Trucksong (18 page)

I grasped the linkmaker and blinked through the files that scrolled behind me eyes. I tried to free meself from the underside of the King as it picked up speed, moving towards the snakes. A bolt on the ground banged into me shoulder it hurt like hell. I almost dropped me linkmaker. The patternings of patchfiles jumped but they kept scrolling. A snake slivered up round me leg. I blinked home a patch and stuck me linkmaker back in me tote while I tried to shake off the snake. I’d see what would happen to the King when it chomped down on that patch of Toxic Shok that I’d saved for the direst emergencies, a patch that could cripple a truck real fast in a jam. The King weren’t no ordinary truck though, and it swerved as a shiver shook through it but it still kept on going and we were almost at the snakes when I finally cut meself loose and got spewed out between the back wheels.

Bashed and battered and with me nerves keening like wind in wires and the blood pounding in me head. I lay there a second while I saw the King come spinning around, fixing to ram me against the wall since it weren’t keen on using other weapons here in the heart of its den. The snake that was on me had gone, shaken off in the fall, but I could feel where it’d bitten me. Skin stiffening up brittle under the poison. King started to slow, maybe the patch was taking hold. Pain washed away with all me fear, but still the King kept coming and I knew I’d have to try one more thing if I was ever gunna see Isa again in this life. Snakes slivering and moving and all manner of twisted metal creatures scrabbling around in the dark down there but the only thing that I could see was the King, ferocious and fearsome. Smoke stacks belching, engine gunning, howling in the echo of the chamber. It come at me and rammed the wall and I spun away to me right as bits of rock and chips of stone rained down on me. The King’s gear box glunked as it found reverse, a sound like bone popping out of a dislocated joint. It backed out of the wall, rumbling away again, its search lights swinging, always swivelling, looking for me.

Then the Left Tenant appeared in the opening, bits of Sinnerflapple smashed up in its grill. It’d been recalled by its master and was coming back inside to see what it could do. The other brumbies were still out searching to see if there were more threats on that mountainside no doubt, given the Brumby King now had its Left Tenant back and thought it had things down here under control. So now I was facing two trucks instead of one. I had to roll out of there lickety split but the main entrance was blocked by the Left Tenant and the Brumby King was between me and the funnel I come in down. The Left Tenant shot out a grappling arm on a flexi cable that snaked out through the snakes and grappled around on the ground next to me. I kicked at it and it twisted around me ankle. I felt a spark as it touched on the skin round where the snake bite was scaling up me skin, and a current ran through me body and a flash of truckmind sickening yaw in me head. It was a raw connect straight into the Left Tenant’s truckmind and it wasn’t a nice thing to feel. I was dragged in toward the Left Tenant then, as it drew back on its grapple. I squirmed around but there wasn’t no way out, it was just me and the grill of the wild brumby truck. I went in for a wrangle, using me fading strength to flip me linkmaker on the right freek but it clattered out of me hand, the smooth steel surface sliding away into the darkness to be infested by snakes and other creatures. No doubt that was the end of me truck riding days but all I could think of was getting to Isa. She was in the cab of the King for sure, I felt it in me bones and plus there wasn’t nowhere else for her to be in the lair, with all the brumbies gone. That was clear enough.

I felt naked without me linkmaker, but there wasn’t nothing I could do about that. A strange feeling came on up through me leg from that flash of truckmind like a new channel had opened up in me head once I got snake bit. As I was gunna get chomped anyway under the steel wheels of the Left Tenant, I sent out a random freek just using me thoughts, as though I was innerfaced with the link and it didn’t seem to make any difference that I wasn’t inside the truckmind. A wide freek opened up inside of me between the flash from the Wotcher the previous day and the spark from the bite. I was innerfacing direct with the Left Tenant and I rode it even from out here on the ground. I let go the grapple and felt full control of the big truck. I wasn’t no soft body rider in the truckcab no more. I was one with the Left Tenant. I moved in to close on the Brumby King that had suddenly realised it didn’t no longer have its own prize brumby. The King squealed and came on in to run me down, tangled as I was, still in the cable, and it would of got to me, too, before the Left Tenant could reach it, except I focused me mind to join with the Left Tenant and throw its ramming bar right at the heart of the Brumby King. The Left Tenant crashed into the King with a sickening roar. The King howled for traction and pushed back but it couldn’t get off that spike. I joined even harder and pushed at the Left Tenant’s mind to go further. Me eyes turned everything red, me head seemed to swell twice as big and shrink dense as a dull lead pinhead at the same time. Screaming gears stripped metal flesh deep in the King’s insides and the ground turned black where its fluids ran out into the dust.

Wheels spinning and then falling silent in the lair. I could almost hear the dust falling in the rusty rustling of the slinky snakes in their mating pile. Left Tenant locked together with its King to the last moment. Twisted metal and leaking fluids. Smell so harsh and high in the close space. Without the King’s slave wire, nor me own link, the Left Tenant itself was dumb and still. The other brumbies outside must of been the same. It was brain damaged and dead weight where it’d been so strong just a minute before. On the end of its spike the King lay dying, all of its insides leaking out on to the ground. The King made an effort to move but it was pinned. With a groan it stopped and was still. All that power and tech came to this at the end, a ruin of buckled plates crushed underneath its own Left Tenant. It made a small whirring sound almost like its last breath and then I knew it was over and relief washed through me system like truckdream. The King was cactus.

I moved towards the King’s leaking body, careful but also keen because I still reckoned I’d find Isa real soon. The Left Tenant were finished for sure, there wasn’t no signs of life from the outside. Its head was blown like a busted gasket. I reached out and touched its plates still warm but there wasn’t nothing going on in there. It was still a awesome sight being so close to the wild brumbies like that, me blood was yammering with it, almost a better trip than haze. Feeling more and more plucky, I got up on the Left Tenant’s wheel arch to have a better look at the damage I’d done to the King. A thin wisp of grey smoke wafted up from inside the Left Tenant’s cab and there was a drip drip drip of hydraulics hitting the ground. The King’s view screen was black as ever, black as a burntout tree stump, no sign of anything going on behind. It was pinned to the cave wall on its side, its armour gouged and crumpled, metal shiny and clean where it’d been sheared, and dirty and rusted over older wounds. I jumped down to the ground to get closer but just then there was a creaking growling sound and a wailing of twisting metal. In the gloam the King moved again, a growing shape forming underneath it and I jumped back as it seemed to swell up and push itself off of the Left Tenant’s spike. I didn’t see what happened next because I was busy getting myself out of the way, but when I turned I saw the Left Tenant had been rolled to one side and the King had sprung out two monstrous legs from underneath its chassis. Shaking like a newborn foal it had climbed to its feet, the truckcab nestled up above the wheel housings where the two backwards joined legs sprung and swayed like a chook. It couldn’t stand to its full height inside the lair, so it crouched down and reared up its head to let out a terrifying roar from its rusted throat. It stomped closer to me, and then I felt the cold rush of its sensor sweep as it scanned me with its red eye. Fluids were running down those massive fleshstretched robo legs. It was weakened but still coming on. It staggered to one side. I saw its thick and yeller toe nails and it struck me strange.

It was odd but it gave me a thrill even though I was threatened with death, and that monster towered above me. A truck, tottering on legs of smooth flesh though the joints were facing back and the toes were splayed. I was seeing something that had never been before nor probably wouldn’t come again after, and at last I understood what them trucks were trying to get from the Wotcher: it was like the horse’s head said, they wanted to be done with parts and pillaging and to go with systems that could heal themselves. They wanted the seed of the original truck form from the Wotcher’s Lie Bury and combined with the power of flesh from hybrids. I scampered backwards with me back against the wall. Me last line of defence as a foot came down and stomped me. I rolled off to one side. A thundering jolt jarred me brain inside me skull.

The King was still teetering above me but it was angry and busting to stomp me head in. It wound up for another go. I was stunned, but a blue light from the slinky snake poison sparkled through me blood to me head and I reached up in the air where a linkmaker would go even though I didn’t have a linkmaker no more. Feeling through fleshmade link wave for the King’s truckmind even as it set again to crush me. A push through the wavy freeks and the King’s firewall and I found what I was looking for. Though there was another rider there, I was fresh bit from the snake and with a massive force I stormed the King through the link, trying to blink home a mindflesh patch that would stall the onslaught.

Me fleshy patch blinked home into the King’s truckmind. There was a shudder through the King’s legs. Though it was newly hatched on two legs, it were still wounded from the Left Tenant’s ramming spike. The rusted and busted truckbody suddenly were too heavy for the legs to hold and the King tottered over to one side then fell to the ground with a crash. The noise was shocking. Slinky snakes skittled out of the way of the blast of dust and chemical smoke licking from the truck cab. The body was seized by me patch, the truckmind came unstuck between the two wounds of the Left Tenant’s spike and the sudden crash to the ground. The King lay there, legs twitching. They were smooth and hairless but there was pores and a sort of down up near the top of them. I couldn’t help myself. I touched one and it was warmbody. Stopped to catch me breath, everything catching up to me. Me heart thumping like a truck’s donk before it shifts gears. The smell of oil and grease and the close trappings of brumby trucks and the rancid stink of dead animals. The droans that once was slaved to the King’s thrall were going skitter scatter everywhere. There wasn’t anything left for them up there no more in the looted world of a dead King. I let them go, I wasn’t interested in slaving nor wrangling no more truck minds. All I could think of was seeing Isa. The lair disappeared in me eyes and ears, all there was left for me now was getting into the cab. I climbed up over those legs with their down and their pores and I found a way up onto the running board dinted and dinged from so many truckbattles. Made it to the rider’s hatch and tried it but it was jammed tight.

I took up a metal bar from the wreckage and pried it open. It came with a creak and a groaning of steel. Inside, the rearview mirror picked out a rectangle of light on Isa’s face. Her eyes met mine.

Her face was hollow, cheeks sunken. The scale on her arm from the slinky snake bite had growed over the place where the IV drip were fed. It smelled real bad in there, like cloying shit and and tangy piss and rotted flesh and underneath all that was a smell of new life like dirt and earth when a thunderstorm has passed. The cab was dark now the King was dead. It was the first time I’d seen inside a brumby truckcab. It wasn’t nothing special, just the rider’s cage and the view screen. She looked at me with her eyes bruised and hurt, her pain washing over me too as I reached in to undo the harness. But there wasn’t no clip. The harness was growed into her chest, her legs were wasted into the fabric of the couch. There was no clear line to where Isa stopped and the Brumby King begun. I put me arms around her shoulders, whispered soothing words even as the stink were almost too much to bear but that other smell got to me. Somehow it was the smell of hope and life in all its writhing forms.

I kissed her mouth but she turned her head away. She couldn’t speak, there was just trucksong in her mouth, chesty gurgles or throaty whine. Her eyes rolled back in her head.

I stroked her hair, tried to comfort her.

‘It’s gunna be OK,’ I said.

She gurgled some more and then through the noise I heard: ‘Don’t touch me.’

Her eyes snapped open and they was burning.

I backed off.

‘Isa, it’s me.’

‘I know who you are.’

‘I’m gunna help you.’

More gurmblin, then she whispered: ‘I don’t want yer help.’

‘But you’re damaged. I’m gunna mech you outta here and I will find some one to help. There’s a doctor in the midden dump knows the way of brumbies.’

She coughed, then found her voice. ‘I’m not innerestid in no doctrin,’ she said.

‘We can road together, start our own show like we always said.’

‘We never said nuthin like that an I’m not goin anywhere, not with you.’

‘I can help you. We can fix you up another rig, mech a new truck body.’

‘I don’t need no rescuin. I roaded with the King of me own free choice.’

That didn’t make no sense, not right away.

‘I been roadin after you since the raid,’ I said.

‘I know, I been lurin you forwards.’

‘I been tryin to find you.’

‘I knowed where I was all the time. I weren’t lost.’

‘You was lurin me forwards? Why didn’t you just get off and tell me.’

‘You still got Smoov’s notes what I need for the trancecrypts. That’s why I stopped the King from killin you and yer stupid truck back on the plains. Or did ya think it was just yer lucky day?’

‘I never been lucky you know that. But mate, it’s all tarmac under the wheels now. Gimme a chance I can show ya. We can tour the camps, you can be a showman just like you always said and I can run the jenny and spot the crowd. Isn’t that what you want?’