Deathlands 117: Desolation Angels (12 page)

Hizzoner beamed and nodded. Clearly, that was the question he’d been hoping for. Although equally clearly, he was prepared to go charging on without it.

“They lost their grip,” he said. “Thirty years ago there was a succession struggle for the post of president—what they call their baron. It got ugly, as such things do. The first incident was that various factions took over various sections of their domain and began fighting one another. The second was a bunch of uprisings by their subjects.

“For a time it appeared the Angels would be destroyed, either by their civil war or by insurrection. By the time things settled back down, their little rubble empire had broken down into gangs controlling neighborhoods, blocks—even individual buildings. Some of them were ruled by former Angel faction leaders, some by successful rebels. The once-proud Desolation Angels were reduced to clinging to just the Cobo Convention Center and the Joe Louis Arena.”

Ryan glanced at Krysty. His lips twitched slightly in a smile.

“But they came back, didn’t they?”

“You could say that,” Bone said drily.

“So they did.” Michaud nodded. “So they did. About twenty years ago they were being hit hard by raids and attacks. Their strongholds were strong, they grew a lot of their own food and the water table’s high enough that close to the river that they got all they needed from wells. But any wall will crack if you pound on it enough.

“Their president had a son and heir who was both charismatic and capable. He earned his wings leading counterattacks to hit their biggest enemies—gangs like the Penobscot Punks, Rock City and the Felonious Monks—where they lived. He had some nasty setbacks at first, but he learned and followed them with a string of victories that soon convinced the Angels’ enemies to pick on easier targets.

“The aging president got jealous of his son. He imprisoned him, but the young man broke free and supplanted his father, who soon died in questionable circumstances.”

“Might actually not have been murder,” Bone said. “Old man was a blackout drunk. His kid’s following his footsteps.”

“Who’s telling this story, Raymond, you or me?”

“You are,” the sec boss said. “But you’re starting to walk all around the blaster instead of getting to the trigger.”

“And
you’re
getting ahead of the story. The new Angels boss, who took the ancient and revered name Red Wings as his own, started out as a wise and capable baron. Yes, even criminals can display such traits—although as my esteemed chief of police has so pithily reminded us, the criminal nature will always come out. He acquired trade relationships and even alliances with the Angels’ former enemies—they had no friends. And he built up his people.

“However. In recent years Red Wings has become more heavy-handed and belligerent—despotic with his own people, aggressive toward others. The Angels have begun trying to expand again, but they’re finding it no easy task. Many of the myriad rival gangs that sprang up during their initial collapse retain memories of what life was like when the Angels held the whip. Nonetheless, they have become a definite threat. Specifically to this, the duly constituted government of the City of Detroit and our own efforts to return the rule of law to these nuke-blighted ruins.”

Ryan and Krysty exchanged looks. Ricky, who sat behind Ryan and J.B., made a skeptical sound, quickly stifled. They’d had a recent run-in with another man who’d claimed to be trying to restore rightful government and the rule of law, in the form of the mad Hanging Judge Santee in his ville of Second Chance, in the midst of the vast mutie thicket known as the Wild. It had not ended well. Though much the worse for the late, and little lamented, Judge.

“If I may be permitted to ask, Your Honor,” Doc said, “what about your own government during the years of Angel ascendancy?”

Michaud stopped before them. He looked at the old man, smiled and nodded benignly, as if he was bestowing gifts. Krysty knew he’d been dying to get asked just that. She also knew Doc knew it, too. For all his ancient, befuddled appearance—and despite the fact that he spent plenty of time actually befuddled—he had the keen mind of a scholar to go along with his courtly old-days manners.

“Since the dark days of the Big Nuke, and the literally and in some way figuratively darker days of skydark, the rightful government of the City of Detroit has continued to exist and survive. Even though for more than a century—and even still today—we have served in effect as a government in exile within our own domain. But from that day to this, the torch of legitimacy has been passed from hand to committed and caring hand.”

“A likely story,” Bone said.

Michaud chuckled indulgently. “Well, it’s the story that was passed onto me. And it’s not as if we have evidence to the contrary, now do we?”

“No,” the skeletal man admitted without apparent rancor or reluctance.

“So, for the past three generations, at least, we have persisted. For decades our only holding lay far away in the North End. That’s how dominant the Angels were in downtown and its surroundings. And even after the catastrophic collapse of their rule, the gangs that sprang up in their place were too powerful to challenge.

“But even as the Angels turned their fortunes around a generation ago, so a great and wise leader, my august predecessor, Mayor Reginald arose—”

“Your dad,” Bone said.

“Reginald Michaud. Yes, my father. He arose and revitalized the City of Detroit and began the march that led us here, to our current headquarters in what once was the Detroit Masonic Temple.”

He finished, holding his arms out and turning in a happy, proprietary circle.

“Which, as you see, the previous tenants, the Cass Conquerors, kept in surprisingly ace conditions for a gang of degenerate coldhearts.”

“Where are they now?” J.B. asked.

“Alas, they proved unable to adapt to changing conditions and so became extinct.”

Bone smirked. He seemed to have happy memories of the Conquerors’ extinction.

Krysty decided she didn’t like him.

Hizzoner was certainly turning out to be a well-educated man. Though that was hardly typical of contemporary Deathlands barons, many of whom were illiterate brutes, it was far from uncommon. Ryan’s late father had seen to his offspring receiving a good education. “So let me get this straight,” Mildred said.

Ryan’s head didn’t turn, but Krysty felt him stiffen. His eye flicked to the healer, who sat on the other side of Krysty. Like Krysty, he knew all too well what that tone of voice meant.

“The mayoralty is hereditary. You’re not democratically elected.”

Bone actually growled at that, but Michaud merely laughed.

“Dear lady, of course we are. Indeed, we hold annual elections to choose who will preside over the resurgence of our city to its former greatness.”

“Just nobody ever stands against you,” Bone said.

“Well, as for that,” Michaud replied, shrugging, “it’s admittedly hard to find candidates worthy enough to pass our exhaustive nomination process. But moving right along—my father led us here. Not quite to the true core of the city’s power, the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center. But on the very verge of crossing the Seven-Five and once more occupying our rightful place.

“And I have done my modest best to continue his great work. Of course, it was substantially aided by the discovery of a most remarkable trove of equipment meant for the use of the very Detroit Police Department, including weps and even a pair of armored vehicles. Our brilliant techs, in the grand tradition of what was once, after all, the automotive capital of the entire world, have converted them to run on biodiesel. The fuel is abundant, given the wide and numerous areas of cultivation here in the rubble. Also, they have fitted out several ancillary police wags with arms and armor.”

“Yeah,” J.B. said. “We saw one of your war wags in action.”

“It was cool!” Ricky said.

Michaud nodded. Even Bone flickered a smile. Or something a lot like one.

“So equipped, we have begun our final push to reclaim the city from the anarchy under which it has suffered for so long. We will subdue the many gangs remaining in the city despite their stubborn insistence on clinging to their independence. And we shall break the last vestiges of Desolation Angel power.”

He finished in the manner of a preacher concluding a sermon. Krysty half expected him to call for an amen. She wondered if she should applaud.

She decided not to. He was just a baron after all.

Ryan uncrossed his right leg from the left, then crossed left over right. He rubbed at his chin. Krysty heard his salt-and-pepper beard bristle crackle on his palm.

“Not to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, Mr. Mayor,” he said, “but why are you telling us this? More to the point—why are you even talking to us at all? As your...police chief pointed out, we’re nothing more than a scrubby bunch of outlanders.”

Slowly, Michaud’s smile winched itself back, revealing teeth that were even but yellow, until it was a big grin. “I need some extra sec, blasters, as it were....”

Chapter Twelve

“Looks tough,” Mildred said.

“
Double
tough,” Ricky said.

Jak snickered.

They lay up in the ruins of a town house a mile or so west of the subterranean redoubt from which they’d emerged. It was late afternoon of the day after they’d arrived at DPD HQ.

A hundred yards west stood a mansion that looked as if it had already been old when the Big Nuke hit. It was, they had been told, a stronghold of the Corktown Dragons, a gang recently allied to the Desolation Angels. It was a solid square structure of what looked to Mildred, when she took a turn peering through J.B.’s minibinocs, as if it had been made out of the same yellow-tan limestone so many older buildings in the area were. It had four stories, each marked by an ornamental ledge, and ivy climbing thick up the walls. Its roof was flat but built up into ramparts at the corners.

Guards armed with longblasters patrolled up there. Others prowled through the knee-high weeds of the spacious lawn. Mildred didn’t see any more gang members among the town houses and detached dwellings, some damaged, some obviously patched and inhabited, that clustered around the formerly stately house at respectful distances. At least none openly toting weapons. But more blaster-carrying Dragons were keeping watch on the cone-hatted farmers working the broad fields north of their fortress. Whether they were guards or overseers or both, Mildred couldn’t tell.

“Piece of cake,” J.B. stated.

“Wait,” Mildred said. “What do you mean, ‘piece of cake’? Are you feeling well, J.B.? Usually you’re Captain Bringdown. You’re all, ‘This’ll never work because X, Y, Z, and also it’s stupe.’”

“Am not,” J.B. said. “Anyway, not this time. This one is a piece of cake.”

“Aren’t those famous last words?”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Not this time.”

“Not see?” Jak said. “Really?”

Mildred looked at Krysty, who shook her head.

“No,” she said. “So, okay, I’ll bite. It doesn’t look promising to me at all. They’ve got a dozen men and women with longblasters out in the open, and they’re just the ones we can see. What am I missing?”

Ryan showed her a twisted grin.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We already know how we’re playing this one.”

Mildred narrowed her eyes.

“This isn’t going to involve Krysty and me flashing our tits, is it?”

“Again,” Krysty added.

Ryan shrugged. “Only if you want to.”

* * *

R
ICKY LAY ON
his belly on the roof of the town house nearest the Dragon stronghold with his carbine by his side. The building had sustained some obvious damage, including fire. Sections of the interior floors had collapsed, though the stairwell was intact. Mostly. But the far third of the flat roof was also gone, meaning the whole structure wasn’t very stable.

He wasn’t sure if he could actually feel it yielding and flexing shakily beneath him at every breath or had just imagined it.

But for all of that, what really gave him a nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach was watching Ryan and J.B. scale the nearest wall of the mansion.

The guards prowling around the rooftop didn’t particularly worry him. The roofline also had a slight projection to it. To actually see the intrepid climbers, they’d have to lean out far and look down in the right place. Neither of them had shown any inclination to do so, so far.

Nor did the pair standing guard on the steps up to the elevated front door. Ryan and J.B. had picked the nearer wall because it was out of their sight but still gave direct access to their objective. Anyway, even though the lantern light wasn’t very bright, it would make it hard to see anything out in the darkness if the door guards did happen to glance skyward at the same time one of the climbers for some reason strayed into their field of view.

Ricky’s breath caught in his throat. Two men appeared around the far corner. Strolling among the weeds in the front yard, they held longblasters at the ready. If they spotted Ricky’s friends, right out there in plain sight, the climbers were certain chills.

His tension mounted as they approached the corner and then went around it—walking directly beneath Ryan and J.B. Both men had reassured Ricky that people generally didn’t look up unless they had a compelling reason to do so. But Ricky was still terrified the patrol might spot them in their peripheral vision.

But they walked on, oblivious to what was occurring twenty feet above their heads. Ricky exhaled. He knew he’d do the same thing on their next circuit. And the next, until his companions got away clear. Or the unthinkable happened.

Light showed through the mansion’s front windows, though fortunately not from those on the side facing Ricky. The sounds of partying drifted sporadically to his ears: the clink of glasses, harsh voices, harsher laughter. The occasional bellow of rage or female scream of...whatever. Ricky didn’t like to think too much about that. He knew that, like the Angels, the Dragons had a minority of female fighters. Somehow he doubted any of them were doing the screaming.