm family, Royce had had nothing else to help him along. No godfathers or family-paved avenues waiting in business or politics. Just a harsh awareness of economics made early in life, on those humiliating Saturday trips to town. Hellish little journeys from near poverty to a voyeur's world of new bikes, clothes, and treats; all belonging to other, more prosperous children.

The message burned bright to the gawking nine-year-old standing empty-handed in his tattered bib overalls. One which became his fuel and rose as his herald: Success was what you clawed out for yourself.

Scholarships got Royce started and personal savvy held the compass for his upstream fight. In 2021 he became a grain broker for the Japanese, eventually gaining exclusive rights to procure all the American buckwheat so craved by that wealthy island nation.

But these current global hard times proved Corealis' best working medium. His business savvy helped penetrate the newly formed CRD. There, he maneuvered himself with timely favors and adroit flanking moves, eventually standing as chief of the restructured USDA itself; a force to be reckoned with and—once federal decentralization had taken place—a position grown to parallel the very presidency itself.

At first, only the power was his motivation. But, slowly, a greater feeling of responsibility awakened in the man: accountability of what he controlled and stewardship for his country's best interest. So driven, the director shouldered a total patriotic acceptance which made him expect no less from his peers. In mind as now in body, Royce Corealis was a force nothing would be allowed to obstruct.

Today found the director far from his Fort Collins home base. He was in Illinois, attending a quarterly staff meeting at the regional capitol and interim White House. Along with the other regional governors and various department heads, Corealis spent the three-day assembly delivering progress reports to the president-in-exile and compiling notes for distribution through subordinate channels back at home. Unknown to the majority, however, another private order of business still remained for Corealis and a select few.