Seed (19 page)

“Lots of chatter about a permanent colony,” Fiorivani reported. Like Doss, he’d wrapped himself in soiled cotton and burlap. A makeshift hood cowled the broad expanse of his well-fed face. Despite the disguise, the sallow migrants who shared the fire sensed the big man wasn’t one of them, gave him too much space.

“Somewhere in Kansas,” he told Doss, “but nobody knows where. She may as well be Santa Claus.” He paused, listening. The telltale wire of an earpiece ran the edge of his cowl. “Chen says Gomez has five Flylights up and flying. They did their first training jump today.”

“And?”

“Four dead.”

Doss sucked her teeth, cursed. Still…

“Could be worse. He got a line to D.C.?”

Fiorivani mumbled into his throat mic, listened, shook his head. “Sat link’s still fucked.”

Doss gazed skyward through yellow topsoil haze. Imagined a net covering the sky, a com satellite sitting at each juncture. There were a lot of holes in that net these days. No sat link meant no coms with Rippert. Which meant no news on Emerson. It made Doss feel homicidal.

She peered out at the ruins of downtown Wichita, crumbling foundations protruding like rotten teeth from drifts of fine topsoil. Caravans rolled in from the south along I-35 and from the west along Route 400, overlapping to give the crossroads the illusion of permanent settlement. Long lines of bone-thin migrants limped along, wrapped in homemade burlap or torn FEMAs, tailing cobbled-together trucks and wagons that whined with disrepair.

Doss and her crew had camped here for five days, watching for some sign of the Designer, waiting for some definitive word. So far…nothing but rumor.

Across the fire, a migrant girl shuddered, stricken with obvious Tet. Doss’ hand, filled with dark longing, touched the molded-plastic remote hung on a cord around her neck, hidden beneath her rags. Her eyes moved to the zep, which zombied ten miles out, a black finger pointing its way along the eastern horizon. She could hit the dead-man switch. Cause the rail gun to fix on her location. Do all these miserable fucks the favor, just vaporize this place. She keyed her throat mic.

“Puppy dog.”

Across the field stood a miraculously intact motel, where
La Chupes
had set up shop. They cooked food out front, rancid stew bubbling in an old heavy-rig fuel tank they’d torched in half and set over a big fire. The other half of the tank held cornmash. Migrants gathered there, handing over pinches of seed to the well-fed
Chupes
in exchange for cornmash, for stew, for time in one of the motel’s rooms. Speakers the height of a man stood either side of the motel’s entrance, and the migrants soaked up fat dub like it was a long lost vitamin, the echo of civilization. Some feebly danced.

As Doss watched, a small gang member led three naked orphans, two girls and a boy, roped neck to neck, in a line up to the motel’s second floor. The orphans looked scarcely younger than the gang member, maybe nine or ten. The
Chupe
ushered them into one of the rooms.

“Puppy dog,” Doss repeated. She spotted Jake throwing dice against a stack of cinderblocks with three other
Chupes
near one throbbing speaker. He rose and stepped away, touched fingers in salute to the red scarf around his head.

“Boss Momma.” He kept his back to her, eyes on the dice, his voice needling through strains of dub in Doss’ earpiece. He’d ditched his army uniform for cutoff FEMAs. Doss watched his delicate shoulder blades. Wondered when, exactly, children had begun doing the nasty business of adults.

“Don’t salute,” she told him. “Gives you away.”

“Nothing to hide here, Boss Momma.
La Chupacabra
loves you.”

“No more signals. Got anything for me?”

“West,” he said authoritatively.

“Revelatory. Anything new?”

“Everybody talks, nobody knows. Just west.” He hesitated. Beats thumped in Doss’ ear. His shoulders bunched as he struggled to form words. “They call her Corn Mother. Lot of people looking for her. Think she can save us.”

“Don’t worry, puppy dog. Nobody’s going to save you.”

“You’ll save me, Boss Momma.”

“Don’t count on it. Out.”

The migrant girl across the fire moaned. Her back arched with a sudden spasm. Fiorivani stared, something tormented in his expression.

“She’s dead, you know,” Doss told him. “Your sister.”

Fiorivani’s eyes—the same shocking green eyes as General Rippert’s—settled on Doss for a second, then he turned and stared out at where a massive wall cloud rumbled over the plains to the north. His chin dipped to his chest.

“Yeah.”

“Our mission is clear,” Doss said. “We collect the Designer. Alive. There’s no room for vengeance. Either yours or Rippert’s.”

“Sure, Boss.” Fiorivani kept his gaze far away. Doss reached out, gripped his chin in between her fingers. Turned his face to hers, saw the loss there. Empathy stabbed her chest. She spoke gently.

“Alive, Lieutenant. Get in my way, I’ll kill you.”

“Understood, Boss.”

“Good.”

They took turns monitoring radio chatter, listening for any clue as to the Designer’s location. Nothing. Just prairie saints and caravan updates. The afternoon waned. The storm to the north swelled, turned the nasty green color of an old hematoma. Then, as the day began to go dark, Doss saw what they’d been waiting for. She nudged Fiorivani with an elbow.

“There.”

A flatbed truck pulled up beside the motel. Its cab had been shaped from heavy duty greenhouse plastic wrapped over a PVC frame; it carried three 100-gal water tanks.

“Damn.” Fiorivani’s jaw hung open. “Is that…a clone?”

The girl, skin the color of charcoal, sat naked at the truck’s back end. A spiked collar circled tight around the svelte length of her neck. A thick log chain ran from it, clasped to a steel ring bolted to the flatbed’s deck.

“A landrace,” Doss affirmed.

The truck ground to a halt and the girl stood, phantasmal and glabrous—a collection of supernaturally precise ratios. Eyes to ears to mouth. Hips to waist to breasts. Shoulders to fingertips to ground. Devoid of chaos, randomness, imbalance. The back of Doss’ neck tingled. Fiorivani gaped.

“She’s perfect.”

Three men climbed from the truck’s cab. Doss noted cowboy hats, jeans, t-shirts, muscle. All three slung plastic assault rifles on their backs and stood surveying the scene.

“They’ve been eating,” she observed.

“Jesus,” Fiorivani said. “Could you maybe find some a little bigger?” Two of the cowboys were obviously twins, and enormous, pushing seven feet. Doss glanced sidelong at the lieutenant.

“Don’t be a pussy.”

The third cowboy, shorter than the others but thick, moved to the back of the truck. Cords of muscle worked in his forearm as he unhooked the girl’s chain, handed its end to one of the big twins. They moved to the motel entrance, the twins’ hats floating like boats sailing a sea of migrant heads as they shouldered their way through the crowd, the landrace girl in tow. The third man brought up the rear, his hat bobbing to chunky dub.

The
Chupes
at the motel entrance exchanged looks, reached for weapons as the cowboys approached. Doss saw one twin’s mouth twist into a satisfied smile. He held up a small leather pouch, and spoke. The gang members relaxed, laughed. One took the pouch, said something and pointed towards the stairs. The tall cowboy tipped his hat.

“Puppy dog,” Doss told her mic.

“Boss Momma,” Jake answered. Doss spotted him near the
Chupes
’ cooking vats, winced as he saluted.

“That’s our crew. With the cowboy hats. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Where’s Casanova?”

“Upstairs.”

“Alright. Give the cowboys ten minutes to settle in. Then you two clear everyone out you don’t want shot. Understood?”

“Got it.”

Doss turned to Fiorivani. “Gear up.”

La Chupes
had cleared away from the rooms. They milled with Jake and Casanova at the bottom of the stairs, leaning against the railing or standing, arms crossed with obviously practiced nonchalance. They nodded respect as Doss and Fiorivani approached. A thick
Chupe
girl, nearly Doss’ height and with a viciously crushed nose, stepped forward. An LC tat covered most of her dark face.

“Savior of El Sol. I’m Jill. I run this place. What you need, you get.” She reverently touched fingertips to the red band wrapped around one bicep. Doss nodded to her, and beckoned Jake.

“What you got?” she asked him. He stepped forward, assuming some approximation of soldierly attention.

“Girl and one of those big fucking twins in room 124,” he reported. “Other twin and his buddy are next door, room 122.” Doss considered this, then addressed the
Chupe
girl.

“Jill, what do you have in room 122?”

“One slut.”

“What’s in room 124?”

“Two sluts.”

“Nothing else?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Okay,” Doss said. “You’re going to hear some noise, Jill. Ignore it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” A cruel smile distorted the LC on Jill’s face. Behind her, the other
Chupes
somberly nodded.

The metal staircase squealed and tilted on its bolts as they started up it, Doss with the silenced .45 drawn and held low, Fiorivani following close behind. At the top, they paused. Doss eyed the motel’s long exterior corridor, its row of doors facing out to what once had been the freeway and nonstop auto traffic. A thin metal rail lined the walkway, dangling in places from bolts corroded clean through. Below, the gathered
Chupes
watched, their faces upturned and young.

“We want the girl alive,” Doss told Fiorivani, “and the twin with her, too. We take the other twin and his buddy out first. I’m on door. We go on three. Copy?”

Fiorivani nodded once, his face hard. “Copy.”

Doss moved quietly up to the door whose chipped brass numbers read: 122. Pressed her ear against it, heard a young girl’s voice, then a man’s laughter. She carefully tried the knob. Unlocked. Fiorivani got behind her, pistol low, ready. Doss nodded the silent count, turned the knob.

Deep training kicked in. She went in low and fast, turning right, following her pistol’s front sight.

A kerosene lamp lit the room with smoky light. Two men sat on their knees, naked, the shorter cowboy and one of the twins. A small white girl lay naked between them on a heap of soiled blankets, one tiny ankle viced in the big twin’s fist. He turned just as Doss squeezed the trigger. The pistol hissed, jerked twice in her hand. Blood sprayed the wall. The big cowboy collapsed, utterly limp.

Doss brought her sights to the shorter man, whose brows had just managed to go up in surprise. Fiorivani’s bullets caught him just as Doss fired. The man’s body collapsed around impacting rounds. He fell back. Doss swept her sights across the remainder of the room…Nothing. Just the lamp, stained blue carpet, decades of dust, the young girl. Doss moved into the room, poked each body with a sandaled toe.

“Deader than shit,” Fiorivani judged. The girl sat up against the wall and casually eyed the bodies of her abruptly deceased clients. A spray of blood dotted her forehead. Doss guessed her to be eleven.

“You gonna kill me, too?” The indifference in her voice stirred strange and deep kinship in Doss. In her mind, she saw a single snowflake descend out of the grey light through the ceiling grate of the Siberian pit, settling against the frozen cheek of a corpse.

“You want me to?” she offered. The girl blinked wide eyes and shook her head, calmly.

“We’re good,” Doss told Fiorivani, and turned for the door. The girl was already rifling pockets.

They moved to the next door, room 124. Doss listened. Holstered the .45, drew the composite tube of the fuckstick from her belt. Rapped knuckles against the door three times hard. A few seconds passed, then the door opened. The cowboy, massive and naked, his erection stabbing in Doss’ direction. On the floor behind him lay a boy and girl, wrapped naked around each other but motionless, as though posed. The landrace sat cross-legged in the corner, still collared. Doss smiled broadly at the cowboy.

“Hi,” she said. He looked her up and down. Scars crisscrossed his face. His lip curled into a hungry smile.

“You’re a tall bitch.”

“You, too.”

The fuckstick thumped. The cowboy flew back into the room, smacking against the opposite wall. He slid to the floor, his entire body quivering with volts.

Doss moved through the door, sweeping the fuckstick about the room. Fiorivani followed, tight behind his pistol. There was nobody else, just the kids and the landrace girl. Doss leveled the fuckstick at the cowboy. Figured he was a big fucker, and thumbed the trigger. It thumped a second time, spit a sizzling blue ball across the room. The cowboy arched. Only the top of his head and the points of his toes contacted the carpet.

Fiorivani closed the door. Kept his pistol on the kids and the landrace girl with one hand, with the other withdrew a roll of piping tape from within the folds of his burlap. This he tossed to Doss. She caught it, holstered the fuckstick, went to work.

It took the cowboy several minutes to fully revive. He strained instinctually, futilely, against the tape binding his limbs, muscles flexing. Then, consciousness fully achieved, he went still. His eyes peeled with fear as the situation registered—Fiorivani sitting Indian style on the floor beside him, tape dangling from one hand while Doss stood against the wall, .45 trained absently in the cowboy’s general direction. The cowboy spoke mutely against the band of tape covering his mouth. Doss and Fiorivani watched, blank, until the cowboy began to scream, rage and panic, muffled.

Doss spoke mildly. “You can yell all you want. Your boys are dead. What we want is very simple.” She pointed at the landrace girl, who now sat, also bound with tape, against the wall. She watched, her smooth face unconcerned, curious even. Up close, she looked carved from obsidian. “
Her
,” Doss said. “I want to know where you got
her
.”

“They took me at a crossroads to the east,” the girl said. “They killed Rat.” Her face fell, a child’s uncomplicated sadness. “I miss Rat.”