The Saffron Malformation (25 page)

“What about Natalie?” Arnie asked.

              Rail nodded.  “You see her,” he said to Quey.  “You tell her I stayed with her mother.  She won’t want to hear it, anything about me really.  Didn’t tell you about that, bit of a falling out a few years back.  You see her, you tell her I’m sorry.  That I love her.  That I should have turned to her and not the bottle when…” he trailed off.  Quey knew the rest.

             
“Northshire,” Quey said.  “She’s a teacher.”

             
Rail shook his head.  “Don’t know for sure.  Not anymore.”  Tears shimmered in his eyes.  “Just what it says on the signal.”  He looked down, shameful for a tick, then added, “Her pages are private and I never mustered what I needed to friend her.  I miss her.  I miss that little girl too.”  He looked up at the sky, cloudless and yet still full of thunder-like booms, and said, “Amber.  Guess she’ll be a young lady by now.”  He looked at Quey, a hard look, the kind a man gives when he means what he says and needs the peace of mind it’ll bring.  “I’m sorry.  I love her.  I was wrong.”

             
Quey nodded.

There was a moment when he almost tried to convince the man to come with him, but that look said it all.  He meant to stay.  “Then I guess I’ll see you around old friend.”

Rail nodded, solemn.  It was a lie—they both knew it.  This would be the end of Fen Quada and even if Rail survived it was unlikely they’d ever run across one another again.  Quey gave the old man a hug and when they separated he looked him in the eye.  Gunfire erupted from just down the street.  Someone screamed.

             
“Go on now.  Don’t need to worry on me anymore,” Rail said and Quey nodded then ran and jumped into his truck.

Arnie emerged from Rusty Nails and Fluffy Tails with a bag slung over his shoulder.  “Come on,” he yelped at Rail who simply shook his head.  Arnie stopped and stared at the man.  He could see everything in Rail’s eyes.

              He shook his head as tears came and flowed.

             
Arnie felt his heart racing in a way he never had before.  He’d heard stories about the raiders pillaging towns, seen footage on screens, but he’d never seen one from the inside.  They never hit places this big, so he supposed he always figured he was safe.

             
Rail saw Arnie's world crumbling expressed through the look in his eyes and went to the young man who he thought of as a son.  He touched his shoulder and told him, “You’re a good kid.  Find a good place, maybe a good woman.  Have a good life.  Stay out of this shit.”

             
“What about you?” Arnie asked.  “You’ve still got plenty of years left.”

             
Rail laughed and nodded.  “This body don’t,” he said patting his chest.  “Doc said so last year.  No,” he added, looking on toward the road the raiders were making their way down.  They’d be along in a matter of minutes and he’d be ready.  “No,” he repeated, “For me, it’s been a good run.”  He looked back to Arnie and told him, “Now go on.”

The boy stood staring until Quey honked the horn and shouted, “Lets move.”  Arnie looked up at Quey.  They exchanged a look and in it Quey let him know there was nothing left to do here.

Arnie started for the passenger’s side of the truck, the skip stripped from his step, and climbed into the cab as the rig’s engine turned over and roared to life.

             
“What’s he doing?” Arnie asked, his voice empty.

             
“Dying on his own terms.”  Quey nodded, waved to Rail for the last time, and shifted the rig out of park.

             
Rail watched Quey pull away and sighed.  Then he went inside and got his guns out of the storage closet in his office.  Sitting at his desk, loading a shotgun, he looked at a picture of himself standing in front of the place with his wife and daughter beside him.  He smiled, nostalgic for a moment, then cocked the weapon.  If it was time for him to go out, it’d be with a hell of a fight.

             
Killing didn’t bother Reggie much when the men he was killing were the sort he was facing today.  These weren’t men trying to do better by their families, mothers and fathers hoping for a future for their kids.  These were parasites feeding on the previous sort, firm in their intent to take as they pleased and murder on a whim.  The sort of men who ought to be dealt with on a large scale but were left because the men in charge couldn’t figure a way to churn a profit off it.

             
Reggie saw a raider up the street holding a rifle to a little girl’s head.  The poor thing was crying, pleading for her mother and father who watched terrified as they unloaded their valuables from their house into this sackless fuck’s car.  The bandit gave no notice to the engine rolling up the street, and why should he, it was reasonable to assume it was another of his brood come to laugh at the misfortune of these folks.

             
Know what they say about assholes who assume…

             
Reggie squeezed the trigger once as he drove by.

             
…they end up wearing their brains on their shirt.

             
The bandit collapsed as Reggie turned wide and started down Sandbar Lane.  He could take that to Coastal View and then on to the Nails and Tails.  He had to hurry, if there were cars down here that meant the raid was coming in full force any moment.

             
“Where we heading?” Arnie asked as Quey stopped the rig at a four way, watching the people cautiously hurrying from here to there in every direction.

             
“To get Dusty and Reggie.”

             
Arnie looked over at him, “You know where they’re at?”

             
Quey shook his head.  “Hoping you might have a thought,” he said as he searched through the windows for anything that might point him true.

             
Arnie looked out his window and up the street where a stream of smoke was rising steadily into the sky.  After a tick or two it stopped and then started up again.  “What’s that?” Arnie asked when it happened again.

             
Quey leaned over and looked through the glass at the smoke signal and smiled.  “Look at you.  All ready useful.”  He patted Arnie on the back once and shifted the truck into gear.

             
Reggie watched as a group of bandits a few blocks up the road stood staring at a smoke signal rising from a street three or four kilometers ahead.  The bandits exchanged words then jumped into a car parked along the side of the road and started it.  The big man thought about raising his gun and looking for a shot but he knew there wasn’t one to be had.  The raiders were too far away and the car would give them cover.  All he could hope to do was waste some shells in the trunk and draw attention to himself.  He pressed down on the accelerator, speeding the car up to dangerous numbers on these thin roads.  He couldn’t be sure but the smoke was near enough to The Rusty Nails and Fluffy Tails for him to suspect a friendly might just be responsible.

             
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Rachel asked as she spotted a trio of bikes roaring toward them.

             
“I’m sure it’s an idea,” Dusty said as he stood next to the smoker opening and closing the lid in what he hoped was a signal for help.

             
She looked over her shoulder at him and he knew the look.  This was no time for sarcasm.

             
“Trust me,” he trailed off and Rachel nodded solemnly.

             
“You think Quey’ll know what this means?”

             
Dusty smirked, “Yeah, that part I’m not worried about.”  It was a story he told often, he just hoped Reggie and maybe Railen would remember, a funny bit about when he was twenty two and got himself trapped on a roof one night after having to abandon a young lady’s bed chamber.  The dilemma was caused mostly when it came to his attention that she might not be as old as she claimed and the apartment they were in might not belong to her, but to her father, who might just be the large man coming through the front door.

             
He shifted his attention back to his signal as raiders began to gather on the road in front of Banners Grill.

             
The door to the roof banged loudly and Dusty looked over at it.  He’d piled the spare cord of wood against it, a stack that stood three quarters of the way up.  The bandits would eventually make it through but it would take a while.

             
Rachel was pacing and fidgeting with her hands.  She couldn’t seem to stay still.  Every time she tried her legs bounced and burned until she started moving again.  She felt a strong need to do something but couldn’t settle on what that might be, so she paced.  Below she could hear the engines roaring to a stop and then sputtering into silence as the raiders parked and convened.  She could hear their voices discussing, but she couldn’t make the words.

             
An air horn blew twice and she looked up.

             
Dusty let the lid on the smoker fall closed and grinned.  Rachel looked at him and he tried to quell her nerves with his excitement as he shot her a look then dashed toward the edge of the roof.

             
On the street were a cluster of three cars and half of a dozen motorbikes.  Around them was a gang of raiders looking up the street at the approaching rig.

             
“Big truck like that, must be carryin somethin,” Dusty heard one of them say and a few of the others agreed.  “Possibly even something we like.”

             
“Or, you know, it may be that’s him,” said another raider.

             
The first scratched his chin thoughtfully and asked, “Think we’d be that lucky?  Find this asshole just waiting for us in the middle of the road of the first place we checked?”

             
“What are they talking about?” Rachel asked.  Dusty looked at her but said nothing.  Truth was, he didn’t know and what the bikers had said confused him.  What, or maybe who, the fuck were they looking for?

             
“What now?” Arnie asked.

             
“Working on that,” Quey said.

The truck was reinforced to the point that none of the bandits guns would pierce the metal but the glass was just glass and he’d learned just a few days ago that
it seemed the engine could take a hit from the front.  There was also the issue of the tires if they had a powerful enough gun or fired enough bullets.  Quey knew if these were problems Once Men could assess, then the bandits looking at him like a new prisoner with a pretty mouth were likely to catch on too.

A ball arched from between the buildings ahead and landed amidst the bandits.  He watched as a few heads turned toward it and then the shouting began and finally the pushing and the mad scramble to get away.  They tried to run but it was too late, the street exploded, blowing out the windows on the cars parked ahead, shattering the glass in the businesses and shaking the rig Arnie and Quey were sitting in.  On the street itself, body parts flew violently away from each other and clothes caught fire and flesh cooked.  A few of the men furthest from the blast were knocked to the ground with deep wounds, cracked bones and bleeding ears, lying in a street covered in their comrades’ gore.  He saw one of them pick a hand off his chest and toss it aside.

              “What the fuck?” Arnie asked as Reggie walked out from between two buildings and assessed the carnage his grenade had caused.  He pumped a few rounds into a number of twitching bodies, just to be safe and sent rounds into a pair of survivors who stumbled and struggled to get away.

             
Quey slapped Arnie’s arm and laughed as the big man waved him forward.  The rig lurched toward the building, rolling over bodies and parts of bodies in the road, and stopped before Banner’s Grill.

             
Reggie was looking up toward the roof when Quey stepped out of the truck, gun in hand, and moved toward the big man.

             
“Welcome to the party,” Reggie said, his voice eerily calm.

             
“See you brought your favors,” Quey remarked looking at the gun in the man’s hand.

             
“Betchyer ass.”

             
Movement inside the restaurant.

Quey and Reggie shifted their gaze just in time to see the two men inside take up position and open fire.  Reggie dove to the left, Quey to the right and then rolled behind his truck.

              Reggie, prone, fired back.  The raiders had taken cover behind a few overturned tables that Reggie's shots cracked holes through and sent bits of splintering into the air.