Veteran (31 page)

‘Of course, there are tribes in the ruins of the cities on the Dead Roads,’ Mrs Tillwater was saying. ‘Little more than savages really. File their teeth, wear human skins, barely human themselves.’ I looked at this woman. Other than her augmentations, the plugs in her neck, replacement eyes, she looked every bit the suburban matriarch. She wore slightly too much make-up, was ordinarily attractive for a woman of a certain age and seemed to take a lot of care with her disconcertingly banal appearance.

‘I hear some of them eat human flesh,’ I said, pretty sure I could defend myself if this got out of hand. She didn’t miss a beat.

‘Yes, but they don’t prepare it properly ...’ She went into quite some detail about how to properly prepare human flesh. I began to worry when I found my mouth watering. I was relieved when I started to hear engines ahead of us.

The outskirts of Trenton, the industrial part of the city, had been hit by a low-yield nuke during the FHC. It was probably that crater that the dune buggy I’d been attached to had driven through. The nuke had killed the majority of the city’s population. Those that didn’t die probably succumbed to the radiation and burns not too long after the blast. The city itself had been pretty badly banged up. Mrs Tillwater was steering round piles of rubble and the four-wheel drive was definitely coming in useful. I was a bit worried about Morag but she seemed to be getting better with the bike. On either side of the road. damaged high-rise buildings reached up towards the unnaturally red sky like broken fingers. Many of the buildings were covered in freshly painted graffiti depicting complex but abstract patterns. Others had murals depicting stylised tribal heroics and what I guessed were hunts. Much of the graffiti was quite beautiful.

‘Those done by the tribes?’ I asked, pointing at one of the abstract designs. The serial killer sitting next to me nodded.

‘Territorial boundaries. The murals are histories,’ she said. ‘I mean, why can’t they do something useful like clean the place up a bit?’

‘Yeah, tidying would be the way forward,’ I said. Mrs Tillwater turned to look at me.

‘I do understand sarcasm, Mr Douglas, I just choose not to lower myself to use it.’ Suddenly the constant patronising sympathy of the others didn’t seem so bad.

‘The tribes wouldn’t mess with us, would they?’ I said, trying to change the subject.

‘Why on Earth wouldn’t they?’ she asked, sounding surprised. ‘They attack convoys much larger and better armed than ours.’ I looked out the back window to see Morag riding behind us, her poncho flapping in the wind. Suddenly she seemed very exposed.

We turned into the ruins of what we would’ve called a scheme back in Dundee but I think they were called projects over here. Basically it had been a large and ugly estate of state-provided housing. Now it was an empty crumbling mess. There was a large, rubble-strewn open area; beyond that were rows of terraced flats and beyond them a series of ugly high-rise buildings.

Parked in the open area were a lot of different vehicles, most of them muscle cars, heavily customised, all four-wheel drive. There were a few pickups and vans, also heavily customised, and lots of bikes and trikes, most of them low riders or chopped, with a few performance bikes here and there. There was even the ancient halftrack with the cartoon swamp creature painted on the bonnet that we’d seen on the first night. Everything was customised. I couldn’t help but stare at the machines. The noise of the various engines hit us like a solid wall of sound. I overrode my audio dampeners. I wanted to hear this.

‘Boys will be boys,’ Mrs Tillwater said cheerfully. People glanced up as we pulled in. Everyone there seemed to be wearing a duster and wide-brimmed hat, though many of them didn’t have their masks on. Most were bearded, even some of the women, and like Gibby and Buck, dreadlocks seemed to be the order of the day. They had the degenerate cowboy look of the cyberbilly scene. I could just about make out the sounds of heavy western guitar riffs playing through a powerful sound system somewhere. The singer was grunting about his one true love stealing his car.

As we pulled into the area, our beat-up vehicles getting looks of scom from the assembled cyberbillys, I wondered how they managed to get their cars and bikes to look this good in such a corrosive environment. I saw the start of a drag race, two of the muscle cars accelerating so quickly that their front wheels came off the ground, flames shooting from their exhausts as they raced up part of the remaining and very unsafe-looking raised road system. A cheer went up from the onlookers. I almost felt like I could live this way.

Mrs Tillwater found a space and fussily parked in it, I wasn’t sure why. I fixed my mask and goggles in place and climbed out. Morag came to a halt nearby and Rannu pulled up next to us. Mrs Tillwater headed over to a group of the cyberbillys. All of them had the aces and eights of the Dead Man’s Hand painted on their clothes somewhere, the colours of the Hard Luck Commancheros. There were some glances our way but finally she signalled to us and started across the concrete square. We followed, doing our best not to get run over by speeding bikes or cars. It was kind of gratifying to see Pagan, Rannu and Mudge form a loose formation, watching all around. I’d found myself doing pretty much the same thing.

We were heading towards the street of terraced flats, where a crowd of the Commancheros was gathered. There were a couple of cars and a pickup, but this mostly seemed to be where the bikers where hanging out. Suited me. Mrs Tillwater signalled to me and then pointed up to the road embankment that ran along one side of the square. Stood on top of the embankment watching us was a figure. I zoomed in on her. She wore an outfit of skin, possibly human, and looked lean, tough and athletic. Her hair was tied back tightly and what I could see of her skin was covered in ritual scars. Her mouth was open in a grimace and I could see her filed-down, steel-capped teeth. She carried a compound bow that looked like it had been made from salvaged metal and had a wicked-looking curved blade stuck through her belt.

‘If we can see her then that means there will be others around that we can’t,’ Mrs Tillwater said over our tactical net. It was like the tribeswoman was challenging us. It was strange. I got a thrill from seeing her. I knew she was another human being but it was like the thrill I got as a kid when I was out with my father in the park and we saw a stag or bear tracks, or even heard wolves howling when we had to camp. The tribeswoman looked feral and degenerate but she also looked noble, unafraid and somehow unpolluted. She hadn’t surrendered her humanity to machinery and war. There was little difference between her tribe and one that had cars and guns except maybe honesty. I think I envied her.

‘Will they attack?’ I asked Mrs Tillwater. I could see her shake her head as the answer came back over the net.

‘No, they’re just letting us know whose neighbourhood we’re borrowing.’

We’d reached the crowd of cyberbillys and I saw them both. I glanced to my left and saw Rannu making his way round that way; I glanced to my right and saw Mudge. I let Mrs Tillwater and Pagan go ahead of me and kept my head down. Morag was next to me. Buck was straddling a low rider, revving it. Gibby was kneeling down next to the engine, fiddling with it. The pair of them looked up as we approached. Neither had their masks on, just plastic sunglasses, though their faces were largely covered by beards anyway. Buck nodded at Mrs Tillwater, then I saw Gibby look to my left - he’d made Mudge. A word passed between Gibby and Buck. Gibby stood up, both of them reaching for their old customised .44s. I came round from behind Mrs Tillwater, the Mastodon in one hand, the Tyler in the other. I couldn’t use my shoulder laser because of the radiation duster.

‘Don’t do it!’ I shouted. Mudge had his SIG drawn and was moving in on the pair, the fully automatic pistol levelled at Gibby. Pagan and even Morag had their pistols in their hands but kept them down waiting to see what the crowd was going to do. Rannu had disappeared somehow despite being the only Nepalese present. He suddenly appeared again, one of his Glocks levelled at Buck and Gibby, the other held down at his side ready to fire into the crowd if need be.

Mudge was still moving up on Buck and Gibby. He didn’t look happy. I wasn’t either. I could still remember them flying away from us, leaving me standing with the corpses of two of my friends. Mudge walked up to Gibby and wrapped his hands round the ex-pilot’s greasy dreadlocks before digging the barrel of the gun painfully into his skin.

‘Hello, Gibby,’ Mudge said. ‘Jakob, we only need one of these cunts to talk, right?’

‘Calm down, Mudge,’ I said. The crowd was edgy. I was sure that weapons were being drawn out of sight. The cyberbilly closest to me tried to pull a cut-down pump action out of her duster. I moved the Tyler to cover her. ‘Do that and I’ll turn your head to steam,’ I said. ‘Okay, everyone, just take it easy. We just want to talk to Buck and Gibby.’

‘I don’t,’ Mudge said helpfully.

‘Except for Mudge, who wants to torture them to death,’ I muttered to myself. There were a lot of Commancheros here and lots close by. If it came down to gunplay it would get futile very quickly.

‘Jakob,’ I heard Morag say. I didn’t like the tone in her voice. ‘Ow, fuck!’ I turned round to see Mrs Tillwater with an automatic held to Morag’s head. It looked like she’d just bitten Morag’s ear through the hood of her poncho - I could see it bleeding through the material. I moved the Tyler to cover Mrs Tillwater.

‘You have been told once,’ she said evenly. The suburban matriarch gone, she was all military commander now. ‘They are Crawling Town; you are not. Now lower your guns,’ she ordered. More of the Commancheros had their weapons in their hands now.

‘Fuck her,’ Mudge said. ‘Shoot her in the head.’

‘I will eat her,’ Mrs Tillwater said, and I believed her. I lowered my weapons. Rannu and a relieved-looking Pagan did the same. Obviously Mudge didn’t. The cyberbilly whose head I’d threatened to turn to steam tried to take my Mastodon out of my hand. She found herself lying on the ground with my foot on her throat.

‘Let’s not get carried away here. We lower ours, you guys lower yours, and we’ll see if we can make it through the next ten minutes without any of you getting killed,’ I said. Always negotiate from a position of strength, even when you obviously don’t have one. Mudge still had his gun levelled at Gibby.

‘Mudge!’ I said. I saw one of his eyes swivel towards me. Finally he lowered his gun. I turned to Mrs Tillwater.

‘Now let her go,’ I said, holstering my two guns. Mrs Tillwater released Morag, who spun away from the serial killer as she was putting her automatic back in her handbag.

‘What did you have to bite me for?’ Morag demanded.

‘Sorry, dear,’ Mrs Tillwater said unapologetically.

Morag punched her. It shouldn’t have connected with a vet like Tillwater, but it did. I guess she hadn’t been expecting it; I know I hadn’t. It was hand-to-hand stuff from Morag’s softskills but she’d obviously been practising enough that her body had properly integrated the software. She caught the side of Tillwater’s jaw with her fist and knocked her back a bit. Tillwater’s head snapped back and she looked furious, as did Morag. I got ready to draw my pistols but Mrs Tillwater just smiled, nodded at Morag and turned away.

‘Hell, that was tense,’ Buck drawled. Mudge pistol-whipped him so hard it knocked him off the bike. Even I cringed as the bike hit the concrete, scratching the electric-blue paint job on the alcohol tank. Gibby helped Buck pick the bike up.

Buck was bleeding from the mouth. He spat out blood and a tooth. The crowd was getting restless again.

‘What the fuck!’

Gibby looked at the ruined paint job. ‘Fuck this! Everybody kill these people,’ he said. Weapons were drawn again.

‘Buck, Gibby,’ Mrs Tillwater said, as if she was talking to two naughty boys, and she kind of was, ‘both myself and Papa Neon would appreciate it if you would talk with Jakob and his friends.’

‘But look what they did to my bike!’ Buck moaned. Mudge didn’t help by grinning at him.

‘Everyone!’ Mrs Tillwater said to the Commancheros. ‘Shall we give these old friends some time together?’ Then she turned to me. ‘I’ll be just over here with all of Buck and Gibby’s friends, so I want you to play nicely,’ she said sweetly. ‘Understand?’ All trace of sweetness gone.

I nodded. ‘Everyone put your guns away,’ I said over the tactical net. Eventually even Mudge holstered his SIG.

‘Come on, everyone,’ Mrs Tillwater said, as if she was organising a picnic.

‘We ain’t going nowhere,’ one of the Commancheros said. ‘Who the hell are you to tell us what to do?’ Mrs Tillwater walked over to him. He towered over her.

‘I’ll come and find you and we can talk about it tonight?’ she said and then smiled up at him. I was pretty sure I saw him blanch behind his goggles.

Finally, once everyone had stopped being macho, the five of us were left alone with Buck and Gibby. Gibby at least had the common courtesy to look a little nervous. Buck just looked pissed off.

‘We need to talk,’ I said to the pair. As soon as I opened my mouth Buck revved the engine on the low rider, drowning me out. ‘That’s pretty childish,’ I said, and predictably he revved the bike again.

‘Fuck it. Let’s shoot him and torture Gibby,’ Mudge said as my audio dampeners kicked in to drown out the bike engine’s throaty roar.

‘We’re wasting our time,’ Pagan said and again the bike engine was revved.

‘We don’t want to talk to you. Fuck off an leave us alone,’ Gibby said. He was looking pretty scared. I didn’t think it was because of us.

‘You know Rolleston’s going to find you sooner or later,’ I told him.

‘Yeah, because of you, you fucker!’ he answered.

‘Rolleston’s always known where we are,’ Buck said angrily. ‘And that was fine as long as we didn’t talk to anyone.’

‘Well, whether you talk to us or not he’s still going to kill you,’ Mudge pointed out.

‘So fucking what? You know anyone over forty?’ Buck asked. Maybe Rolleston, I thought, but decided to keep that observation to myself.

‘That’s no reason not to talk to us,’ Morag said.