Under Dark Sky Law (4 page)

“Jesus Christ, it’s fucking foul out here
this month,” she said, silently hoping that the smell didn’t creep
into her hair. There wasn’t much of it to deal with in the first
place, but if the federalies thought she smelled contaminated,
they’d make her go through a decon shower, and that was the last
thing that she wanted. That shit burned like nothing else, and on
occasion some idiot forgot to calibrate the formula so that it
contained a safe amount of acid. Those were the types of accidents
that went around the media and dove straight into the graves at the
edges of the pits. It wasn’t something she was especially proud of,
but corpse removal runs were especially lucrative, and the
federalies tended to look the other way, leaving her far more
leeway to get her own business done at the same time without having
to worry as much about getting caught.

Despite the putrid smell, the river flats had
a certain strange beauty to them. The abandoned underpass reminded
her of where she used to hang out as a teenager, and the lack of
residents in any of the crumbling tin and wood shacks let her hear
the oddly soothing surge of the mottled, lumpy river. Trying to go
for a dip in that might not be a great idea even for Xero or Argon,
teeming as it was with chemicals and debris aggregating from the
state’s intact domes. It had been so long since anyone had lived
down there, and the river was so acidic that there was virtually no
trash littered on the banks or anywhere else in the surrounding
neighborhood—what was there had either eroded in the acidic soil
over the past decades, or it was directly swept away and degraded
by the river itself.

Their personal shack was like any of the
other abandoned buildings in the area, but they had chosen one that
leaned directly up against the pillar of the old underpass to give
it some additional stability, and they were lucky enough to find
one that had a half-assed solar tank and was still connected to an
intact sewer line that wasn’t contaminated by the river water.
Argon had dragged the body a few feet outside the building to an
adjacent shack that had probably once been some kind of a tool
shed. He hadn’t actually put the body totally back into the
enclosure, and the skeleton’s black and white boots were still
hanging out the back door.

Xero stopped when she saw the skeleton’s legs
peeking out. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” she said.

Argon threw up his hands. “Look, it was dark
and late, and we were hoping Calavera’s henchmen would come take
care of him really soon anyway. It’s not like there’s anyone around
here. There’s no one that will even come within a half mile radius
of this area—especially not with that stench rising off the river
this month.”

He was right, but Xero didn’t like sloppy
work. She gave Argon a look that let him know not to pull any more
bullshit jobs like that again. “I leave you alone for two minutes
and you can’t even finish a simple task. You never change,” she
said.

He shrugged. “I’m just the chemist, and
occasional muscle. You know I’m no good with logistics. That’s
Milo’s job, and he’s stuck taking care of Trina,” he said.

“Don’t remind me—I’d kill to have Milo along
with us on this job,” she said. She would have loved to have
Neptune along too, just for fun, but with Trina out of commission
and Milo distracted by his sick girlfriend, someone had to stay
behind and watch the fort.

She tapped her foot against the squishy
ground. “Alright, let’s get this over with,” she said.

They pulled the body back out of the shed,
trying to avoid as much of the congealed blood as possible. Xero
motioned with her head and Argon ripped the armored skeleton head
mask off its face. It was a Hispanic male, his face tattooed with
an intricate sugar skull design.

“Shit,” she said. “Well, if this isn’t one of
Calavera’s guys, he went pretty far with the authenticity attempt.
Unless I’m imagining things, those tattoos didn’t get there
overnight.”

The tattoos were old, and looked like they
had been applied at different stages in time over the years. Parts
of it were faded, where others looked like they were relatively
fresh.

“Looks like a pretty decorated enforcer too,
since he’s got so many layers of tats,” Argon said. He turned and
pointed at Xero. “See! He wasn’t just some loser flunky.”

She shook her head. “Whatever makes you feel
better, buddy.”

Argon scoffed. “Whatever. Anyway, we may have
a real problem on our hands here,” he said.

She sighed. “We’re going to have an even
bigger issue if we don’t get out of here soon. We’re pushing things
as it is. Where the fuck are Calavera’s goons? Does no one value
punctuality anymore? Shouldn’t they have been here hours ago? I
want one of us here in person to impress upon them the seriousness
of this situation,” she said.

Argon nodded. “Let’s pack this asshole back
into the shed and make ourselves look respectable.”

It was fairly ridiculous that they had to get
themselves all gussied up when they would likely just have to strip
naked and at least go through some minimal decon, but standards had
gotten far laxer in recent years, and sometimes they got away
without having to do anything to gain dome access if they looked
nice enough.

Xero was wearing a light pink mini skirt with
a white blouse and matching pink blazer. She wore a pearl necklace
with little pearl stud earrings that flashed slightly in the light.
Flat little black pumps and a blond wig completed the outfit.

Argon clucked his tongue. “It never ceases to
amaze me when you dress up like this. You look so harmless,” he
said.

She brushed a strand of the tightly affixed
wig away from her face. A thick smearing of foundation covered up
the remains of her black eye, and with some careful shading you
could barely notice any of the lingering swelling. She smiled with
sickly pink lips. “I kind of like it. People never even see it
coming when I’m dressed like this,” she said. At least people in
the domes. Out in the flats and pits, people knew better than to
trust someone in fancy clothes. They’d probably see her poison
lipstick from a mile away.

She looked him up and down. “You actually
don’t look so bad yourself. You’d be the kind of boy that I would
have had a crush on in high school—the kind you’d see on the
fashion magazines and on the walls of clothing stores in the mall,”
she said. None of them had tattoos or piercings because it would
impair their ability to wear various disguises when necessary, so
any style choices had to be limited to hair and clothing.

Since he was playing the hired muscle and
would do little of the talking, he could get away with being more
casual. He had on a pair of good fitting jeans and a tight white
t-shirt. His unruly hazard cone orange hair was covered with a
pretty-boy brown wig. He scratched at the industrial strength glue
that was holding it to his head. “Fuck, I hate wearing these wigs.
This gutter glue itches like hell,” he said.

“That thing is on there so tightly that even
a decon shower won’t get it off. Don’t knock the gutter glue,” she
said and leaned over to see behind him. “Your ass looks nice in
those jeans.”

He put his hands up. “Don’t even think of
trying to kiss me,” he said.

She made an exaggerated pout. “You’re no
fun,” she said. “No time for that business anyway.”

Walking around the blood stain, she reached a
long arm over to snag a small black clock off the dresser and
thrust it in his face. “Look at the time. Get Calavera on the horn
right now and figure out what is up,” she said.

Argon silently slunk off to grab a
transmitter and get outside where the reception was better. The
broken domes of the flats made for a natural radio barrier that
made communications difficult. With a little luck and ingenuity you
could get things to work, but trying to use something straight off
the shelf was a losing bet.

He reappeared a few moments later. “I got
ahold of the nearest enforcer crew again, and apparently they’re
having some trouble at the border. I guess there are some local
skirmishes going on at that compromised south entrance we passed on
the way in last night. I wonder if that has anything to do with
this mess,” he said.

She squinted her eyes. “I don’t like the
sound of any of this—highly suspicious,” she said and exhaled
loudly. “Look, I don’t like thinking about this, but I think we
might have to split up temporarily. Which means you would need to
be the one to stay behind because you don’t have the clearance to
trigger the supply order on your own. Once I’m through dome
security the papers should be in order for you to follow behind me.
It will take most of the day getting the cargo and paperwork in
order anyway, so you should have most of the day to get to the
bottom of this. Do you think you can handle this on your own? I
really need someone to stay here and get to the bottom of this.
I’ll have a transmitter on me if anything goes down. If shit gets
really hairy, call our emergency back up and get the fuck out of
here.”

He nodded slowly. “You’ve still got some
connections to the local gangs?” he said.

“Yeah, they’re not terribly reliable, but in
an emergency they owe enough to us that they should come through.
I’ve had to put them in their place often enough in the past that
they’ll be really reluctant to let me down again,” she said.

“It’s really creepy to hear you say that with
that wig on,” he said. He put his hands in his pockets and rocked
back on his heels. Looks like we don’t have much of a choice in
this matter, though—you better get a move on.”

She smiled but her eyes were hard. “Don’t
screw this up, or we’ll all be sorry. Another war with Mexico would
seriously fuck up our groove.”

CHAPTER 5

Some serious doubt lingered in the pit of her
stomach. Argon was actually a brilliant chemist, and not bad to
have on your side in a fight, but he could be a total moron when it
came to common. Usually the rest of the Grease Weasels helped keep
him in line, but that wasn’t an option at the moment. She almost
would have sent him on to the domes ahead of her if it had been
possible, but there’s no way his Zone Pass alone would have gotten
them through security without going through the backend. And this
wasn’t a backend job.

Fortunately their flats were not very big—it
had been a test dome before the big Phoenix dome went up, and had
never been a fully fledged city before it was cut from the grid and
left to rot along with its rejected citizens. Sometimes she felt
sorry for the people trapped in the flats. Their lungs were too
weak to withstand the harshly polluted and oxygen depleted
wastelands of the pits, but since they were able to survive with
reduced oxygen they weren’t allowed Zone Passes for the domes.
Their lives were miserable, but they were perfect customers for
Alphamine. And for that, they held a special place in her heart and
in her wallet.

It didn’t really matter though. In the end,
they were all slowly dying of cancer.

She zipped over mounds of trash and smoking
debris behind the wheel of a souped-up armored all-terrain vehicle.
It had a camo paint job that would have been totally inappropriate
in this kind of an urban area, but it was now almost effective
amongst the piles of rubbles that had overtaken the once productive
city. She laughed at the image of her and her ridiculous pink
business suit driving what basically amounted to a camouflaged
tank. Dome squares were such idiots.

She had the windows rolled up in the vehicle,
and the filtration system was on full blast. The machine was fairly
new, and the filtration system was still doing a decent job of
removing some of the more detectable noxious chemicals and odors
from the incoming air. She had doused herself with an odor reducing
spray before climbing inside, which would hopefully neutralize
enough of the river stench to keep her out of a scalding decon
bath. She shuddered thinking about it. It was one of the most
unpleasant parts of dealing with official dome entry. The
California domes were the worst—you could never escape a decon bath
in those parts. They had so many laws that changed every two or
three months that she could hardly keep track of them. At least the
Arizona domes got lazy sometimes. As long as you weren’t covered in
pig shit and brandishing an illegal laser, you had a good chance of
getting through with limited hassle.

Even with the modified power-efficient
engine, the vehicle still had decent speed capabilities, and it
wasn’t long before she’d skirted a quarter of the flat’s area and
ended up at the north end of the ruined dome. The flats’ exit point
was small, but heavily guarded. They didn’t really care if anyone
escaped out into the pits—they would die within a few days anyway,
but they didn’t want any riffraff sneaking through the corridor to
the Phoenix dome. Heaven forbid they had to treat people like human
beings. It was so ironic—those more equipped to survive were
actually more likely to die an untimely death because of the dome
exile policies. Technology was a strange beast that raped nature on
a daily basis. It pissed her off, but Xero knew it was nothing but
a waiting game. Eventually the domes would run out of resources,
the sad parasitic flats would die along with them, and all that
would be left would be the pits. It probably wouldn’t happen within
her lifetime, but there was a certain satisfaction in knowing that
ultimately they would win, and all the dome drones would get what
was coming to them.

The exit compound was surrounded by armed
soldiers, tactical vehicles, a large brick wall, and lots of barbed
wire. It looked more intimidating than it really was, considering
half of the personnel would die if you ripped off their oxygen
supplies, and the ones that wouldn’t die could probably be
persuaded to turn against their superiors. If they could survive
any amount of time in the flats without oxygen, it meant they were
previously subjugated flats residents that had been hired to defend
the complex in the event of an oxygen shortage. At least they were
authorized to carry lasers—she was forbidden from carrying any
weapons into the complex, and going anywhere unarmed made her
extremely uncomfortable. Getting to play with lasers on cargo runs
almost made up for having to deal with being unarmed in the flats
for awhile.