March in Country (4 page)

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Authors: EE Knight

BOOK: March in Country
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“C’mon, boss,” she said. “Five bucks. For anything and everything. That’s what you tip a doorman in Atlanta.”
So began a tiresome argument, her arms crossed on her chest, holding up her small, undernourished breasts. Decent muscle on her shoulders but she could use a few weeks on Georgia ham. Amazing how so many of these people who tried to scratch an existence away from the Kurians wound up thin, sick, and haggard, like wild mutts compared to the sleek German Shepherds of the Control.
Whatever she did, even if she blew him like an eight-hundred dollar private dancer at the Velvet Cloud in Limotown, he’d bag and deliver her. Macon rather liked the idea that the very last skeet dispersing in her body would be his.
After what seemed like endless negotiations, he gave her a dollar. The price of a breath mint. Plus his personal guarantee that she wouldn’t have to be out all night holding up a sign.
She unzipped his fly and released his growing erection.
“This’ll be the best damn dollar you ever spent,” she promised, dropping her knees to the clean white tiles.
Relaxed, sweaty, and tired, he exited the washroom a half hour later, counted heads. The jukebox was still wailing. He shut the door to the sound of the whore fishing in the trash can for her utensils.
A fly buzzed his ear. “Wait a cyc, where did the Indian guy go?”
As if in response, the jukebox went silent.
“I think he left,” the kid said.
Macon glared at Casp. He shook his head. “No one’s been through this door, boss.”
“Left?” Macon looked at the counterman. “Did he go out the kitchen?”
“No, boss.”
“Then—”
Macon heard plastic flapping. He followed the sound to the music player. Behind a shelving unit filled with stacked boxes of dry supplies a hole in the wall, plastic-covered, flapped. He suspected there’d once been a wall-unit air conditioner, probably long since sold off, the hole then filled with a couple of layers of roofing sheet.
Well, you’d have to expect a few rats to dodge a trap. Maybe Stutters-with-Gimp wasn’t as stupid as he looked.
The whore came out of the washroom.
“Anyone who doesn’t want to be dead, follow me,” Macon said, looking pointedly at her. “You too, Red. Casp, bring up the rear, I don’t want any more stragglers.”
He strode out the door. The Transporter waited in the lot near the exit. They probably wouldn’t be able to see into the windowless back compartment until they were inside. He just needed them to follow him to the back doors. Half of your Authority was in how you presented yourself, walked, talked, confidence bred—
Hands swung down out of the daylight like a mousetrap snapping shut. Before Macon processed that a man—a very strong one—must be up on the Wayside roof, somehow he was in the air, swung aloft by the straps on his Model 18 and his own field harness. He sagged as his gun hitched around some invisible projection, he could just see the shoulder brace of the folding stock ...
“Casp!”
A shadow dropped, the steel hammer pick in its hand. The Indian—
He heard Casp grunt.
Three wet strikes. Two quick, one loud and slow—a secret knock struck by a hatchet on a melon—and Casp fell. He looked like a toppled chess piece. The same neat collar, the same well-trimmed hair, facedown in front of a nowhere fill-up, all those hours in the gym punishing a punching bag obviated . . .
“Run for your lives,” the Indian yelled to those inside, his stutter gone.
He swung one leg up on the roof, yanked on his gun until the strap came free, then felt himself fall—pulled down.
The ground hit him, hard.
A flurry of legs and he rolled over. Still had the gun. Smelled blood, saw it leaking out of Casp.
Horror in the lot. Red ran out of the driver’s compartment on the Transporter. Those fools . . .
The Indian and Red were throwing bundles into the back of his Pooter. His Pooter! They climbed in, pressed the starter.
Macon raised his gun, sighted. He’d blow their brains out and let a sanitation squad clean up the Pooter.
PKEW!
the gun rocked sideways in his hand. It had never done anything like that before in his range practice. He lowered it, tried to work the ejector but it wouldn’t slide.
Misfire—
No, the Indian had jammed something in the barrel. The gun’s mechanism was jammed. Shit—this had never happened to him in the field before, he’d had classroom training.
The Pooter spun around in the parking lot. Macon rolled out of the way, but they weren’t heading for him . . . they pulled up alongside the Transporter and the girl slammed a bag into the wheel well.
The bag hissed and smoked.
The Pooter kicked up pebbles as they roared out of the Wayside.
Panting, heart hammering as it had never beat before, Macon dropped the useless gun and rushed to the side of the truck. Expecting to be torn to shreds any second by the blast, he wrenched the charge free. Hurled the bag—odd shape for a demolition charge, and wet, must be some bathtub fertilizer mix in Kur-knows-what container. Had the presence of mind to hit the dirt between himself and the still-airborne explosive.
It landed on the road. He could see it from beneath the Transporter. The bag had split on impact.
The cigarette she’d stuck inside the bag had gone out. The sputtering hiss had been from a bottle of flavored soda that had sprung a leak as she crammed it against the wheel. It was the bag full of sandwiches he’d told the kid to gather.
Angry, angrier than he’d ever been—
who were these fuckers!—
Macon climbed into the cab and shoved the dead idiots to the side. The radio was smashed. How had that dolt Casp not heard the Transporter crew being killed? Why had the Reapers remained inside? The passenger-side body was grinning at the secret joke of their demise, a Bicycle brand card still in his hand and a vast hole in his throat, as though someone had pried out his windpipe.
He started the engine and pulled out after the Pooter. The rest of the Wayside occupants were fleeing to various compass points.
The Transporter was built like a tank. Nothing short of a cannon could stop it. True Georgia Control craftsmanship, superb in its simplicity. Solid tires behind automatic blinds. Self-sealing fuel tank. Explosive-channeling armored plate.
He drove as though demons had occupied the Pooter and he was an avenging angel. His charges pounded on the wall between the driver’s cabin and their compartment. They were probably going crazy from the blood smell.
Still daylight. The Kurians had a hard time keeping connections with their avatars in daylight.
He couldn’t wait to turn them loose on this pair. Regular Bonnie and Clyde.
“Shut up back there!” he yelled.
No radio, so the speaker system was voice only.
They didn’t shut up back there. The banging increased.
“I’m saving our lives. It’s still daylight.”
Macon heard rivets pop.
What the hell were they doing back there?
Metal protested.
“For Kur’s sake!” he shouted at the dimpled partition.
At last the banging slackened. Maybe they finally figured out he was doing the driving and the communicator was dead.
The Pooter headed north into wilderness, pushing through brush like a rampaging bull, suddenly lifted its tail. A great fallen tree filled the road, with thick woods to either side. The Pooter might still be able to push through, but only at a pace a jogging man could maintain.
Macon slammed on the brakes as well, hard enough so he heard a thump in back. Well, the Reapers wouldn’t mind a few bumps. Especially not after he turned them loose on Bonnie and Clod.
The pair rolled out of the transport. He saw heads bob briefly as they made their way to cover at the front.
Macon felt very alone, now. In his first anger, he’d pursued without thinking about what would happen if he caught up to them. The sweat running down his back had gone cold and his mouth dry.
He rolled down the window, heard nothing but the breeze rustling through leafy spring growth and the popping of hot metal from his engine.
He found himself staring at the back of the transport. It took a moment for him to see what he was already looking at.
Someone had looped a length of no-shit tow-chain around the handles, crisscrossing it several times. Those doors wouldn’t open from the inside without being torn off, and some puckering at the hinges on one side showed that the Reapers inside had been trying to do just that.
Yes, the Control really knew how to build them. The air vent to the rear chamber was atop the vehicle, a little mushroomlike projection with a grid to keep out hand grenades. Even an expert shot with a good angle couldn’t use the vent to shoot into the rear.
But the grid was stuffed with rags.
Macon swooned for a moment, realizing the implications. He dropped to his hands and knees and looked under the Transporter.
Someone had stuck a siphon hose in the Transporter’s exhaust and fed it into the air vent beneath the compartment. With the top corked, the deadly gasses had nothing to do but concentrate.
The implications came—hard and fast. The sweat on his brow made itself felt at the same time—cold and greasy.
Reapers used oxygen like everyone else. Carbon monoxide would build up and kill them. Easier than bullets.
Especially with some fool in the driver’s seat redlining the engine.
Just as well he couldn’t see the mess inside. Three Reapers, paler than they’d ever been. He could imagine the blue lines in their faces, more distinct than ever. He wondered what those yellow, slit-pupil eyes looked like in death.
Macon understood how it had happened, but would the Green Prince? A new man on the team, a red-ribboned, gift-wrapped, perfumed fuckup like this, and the loss of three qualified lives to a pair of junkyard guerillas.
He’d be lucky to get a job processing corpses for what was left of the Green Prince’s Reapers.
For a moment, Macon considered putting the barrel of the gun under his chin and pulling the trigger.
If you want to rise, do the difficult
.
It took a long time to grow a new Reaper to useful size and learn to survive on its own during breaks in contact with its master Kurian. Maybe ten years or so, though that was only a guess. No one he knew could say for certain. Only a select few were involved in that process. Maybe he could achieve something that would allow the Green Prince to control Western Kentucky with however many Reapers he had left. Couldn’t be more than nine or ten, he’d never heard of a Kurian who had more than a dozen or so.
He cocked the revolver and came around the Transporter, firing as he advanced. He made it to the driver’s seat, put the transmission in reverse, and backed away from the Pooter.
The figures rose, watching him. The redhead made an obscene gesture. The Indian stared. Maybe he mouthed something.
John Macon pointed at them, then drew his finger across his throat. Silent promise.

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